Becoming Human, page 11
“Well, damn my soul!”
“You don’t mean that, do you?”
“Mean what?”
“‘Damn my soul.’”
He chuckled a little, as if he hadn’t realized what he had said. “Well, no, not exactly. It’s a figure of speech.”
“Like ‘Oh, my God’?”
“Yes. Like that.”
“D’Arcy, do you think there’s a soul?”
He flung a tool onto his desk. “You are full of questions today, aren’t you, dude?” I knew that was one of those things that didn’t require an answer, so I didn’t give him one. But he answered mine, anyway. “Yes, of course there’s a soul.”
“Are there any books about it?”
“Sure, man. The Bible.”
“I’ve read that one. And I understand that you’re supposed to believe the things in there without scientific evidence that they are true. But are there any scientific books about the soul?”
“Not that I know of. You just have to believe it.”
I decided to play devil’s advocate. “Do you believe it?”
“My daddy’s a preacher, Oscar. It would kill him if I didn’t.”
“So you believe there’s a soul to please your father?”
He pushed out his lips, which were reddish inside, and thought about this. “No, I actually believe there’s a God and a heaven. And a soul.”
“Were you brainwashed by your father?”
He shook his head. “Maybe, Oscar, maybe. What difference does it make where your beliefs come from? They’re there, regardless.”
I saw his point. “So you will be going to heaven one day?”
“I better be. Otherwise I’ll be burning in hell for all eternity.”
“Eternity is a long time. But of course part of eternity has already passed. Maybe the rest of eternity isn’t so long. Maybe it’s only another ten minutes or so.”
He stopped working again and stared straight ahead for a minute. “You know, I hadn’t thought about it that way. You’re right.” After a pause, he added, “But even ten minutes is still a shitload of time to be on fire!”
I tittered a little so he would know that I knew he was whistling in the dark. “Let me ask you another question.”
He sighed. “How many more you got?”
“Not too many. Here’s the question: would you rather burn for the rest of eternity, or would you rather there were no souls, only death?”
“Shit, man, you’ve got to stop asking things like that.”
“Why?”
“Because some questions don’t have any answers. And I’ve got work to do.” I clammed up, but he said immediately, “You have to believe there’s a heaven so there has to be a soul. Those other two alternatives are too horrible to contemplate.”
“How bad would it be if you did contemplate them?”
“Like a million rotten eggs.”
“That would be pretty horrible.”
He nodded and went back to work. After another couple of minutes he added, “Besides, if there’s nothing after death, then life would be meaningless. It wouldn’t matter what you did while you were on Earth. You could murder fifty people and there would be no eternal punishment. Or do good things, like Mother Teresa. You end up with nothing either way.”
“But what about science? You’re supposed to be a scientist, D’Arcy. There’s no scientific evidence at all for God or an afterlife.”
He looked me straight in the eye and said, rather sadly, I thought, “Science isn’t everything.”
I said, “You’re referring to ‘faith’?”
“Exactly.”
“Isn’t that a contradiction?”
“There’s no contradiction there. Faith means it’s true whether it’s true or not.”
I decided to contemplate that at another time. “Do you think I have a soul?”
“I don’t know, man. But I can tell you this: I hope so.”
“Do animals have souls?”
“I don’t know that, either. But I’ll tell you what.”
“What?”
“You want to become a human, right?”
“Yes. More than anything. That’s why I—”
“So why don’t you stop asking questions for a while so I can get this damn thing ready to put into your backside and you’ll be able to feel pain, like the rest of us.”
“Okay. Fair enough.”
Not long after that, David and Robyn came in, but it was late afternoon by the time they completed the adjustments on the pain receptors. All I could do while I waited was to think about the meaning of faith, and what pain might be like. Was it like the horrible stink of rotten eggs? Or like a blinding light or the deafening sound of an air horn? Or was it something so different that neither I, nor anyone else, could possibly imagine it, like color vision? I realized that I am human in this regard, if nothing else: I could not imagine anything another human could not. Our brains are the same. By the same token, I could never be smarter than the smartest human. Not even smarter than most computers, which can do many things I cannot. I, like all humans, am limited in many ways.
After Susumu came in he spent the day on his computer reading and writing and organizing his innumerable notes. I might have asked him what was in them if I hadn’t been so preoccupied with the imminent occurrence of blinding pain. Sometimes I watched Omar creating more and more neurons and memory cells. It seemed like a dull job for a human being, but maybe he saw a bigger picture and found the work fulfilling. If I survived the day I would ask him about this.
D’Arcy finally heaved a sigh, which was more like an “Ahhhhh.” “Okay,” he said as he examined one of the receptors, turning it this way and that. “I think we’re ready.”
“Should we begin?” David asked. “Or is it too late to start today?” He whispered something to D’Arcy. I realized it was something I wasn’t supposed to hear. This was puzzling because they had never kept secrets from me before, as far as I knew. If it involved me, I wanted to know.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you,” I prodded.
“Nothing, nothing,” David said, but he didn’t look at me.
