Kierk comes up for air. “I’m networking the computers together. Then I’ll model different regions of the cortex independently on each.” He brushes the dust off the top of one of the hard drives, then goes back down.

Carmen nods solemnly—“So the hardware will mimic the architecture of the neural network being simulated. Since there’s more intra-regional connections than inter-regional. Clever.”

Kierk immediately sits back onto one knee and looks up at her, surprised. “Yes, that’s exactly right.”

He’s been staring just a second too long when Karen saves him by tapping on his shoulder. “I come bearing MATLAB keys.”

Later Karen takes them on a tour, detailing the available equipment: electroencephalography (EEG), functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS). At the same time she launches into her standard research spiel. In all scientists this is a practiced presentation as worn and automatic as a politician’s stump speech. Carmen gives Kierk a subtle look and he whispers—“Call Stockholm,” to which she stifles a laugh.

“. . . and using fMRI we’ve shown that changes in consciousness are accompanied only by changes in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. Meaning that only a tiny, evolutionary-recent frontal part of the brain is actually doing any experiencing . . .”

Kierk lags behind, thinking—what a ridiculous and old hypothesis, that the entirety of mind is just a play of sartorial metaphysics, as if by adding a hat the entire outfit became conscious . . .

Carmen tugs his shirt, and Kierk, breaking from thought, follows her into the room dominated by the giant white children’s toy of the fMRI. Karen is talking about the time that she, as a graduate student, had the surreal experience of giving H. M., the man without a hippocampus and therefore infamous for his inability to form new memories, a similar tour of the lab, knowing that he would forget it all in several minutes. Carmen is reminded of the anecdote about what H. M. had kept in his wallet. A small, well-handled slip of paper that read—DAD’S DEAD. That struck her so hard she had nearly cried in class when her professor told them about it. But with Karen holding court she doesn’t mention it.

In the next room a medieval contraption occupies the center. It consists of a leather chair next to a table, and on the table is a buckled stand of hinged joints, like the bottom of a hideously heavy lamp, a base that rises up into a maw of metal and a wired-up football helmet with a tube-like tongue. Long hoses of wire snake around in loose nests. Arrays of monitors surround the homiletic contraption like withdrawn worshippers.

“It uses a fluctuating magnetic field to excite the neurons in the inferior temporal lobe. Subjects report feelings of religious hallucinations. We have another standard one for regular experiments, but this one is specially designed. It’s called the God Helmet.”