Not looking in Max’s direction Kierk waves a hand as if shooing away a fly. “Memory, attention? What are these things if not synonyms for selection? Selection of a change to keep. Selection of one stimulus above others. And we already know the physiological correlates of this selection: the literal selection of neural connections, their random growth providing variation and their preferential survival based on their utility, their use. All those neu-rites growing, pruning, triumphing, dying, forming alliances, and carving out the territory of gray matter. Render a monkey’s arm inert by tying it to its side, and in a week the neighboring neurons will have taken over the neural territory that belonged to that arm. Playing out the only game in town. The elegance of our genome is carved out of the violence of selection. Did you think that the elegance of our thoughts was any different? Oh fall to your knees, you lovers of peace, for the brain is a war!”

Kierk shoots his gaze to Max, a wild Celtic look in his eyes. This should annoy Max, but something in the desperate look of Kierk’s eyes makes it not. Max has realized that none of this is directed at him anyways, and that Kierk is always talking to himself.

“It’s just gotten so much clearer to me lately!” Kierk goes on. “There’s only one real question in all of neuroscience: how does the continuous activity of twenty billion cortical neurons generate a stream of consciousness? That’s it. Everything else is just chump-change correlations. Or tracking the minute changes in a complex and endless competition that we cannot unravel with all the supercomputers in the world. Neither of these gives us a science of mind. In the end, nothing in the brain makes sense except in the light of consciousness.”

Max internally debates arguing but finally just sighs. “You’re only interested in revolution, but you don’t realize how rare that is. And in the meantime, someone has to get the grants and develop the techniques and teach the students and actually do some neuroscience research. No?”

But Kierk just nods vaguely, already moving away. He’s off to find Carmen, drawn to her in this crowded space of Promega tote bags, and although he doesn’t know where she is her presence is palpable, an electric charge in a substance beyond perception, like his own personal magnetic north. Like action at a distance. Now he feels the way needles feel, always.