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postulated that those empty spaces suddenly had to be considered as a part of the substance of the brain itself. Overnight, Bayron's theory had become a genuine hypothesis.
    To test his hypothesis, Bayron wanted to model the brain of a European Quail, the least complex full brain in the animal kingdom. He wrote a grant proposal asking for a huge sum of money to fund his research. He was surprised when he received a call from the research director at SmithCorp. SmithCorp would fund the research, but not at the amount requested. It wouldn't be necessary, the director said, because the brain of the European quail had been thoroughly mapped and modeled, by none other than Elijah Smith himself. Smith had a very personal interest in this project, the director said, as years of research had been expended unsuccessfully trying to get the Smith model to work.  As perfect as the model was, the computer never became a Quail. Not only couldn't the computer build a nest, it didn't even produce patterned data. But Smith himself personally believed that Bayron's theory was the key. And so, with the financial support of his unexpected benefactor, Bayron started assigning properties to the empty spaces. Everything he could learn about the properties of nothingness were added to the model. When the CERN scientists discovered there were actually many different kinds of nothingness, each with their own properties, Bayron's model became more complex. The more the CERN scientists learned about the nature of empty space, the larger Bayron's model grew.
    One day, like magic, the model spewed out a pattern. It was definitely a pattern. When the data was plotted, there was the clear image of an oscilloscopic wave. Dr. Bayron, like Archimedes bolting from his legendary tub, ran to the audio lab waving his printout at the technicians. "Produce this sound for me!" he yelled at the first technician he saw. "Do it, do it!" 
    The technician scanned the wave diagram into his computer, pressed a few keys and turned up the volume on a speaker. A moment later, they all heard a clear sound:
    "Chirp".
    "What the hell is that?"  The technician asked.
    "It's a god damn European Quail!" Bayron shouted.
    In retrospect, he wished he had just said, "Eureka."
    After celebrating the almost magical chirp with his research team, Bayron made a phone call to the research director at SmithCorp. After explaining his result, the research director put him on hold. He was barely on hold for 10 seconds when a louder, different voice, came from the phone.
    "Douglas Bayron?"  The voice said. "Elly Smith."
    Bayron, by virtue of some unknown instinct, stood up when he realized who he was speaking with. "Yes sir. I trust you've heard we got affirmative results?"
    "I had no doubt, Bayron," Smith said, "I am not in the habit of betting on losers. But this is just proof of concept, you understand. Let me tell you what I really want."
    When Smith offered Bayron the opportunity to model a human brain, Bayron jumped. The promise of unlimited resources and huge pay were appreciated, but were hardly necessary.
    And so it was the European Quail that brought these two men together.
    Bayron protected his empty spaces. They were his. He didn't let anyone else at SmithCorp work on the empty spaces. He guarded them jealously; that's where the magic lay. He filled most of his black spiral notebook with the properties of the various types of nothingness that he identified in the model he was creating of Smith's brain. The pipes and tubes, neurons and arteries and the chemicals that drive the apparatus - all the quantifiable aspects: that work could be done by his assistants most of whom were really just highly educated technicians and mechanics. Myra called them the trained monkeys. But the magic he kept for himself in the bound pages of his spiral book.
    Bayron did not think of his rendering staff quite as contemptuously as Myra, but he never let them near the empty spaces. Those were all