The three of them stand at the entrance of the room but do not enter.

“Did you know,” Karen continued, “that this machine simulates what some neurologists think happened to Saint Paul? On the road to Damascus. His conversion, his revelation. Just epilepsy. A localized temporal lobe seizure.”

“So do you want to try it?” she asks Kierk, who is staring at her.

He examines himself, searching.

“No, no. I don’t think I would, actually.”

Karen looks at him with sly eyes, as if he has told her a great secret.

“What about you, Carmen?” she asks.

“No. I guess I don’t want to either.”

Karen sighs. “Neither did I,” she finally says, and turns off the lights. As the door closes and the contraption is left to blink alone in the dark of the room its slavering outline looks to Kierk almost biological, like a creature crouching on its haunches in wait.

Later in the standard TMS and EEG lab Karen assesses Carmen’s technique as Carmen maneuvers the mesh net of recording electrodes onto Kierk’s hair, which leaves tufts of it sticking out like a captured sea anemone. Then Carmen pulls down the coil that is attached to a suitcase-size battery.

“Where are we going with that thing?” He eyes the coil.

“You don’t have any history of seizures, right?” Carmen says playfully.

“No, but—”

“Don’t worry, I’m just calibrating it.” She flicks on some dials. “I’ll start with a low, subthreshold pulse, very weak, in your motor cortex. Then build up slowly to find the right threshold until we get a motor result.”

Kierk makes a face. “Okay, but just keep that damn thing away from my Broca’s area. It’s a fucking cathedral in there.”

“I’ll just get to motor threshold and then we’ll quit.” With the coil set against his skull, the click of its activation is incredibly loud. They both stare down at his unmoving hand.

Karen watches the two of them lightly flirt and Kierk regales Carmen with the incident at the primate lab last night. At their banter Karen’s thoughts go to Max, and how she will sit across from him later today in a department budget meeting and slowly, very slowly, his foot will make its way over to hers, violating the stiller air of the committee, both their faces unchanged. Under the table an observer would see their shoes begin, like an alien life-form, a strange and silly and titillating courtship dance.