It’s like walking into a refrigerator when he enters the CNS, that mechanical cool tinged with the tin of air ducts. He searches for a while to find the room of Dr. George Williams, who’s finally back from a conference. Karen had roped George into being on Kierk’s committee over email last week. Knocking on the half-open door Kierk leans in. The professor is sitting behind his desk. His shirtsleeves are rolled up and he projects the confident air of a man whose life is secure socially, economically, tenure-wise, recognition-wise, and grant-wise. There’s a framed fMRI scan on the wall. There’s a bookshelf, the contents of which are mostly familiar to Kierk. But what attracts Kierk’s attention most directly is the crucifix. The cross hangs metallic and unobtrusive between two photos, barely a pencil’s length in size, yet its incongruity with its environment makes it as weighty as an old ironside.

“Kierk Suren, right?”

“Hello, Professor Williams, we said we’d meet today at 10:00. Is that still okay? I know it’s like 10:30, but if you still have time . . .”

“Please, just grab the door and have a seat.”

Kierk nods to the cross—“So you must be a non-overlapping magisteria kind of guy, huh?”

At first Williams blinks in confusion, but then follows Kierk’s gaze and for a silent moment both regard Jesus’ face orgasmic with beatific anguish.

“Well . . . I don’t let it interfere with my work, of course. A bit of a private issue, actually,” Williams says, obviously peeved.

“Not to worry,” Kierk says. “I’m not an atheist anyways.” Even as he says it, he doesn’t know if it’s true or not. He never does.

Williams shifts in his chair and asks—“So fill me in on what you’ve been up to, what you expect from your committee, and so on.”

Kierk does his best to overinflate his minimal progress. Then they talk logistics for a while, but eventually Williams asks him—“You worked with Antonio Moretti?”

“That’s right.”

“Are you planning on continuing the work you were doing prior to leaving your PhD program, or . . .”

“I disproved most of the work I did. Turns out you’re not really supposed to do that in science.”

“. . .”

“So I want to start something new.”

“That’s fine, I guess. Do you have any ideas right now?”

“Well . . . Last night I was thinking that there are intriguing similarities between problems in information theory and the kind of problems with consciousness.”

“Let me be frank. From what I’ve heard there’s a bit of a self-indulgence problem here. With you. And I’m not sure that it’s the best idea—”