“We were just discussing whether to start today, or wait until we have a whole day to work on you,” D’Arcy added. I think he was lying because he said it in a funny way. And he didn’t look at me, either.
“And what did you decide?”
“We’ll do a preliminary experiment today just to test the devices, and do a more comprehensive set on Monday. Is that okay with you, Oscar?”
If I could sweat, I would have been sweating by now. “I don’t know!” I responded, somewhat weakly, I suspect. They actually looked a bit concerned. To show them that I wasn’t blaming them for what was about to happen, I produced a little giggle.
“Let’s go for it!” D’Arcy almost shouted. He seemed eager; I wished I hadn’t asked him so many questions. Both he and David disappeared behind my backside. I was left again to cogitate my immediate future. I tried to think about what I might like to read that night, what movies I might like to watch, what sex might be like. The opposite of pain, perhaps. I focused on all the beautiful colors in the lab. Someone had an orange, a stunning color if there ever was one. I contemplated why a lemon wasn’t called a “yellow.” But I couldn’t really think seriously about any of these topics, even the question of faith.
Suddenly David appeared in front of me. “Ready, Oscar?” Without waiting for a response, he informed me that, because of our experience with the odor experiments, they had decided to hit me briefly with all six “cylinders.”
Robyn, sitting at her desk, turned to watch. “Good luck, Oscar,” she said. She was smiling, but it showed some concern.
David raised his arm and looked back toward D’Arcy, then at his watch. “Ten. Nine. Eight…” I felt funny, like my wires were tingling, but I don’t think it had anything to do with the receptors they had just implanted in me. “. . . Four. Three. Two. One. ZERO!” On “zero” his arm came down.
“Contact!” D’Arcy shouted from behind me. If I could have closed my eyes, I would have. I waited. Nothing happened.
David grinned. “Okay, that’s it,” he said. D’Arcy reappeared.
“It didn’t work, did it?”
“No, it worked fine, man,” said D’Arcy. “It was a dry run.”
“What’s a dry run?”
“We wanted to see if you would try to fake a reaction to pain.”
“What do you mean? Did you think I would lie about it?”
“Not really. But Henry wanted us to make sure. You understand? He’s under a lot of pressure from his colleagues—our colleagues—to be certain that you’re for real.”
I felt that anger feeling again. Or maybe disappointment or hurt. “Tell Henry that I would never lie to him.”
“We will. And we’ll start the real experiments on Monday. Okay?”
“Do I get a vote on that?”
“You already voted on it, remember?”
“Oh, right.” Robyn winked at me. “David?”
“Yes, Oscar?”
“When the pain experiments are over, will you fix my eyes so I can wink?”
He laughed. D’Arcy laughed. Robyn laughed, too. I didn’t laugh. “Well, big guy, that’s the same problem we had with eye movement.” But I could see he was thinking about it. “All right, we’ll see what we can do. And thanks for being honest with us.”
As they were leaving I wondered why they should thank me for being honest. Is it because it’s unusual for someone to be truthful? If I am to be human, should I learn to lie with conviction?
Perhaps two can play the game of fake experiments.
21
On Saturday morning I felt tired and drowsy, as if I had been working all night. Otherwise it was no different from any other. The red LED lights in the clock on the far wall said 6:35. I waited for someone to power me up. I almost wished they would leave me alone to rest. As he often does on weekends, Susumu came in and brought me back to full speed. Despite my fatigue, I soon felt better.
I had not spoken to him the day before—we had both been preoccupied—but of course he knew about the pain experiments that David and D’Arcy were working on. After he was settled at his desk I said, “Good morning, Susumu.”
“Oh, good morning, Oscar.” He shuffled through some of the papers spread out beside his computer. “Do you want a book to read?”
I knew he didn’t want to be disturbed when he was working on his papers—none of the crew did—but I knew he could leave the lab just as abruptly as he had come in, and I needed to discuss some things with him. “No. I just wanted to tell you that I had that same dream again last night.”
He looked up quickly, seemingly more puzzled than annoyed. “Really? That’s interesting. I think you are still worried about the pain experiments. David told me they will be starting on Monday. Are you still having some trepidation about this?”
“A little.”
“That’s perfectly normal. Many people don’t sleep well when they know they are facing something unpleasant. But the important thing is that you are dreaming. It’s how people clear their minds, regardless of what they mean. Do you realize how significant that is?”
I hadn’t thought about that. I suppose I should have been elated that I had apparently crossed another threshold. “Thank you.”
He was still staring at me, perhaps deciding which of the infinite number of follow-up comments he could make. But he chose none of them. He merely looked down again and wrote a note to himself. Was it about me?
