The Somnambulist's Inquiry
A cynical investigator, haunted by loss, delves into the murky world of dream-walkers, seeking connection to the departed through a dubious lucid dreaming venture. Spring rain falls, blurring lines between logic and desperation.
## Introduction
"The Somnambulist's Inquiry" merges the archetypes of hardboiled noir with the speculative frontiers of psychological horror, creating a narrative space where external investigation and internal descent become indistinguishable. What follows is an exploration of its psychological and aesthetic architecture, examining a world where grief is not an emotion to be processed, but a territory to be navigated.
## Thematic, Genre & Narrative Analysis
The chapter establishes itself firmly within a neo-noir framework, yet it deliberately subverts the genre's traditional focus on external crime to explore the internal landscape of trauma. The rain-soaked city, the cynical protagonist, and the dead-end investigation are all classic noir tropes, but they serve as a backdrop for the story's true subject: the unbearable weight of unresolved loss. The central theme is the failure of rationality in the face of profound grief. Marvin's world, governed by facts and evidence, has provided no answers regarding Sylvie's disappearance. This failure compels him to abandon the "sense" of the waking world and embrace the "absurd" logic of the subconscious, positioning the narrative as a conflict between reality and perception. The narrative voice is a critical element, as Marvin’s first-person perspective is inherently unreliable, filtered through a lens of sorrow and desperation. His description of spring as a "long, drawn-out cry" reveals a consciousness that projects its own internal state onto the external world, blurring the lines between objective reality and subjective experience. His cynicism is a fragile shield against a hope he can no longer afford to feel, a blind spot that makes him vulnerable to the very forces he seeks to control. The story poses a significant existential question: when the tangible world becomes a void, is it not logical to seek meaning in the intangible? This journey into the dreamscape is not just a search for a missing person; it is a desperate attempt to reconstruct a coherent reality from the fragments of memory and consciousness, questioning whether closure is worth the potential dissolution of the self.
## Character Deep Dive
### Marvin Simpson
**Psychological State:** Marvin is in a state of arrested grief, caught in the liminal space between hope and despair. His emotional condition is one of profound exhaustion, masked by a performative, hardboiled cynicism. The "battlefield" of his desk is a direct externalization of his chaotic inner world, where the fight to find Sylvie has been lost to attrition and indifference. He is intellectually aware that pursuing lucid dreaming is irrational, labeling it as something for "a desperate widow," yet he is unable to see that he perfectly fits his own description. This cognitive dissonance highlights a mind at war with itself, where the detective's need for logic is being systematically dismantled by the grieving partner's need for connection, no matter the cost.
**Mental Health Assessment:** From a clinical perspective, Marvin exhibits symptoms consistent with Complicated Grief, a condition where the acute pain of loss does not subside and becomes a debilitating, long-term state. His inability to move forward, his obsession with the "unsolved" case, and his social withdrawal are all indicators of a psyche trapped by trauma. His coping mechanisms—investigation and a cynical worldview—have proven ineffective, leaving him with a diminished sense of self and a fragile grip on reality. His decision to engage with the Somnambulist's Guild is not a sign of recovery but of a deepening crisis, a high-risk behavior born of desperation. He is psychologically vulnerable, making him susceptible to suggestion and the potential for further mental fragmentation posed by Nancy's methods.
**Motivations & Drivers:** Marvin's primary motivation is not to heal, but to know. He explicitly states he is not seeking "solace" but "answers." This distinction is crucial; he is driven by a detective's need for a conclusive narrative, a way to close the case file on his own heart. The "void" left by Sylvie is an intellectual problem as much as an emotional one, an intolerable lack of data. His quest is to fill that void, to replace the torment of the unknown with the finality of truth, however painful that truth may be. This drive for closure is so powerful that it overrides his innate skepticism and professional caution, pushing him toward a methodology that promises information, not comfort.
**Hopes & Fears:** At his core, Marvin hopes to find a trace of Sylvie, a confirmation that the vibrant person he knew has not been utterly erased from existence. This hope is so dangerous to him that he buries it under layers of cynicism. His most immediate fear is that this new, absurd path will yield nothing, leaving him exactly where he started but with his last shred of hope extinguished. However, a deeper, unacknowledged fear is that he will find something worse than nothing—a truth about Sylvie's fate so terrible it shatters him completely. The chapter's final moments introduce a new, more terrifying possibility: that in searching for Sylvie, he might find something else entirely, something alien and malevolent waiting in the depths of the collective subconscious.
