Antonio Moretti was sitting behind his desk wearing a bolo tie and a boyish smile, nearly twirling in his office chair. Around him were shelves of psychiatry books, whiteboards filled by equations and diagrams, loose-leaf paper, and discarded pens everywhere. Kierk was twenty-three and in ripped jeans and a disheveled, unwashed T-shirt, circles under his eyes from reading all night. From tiny cups they drank espresso made from Moretti’s new state-of-the-art espresso machine that had the sleekness of a high-end automobile.

Antonio Moretti was speaking . . . “The most amazing thing is that using my theory you can recreate someone’s consciousness just from their brain’s connectome.”

“Basically a consciousness meter,” Kierk said.

“Yes, precisely. As per the theory, all conscious experiences are essentially geometrical information shapes. Very simple to represent. Very beautiful.”

Kierk, excitedly—“Yes, like you’ve extracted the conscious experience out of the physical system into a simplified mathematical form.”

“Exactly. Which means that, given my theory, we’ll be able to transmit the quale, the conscious state.”

“Others could reconstruct it.”

“Imagine, Kierk, if one finds a patient with a particular sensory deficit, a neurologist could send the quale, the conscious experience of that patient, to another neurologist. I imagine art exhibits of qualia, large geometric structures. The conscious experience becomes fungible. You could even instantiate it in other brains if you wanted to. Change the connectivity of a particular brain to get the sensation or sensory space that you wanted.” Antonio began to sketch out on a sheet of paper the anatomy of a machine capable of such a procedure, of bending the neural connectivity of a brain to produce heightened sensation, or maybe even transplant another’s experience directly into it.

“Consciousness as a commodity. You’re talking about building and selling experiences,” Kierk said quietly.

“Well, such things are possible, Kierk, when you have a theory of consciousness.”

And maybe, Kierk had thought, leaning back in his chair, one day we’ll have synaptic sewing machines with fine enough fingers to sculpt the delicate neural architectures required to replicate, precisely, the pain of Jesus Christ crucified on the cross. We can sell them at discounts and try to save all our souls, he had thought, watching Antonio continue to draw sketches of his machine.

TUESDAY

Kierk wakes up and collects the rags of himself crumpled about the floor of the apartment, a difficult task now because the cardboard boxes have taken up nearly all available space, as if they were capable of reproduction and had multiplied.

Out on Broadway he can feel the barometric pressure drop that indicates a storm approaching, that tingling feeling on the skin, that wind chime of receptive bone, the way the trash skitters across the pavement as it is swept from one side of the street to the other. The sky begins to gray, becomes a low roof.