y heart, though, I knew. I'd lived enough of my life on the hallucinatory
edge of sleepdep to have anticipated this moment during a thousand freakouts. I
was being led away to the sanatorium, because someone, somewhere, had figured
out about the scurrying hamsters in my brain. About time.

As soon as I said the f-word, the guns came out. I tried to relax. I knew
intuitively that this could either be a routine and impersonal affair, or a
screaming, kicking, biting nightmare. I knew that arriving at the intake in a
calm frame of mind would make the difference between a chemical straightjacket
and a sleeping pill.

The guns were nonlethals, and varied: two kinds of nasty aerosol, a dart-gun,
and a tazer. The tazer captured my attention, whipping horizontal lightning in
the spring breeze. The Tesla enema, they called it in London. Supposedly
club-kids used them recreationally, but everyone I knew who'd been hit with one
described the experience as fundamentally and uniquely horrible.

I slowly raised my hands. "I would like to pack a bag, and I would like to see
documentary evidence of your authority. May I?" I kept my voice as calm as I
could, but it cracked on "May I?"

The reader of the litany nodded slowly. "You tell us what you want packed and
we'll pack it. Once that's done, I'll show you the committal document, all
right?"

"Thank you," I said.

They drove me through the Route 128 traffic in the sealed and padded compartment
in the back of their van. I was strapped in at the waist, and strapped over my
shoulders with a padded harness that reminded me of a rollercoaster restraint.
We made slow progress, jerking and changing lanes at regular intervals. The
traffic signature of 128 was unmistakable.

The intake doctor wanded me for contraband, drew fluids from my various parts,
and made light chitchat with me along the way. It was the last time I saw him.
Before I knew it, a beefy orderly had me by the arm and was leading me to my
room. He had a thick Eastern European accent, and he ran down the house rules
for me in battered English. I tried to devote my attention to it, to forget the
slack-eyed ward denizens I'd passed on my way in. I succeeded enough to
understand the relationship of my legcuff, the door frame and the elevators. The
orderly fished in his smock and produced a hypo.

"For sleepink," he said.

Panic, suppressed since my arrival, welled up and burst over. "Wait!" I said.
"What about my things? I