### Nancy
**Psychological State:** Nancy presents a facade of serene, almost unnerving, control. Her stillness and minimalist speech suggest a personality that has been deliberately purged of extraneous emotion, perhaps as a professional necessity for navigating the volatile mental states of her clients. Her voice, like "river stones," is smooth but hard, indicating a personality that has been worn into its current shape by constant pressure. The "ancient weariness" in her gaze suggests she is not merely a practitioner but a long-term inhabitant of the strange world she offers access to, and that she carries the weight of the "untold dreams" she has witnessed. Her detachment may be a form of self-preservation, a necessary boundary to keep from being consumed by the abysses she helps others explore.
**Mental Health Assessment:** Nancy's mental health appears robust, characterized by strong psychological boundaries and a highly disciplined mind. She operates with a clinical precision that borders on the ascetic, suggesting a life governed by the "strict protocols" she imposes on her clients. However, her profession places her in a constant state of psychological risk. Her warnings to Marvin about the "greater abyss" and the blurring of dream-lines are not abstract cautionary tales; they likely stem from direct experience, either her own or that of past clients. Her stability, therefore, is not a given but a state of constant, vigilant maintenance against the chaotic forces she works with.
**Motivations & Drivers:** Nancy's motivations are deliberately kept opaque. On the surface, she is a guide, driven by a belief in her "sound" methodology and a desire to help others "facilitate" access to their own minds. She speaks of her work not as magic but as a science—"a highly advanced form of cognitive mapping"—which suggests a desire for legitimacy and a genuine intellectual investment in her craft. Yet, her lack of pleasantries and transactional nature imply that this is also a business. Her true driver may be a philosophical curiosity, a need to map the "unmapped territory" of consciousness, with her clients serving as the explorers she sends into the frontier.
**Hopes & Fears:** Nancy hopes for commitment and adherence to protocol from her clients, suggesting her primary goal is a successful, controlled outcome. She hopes her clients find what they are looking for, but her warnings reveal a profound fear of the potential consequences. Her greatest fear, articulated through her warning to Marvin, is that the seeker will become lost, that the "abyss" they find will be greater than the one they sought to escape. This implies a fear of failure that is not just professional but deeply ethical; she fears leading vulnerable people like Marvin to a state of psychological ruin from which there is no return.
## Emotional Architecture
The chapter constructs its emotional landscape with meticulous care, beginning with a pervasive sense of melancholic stasis. The "dull, insistent drumming" of the rain is not just weather; it is the story's emotional heartbeat, a monotonous rhythm of grief that mirrors Marvin's psychological state. The emotional temperature remains low and depressive through the initial scenes, steeped in the "disinfectant and despair" of the city bus. The first significant shift occurs upon entering Nancy's warehouse. Here, the mood transitions from mundane sorrow to a quiet, unnerving tension. The warmth of the air, the "cloying scent of incense," and Nancy's unnerving stillness create an atmosphere of suspense and otherworldliness, raising the emotional stakes. The dialogue between Marvin and Nancy is a carefully controlled escalation, with her clinical, detached language ("residual imprints," "emotional tether") clashing with the raw, unspoken pain driving Marvin. This contrast generates a powerful undercurrent of dread. The chapter's emotional climax is swift and sharp. After the slow build of tension, the dream sequence delivers a jolt of pure horror. The familiar hope of finding Sylvie is grotesquely inverted, replaced by the elongating finger, the "sickly green" light, and the wrong voice. The emotion shifts from grief-fueled desperation to active terror, transferring the story's central conflict from a man against his sorrow to a man against a hostile, unknown entity.
