"I imagine you're right," he dismissed it. "More coffee?"
"No, thanks."
Deciding it was time to continue the discussion, he said, "So you want to be a Shaper..."
"Yes."
"I hate to be the one to destroy anybody's high ambitions," he told her. "Like poison, I hate it. Unless they have no foundation at all in reality. Then I can be ruthless. So— honestly, frankly, and in all sincerity, I do not see how it could ever be managed. Perhaps you're a fine psychiatrist—
but in my opinion, it is a physical and mental impossibility for you ever to become a neuroparticipant. As for my reasons—"
"Wait," she said. "Not here, please. Humor me. I'm tired of this stuffy place—take me somewhere else to talk. I think I might be able to convince you there is a way."
"Why not?" He shrugged. "I have plenty time. Sure—you call it. Where?"
"Blindspin?"
He suppressed an unwilling chuckle at the expression, but she laughed aloud.
"Fine," he said, "but I'm still thirsty."
A bottle of champagne was tallied and he signed the check despite her protests. It arrived in a colorful "Drink While You Drive" basket, and they stood then, and she was tall, but he was taller.
Blindspin.
A single name of a multitude of practices centered about the auto-driven auto. Flashing across the country in the sure hands of an invisible chauffeur, windows all opaque, night dark, sky high, tires assailing the road below like four phantom buzzsaws—and starting from scratch and ending in the same place, and never knowing where you are going or where you have been—it is possible, for a moment, to kindle some feeling of individuality in the coldest brainpan, to produce a momentary awareness of self by virtue of an apartness from all but a sense of motion. This is because movement through darkness is the ultimate abstraction of life itself—at least that's what one of the Vital Comedians said, and everybody in the place laughed.