Once I lay flat on my back for nearly three hours feeling all of human evolution flow through my head and my body, starting way back in the primordial slop, where I writhed through the mud and the ooze as a tiny three-celled protozoan, and then moved forward in cosmic time, slowly at first and then more quickly, gathering momentum upwards through first the plant and then the animal kingdom. At one point I found myself scavenging around as a rodent, some type of prehistoric squirrel, with a tiny, pointed head and powerful front claws that I used to climb swiftly through the trees and squeeze the life out of other smaller creatures. I especially enjoyed my time as a sleek silver sea bass, gliding through the cool ocean, greedily sucking big molecules of oxygen out of the water and feeling them seep into every cell of my body.

Afterward I wandered down to Raoul’s basement, where I spent a long afternoon in the teeming fertility of the jungle world he had created down there. At first I felt out of place, like an intruder, and I sat with my back to the door of the laboratory so I could escape quickly in case the beasts turned on me and attacked. But gradually I grew more relaxed, and soothed by the swaying of the vast leaves of the banyan trees in the piped in tropical breeze, I fell into a deep dreamless sleep.

Over the next few days I explored the whole two-square-block expanse of the mini rainforest, once becoming so engrossed in the teeming life in the bed of a stream that at first I didn’t notice a thick, nasty looking snake that was coiled up on a rock a few feet away from me, looking ready to strike at any moment. I could feel his primitive reptilian venom as we stared each other down, but after a while we both relaxed and went back to our own separate business, and I was so sure he wouldn’t bother me that I again fell asleep, this time dreaming that I was agilely swinging through the trees with several young chimps who were trying with some success to teach me their favorite tricks.