neural programming – The Phantom Self

This is episode 2 of a short story about fusion – two persons coming together to share one body. If you haven’t yet read episode 1, start here.

When consciousness returns, May finds it cluttered, like a room in which she can’t find something she’s looking for. Adrift in the jumble, she clutches at anything familiar. She knows she’s in the lab – she remembers the looming, blinking machines. Other, more important things are hidden. She can’t recall her age.

She used to sail with her dad up and down Ghost Lake, in strong winds. If she was scared, she only needed to look at his face. He grinned at the sun and wind, embracing any weather. He worked in forestry. The memory of a year ago chills her, like a snow cloud blown over the sun. A sudden headache at breakfast, her mother said. Then he doubled over and vomited on the floor. How could that happen?

The enormous prickly helmet, she notices with relief, has been removed. Stretching, wriggling her toes, she grows annoyed that no one is there to attend to her. She cranes her neck, looking for her clothes. She can’t remember what she wore to the lab.

I am now familiar with the entire literature on hemispheric specialization, she thinks, to comfort herself. Or most of it anyway. I’m a leading expert in computational neuroscience. Now I know descriptive and inferential statistics, and ASL. She pictures Nina and Tina going through their intricate routines. But the meanings are as dark as ever. I don’t know ASL! she realizes in astonishment. Didn’t Jerry know it?

There was never enough time, she answers herself defensively.

Nervous, she wishes Sam would come with her clothes – whatever they were. She vaguely recollects a purple departmental T-shirt, which needed washing, with a picture of a nerve cell. But that wasn’t mine! She even remembers its sour smell as she pulled it over her head. It must have been mine. And down, over her flat, sparsely-haired chest…. Continue reading “Coed – episode 2”

“Coed” is a fictional exploration of fusion – two persons coming together to cohabit in a shared body. Fusion cases are more complex than fission, involving greater discontinuities, botb physical and psychological. You may find that contemplation of fusion cases fosters real doubt as to whether two persons are present, or one.

She knows he’s in there – she can see him brokenly through the office door’s bevelled glass, framed and backlit by the window, inert in his chair. “It’s me, May,” she calls softly, not wanting to attract attention in the hallway.

The last thing Jerry wants now is to be bothered by students. With time suddenly so precious to him, he is not prepared to squander it on their all-too-protean intellects. The knob rattles, making him seethe. Typical of students nowadays; they’ll barge in anywhere. They hardly care which washrooms they use. Even May startled him at the urinal, once. They were both convulsed by giggles, meeting like that. He scolded her, but she didn’t care. Abruptly, it occurs to Jerry that it’s probably May now – she said she’d drop by this afternoon.

At last she sees the fragmented figure inside lurch to its feet, lean towards the door.

He was right – May stands there with her shining golden hair and the essay-in-progress which has been her excuse for visiting him during the entire term. Playfully, she kicks the door closed behind her.

Instead of reaching out to her, Jerry stands listlessly, his arms limp. She wonders what’s wrong.

He realizes he will lose this too. In six months – a year at most – she will avoid his gaze. Not only she, but all the other tantalizing female students. And even the ones that aren’t tantalizing. But now she is waiting for him, to say something. “How much have you written since last time?” His tone is collegial, only a little condescending.

“Nothing,” she admits without a trace of guilt. She dares him with her eyes to reprimand her, but her playful invitation is rebuffed.

That’s how he feels about her too – absolutely guiltless. It’s a wonderful relationship, even more so than his relationship with Carole, which he once thought wonderful enough to justify the unpleasantness and expense of a divorce. And now when he has achieved this, and so much else – when his life has at last taken a finished shape, with full-professor status, four-month European vacations, and a conscience mature enough to allow him the things he really wants – now, at age forty, it’s over. Continue reading “Coed – episode 1”