As the cold reality of the scan-tube leaked in, he once again became the sole inhabitant of his body.

The tube slid back to reveal the bare white ceiling of the lab.

“Ambrose.” His father’s voice.

“Don’t try to sit up.” His brother.

But he felt fine, if slightly groggy, as if he’d just woken up from a short, teeth-grinding nap. The top half of the tube tilted upright until he was face-to-face with his brother. His arms and legs were still strapped down. His feet rested on little platforms. Len smiled grimly.

“Congratulations, Ambrose.”

Ambrose regarded his brother. As always, impossible to read. Had they become aware of the transmission? There was no way to find out. Best to keep his mouth shut. He tried to flow a quick process and realized how sluggish he was. He couldn’t reach any real endpoint. The tube had opened into a new world with an unfamiliar set of possibilities and outcomes, and his ability was hopelessly scrambled. His heart hammered, but he kept his voice steady.

“How’d I do?”

“You didn’t do anything except lie still inside the tube.”

“I mean—”

“We successfully modified your hypothalamus and corresponding cephalic patterns. Your body’s physical craving for sleep will no longer register.”

“Get me out of this thing.”

“You’re aware that we have to run a series of tests, that you can’t just—”

“Where’s Dad?”

His father stepped into his line of sight. “As predicted, the procedure was a success. Len’s going to run diagnostics, then we’ll get you acclimated to the calibration process. Listen, son.”

“Which?” Len asked.

“Ambrose.”

“Can you undo these straps, please?” Ambrose asked.

His father ignored his request. “I want you to stay on task. You may think you feel fine, but it’s important never to underestimate the psychological effects of a Level-Seven procedure.”

Ambrose nodded curtly and slipped into the corporate-scientist-speak he used with his father. “We accounted for them in our initial Process Flow. Sixteen mid-spectrum outcomes involving extended dream states immediately following the procedure. My own internal monitoring indicates—”

Len scoffed. “How exactly are you performing this self-diagnostic? Checking for a sore throat?”

“Leonard,” Martin said. Len busied himself with a series of slowly rotating externalized graphs. “Ambrose, what your brother’s trying to say is that you need to relax and let us work.”

“My endpoints are hazy. When will my Process Flow ability reconstitute?”

“Soon,” his father assured him.

“You might feel a little pinch,” Len said, placing his palms an inch from Ambrose’s forehead and externalizing the data in the space between the tube and the ceiling.

“Shut up, Len.”

Slowly, Len moved his palms around his brother’s forehead and down along his face. Ambrose’s feet twitched at the prickly sensation of almost-touch.

“Lemme see,” he said. Len moved the data so that Ambrose could see the projection of his brain broken down into subsections and cross sections.

“See? I’m fine.”

Len grunted. This wasn’t exactly Ambrose’s area of expertise. Len turned to the data, reached inside the hypothalamus, and expanded it by pulling apart. He poked deep into Ambrose’s brain, and the memory of the transmission asserted itself. Ambrose’s present reality was an imitation of his birth: projected brain activity, scan-tubes, Martin Truax. He studied his thought-pattern charts for some indication of what he was thinking. If Len and his father noticed anything, they kept quiet.