The voices picked up then and Don went back to searching for the hammer. He was on track 15, maybe halfway through the CD. He'd gotten to recognize some of the voices now, or at least the voices of the patients who were repeating what they heard. This patient watched a lot of TV: knew all the advertising jingles, liked to call imaginary basketball games.

Don looked up suddenly to find Charlie sitting on the kitchen counter, watching him. "Sorry—did you say something?"

"I just wondered if listening to that gave you a more sincere appreciation for John Nash? It's probably a reasonable facsimile of what he hears on bad days." Charlie asked.

Don could hear the smile in his brother's voice and mentally made a deal with Terry: he would listen to the CD all day, just as soon as he finished this conversation.

"Look," Don tugged off the headphones and leaned back against the hall table so he and Charlie could see each other down the length of the hallway, "I didn't mean to sound like you were making stuff up."

Charlie started spreading Nutella on a graham cracker so that he wouldn't have to look at Don. He was wearing beat-up blue jeans and a t-shirt that said Physics Is phun!; the h in physics had been crossed to look like Planck's Constant. Sitting there with his bare feet dangling above the kitchen linoleum, he looked all of fourteen, making an after school snack. The Nutella was a recent addiction, a taste Charlie had picked up at a conference in Europe. Conference in Europe, Don reminded himself. His brother might look like a teenager, but he was a respected PhD, a full professor who jetted around the world using phrases like 'more sincere appreciation,' 'reasonable facsimile,' 'unlikely to be the case in a second such encounter.' Don could practically hear Charlie saying that last phrase. Still, he knew if he asked Charlie to spell facsimile, Charlie would put in an x. He knew so much, but not everything.

"It's just that…well, it's the opposite. I believe everything you say. I mean, you say there are UFOs, I start looking for them."

Charlie looked stung. "I would never give you the wrong information. And there was an Unexplained Arial Event"

Why, Don wanted to know, why could he not just once say something so that his brother would understand? "I know," he began again, "I know you wouldn't. What I mean is, I wouldn't know if something were wrong. With you, not with the information." He took a deep breath and tried another tack. "Charlie, you go places, in your head, where I can't follow. And that's fine, as long as you can get back. But what if you get…lost in there? Some really smart people do; they can't help it, what they're thinking about is just so, I don't know…"

"Tempting?" Charlie offered. He'd stopped eating now and Don had his full attention. "It is," he said simply, "Very tempting. My numbers are exciting and beautiful and who doesn't what to make a little more sense out of the world? Isn't that what we're all after—you and me and Larry and Dad and Terry? We all want to know why things are the way they are. But I do know what's real and what's just theory or make-believe or whatever. For one thing," he smiled ruefully, "the stuff in my head makes perfect sense." He looked around for something to occupy his hands, started playing with the jar of Nutella. "You don't need to protect me from my own mind, Don. And this is not a new development; so why worry now?" Charlie looked up quickly. "Is this because of Mom?"

It was, some of it, because their mother had been just fine and then suddenly so very, very sick. Beyond help, the doctors said, and all in a matter of weeks. But most of it was because of Finn, whose logical mind had been hijacked and used against him. And a little was because Terry's CD had gotten him thinking about new things. Don was trying to figure out exactly how to say this when he heard a car door slam.

"Hey, boys!" Alan called. "Come help me with these groceries!"

Charlie jumped off the kitchen counter. "I've got it—you keep working on that lock." He tossed Don the bag from the hardware store and opened the back door. "Oh, my…Dad," he called out to Alan, "I know there was a sale but, come on, did you leave any pasta for the rest of Los Angeles?"

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