Instead of sleeping Kierk is out grabbing beers at a bar, sitting at the open window in the breeze and watching the late-night groups of people walk past in fits of laughter or discussion. Then he’s out to join them, meandering past the bright lamplights and shuttered store windows of New York City at night. To be a scientist again, to be working on consciousness again—he can’t believe it. He is a secular priest once more. In this he feels the possessor of a great secret, a thing unknown to everyone he passes, a thing that buzzes inside him and keeps him from bed. No longer is he on the outside looking in. It is happening again. He is a man catching fire. Eventually this feeling grows until his path becomes directional, purposeful. He can now enter where others cannot. Stalking through the darkened trees of Washington Square Park he veers sharply toward the CNS.

The building stands as a dark windowless tower, which he approaches in the night. A single light is on from somewhere far above. The ID card he’d been given makes the door flash green and he enters the cool artificial air with the smile of one entering a sanctum. He wants to see again the familiar sights of the graduate student making a midnight dinner, the postdoc mid-experiment listening to music, the long rows of waiting workstations, the nocturnal mice now up to play while the scientists sleep.

But in the dim lobby everything is silent, and his fingers linger on the handle, the glass, the empty lobby desk. Where is the guard? Kierk had thought entry to the building was constantly monitored, even this late. He goes to drink at the water fountain but bending down the water never touches his mouth. The metal under his hand is vibrating subtly but forcefully. He puts his palm on the cold tile of the wall. There it is stronger, almost a hum, and he can feel it moving through his entire arm now. Moving a few steps, hand still on the wall, he finds it increasing in intensity. There’s some sort of incredibly loud droning vibrating through the entire building’s foundation. Maybe there’s construction in the basement?

Following the hum through the dark corridors, he passes no sign of anyone else on his way to the stairwell. As he descends, the metal railing shudders perceptibly under his hand. At the very bottom he finds himself back at the door to the primate labs, the annex of which is illuminated only by red light. The hum is no longer just a hum but has become an alien sound vibrating through his skeleton like an ocean of white noise. The locus is beyond the annex. Above it he can now hear what sounds like a jungle of screams and cries, howling, shrieks, the clatter of cages as the monkeys inside go mad.