“Good, the fog is lifting.” I detected a trace of Scottish Highlands tucked into the physician’s British accent. As he backed away, I realized I wasn’t looking at him; I was watching a flatscreen monitor on my left. The man’s face suddenly multiplied, as if he were looking into a mirror that was facing another mirror, only everything that appeared on the screen was originating from my vision.

“Let me turn that away from you, it’s too disorienting.” He pushed the monitor around on its swivel arm.

I heard a hiss of air pressure as a pneumatic door opened behind me. I caught a whiff of cheap aftershave and knew it was the Colonel.

He positioned a stool on my right and then spun my chair around to face him. “What did you know, Zachary?”

“I don’t understand.”

“In your last memory emergence you said, ‘I already knew.’ You were at Loch Ness, the day your best friend, True, died. What is it you knew?”

“That he wanted to die. That he was wracked with guilt over the deaths caused by the Purussaurus. I knew when I saw him circling in his boat that he had rigged the keel with explosives. How did you know I was dreaming of that day?”

He pointed to the optical scanner. “I know because this machine reads the electrical signals perceived by the brain and plays them on this monitor for me to watch. In the last seventeen days, I’ve dialed up every pertinent memory you’ve experienced, and it’s been quite an adventure. Your life is a paradox, Dr. Wallace… No, let me rephrase that: Your death is a paradox. I’ve watched you die so many times that I feel I owe you flowers. From your drowning as a young boy in Loch Ness to your drowning in the Sargasso Sea, to at least a dozen horrible deaths in Lake Vostok. And yet, here you are.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I had a few near-death experiences, so what?”

“Not near-death, my friend. You died.”

I laid my head back, feeling lightheaded.

Dr. Stewart leaned in with an apple juice, which I sipped from a straw.

“Thank you.”

“Let me know if you want more. And if you feel like you have to urinate, go ahead. We have a catheter in you.”

I felt queasy. “Why am I here? Is any of this even real?”