At the push of a button, the gurney holding Auriel Peterson slides slowly into the pale blue glow of a magnetic resonance imaging machine. Soon, all that's visible are the shins of her black track pants and the chartreuse-and-white soles of her running shoes, angled like the fins of a torpedo.
Behind a window in an adjacent room, a splayed-out cauliflower pattern appears on a computer screen in black and white. It's Peterson's brain. And it's probably the last thing about this exercise that will be so simply shaded.
From Peterson's perspective, the next hour will be spent in service, like the day she packed donated eyeglasses to send to Zimbabwe. But the ardent Mormon also knows she could be adding to a centuries-old debate about God and science.
So she says a silent prayer: "I hope they get what they need."