## Spatial & Environmental Psychology
The environments in "The Somnambulist's Inquiry" are not mere backdrops but are potent reflections of the characters' inner worlds. Marvin's office is the most direct example, a physical manifestation of his stalled life and mental chaos. It is a "battlefield" where he has lost the war against his own grief, littered with the detritus of a life neglected. The grime-streaked glass of his window acts as a psychological filter, blurring the outside world and reinforcing his sense of isolation and confusion. The city itself is an extension of his depression, a "monochrome blur" of grey buildings and grey skies, populated by figures who seem to share his "unseen burden." This projection of his internal state onto his surroundings illustrates how his grief has become the sole lens through which he experiences reality. In stark contrast, Nancy's warehouse is a liminal space, a physical threshold between Marvin's grim reality and the abstract world of the subconscious. It is a place of contradictions—a former industrial building housing "forgotten dreams," adorned with an anachronistic gas lamp and arcane diagrams. The aggressive ivy reclaiming the brickwork symbolizes the untamed, natural power of the subconscious overwhelming the rigid structures of the conscious world. This space is designed to disorient and prepare the visitor for a journey where the normal rules of logic and environment no longer apply, serving as a psychological antechamber to the dreamscape itself.
## Aesthetic, Stylistic, & Symbolic Mechanics
The narrative's power is amplified by its deliberate stylistic choices, blending the clipped, cynical prose of hardboiled fiction with more lyrical, introspective language. Marvin’s observation that "punctuality was a dying art, like common sense" is pure noir, establishing his world-weary persona. This is contrasted with the impressionistic description of the city as "smudges of concrete and neon," a metaphor for his own mental fog. This stylistic duality mirrors the central conflict between the concrete world of investigation and the fluid, symbolic world of dreams. Symbolism is woven deeply into the fabric of the chapter. The relentless spring rain is the dominant symbol, representing not the "foolish hope of rebirth" but an endless, cleansing-resistant grief. Nancy’s polished stone serves as a critical symbolic object: an "anchor," a tangible piece of reality Marvin must cling to as he descends into the formless depths of the mind. The most potent symbol emerges in the final scene: the dream-door, a classic archetype for a gateway to the subconscious. However, its "sickly green" light corrupts this symbol, transforming it from a gateway of potential discovery into a portal of malevolent intrusion. This subversion of a familiar symbol signals that Marvin's journey will not be a simple exploration of memory but a confrontation with something alien and parasitic.
## Cultural & Intertextual Context
The story situates itself within a rich tapestry of literary and cultural traditions. Its most obvious ancestor is the noir detective genre of writers like Raymond Chandler, with Marvin Simpson as a modern incarnation of Philip Marlowe. However, unlike Marlowe, whose cases were external, Marvin's "case" is his own internal trauma, a distinctly contemporary psychological turn on the classic archetype. The narrative also draws heavily from the Orphic myth, casting Marvin as a modern Orpheus descending into the underworld (the dreamscape) to retrieve his lost Eurydice (Sylvie). Nancy plays the role of a psychopomp, a guide like Charon or Hermes who facilitates passage between worlds. The crucial twist is the hint that this underworld is not merely empty or populated by shades of the dead, but is actively occupied by a hostile intelligence. This element pushes the story into the realm of cosmic horror, echoing the work of H.P. Lovecraft, where the pursuit of forbidden knowledge leads not to enlightenment but to a terrifying awareness of malevolent, unseen forces. The scientific-mystical jargon used by Nancy—"cognitive mapping," "residual imprints"—also places the story in a post-Freudian, technologically-aware context, reminiscent of speculative fiction like *Inception* or the novels of Philip K. Dick, which explore the fragility of reality and the malleability of the human mind.
## Reader Reflection: What Lingers
What lingers long after reading this chapter is not the mystery of Sylvie's disappearance but the dawning horror of what Marvin has found instead. The story masterfully pivots from a tale of grief to one of existential dread. The final image of the green flicker and the wrong voice leaves an unsettling afterimage, a sense of profound violation. The quest for a loved one has been hijacked by an unknown entity, transforming a personal tragedy into a confrontation with a potentially cosmic menace. The reader is left to grapple with a series of unnerving questions. Is this green light a manifestation of Marvin's own fractured psyche, a symbol of the "greater abyss" Nancy warned of? Or has he, in his desperation, opened a door to something truly external and predatory? The narrative provides no easy answers, forcing the reader to inhabit the same space of terrifying uncertainty as the protagonist. The story evokes the chilling possibility that the deepest parts of the mind are not our own, and that in digging for lost loves, we might unearth something that should have remained buried.
## Conclusion
In the end, "The Somnambulist's Inquiry" is not a story about finding a missing person, but about the terrifying act of becoming lost oneself. It uses the familiar scaffolding of a detective story to explore the treacherous, unmapped territory of the human subconscious. The chapter's true mystery is not what happened to Sylvie, but what will happen to Marvin now that he has knocked on a door in his own mind and discovered something unknown was waiting to answer.
