“No, he’s stable. Nothing to be concerned about. Unusual to catch it this early even, gives us much better odds of successfully treating it.” The doctor walking alongside my gurney carried on reassuring somebody that I was in good condition. My mother, I assumed. I felt weak and nauseous, not sure how much was simply down to anxiety though.
I glanced left as I was rolled down the sterile white corridor and saw a series of strange chambers. Spherical metal with a thick glass porthole, through which a faint blue glow was visible. All manner of hoses and wires came out of the metal shell on every side, and humming machinery behind it all performed some mysterious function I assumed related to whatever was inside the spheres.
We arrived in a small room with another wretched looking patient opposite me. His head swollen, veins bulging. For reasons unclear to me, they’d strapped him down and everything nearby was bolted to the floor, or in the case of cups, lamps and so on, secured by nylon cord.
He moaned in apparent agony. The lamp lifted up, straining against the cord, jerking as if he meant to throw it across the room. Then it crashed suddenly to the floor. A nurse appeared soon after to clean up the glass from the shattered bulb, set the lamp upright again, and screw a fresh bulb into it. She gave me a stern look. “I hope you don’t plan to be this much trouble.”
Exasperating. How could I cause any trouble like this? I felt on the verge of losing my breakfast. How did the lamp levitate? Why did it stop? Did it relate to those spheres, somehow? I felt intensely hungry. Or did I? The strange feeling where you’re so nauseous it feels like hunger, and you can’t tell which.
Again, he moaned, thrashing about impotently under his straps. The bed vibrated but did not budge, while the cup shot towards me. I flinched, but the cord stopped it. It fell to the floor but, being plastic, merely bounced and then rolled around a bit. Luckily it was just about empty or I’d be drenched.
I looked around for some explanation as to how it occurred, but saw no obvious mechanism. When I called for a nurse to ask about it, nobody came. I began to grow worried. Where was Mom and Dad? What about my lessons? The nausea had subsided somewhat and I was properly hungry now. I tried to get up.
“Oh hon, don’t move around. You’ll break the catheter.” The nurse finally showed her face again. I leaned towards her, intent on asking what a catheter was before the shooting pains in my groin made it clear to me. I relented, and lay back down. Aside from the unwelcome novelty of urinating through a tube, I sort of enjoyed being fussed over.
The nurse herself was on the pretty side and spoke softly to me as she went about checking various meters and gauges fixed to parts of the bed. “Oh my. Never seen it progress so quickly. Nothing to worry about though, this is exactly what we take care of here. Leave it to Doctor Rinnet.” I didn’t really follow any of it, but her voice was soothing, and despite my hunger I soon drifted off to sleep.
I awoke to a startling commotion, multiple doctors and nurses mobbing the bed of the patient opposite me. Buzzers and alarms of all kinds were going off. Some on his bed, some over the hospital’s intercom system. Was he dying? I wished they wouldn’t pack together so tightly, that I might at least see what was happening to him.
A team of muscular men in scrubs wheeled in one of those steel spheres, split into hemispherical halves on a hinge. Finally the cluster parted enough that I could see the poor boy being hoisted by two of the men into the open sphere. His head was flush, bright red like a lobster and I could faintly see steam rising from his ears, mouth and nostrils.
Once he was inside, they closed the top half and began tightly fastening latches around the perimeter. I imagine they didn’t want me to see what would happen, but they didn’t have time to prevent it. Through the porthole I watched in awe as the boy’s head burst into flames. He briefly thrashed, then went limp as a white hot mass burnt its way out from inside his head.
Glowing holes appeared in his freshly exposed skull as charred skin peeled away. Rays of light, now discernibly blue, poured out through the rapidly growing openings until his head simply fell apart around the radiant apparition.
Though I shielded my eyes with one hand, through cracks between my fingers I could just barely make out the shimmering outline of a brain at the center. Not a solid one, I could see through it to some degree. But the recognizable shape of a brain, nonetheless.
Arcs of blue lightning lashed out from it, striving to penetrate the spherical vessel without avail. Once the excitement died down, the muscular men wheeled the vessel out of the room, and that was that. Aside from a prolonged stare from the nurse as if swearing me to silence, everyone continued as though nothing remarkable had occurred.
“What was wrong with him?” I frantically called out. Nobody came. However I pleaded, I was ignored until the familiar nurse reappeared with some strange items. I hoped it was lunch as she presented it to me on the same tray, but instead there were a series of weights arranged in order of size, some cards and other assorted trinkets.
“What happened to that boy? Where did you take the sphere? Are you going to put me in one of those?” My barrage of anxious questions went straight through her. She just serenely continued setting up the kit, turning on a recording device, then began describing the activity she meant for me to participate in.
“Do you understand?” I said that I did, although somehow at the same time it made no sense to me. “Good enough. State your name.” I did so. “Tell me when your symptoms began.” I realized she meant the headache, so I told her it began this morning. She corrected me. Evidently I was passed out for much longer than I realized, and had been here overnight.
“Truly remarkable. Such a rapid onset is unheard of. I should notify Dr. Bainbridge” she mumbled to herself, though I was right beside her and could easily hear it. As if keeping information from me was no longer important. I worried that I’d already seen why, and would soon end up inside one of the steel chambers. She persisted in refusing to acknowledge my questions about that.
“If you would, please try to lift the smallest weight.” I struggled, and it seemed to amuse her. “No, I mean with your mind.” I stared at her waiting to be let in on the joke. When she only continued staring expectantly, I began to entertain the possibility that I was in an asylum run by the inmates. “You mean to say you’ve never tried?” I shook my head. Never occurred to me.
She wouldn’t stop pushing me, so in the interest of hastening lunch, I made a token effort. Simply thinking “move” did nothing, although it occurred to me soon after that may not be how it works. Instead, I tried willing it to move. Again, no effect. Finally, I tried to move it as you would your arms or legs. The weight slid about a centimeter, then stopped.
I boggled. The nurse seemed a lot less surprised. “Very good. Something like the phantom limb effect, isn’t it? Or relearning to control a limb that’s been surgically reattached after an accident. The brain is quite plastic. But of course, you’re controlling something entirely separate from your body. So far as you know. How does it feel?”
Frightening. Have I always been able to do this? Couldn’t be, I’d have done it on accident before. Something to do with the headaches, I concluded. Has to be. She coached me until I could reliably slide the weight around in any direction I pleased, then finally lift it up off the tray entirely. Lifting it was the most difficult. Weighed a ton, or so it seemed to me.
We progressed through the weights until I reached my limit. Just the third weight, still miniscule. “Oh no, don’t be ashamed hon. I’ve honestly never seen anyone progress this rapidly. Usually this sort of degradation takes months.” Degradation? Progress, rather. Surely?
Next up were the cards. It was a sort of game, where I was meant to guess what symbols were on them and in what order, though I couldn’t see. The trick here was to stare at the nurse and simply blurt out the first symbol that popped into my head. I only got it wrong when I second guessed myself. “Stronger with the cards than the weights. Interesting.” She jotted down some notes.
My stomach growled. At last, she took an interest in me outside of the academic. My arms were released and soon I was presented with a dismal looking plate of peas, fried fish, baby carrots and kernels of corn. I practiced levitating the small vegetable bits to my mouth.
Once I finished she stashed the kit in a cabinet beside my bed, turned off the light, and left. It was my great fortune that she didn’t feel like carrying both the kit and my dishes, else she might’ve taken the kit back to where she brought it from originally.
Stay Tuned for Part 4!