probably think of a little silver thing in the sky.
Actually, an airplane is much bigger than that, so your mental picture
of an airplane is all wrong. An airplane gives me a certain impression.
I have it only when looking at one. Maybe it's an unrecognized sense. I
have an entirely different impression when I'm looking at a horse."

Dr. Bean threw down his pencil, caught his falling glasses, drew a
handkerchief from his breast pocket, and polished them.

"Too deep for you, Doc?" Potts inquired. "Well, just assume that my
brain is a more powerful generator and transformer than any you ever
saw. I've developed it by memorizing, remembering, visualizing, working
problems in my head, and so on. I've been trying to make my brain take
complete control of my body. The body is composed of atoms, and the
atoms are electrical charges, protons and electrons. Therefore, you're
nothing but electricity in the shape of a man.

"By changing myself to pure thought, or pure electricity, I believed
that I could escape to the past. Get away from this age where a man is
suspected of insanity if he so much as mislays his checkbook or kicks
his dog. People didn't used to be crazy unless they went around hacking
their relatives with an ax.

"I tried to meet Columbus when he rowed ashore from the _Santa Maria_. I
tried to watch the Battle of Bunker Hill. I tried to lead the Charge of
the Light Brigade. I tried to invent an airplane during the Civil War. I
always failed, because I didn't have enough sensory knowledge of the
period, and I couldn't change the past.

"I succeeded in P. T. because I transported myself through space instead
of time. I knew every detail of the day room, so it worked. My brain
reduced my body to its elemental charges in the P. T. bath and
reassembled it in the dayroom. Something like radio, with the brain
acting as sending set and receiver. Maybe we should call it philosophy,
Doc. What is reality? If I sit here in your office but imagine I'm
sitting in the dayroom, until the chair in the dayroom becomes more real
than this, where am I actually sitting?"

Dr. Bean stood up, adjusted his glasses, and said, "Orville, I am going
to do as you asked. I am going to tell you exactly what is wrong with
you. You are suffering from distorted perception--illusions and
hallucinations, disorientation. You are also becoming an exhibitionist
and are developing a persecution complex. I thought, when you first came
in, that you h