I must be going nuts, Michael thought.

'Sleep tight,' said the guard and gave him a cheery, leery grin.

There were smiling Japanese tourists in the lift. You are bowing to a crazy man, Michael told them in his mind.

I made the whole thing up. I had a bad experience in the sauna, my life is shit, I've been depressed for years without doing anything about it, and now I've gone and broken my brain.

Christ. Michael remembered the feel of Tony's skin, its smell, its taste. It increases your respect for schizophrenics, really. They're not just a bit muddled. All those brain cells get tickled up, and they start making brand-new sentences of sight and sound and touch. The new sentences are lies, but they feel like the real thing.

You lose a certain kind of innocence when you go crazy. You used to take it for granted that your brain shows you what's actually out there. Now all you've got left is doubt, Michael.

But then, science is built on doubt.

The train bounced and rattled him, like life.

At the lab, Michael strolled through his normal routine as if sleepwalking.

He fed his smartcard into the reader at the front door. He said hello to the security guard Shafiq and showed him his pass. He went down the line of offices, one by one. None of them had windows.

Hello, Ebru! Hello boss! It amused Ebru to call him boss.

Hiya Emilio, how's the system? Why you ask? It's great like always!

He heard their voices, as if in his own head, as if no one were really speaking.

In his own office, Michael slipped into his entirely symbolic white lab coat. He asked Hugh to check the thermostat readings in the darkroom. 'If the temperature goes much under or over thirty-eight, give me a shout.'

And he sat down and he had no idea what to do. His desk stared back at him, as orderly as his notebooks. There were three new things in his in tray, and the out tray was empty. On his PC would be a timed list of things to do.