"The Somnambulist's Inquiry" merges the archetypes of hardboiled noir with the speculative frontiers of psychological horror, creating a narrative space where external investigation and internal descent become indistinguishable. What follows is an exploration of its psychological and aesthetic architecture, examining a world where grief is not an emotion to be processed, but a territory to be navigated.
## Thematic, Genre & Narrative Analysis
The chapter establishes itself firmly within a neo-noir framework, yet it deliberately subverts the genre's traditional focus on external crime to explore the internal landscape of trauma. The rain-soaked city, the cynical protagonist, and the dead-end investigation are all classic noir tropes, but they serve as a backdrop for the story's true subject: the unbearable weight of unresolved loss. The central theme is the failure of rationality in the face of profound grief. Marvin's world, governed by facts and evidence, has provided no answers regarding Sylvie's disappearance. This failure compels him to abandon the "sense" of the waking world and embrace the "absurd" logic of the subconscious, positioning the narrative as a conflict between reality and perception. The narrative voice is a critical element, as Marvin’s first-person perspective is inherently unreliable, filtered through a lens of sorrow and desperation. His description of spring as a "long, drawn-out cry" reveals a consciousness that projects its own internal state onto the external world, blurring the lines between objective reality and subjective experience. His cynicism is a fragile shield against a hope he can no longer afford to feel, a blind spot that makes him vulnerable to the very forces he seeks to control. The story poses a significant existential question: when the tangible world becomes a void, is it not logical to seek meaning in the intangible? This journey into the dreamscape is not just a search for a missing person; it is a desperate attempt to reconstruct a coherent reality from the fragments of memory and consciousness, questioning whether closure is worth the potential dissolution of the self.
## Character Deep Dive
### Marvin Simpson
**Psychological State:** Marvin is in a state of arrested grief, caught in the liminal space between hope and despair. His emotional condition is one of profound exhaustion, masked by a performative, hardboiled cynicism. The "battlefield" of his desk is a direct externalization of his chaotic inner world, where the fight to find Sylvie has been lost to attrition and indifference. He is intellectually aware that pursuing lucid dreaming is irrational, labeling it as something for "a desperate widow," yet he is unable to see that he perfectly fits his own description. This cognitive dissonance highlights a mind at war with itself, where the detective's need for logic is being systematically dismantled by the grieving partner's need for connection, no matter the cost.
**Mental Health Assessment:** From a clinical perspective, Marvin exhibits symptoms consistent with Complicated Grief, a condition where the acute pain of loss does not subside and becomes a debilitating, long-term state. His inability to move forward, his obsession with the "unsolved" case, and his social withdrawal are all indicators of a psyche trapped by trauma. His coping mechanisms—investigation and a cynical worldview—have proven ineffective, leaving him with a diminished sense of self and a fragile grip on reality. His decision to engage with the Somnambulist's Guild is not a sign of recovery but of a deepening crisis, a high-risk behavior born of desperation. He is psychologically vulnerable, making him susceptible to suggestion and the potential for further mental fragmentation posed by Nancy's methods.
**Motivations & Drivers:** Marvin's primary motivation is not to heal, but to know. He explicitly states he is not seeking "solace" but "answers." This distinction is crucial; he is driven by a detective's need for a conclusive narrative, a way to close the case file on his own heart. The "void" left by Sylvie is an intellectual problem as much as an emotional one, an intolerable lack of data. His quest is to fill that void, to replace the torment of the unknown with the finality of truth, however painful that truth may be. This drive for closure is so powerful that it overrides his innate skepticism and professional caution, pushing him toward a methodology that promises information, not comfort.
**Hopes & Fears:** At his core, Marvin hopes to find a trace of Sylvie, a confirmation that the vibrant person he knew has not been utterly erased from existence. This hope is so dangerous to him that he buries it under layers of cynicism. His most immediate fear is that this new, absurd path will yield nothing, leaving him exactly where he started but with his last shred of hope extinguished. However, a deeper, unacknowledged fear is that he will find something worse than nothing—a truth about Sylvie's fate so terrible it shatters him completely. The chapter's final moments introduce a new, more terrifying possibility: that in searching for Sylvie, he might find something else entirely, something alien and malevolent waiting in the depths of the collective subconscious.
