Consciousness cornered in brain, then escapes.

THE CENTRAL SULCUS, YOUR BRAIN. Brain detectives have tailed consciousness for decades, from swanky prefrontal salons to high-rise occipital condominiums. Whenever researchers thought that they had it cornered, they lost consciousness.

The fundamental mind-brain phenomenon has given scientists the slip. Until now, consciousness was widely believed to be hiding out in either the gated, exclusive confines of NeoCortical Heights or in a hippocampal townhouse owned by its frequently absent friends Memory and Reasoning.

Think again. Last week, intrepid neuroscientific sleuth Sarah Bellum tracked down a haggard-looking consciousness at one the brain's seamiest flophouses, only to let her elusive quarry slip away,

"It has a mug that only a mother could love," Bellum said as she recalled her brief encounter with the avatar of awareness. "It's neither male nor female nor Michael Jackson."

Ignoring the warnings of colleagues, Bellum nosed through the seedy and lascivious nooks and crannies of the Limbic Quarter. After an emotionally draining series of dead-ends, she probed into even sleazier neural depths. Bravely entering the darkened service entrance behind the Savoy Pons, a shabby apartment building long-since abandoned to thieves and misfits, Bellum spied a figure shuffling into a doorway. Focusing her MRI's high beam on the cringing suspect, she realized that this pathetic-looking individual was the archduke of attentiveness. Gaunt, haunted-looking, and reeking of Jolt Cola, the maestro of mentation still emanated an unmistakable aura of light and clarity.

At one point, Bellum momentarily froze as a sense of spiritual unity with the timespace-Microsoft continuum washed over her. She knew she was near consciousness, though she had lingering doubts that she could be dreaming. With surprising agility, however, consciousness darted away and slithered down an open and seemingly infinite ganglial conduit. "I'm medulla oblonggone," taunted the high priest of perception. "Don't try to follow me or I'll hightail it down the Vertebral Turnpike. And you know where that leads."