The problem was information. Redundancy as the enemy of ambiguity. Mass delusion entering the public record. Then the unexpected happened. I was having a bad dream, in which an experiment had gone terribly wrong, when everyone came out from their rooms into the courtyard. It was very late. Later than it had ever been. We had to look and look to find the night sky. Otherwise there was only the dome of a church in the distance. Only a story or two passing among the group. It all started with the cat lying there on the floor, looking around. The dog was there too, but that was different. The brain is a natural actor. Come here, boy—and it does. Nobody likes the predictable sequence. Wreckage leading to fabrication. When all the principal agents get lost in the storm, you have to turn back the clock to a more innocent time. But innocence is like clarity, clarity is like speed. Turn the dial too quickly and nothing is ever the same. Again the mutations, the directionless barges drifting across the river. You have to count it all up, every separate piece, before the light changes and you can’t see.