Sam was shaking her head, her lips pressed into a cold line. 'You're saying there's no such thing as consciousness, aren't you?'

Thomas shrugged. 'Who knows? Certainly not as it intuitively understands itself.'

The car was still running—a sub-audible purr. The radio voices had given way to some inane NPR jingle. The blinker ticked like a cartoon bomb.

'It's all a dream,' she said, more to herself than to Thomas, it seemed. 'All of it, from the pyramids to Shakespeare to…'

Thomas didn't know what to say.

There was something genuinely sad about her smile. 'How about you, professor? Are you for real?'

Her eyes held him, wet and open.

'Only if you want me to be, Sam.'

Another one of her friendly, skeptical scowls. She began pulling back onto the road. The eighteen-wheeler had become a toy in the distance.

No more lies, he promised himself.

They drove in silence for several moments. Sam stared blankly out the windshield, while Thomas hugged his shoulders in apprehension.

'So Neil…' Sam said, trailing.

'Is unlike anyone you've ever hunted, Sam.'

Her look was pure you're-telling-me. 'This is what you meant at the restaurant, isn't it? When you said that Neil thinks of himself as a brain rather than a person.'

'I guess so. I didn't really think it through until now, though.'

'So we're talking about a man without motives? Is that it?'

'No. Motives, goals, reasons—these are just ways we make sense of ourselves and each other. Even if they're deceptive, they still work, which means they're still applicable to him, probably. The difference is that he no longer thinks in these terms.'

'Then just how does he think?'

'My guess is that he sees himself just… doing things. That he's suffering some kind of extreme depersonalization.'

'Depersonalization,' she repeated. 'You say that like it's a disease, but it's not, is it? It's more like some kind of… revelation or something.'

'I suppose so.'

'So what? Should I be thinking of him as a machine executing some kind of aberrant program?'

'Perhaps.'

'Help me out here, Tom. Every time I start thinking I have a handle on this crazy fucker, you throw me another fuzz ball.'

She was being too insistent, trying to force something actionable out of paralyzing facts. 'You asked me what Neil's world was like. I'm trying to tell you that he's passed beyond the veil, that he thinks he's seen his way through the illusions of consciousness. Since I'm stuck in the Lie the same as you, all I can really do is speculate about what Neil isn't.'

She scowled, her eyes reading the road. 'C'mon, professor. Speculation only becomes a problem when you confuse it for fact. You of all people should know that.'

Thomas exhaled, pinched the bridge of his nose.