I wore the apparatus to pay off my student loans. The full kit contained a helmet, of course, but also a backpack for the battery and two wrist pieces. An anagram of Mini-fMRI is *I'm Infirm,* which is how I felt after lugging the apparatus around for a week, from transit centers to movie theatres.

"You'll get used to it," the lead researcher said.

How could he know that? His previous test subjects had been chimpanzees. Before that, he had experimented on the comatose.

#

I somehow ended up in Buttonwillow, California.

I'd had thoughts of escape ever since I slipped the helmet on my head for the first time. The clicking and whirring, it was driving me crazy. But it was for a good cause, right? I mean, besides my financial security, I was making the world a better place, wasn't I?

The day before, I had asked the lead researcher if there were any humanitarian applications of the technology I was testing out. Of course I didn't have to ask the question out loud. I was discouraged from speaking.

My thoughts appeared on the researcher's screen as a series of illuminated regions of my brain, which were then translated by the AI into text that the researcher could read.

"Well," he replied. "Say a person had cancer. Maybe you could show them a series of images and as they processed those images, certain regions of their brains would light up. Which would then activate particular neural pathways. Which could then deliver certain cancer-killing instructions to the immune system.

"Okay, but the problem is we are, like, stuck on that first step. The implantation. Right now we can read a person's brain, but we cannot write on it. If we can't get past that first step, we can't cure cancer."

And the easiest way to fund this research was to help companies sell products. And I, being incredibly average, hardcore normcore, was the perfect consumer. That's why I had to watch so many commercials and ride in so many autonomous taxis while I wore the helmet. Did I want to help companies target their advertising to people like me, or did I want people to keep dying of cancer year after year?

#

So Buttonwillow.

So I left my helmet at home one morning and went to the Greyhound station. I took the first departing bus. I had never done anything like this before. I needed to think new thoughts.

None of us are really so different from the comatose. What I mean is that none of us are fully awake. For instance: you don't experience your blind spots as black holes on your vision. Your brain fills those gaps in, activating your visual cortex as if you were dreaming. Your brain autocompletes nearly all your sensory inputs, alerting you only to deviations from your interior model of reality.

The fastest way to update your model of reality is to think new thoughts. And the easiest way to think new thoughts is to go to a new place.

So, Buttonwillow.

I never made it past the rest stop. It was pink and green and covered in life-size slinkies. The coils were for decoration. They were for whimsy. They were coated in soothing shades of pastel paint. Some swayed gently in the breeze, some thrummed like tuning forks.

A few of them could be sat on or slept in. I found an amiable spiral the color of pistachio ice cream and lay down in it.

First, I gazed up at the sky. Then, over at the billboards on the other side of the freeway.

One billboard for Realskin, now in new shades.

One for a personal injury lawyer: Something Tragic??? Call Ann Fantastic!!!

I closed my eyes. My absence at the lab would have been noticed hours ago. At this point they were probably searching my apartment, trying to recover my apparatus. What would Ann Fantastic think?

I opened my eyes. The lead researcher was standing over me. I felt surprise, which meant my mental model had failed me. 

I thought but did not say: how did you find me?

He didn't answer. I forgot that without my helmet and his fancy equipment, he couldn't hear me. I had to repeat myself, this time using my vocal cords and the air that surrounded them.

"Remember the brain surgery? The one we used to calibrate the helmet? We implanted a tiny tracking device inside your head. Our model indicated you might try to flee. We learned our lesson after all the chimpanzees escaped."

I looked around, wondering if the chimpanzees had also come to Buttonwillow. I didn't see any. Too bad. They would have had a lot of fun playing around on these slinkies.

"I didn't consent to a tracking device," I said. I touched the stitches on my scalp. They were still itchy.

"You signed everything we put in front of you."

I looked past him, at the billboard. Ann Fantastic crossed her arms and gazed sternly. Her eyes roamed over the freeway, scanning for accidents. Then she panned her gaze over the rest stop until she was finally looking at me. She wasn't one of those cyborgs that tried to look human with Realskin. She wore her shiny metal carapace with pride.

The steadiness of her gaze helped me to think a new thought. To voice an opinion that should have occurred to me long ago.

"Listen," I told him. "We can update your mental model of me the hard way or the easy way."

He turned around to look where I was looking and saw the billboard. Even without all of his fancy lab computers, he read my thoughts. He venmo'd my debt-holder and repaid all my school loans on the spot. In the comment thread of the transaction, I wished him the best of luck in curing cancer. He didn't respond, which was fine. I didn't care to know his thoughts.

.