I am worried: Will I end up bragging about how well I performed at a series of clever psychological mazes? And is that actually what I’m being led to do? Yet even laboratory animals are given incentives, so what reward am I being offered? What stimuli am I unconsciously reacting to? The question itself suddenly excited me so that I stopped writing for a moment, filled with anticipation. If I’m running a different kind of maze than laboratory animals, a “multidimensional” one, to coin one of “Education”’s terms, then, of course, the psychological rewards are being held out like the carrot before the horse.

And that simple enough statement sounds very much like Ram-Ram’s agitated first conversation with me in connection with the experiments he suggested—experiments, incidentally, that were never quite explained to me … But in any case, surely I’m being offered a boon of a kind: the opportunity of studying this bizarre experience from the inside, at first hand, in the most isolated laboratory of all, in a way—my own mind. I seem to be both subject and analyst, and thus in a position to study behavioral conditioning from a unique standpoint. For the first time I see some kind of logic that I can understand in all of this. If I’m right, then each further intrusion of the “book world” into mine is actually the insertion of new stimulus to the laboratory situation. My reactions are being watched, then. Why didn’t this occur to me before? Well, any number can play that game.

So: Tomorrow I won’t write a line on the infernal manuscript, and I’ll wait for their reactions. Am I being crafty, suitably clever, or in playing the game, have I already lost the fine edges of sanity? Now I question whether or not sanity has fine edges. I do wish I knew some truly knowledgeable colleague, familiar with all fields of psychology, with whom I could discuss what’s happening. Actually I’m beyond that point now; I don’t really feel that anyone else can help me. At the same time, I’m afraid, sometimes at least, that I’ll end up like Ram-Ram or worse. Even the prospect of being considered a mere fool is a terrible one to me, when I’ve been so used to considering my psychological stance impeccable.

All of this concentrated thought must be wearing me out. I feel unusually tired and can hardly keep my eyes open. My fingers keep lingering over the typewriter keys as if uncertain whether or not to continue—