### Nancy
**Psychological State:** Nancy presents a facade of serene, almost unnerving, control. Her stillness and minimalist speech suggest a personality that has been deliberately purged of extraneous emotion, perhaps as a professional necessity for navigating the volatile mental states of her clients. Her voice, like "river stones," is smooth but hard, indicating a personality that has been worn into its current shape by constant pressure. The "ancient weariness" in her gaze suggests she is not merely a practitioner but a long-term inhabitant of the strange world she offers access to, and that she carries the weight of the "untold dreams" she has witnessed. Her detachment may be a form of self-preservation, a necessary boundary to keep from being consumed by the abysses she helps others explore.
**Mental Health Assessment:** Nancy's mental health appears robust, characterized by strong psychological boundaries and a highly disciplined mind. She operates with a clinical precision that borders on the ascetic, suggesting a life governed by the "strict protocols" she imposes on her clients. However, her profession places her in a constant state of psychological risk. Her warnings to Marvin about the "greater abyss" and the blurring of dream-lines are not abstract cautionary tales; they likely stem from direct experience, either her own or that of past clients. Her stability, therefore, is not a given but a state of constant, vigilant maintenance against the chaotic forces she works with.
**Motivations & Drivers:** Nancy's motivations are deliberately kept opaque. On the surface, she is a guide, driven by a belief in her "sound" methodology and a desire to help others "facilitate" access to their own minds. She speaks of her work not as magic but as a science—"a highly advanced form of cognitive mapping"—which suggests a desire for legitimacy and a genuine intellectual investment in her craft. Yet, her lack of pleasantries and transactional nature imply that this is also a business. Her true driver may be a philosophical curiosity, a need to map the "unmapped territory" of consciousness, with her clients serving as the explorers she sends into the frontier.
**Hopes & Fears:** Nancy hopes for commitment and adherence to protocol from her clients, suggesting her primary goal is a successful, controlled outcome. She hopes her clients find what they are looking for, but her warnings reveal a profound fear of the potential consequences. Her greatest fear, articulated through her warning to Marvin, is that the seeker will become lost, that the "abyss" they find will be greater than the one they sought to escape. This implies a fear of failure that is not just professional but deeply ethical; she fears leading vulnerable people like Marvin to a state of psychological ruin from which there is no return.
## Emotional Architecture
The chapter constructs its emotional landscape with meticulous care, beginning with a pervasive sense of melancholic stasis. The "dull, insistent drumming" of the rain is not just weather; it is the story's emotional heartbeat, a monotonous rhythm of grief that mirrors Marvin's psychological state. The emotional temperature remains low and depressive through the initial scenes, steeped in the "disinfectant and despair" of the city bus. The first significant shift occurs upon entering Nancy's warehouse. Here, the mood transitions from mundane sorrow to a quiet, unnerving tension. The warmth of the air, the "cloying scent of incense," and Nancy's unnerving stillness create an atmosphere of suspense and otherworldliness, raising the emotional stakes. The dialogue between Marvin and Nancy is a carefully controlled escalation, with her clinical, detached language ("residual imprints," "emotional tether") clashing with the raw, unspoken pain driving Marvin. This contrast generates a powerful undercurrent of dread. The chapter's emotional climax is swift and sharp. After the slow build of tension, the dream sequence delivers a jolt of pure horror. The familiar hope of finding Sylvie is grotesquely inverted, replaced by the elongating finger, the "sickly green" light, and the wrong voice. The emotion shifts from grief-fueled desperation to active terror, transferring the story's central conflict from a man against his sorrow to a man against a hostile, unknown entity.
## Spatial & Environmental Psychology
The environments in "The Somnambulist's Inquiry" are not mere backdrops but are potent reflections of the characters' inner worlds. Marvin's office is the most direct example, a physical manifestation of his stalled life and mental chaos. It is a "battlefield" where he has lost the war against his own grief, littered with the detritus of a life neglected. The grime-streaked glass of his window acts as a psychological filter, blurring the outside world and reinforcing his sense of isolation and confusion. The city itself is an extension of his depression, a "monochrome blur" of grey buildings and grey skies, populated by figures who seem to share his "unseen burden." This projection of his internal state onto his surroundings illustrates how his grief has become the sole lens through which he experiences reality. In stark contrast, Nancy's warehouse is a liminal space, a physical threshold between Marvin's grim reality and the abstract world of the subconscious. It is a place of contradictions—a former industrial building housing "forgotten dreams," adorned with an anachronistic gas lamp and arcane diagrams. The aggressive ivy reclaiming the brickwork symbolizes the untamed, natural power of the subconscious overwhelming the rigid structures of the conscious world. This space is designed to disorient and prepare the visitor for a journey where the normal rules of logic and environment no longer apply, serving as a psychological antechamber to the dreamscape itself.
