Except for little things: fleeting things, small but bright somehow, little bits of recorded data that seemed to catch the light like confetti as they fluttered down through his mind throughout the day. They weren’t pictures, nothing as clear and straightforward as that, and nothing he could hold on to. But he’d be sitting in the commissary, or back in his room, or crossing the yard to the Chalet, and a taste would bubble from the back of his throat, and a queer juicy feeling in his teeth. Sometimes it struck him so hard it actually made him freeze in his tracks. And when this happened, he’d think of funny things, unrelated, a lot of which had to do with Brownbear. Like the taste in his mouth would push a button that would start him up thinking about his old dog, who, truth be told, he hadn’t really thought about much at all until recently, not for years and years, until that night he’d had that dream in Containment and tossed all over the floor.

Brownbear and his reeking breath. Brownbear dragging something dead, a possum or raccoon, up the front steps. That time he got into a nest of bunnies under the trailer, tiny little balls of peach-colored skin, not even covered with fur yet, and crunched them one by one, their little skulls popping between his molars, like a kid sitting in the movies with a box of Whoppers.

Funny thing: he couldn’t say for sure Brownbear had actually done that.

He wondered if he was sick. The sign over the sentry station on L3 made him nervous, in a way it hadn’t before. It seemed to be talking right to him. ANY OF THE FOLLOWING SYMPTOMS … One morning, returning from breakfast, he’d felt a tickle in this throat, like maybe he was getting a cold; before he knew it he’d sneezed hard into his hand. His nose had been running a little ever since. Then again, it was spring now, still cold at night but rising into the fifties or even sixties during the afternoon, and all the trees were budding out, a faint haze of green, like a spatter of paint over the mountains. He’d always been allergic.