If an alarm deep in your brain is triggered in the night, by something in a dream or a change in the body, then the waking mind is suddenly switched back on by the appropriate activating system. You are immediately brought back as thinker, and even after you have seen that there is no obvious cause for the original alarm you are stuck in a state of wakefulness for an indefinite period. But it is a special kind of wakefulness, highly alert but not fully present. Thoughts skitter weightlessly, they may be distressing and repetitive, or amusing and even rather insightful, or just hopelessly dull, or all at once, but even though you seem to be unwillingly committed to them, it is as if they are being thought by a mechanical duplicate of yourself. There is a part missing, certainly including the countervailing body-consciousness - what there is of it is also detached and untethered -, you know it is missing but you can't really point to what that missing part is. It is like a false alarm in a tall apartment building. Everybody has to evacuate the premises via the stairways, and then stand around for far too long until the emergency services arrive and certify that it is safe to return. You feel dislocated, but are strangely liable to speak to your neighbours for the one and only time. Afterwards when you have slept it off it seems dreamlike, you cannot precisely recall the duration of the event. So there you are in your bed, your mind buzzing like a trapped insect while you wait for some sort of all-clear. What will gradually flood back into you is a sense of well-being, an opiate like sweetness, and a reintegration of the self along lines of fracture that you are hardly aware exist.