He set the contact clock for objectivity maximum and clamped the electrodes on his head. He reached for the switch, had to close his eyes before he could throw it.
He didn't see the second hand going around and around the clock, but he felt the prejudice-erasing impulses, the objective-appraisal stimuli, revealing memories that had shaped him, humiliations that had twisted him and been forgotten, urgings and longings and guilts that he had never known existed.
He saw himself. It was highly unpleasant.
There was a final buzz and the clock stopped. Joe opened his eyes, both figuratively and literally. He unclamped the helmet with the electrodes and stepped from the chair, holding onto the arm, looking at the mirrored inside walls of the mold.
He had made an image of himself and it had turned on him. Now he had made—what? An image of his image's image of him? It was very confusing, yet somehow clear.
He went slowly up the stairs, smelling the perfume. It wasn't Alice's and that was peculiar, because she had practically swabbed herself with the stuff, knowing he liked it, and she had just left.
It was Vera's perfume.