“Nothing. I’m just busy.”

“This is important.”

“Fine. Alright? Fine.”

Carmen, confused, leads him out of the lab and into the side room down the corridor. It’s the same room where Atif, Carmen, and he had first talked about their joint project weeks ago.

“What’s going on with you?”

“What is it that you wanted to tell me?” he says brusquely.

Hurt, Carmen lowers her voice. “Okay, whatever, I don’t know what’s wrong with you but this morning outside the CNS this homeless guy was yelling—”

“What was he saying?”

“Listen! He was shouting at everyone entering the CNS. Screaming about how we had taken his friends, that we were kidnapping people. So I asked him. And it took a little while to get it coherent, but the gist of it was that, last night, a friend of his was taken into this building, in here.”

“Into the CNS?”

“Yeah, he was saying that they were taking the homeless. That everyone knew it too. That they took them at night.”

“ Really.”

“Listen, and then he said that afterward they’re different.” Carmen has gotten incredibly serious. “Kierk, he said that they had been lobotomized.”

“He probably just saw the sign ‘Center for Neural Science’ and remembered something about lobotomies and was out there screaming.”

“He said they were doing experiments.”

“Oh come on.” But at her reaction he quickly says—“Listen, I know you’re sensitive about that. Given what happened. It was a sick joke. Maybe even a real death threat. And that’s upsetting. And then what happened with Mars Bars . . . It’s odd. I agree. But what’s the motivation?”

Brushing aside his earlier words Carmen says—“I had the same thought about motivation. And then I realized something. Come with me.”

The TMS/EEG lab is empty. The big plush chair sits in the middle of it like an obscene throne with the extended metal arm a mini-crane looming over it. The coil was attached so that the transcranial magnetic stimulation could be maneuvered to any position above a subject’s head and a magnetic pulse delivered. The webbed hats of electrodes hung in rows on the walls to dry off like wet scalps after an Indian raid. To the front of the chair was the large monitor where visual stimuli could be presented.

Carmen swipes her finger across the armrest and shows her blackened digit to Kierk.

He gestures. “So the cleanliness of the experimental chair is a tragedy of the commons. And?”

“Kierk, sniff this chair.”

He takes a whiff and then pulls back, eyes watering. “And what exactly does this tell us?”

“Not just the chair!” Carmen rushes over to the trash bin. “I found this earlier!” She picks out what looks like an old blanket, frayed and caked to stiffness by dirt and stains. She’s holding it pinched between thumb and forefinger.

Carmen sees Kierk’s expression and says—“I’m a scientist, it’s not my job to be politically correct. It’s my job to go where the facts lead. And the facts say that there was a homeless person in this room, or several. Over time.”