But now she needed to stop staring out the window. She was leaving later that afternoon for the annual Psychonomic Society meeting in Chicago, and she had a ton to accomplish before then. She looked over her to-do list.

Review Nature Neuroscience paper

Department meeting

Meet with TA’s

Cognition class

Finalize conference poster and itinerary

Run

Airport

She drank the last watery sip of her iced tea and began to study her lecture notes. Today’s lecture focused on semantics, the meaning of language, the third of six classes on linguistics, her favorite series of classes for this course. Even after twenty-five years of teaching, Alice still set aside an hour before class to prepare. Of course, at this point in her career, she could meticulously deliver 75 percent of any given lecture without consciously thinking about it. The other 25 percent, however, contained insights, innovative techniques, or points for discussion from current findings in the field, and she used the time immediately before class to refine the organization and presentation of this newer material. The inclusion of this constantly evolving information kept her passionate about her course subjects and mentally present in each class.

Emphasis for the faculty at Harvard tipped heavily toward research performance, and so a lot of less than optimal teaching was tolerated, by both the students and the administration. The emphasis Alice placed on teaching was in part motivated by the belief that she had both a duty and the opportunity to inspire the next generation in the field, or at the very least not to be the reason that the next would-be great thought leader in cognition abandoned psychology to major in political science instead. Plus, she simply loved teaching.

Ready for class, she checked her email.

Alice,

We’re still waiting on you for 3 slides to be included in Michael’s talk: 1 word retrieval graph, 1 model of language cartoon, and 1 text slide. His talk isn’t until Thursday at 1:00, but it would be a good idea for him to drop your slides into the presentation as soon as possible, make sure he’s comfortable with it all, and that it still falls within the allotted time. You can email them to either me or Michael.

We’re staying at the Hyatt. See you in Chicago.

Kind regards,

Eric Greenberg

A cold and dusty lightbulb flickered on inside Alice’s head. That was what the mysterious “Eric” had meant on one of her to-do lists last month. It didn’t refer to Eric Wellman at all. It was meant to remind her to email those slides to Eric Greenberg, a former colleague at Harvard, now a professor in the psychology department at Princeton. Alice and Dan had put together three slides describing a quick and dirty experiment Dan had run as part of a collaboration with Eric’s postdoc Michael, to be included in Michael’s talk at the psychonomic meeting. Before doing anything else that might distract her, Alice emailed the slides, along with sincerest apologies, to Eric. Fortunately, he’d get them in plenty of time. No harm done.

AS WITH MOST EVERYTHING AT Harvard, the lecture auditorium used for Alice’s cognition course was grander than necessary. The blue upholstered chairs arranged in stadium seating numbered several hundred more than the students enrolled in the class. An impressive, state-of-the-art audiovisual center stood at the back of the room, and a projection screen as big as those in any movie cinema hung at the front. While three men busily hooked up various cables to Alice’s computer and checked the lighting and sound, students wandered in, and Alice opened her “Linguistics Classes” folder on her laptop.

It contained six files: “Acquisition,” “Syntax,” “Semantics,” “Comprehension,” “Modeling,” and “Pathologies.” Alice read the titles again. She couldn’t remember which lecture she was supposed to give today. She’d just spent the last hour looking over one of these subjects but couldn’t remember which one. Was it “Syntax”? They all looked familiar to her, but none more salient than the others.

Ever since her visit with Dr. Moyer, each time Alice forgot something, her foreboding intensified. This wasn’t like forgetting where she left her BlackBerry charger or where John left his glasses. This wasn’t normal. She’d begun telling herself, in a tortured and paranoid voice, that she probably had a brain tumor. She also told herself not to freak out or worry John until she heard the more informed voice of Dr. Moyer, which unfortunately wouldn’t be until next week, after the psychonomic conference.

Determined to get through the next hour, she took a deep, frustrated breath. Although she didn’t remember the topic of today’s lecture, she did remember who her audience was.

“Can someone please tell me what it says on your syllabus for today?” Alice asked the class.

Several students called out in a staggered, collective voice, “Semantics.”

She had gambled correctly that at least a few of her students would pounce on the opportunity to be visibly helpful and knowledgeable. She didn’t worry for a second that any of them would think it grievous or strange that she didn’t know the subject of today’s class. There existed a great metaphysical distance in age, knowledge, and power between undergraduate students and professors.

Plus, over the course of the semester, they’d witnessed specific demonstrations of her competence in class and had been wowed by her dominant presence in the course literature. If any of them gave it any consideration whatsoever, they probably assumed that she was so distracted with other obligations more important than Psychology 256 that she didn’t have time even to glance at the syllabus before class. Little did they know that she’d just spent the last hour concentrating almost exclusively on semantics.

THE SUNNY DAY HAD TURNED cloudy and raw by evening, the first real flirtation with winter. A hard rain the night before had knocked most of the remaining leaves off their branches, leaving the trees nearly naked, underdressed for the coming weather. Comfortably warm in her fleece, Alice took her time walking home, enjoying the cold autumn air smell and the crunchy swishing sound her feet made as they strolled through the piles of grounded leaves.

The lights were on inside her house, and John’s bag and shoes rested next to the table by the door.

“Hello? I’m home,” said Alice.

John walked out from the study and stared at her, looking confused and at a loss for words. Alice stared back and waited, nervously sensing that something was dreadfully wrong. Her mind raced straight to her children. She stood frozen in the doorway, braced for horrible news.

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Chicago?”

“WELL, ALICE, ALL OF YOUR blood work came back normal, and your MRI is clean,” said Dr. Moyer. “We can do one of two things. We can wait, see how things go, see how you’re sleeping and how you’re doing in three months, or—”

“I want to see a neurologist.”