A conditioned reality had been created for me and it suited me down to the ground. Boy was it a good fit! It had all the things I could possibly want in it and it firmly excluded all the things that I didn’t want, all the things that I hated and despised. What could be better? Just me and my conditioned reality, no need for anyone else – no need for any interlopers, in other words. No one likes interlopers. That’s putting it mildly of course – we all hate and fear the interlopers. I do, anyway. Just me and my conditioned reality and that’s all. I’m as snug as a bug in a rug, I’m as cosy as you please. You couldn’t winkle me out if you tried – no sir you couldn’t. You won’t entice me out, not for anything. No way. I have a long list of exciting things to do – a list as long as your arm – and I can’t wait to start doing them. So many things to do, so many things to do… And all the time in the world to do them. And what’s more, only I am allowed to do them – no one else is. No interlopers. What to do first – that’s the question. Where to begin? Where to begin and were to end? Just me and my conditioned reality. Doing the thing, doing the thing, always doing the thing. ‘Stop annoying me!’ I roar out all of a sudden, ‘can’t you see that I’m doing the thing?’ There was no one there of course – it was all in my mind. No one is going to stop me doing the thing; no one was ever going to stop me doing the thing. I could carry on doing the thing forever if I wanted to and I did want to. You bet I did. I wanted to carry on doing the thing more than anything else in the whole world. Not that there was a world, I corrected myself. There was only me and the conditioned reality, which fitted me like a glove. ‘You better not try to stop me doing the thing,’ I bawled like an oaf. The very thought of it made me angry; more than angry – I was beside myself with rage and indignation. Then I remembered again that no one could stop me. There was no one else. ‘Only me, only me, only me…’ I crooned with satisfaction. No need for anyone else, no need for any sinister interlopers who might be trying to manipulate my thoughts with their mind rays. No need for any of that stuff. I had all the time in the world and there was no one who could interfere with me. ‘There’s no such thing as someone else’, I told myself severely. No such thing as interlopers, no such thing as manipulating mind rays. That was all in my head. No one was allowed to interfere. No one was allowed to interfere and I was a snug as a bug in a rug. ‘They’ll never get me out of here,’ I told myself. ‘They’ll never winkle me out, not with all the mind rays in the world they won’t…