He didn’t believe they could do it; he didn’t want to believe it. Of course, much of what occurred in the universe, including much of human behavior, was predictable in theory. The world wasn’t totally chaotic, after all, and science had had its successes in foreseeing certain events. But he refused to believe that there was no element of chance in the world, that every event happened just as it did out of necessity. He had some freedom, some causal autonomy, some power to initiate the new. He was not merely a puppet of universal laws. Each of his choices was not simply a mathematical function of those laws together with the state of himself and the external world at the moment just prior to the choice. He would not believe that. Nothing was written on page 1 to indicate how the other experiments had turned out, not that he would have believed such a report anyway. No doubt the indication that his experience was a more complex “variant” of the experiment was meant to imply that the preceding experiments had been successful. But there had to have been mistakes, even if they claimed that the errors could eventually be overcome. As long as there were mistakes, one could continue to believe in human freedom. He did believe in human freedom. His thoughts were interrupted by the buzzer. His dinner emerged from the wall. He looked at it with anger, remembering how the first page to which he had turned had listed, perhaps even predicted, exactly what foods he would eat. But he didn’t reject the meal. He needed his wits about him, and for that he needed strength. He must try to get his mind off all this for tonight, at least. He would eat, read, and then sleep. For several hours, he was fairly successful in diverting his attention from the books. Then, in bed with the lights out, he recalled the phrase “Variant No. 8, Case 2.” That made him feel more hopeful. This was only the second time that this particular version of the experiment was being tried. Surely, the likelihood of error was great.