## Aesthetic, Stylistic, & Symbolic Mechanics
The narrative's power is amplified by its deliberate stylistic choices, blending the clipped, cynical prose of hardboiled fiction with more lyrical, introspective language. Marvin’s observation that "punctuality was a dying art, like common sense" is pure noir, establishing his world-weary persona. This is contrasted with the impressionistic description of the city as "smudges of concrete and neon," a metaphor for his own mental fog. This stylistic duality mirrors the central conflict between the concrete world of investigation and the fluid, symbolic world of dreams. Symbolism is woven deeply into the fabric of the chapter. The relentless spring rain is the dominant symbol, representing not the "foolish hope of rebirth" but an endless, cleansing-resistant grief. Nancy’s polished stone serves as a critical symbolic object: an "anchor," a tangible piece of reality Marvin must cling to as he descends into the formless depths of the mind. The most potent symbol emerges in the final scene: the dream-door, a classic archetype for a gateway to the subconscious. However, its "sickly green" light corrupts this symbol, transforming it from a gateway of potential discovery into a portal of malevolent intrusion. This subversion of a familiar symbol signals that Marvin's journey will not be a simple exploration of memory but a confrontation with something alien and parasitic.
## Cultural & Intertextual Context
The story situates itself within a rich tapestry of literary and cultural traditions. Its most obvious ancestor is the noir detective genre of writers like Raymond Chandler, with Marvin Simpson as a modern incarnation of Philip Marlowe. However, unlike Marlowe, whose cases were external, Marvin's "case" is his own internal trauma, a distinctly contemporary psychological turn on the classic archetype. The narrative also draws heavily from the Orphic myth, casting Marvin as a modern Orpheus descending into the underworld (the dreamscape) to retrieve his lost Eurydice (Sylvie). Nancy plays the role of a psychopomp, a guide like Charon or Hermes who facilitates passage between worlds. The crucial twist is the hint that this underworld is not merely empty or populated by shades of the dead, but is actively occupied by a hostile intelligence. This element pushes the story into the realm of cosmic horror, echoing the work of H.P. Lovecraft, where the pursuit of forbidden knowledge leads not to enlightenment but to a terrifying awareness of malevolent, unseen forces. The scientific-mystical jargon used by Nancy—"cognitive mapping," "residual imprints"—also places the story in a post-Freudian, technologically-aware context, reminiscent of speculative fiction like *Inception* or the novels of Philip K. Dick, which explore the fragility of reality and the malleability of the human mind.
## Reader Reflection: What Lingers
What lingers long after reading this chapter is not the mystery of Sylvie's disappearance but the dawning horror of what Marvin has found instead. The story masterfully pivots from a tale of grief to one of existential dread. The final image of the green flicker and the wrong voice leaves an unsettling afterimage, a sense of profound violation. The quest for a loved one has been hijacked by an unknown entity, transforming a personal tragedy into a confrontation with a potentially cosmic menace. The reader is left to grapple with a series of unnerving questions. Is this green light a manifestation of Marvin's own fractured psyche, a symbol of the "greater abyss" Nancy warned of? Or has he, in his desperation, opened a door to something truly external and predatory? The narrative provides no easy answers, forcing the reader to inhabit the same space of terrifying uncertainty as the protagonist. The story evokes the chilling possibility that the deepest parts of the mind are not our own, and that in digging for lost loves, we might unearth something that should have remained buried.
## Conclusion
In the end, "The Somnambulist's Inquiry" is not a story about finding a missing person, but about the terrifying act of becoming lost oneself. It uses the familiar scaffolding of a detective story to explore the treacherous, unmapped territory of the human subconscious. The chapter's true mystery is not what happened to Sylvie, but what will happen to Marvin now that he has knocked on a door in his own mind and discovered something unknown was waiting to answer.