He’s not going far enough. But perhaps there is a way. A real theory of consciousness could begin here.

Kierk pauses. The paper is not one of his better ones, he had thought. But maybe Atif had seen some way forward, or suspected something . . . Kierk couldn’t figure it out. Had Atif been secretly working on a theory of consciousness without telling the others? Kierk raked his mind, trying to remember the various conversations . . . Maybe he had been afraid to mention it? Fear of someone, specifically Kierk, stealing the seed of his idea and extrapolating it faster than he could? Had there been some hint that night, some way Atif had acted that showed that he was ripe with an ultimate notion? Had there been a dissertation blooming like a flower bed in his gut, a symphonic thesis playing behind his calm eyes? Honestly Kierk doubted it, but who really knew when it would come, and to whom. And what if it hadn’t been just any theory, but the correct theory, that paragraph of perfect language Kierk had been searching for . . . But maybe such a revelation wouldn’t have been so lucky. Maybe the thought of it was so intense, so shattering in its weight, its implications spinning out, Atif seeing all of it, drunk and underground in that yellow halving chamber, just him and the greatest scientific theory of all time, not beautiful but horrifying, the cruel joke exposed, turning into an infinite unstoppable laugh track sounding off all throughout the universe, and, unable to bear the jeering weight of its consequences, Atif had dived headfirst into that bright light just to erase from his mind the idea that had colonized it with omnivorous intent.