erence and try to sidetrack
me with questions about my motivations, a tactic rating barely above ad hominems
in my book. No one to talk to -- the other patients get violent or nod off,
depending on their medication levels, and the staff just patronize me.

Four AM and I'm going nuts, hamsters in my mind spinning their wheels at a
thousand RPM, chittering away. I snort -- if I wasn't crazy to begin with, I'm
sure getting there.

The hamsters won't stop arguing with each other over all the terrible errors of
judgment I've made to get here. Trusting the Tribe, trusting strangers. Argue,
argue, argue. God, if only someone else were around, I could argue the
definition of sanity, I could argue the ethics of involuntary committal, I could
argue the food. But my head is full of argument and there's nowhere to spill it
and soon enough I'll be talking aloud, arguing with the air like the schizoids
on the ward who muttergrumbleshout through the day and through the night.

Why didn't I just leave London when I could, come home, move in with Gran, get a
regular job? Why didn't I swear off the whole business of secrecy and
provocation?

I was too smart for my own good. I could always argue myself into doing the
sexy, futuristic thing instead of being a nice, mundane, nonaffiliated
individual. Too smart to settle down, take a job and watch TV after work, spend
two weeks a year at the cottage and go online to find movie listings. Too smart
is too restless and no happiness, ever, without that it's chased by obsessive
maundering moping about what comes next.

Smart or happy?

The hamsters have hopped off their wheels and are gnawing at the blood-brain
barrier, trying to get out of my skull. This is a good sanatorium, but still,
the toilets are communal on my floor, which means that I've got an unlocked door
that lights up at the nurses' station down the corridor when I open the door,
and goes berserk if I don't reopen it again within the mandated fifteen-minute
maximum potty-break. I figured out how to defeat the system the first day, but
it was a theoretical hack, and now it's time to put it into practice.

I step out the door and the lintel goes pink, deepens toward red. Once it's red,
whoopwhoopwhoop. I pad down to the lav, step inside, wait, step out again. I go
back to my room -- the lintel is orange now -- and open it, move my torso across
the long electric eye, then pull it back and let the door swing closed. The
lintel is w