I suppose that’s true. What then? Is that all that the world has in mind?

If the world has a mind then it’s all worse than we thought.

Does it? It is?

I dont know that we’ll get that far.

In these consultations.

Yes. Let’s go back to the allotted days.

All right.

I doubt that anyone would live his life over. They’d hardly relive a day of it.

I can think of days I wouldnt mind living over.

Moments of joy or insight maybe. But the whole twenty-four hours?

I wouldnt rule it out. Do you spend a lot of time thinking about death?

I dont know what a lot is. Contemplating death is supposed to have a certain philosophical value. Palliative even. Trivial to say, I suppose, but the best way to die well is to live well. To die for another would give your death meaning. Ignoring for the time being the fact that the other is going to die anyway.

I dont know how much of this is said for effect.

Let’s just say all of it.

That, for instance. What about living for others?

Well. Exempting the amorphous others of social ideologies and sticking to real people I suppose it might be rare enough to qualify at least as a neurosis. What do you think?

Or that. There’s a note in your files to the effect that you felt you were decaying. I think that’s the word you used. Do you remember making such a statement? It sounds like a rather classical somatic delusion. Something out of the literature. Or were you just stringing your keepers along?

Maybe I was just bored.

Well. People get bored.

No they dont.

They dont?

No. They’ve no idea what boredom is.

Well. I’ll take your word for it. Although intelligence in itself is generally supposed to stand off tedium.

I think it does. Up to a point. Then the door buckles.

I guess what concerns me is that the skepticism of these clinicians—some of whom apparently refused in the end to believe anything you said—makes it hard, or maybe even impossible, to treat you. They dont really know what tack to take with someone whom they believe to be simply making everything up.

Making everything up.

Yes.

That troublesome phrase.

Yes.

I suppose I could ask what it is that they think they’re being paid to do. They want to explain either my delusions or my predilection for lying but the truth is that they cant explain anything at all. Do they think it would be easier to treat someone who was delusional or someone who only believed that she was? You should listen to what this sounds like. Anyway, I’m long past explaining. I’m done.

Do you feel that you belong here? At Stella Maris?

No. But that doesnt answer your question. The only social entity I was ever a part of was the world of mathematics. I always knew that was where I belonged. I even believed it took precedence over the universe. I do now.