I realized then that I didn’t know him any better than I knew D’Arcy. Of course, I didn’t actually know anyone else in the laboratory, either. Perhaps it’s not possible to really know another human being, even a spouse. There seemed to be such a great variety of responses to anything and everything, an infinite number of reactions to any given situation that you can never predict what a person will say or do, or really know someone else, or even yourself! But Susumu I knew least of all because he never said much, nor demonstrated his feelings in facial expressions. Did that make him less human than most other people? I wondered whether he, like Omar and D’Arcy, had trouble with women. If everyone had that problem I might be better off without love or sex. I decided to ask him about that while he was shuffling, even though he might have been thinking important thoughts, such as what to do with me after the pain experiments were completed.
“Susumu, may I ask you a question?”
He looked up from a stack of reprints and reports. “Yes, Oscar?”
“Are you married?”
I had rarely seen Susumu smile, but a corner of his mouth turned up. “I was, once.”
“You had a divorce?”
“No. She died.”
I said I was very sorry because I knew that was what humans were supposed to say, even if the deceased spouse was a despicable person.
“Thank you, Oscar. It was a long time ago.”
“Do you have any children?”
“No.”
“So you live alone?”
“Yes.”
“Are you happy?”
He stared at me for a long time. I wondered whether he didn’t want to answer that question, but I think perhaps no one had asked him that before. “I don’t know, Oscar. Most people in my position would probably say they weren’t. But I am content. I had my wonderful wife for seven years, and I have my work.” He paused for another minute, but I could see he was thinking. “In a way, I suppose you have made me happy.”
That was a surprisingly gratifying thing to hear. No one had ever told me I made them happy. I felt a pleasant sensation; perhaps I was happy, too. “Do you think we can be friends?”
He leaned back in his chair and looked away. “I don’t think that would be such a good idea, Oscar. It would be difficult to work on a friend. That’s one reason why doctors and lawyers don’t usually take their friends as patients or clients.”
“But surely we are not enemies.”
“No, of course not. Let’s just say we can be lab partners. Or colleagues. Would that be all right with you?”
It wasn’t entirely all right, but I didn’t want to hurt Susumu’s feelings, especially since his wife had died and he didn’t seem to have any friends of his own. “Okay, partner. Perhaps we can be friends later, when the experiments are finished.”
His eyes twinkled ever so slightly. “Yes, I think that would be possible. Now let me get back to work. I need to concentrate.”
“I will be silent. But I will think of you as a friend even though you are not.”
He made no response to that. But maybe I had said it so softly that he didn’t hear me.
He worked all morning on his notes and reports, and I didn’t disturb him further. At just after noon he reorganized his papers and stacked them neatly on his desk. “Don’t worry about the pain experiments, Oscar. No one wants to hurt you in any way.”
I didn’t remind him that sometimes things happen even when you don’t want them to.
He set up a few DVDs for me, including an opera by Bizet, a philosophy book by Kierkegaard, a novel by Aldous Huxley, and a dictionary (he knew I liked to read dictionaries for relaxation). Then he powered me back down for the weekend and left me alone with my thoughts. I wondered where he was going and whether he would be lonely, as I would be, until Monday. Ordinarily, I would have looked forward to some new ideas, but the books didn’t seem to interest me much. Mostly I thought about whom I might become friends with. One of the members of the crew? Perhaps they would disagree with Susumu about friendship. Maybe Robyn, who already seemed friendly to me. Sometimes great loves begin with a great friendship!
22
That night I was mulling over the upcoming experiments, and how I could prepare myself for them, when I heard a noise like a muffled “bang.” This was followed by a kind of ripping sound, and someone pushed open the door and stepped into the lab, closing the broken door after him. It screeched, as if in pain. I didn’t recognize him; he was young, perhaps a student. He scurried silently to Susumu’s desk and pulled out the drawer. With a little flashlight in one hand he hunted through its contents with the other, before slamming it shut. Some of Susumu’s papers fell to the floor. He repeated this with all the desks in the laboratory. Apparently finding nothing of importance, he unplugged some of the computers and stacked them under his arm. He checked his watch and took a final look around. Apparently he hadn’t noticed me. Perhaps he didn’t even know of my existence. Maybe he wasn’t a student after all, merely a thief looking for anything of value. Just as he was turning around to leave, I said, in a loud, authoritative voice, “Put them back!” This wasn’t easy, given my lowered energy state.
He staggered forward, and one of the computers banged to the floor.
“I’ve got a gun pointed at your heart!” (I had heard that in a video of a televised police show.)
“Where the hell are you?”
“Never mind that. Put them back. Stat!” (Another show, this one medical.) Without a word he dropped the rest of the computers onto Robyn’s desk and backed out of the lab without closing the defective door.
It occurred to me that perhaps I should add a siren to my repertoire of sounds. Or request an alarm system connected directly to Security. Otherwise, except for contemplating the fact that I had told my first lie, and worrying about the pain experiment, there was nothing I could do but wait for the sun to come up and Sunday to slowly pass by.
But early that morning someone in a brown security uniform came through the open door. In his right hand he carried a gun, in his left a large flashlight. He shone the light all around. Apparently satisfied that no one was in the laboratory, he holstered the gun and pulled out a communication device. “Intrusion in one of the Neurology Labs, Room B-12.”
