I didn’t know what to do or say. Certainly I didn’t want to upset either of them. Just then, a tall clownish-looking man came up to us. He walked bent over, but quickly, on the balls of his feet. He took a magazine from the table and winked at me sympathetically. “Don’t let it bother you none,” he said. “None of us hears the voices either like Queen Alice does. Maybe you’ll be able to hear them later on yourself. You never can tell.” He winked encouragingly and went back to his chair.

I just stared after him. This … patient wanted me to understand that I was in the same boat as all of them—he was trying to comfort me. I rose to leave. As I did, again the other patients began to mill about. Queen Alice squared her scrawny shoulders and asked suddenly, “Who do you think you are? I mean, who do you imagine yourself to be?”

“Nobody,” I said.

“That’s too bad,” she answered, and with the craziest smile, Ram-Ram said, “That’s his trouble.” Without another word, I left.

Actually I was more shaken than I wanted to admit. Obviously the conversation in my apartment had set Ram-Ram off, I thought, for now he supposed that we were conducting some esoteric experiment together, in which Queen Alice’s voices were also involved. I shook my head: “The poor old coot.” Yet as I returned home, I could feel my mood swing about in the most unusual fashion from definite disquiet to an almost lethargic passivity. From this latter I was then struck by a sudden exuberance in which it seemed that everything would work out well, and, indeed, that none of my problems or Ram-Ram’s were important at all.

I’d been working too hard, I thought. Obviously the two experiences that led me to call Ram-Ram were perfectly natural results of exhaustion. I decided to take some vitamin C. Then my exhilaration quickened. The idea came to me that there was something I must write down at once. Almost without thinking, I inserted some paper into my old typewriter.

I recall being surprised beyond measure at the first sight of what I’d written. For there at the top of the page the following words appeared as if in a title:

THE FURTHER EDUCATION OF OVERSOUL SEVEN

I stared. The further education of what? What had possessed me to write such a nonsense phrase? Yet even as I puzzled over the sentence, excitement seized me. Suddenly assured and full of confidence, I began typing as fast as my hands would go. The words seemed to slip through my brain from someplace else, and onto the paper, yet I had no idea where the material was coming from. Moreover, a story of sorts seemed to be developing.