“You can’t get at what’s going on in the brain without talking about consciousness.” Kierk circles the table. “Neuroscientists talk about things like concepts, cognition, memory, attention. But they don’t exist in and of themselves, they only exist because a conscious process expresses them. I’m just pointing out that these terms don’t define a playable game by themselves. They’re just the shadows consciousness casts.”

Mike is shaking his head, incredulous. “There are plenty of really fucking smart people in this field, and you’re just dismissing everything they do and the arrogance is astounding. That’s all I’ll say.”

“But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong,” Carmen interrupts. “I mean, you can’t believe that there are no serious fundamental problems in this field, unless you’re wearing, you know, your research blinders.”

Kierk bounces the one off a wall at an acute angle such that it traces a slow lazy yellow line into a middle pocket. Before it even sinks, Kierk is crouching down and surveying the table at eye level, talking. “Let me put it another way. If we didn’t experience it for ourselves, and instead just had to rely on the current literature that makes up the field of neuroscience, would we have any idea, any idea at all, that mental events are bound into a single internal world of experience and that this world is egocentrically oriented around a self? Would you be able to deduce, at all, the structure of human consciousness from what we know about the brain?”

Carmen shakes her head so hard she nearly unbalances herself and falls off her stool. Alex is the only one who sees this and both Carmen and Alex are now laughing at each other, drinks clinking.

“What about my research, Kierk?” Carmen says, recovering. “Want to analyze mine? Say it’s all bullshit?”

“Nah, I read your Nature paper. You’re arguing on my side. Trying to show that consciousness isn’t localized to any part of the brain.”

“And,” Carmen adds, fluffing herself up, pretending to deliver a grand lecture, “that the vast majority of the brain participates in any one given conscious moment. Irreducibly.”

Kierk’s next target is the four, which is sitting snug against the far edge. The cue ball barely touches it but somehow, as if tugged by an invisible string, the four drifts perfectly sideways for almost half a meter along the wall, losing momentum and stopping just in front of the pocket, blocking it.

“Holy shit,” Jessica says. Mike stalks around the table angrily looking for a shot. Kierk clears his throat theatrically, as if taking stage.