I drink it: a large mouthful. Then I lie down on the sofa and stare at the black circle, concentrating as hard as I can. And this time, I do not fall asleep: I watch as the black circle splits into two, and I try not to blink as it kaleidoscopes around on the sheet, lifting and turning.

And then, in an instant that feels thinner and sharper than the edge of a razor, I'm falling. I'm falling into a black tunnel, the same black tunnel that Mr. Y described in the book. But I'm not falling down, if that makes any sense: I'm falling along, forwards, horizontally. The walls of the tunnel pass by as if I were in a car, but I'm not in a car. Wherever I am it's completely silent and I have no bodily sensations at all. I'm fairly sure my body is here with me, but it has no feelings and no desires. I'm not even sure if I'm wearing clothes. Only my mind feels alive. I see-although it doesn't feel as if it's actually through my eyes-almost exactly what Mr. Y saw: black all around suddenly pinpricked by little lights that turn into wavy lines that seem to go on forever. Then a huge penis, drawn in the same style as that on the Cerne Abbas Giant, but rendered here in light. There's also a vagina, which looks less familiar, and then it's gone. Then I seem to be moving faster. I see the birds and feet and eyes that Mr. Y saw, but to me they look like Egyptian hieroglyphics, the kind of thing you learn about in primary school. Then I see many letters: Greek, Roman, and Cyrillic. I don't recognize all of them, but after a while they organize themselves into alphabets and there are several minutes where nothing seems to change in the tunnel. Could I stop this experience if I wanted to? I'm not sure I could. Can my mind even handle this experience, whatever it is? I've never much liked hallucinogens because of the lack of control you have, and the fact that you have to finish the trip; you can't just switch it off. Now I'm here and I know I can't switch this off. I could go mad. Maybe I have just gone mad. Maybe this is what it's like crossing from sanity into madness, and maybe I'll never escape. As I think, I begin to feel sick, so I try to stop thinking and instead just look at the walls of the tunnel again.

The alphabets look more familiar, and now include numerals, although in patterns I don't immediately recognize. Odd combinations of Roman numerals that I don't understand are interspersed with sequences beginning 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19 and 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. At least, I assume they are sequences, but soon they dissolve into long lines of numerals that look like cosmic telephone numbers. In places I can see equations, but they only flicker and then disappear. I'm sure I see Newton's F=MA, and, later, Einstein's E=MC2. I can see mathematical symbols that I don't understand, as well as those I do: the = and + signs, and later various pieces of set notation like I = {1, 2, 3, . . . 100}. Then more series of numbers that go on for minutes and minutes. I see sequences that don't make any sense at all, such as: 1431, 1731, 1831, 2432, 2732, 2832, 3171, 3181, 3272, 3282, 11511, 31531, 31631, 32532, 32632, 33151, 33161, 33252, 33262, 114311, 117311, 118311, 124312, 127312, 128312, 214321, 217321, 218321, 224322, 227322, 228322. At first I think they must be dates, but then the numbers get too big again. Then something else happens, something not described in Lumas's version of this: The letters from the alphabet all disappear and turn into numbers, and then the numbers, apart from 1 and 0, disappear as well until I am left with millions and millions of 0s and 1s waterfalling down the walls around me.

011101110110100001100001011101000111010001 101000011001010110011001110101011000110110 101101101001011100110110011101101111011010 010110111001100111011011110110111001110111 011010000110000101110100011101000110100001 100101011001100111010101100011011010110110 100101110011011001110110111101101001011011 100110011101101111011011100111011101101000 011000010111010001110100011010000110010101 100110011101010110001101101011011010010111 001101100111011011110110100101101110011001 110110111101101110011101110110100001100001 011101000111010001101000011001010110011001 110101011000110110101101101001011100110110 011101101111011010010110111001100111011011 110110111001110111011010000110000101110100 011101000110100001100101011001100111010101 100011011010110110100101110011011001110110 111101101001011011100110011101101111011011 100111011101101000011000010111010001110100 011010000110010101100110011101010110001101 101011011010010111001101100111011011110110 100101101110011001110110111101101110011101 110110100001100001011101000111010001101000 011001010110011001110101011000110110101101 101001011100110110011101101111011010010110 1110011001110110111101101110

And then everything goes white and I'm out of the tunnel.