“But we’re just retracing the same ground all over again. We’re just repeating history. Over and over we keep making the same mistakes. Everyone who works on consciousness does.”

“You are lazy.”

“I’ve been trying to get a clear view of all this—”

“To be a scientist, to be anything of caliber is difficult. In fact, it is nearly impossible. You wish to study consciousness, you must, as they say, do the time. You must do boring, menial work, sometimes.

You must finish papers.”

“I’m trying. I stopped writing fiction, like you told me to. I haven’t written a word since you told me to stop.”

“You are clean. As drug addicts say.”

“Yes, I’m clean.”

“Good. One cannot be an artist, and a scientist, and a philosopher. To be that is to be a monster. A centaur. A freak.”

“I understand.”

“How many times have we had this conversation?”

“If you’d let me do it my way I could—”

“You must stop reading as well. No literature. And you must not, must never, read philosophy. It is especially dangerous for you to read philosophy.”

“I’m just trying to help, to shore things up, to focus on the foundations.”

“The foundations can be reexamined forever, an eternal return. We must progress. Or what are we doing here? Or more specifically, what are you doing here?”

Later, back in Madison, Kierk trudged across the dark frictionless expanse of the Capitol Square at some late hour of the night, craning his neck to occasionally look up at the golden angel. Beneath her the dome of the capitol building was breaching snow and wind like the rounded head of a great white whale. There was a notebook clenched in his cyanotic fingers. Not dressed for the weather, Kierk couldn’t stop shaking.

“NOTHING LESS!” Wiping at his nose with his sleeves, his eyes darted around in the freezing dark of the square, chasing phantasmagoria.

“I WILL ACCEPT NOTHING LESS. AND YOU DON’T HAVE IT. BUT INSTEAD OF LETTING ME SOLVE THIS PROBLEM YOU MAKE ME POUR WATER INTO BOTTOMLESS JARS. BOTTOMLESS—” Coughing. Kierk couldn’t stop coughing. His lungs felt like they were burning up from the cold.

Trudging back to his apartment he was a solitary figure weaving down the emptiness of State Street. At the door his hands were so chilled he couldn’t put the key in. Finally inside the building, he had a violent shivering attack on the concrete stairs, sprawled out, biting down so hard he thought his teeth might crack, his legs kicking and curling in an automatic attempt to generate heat, followed by the intense cramping pain of blood coming back to every limb and digit.