Chapter Four: 
Not The Doctors, The Disease

       “You have three new messages.”

Beep.

       “Mortimer, it’s your mother.  We heard about the incident at work.”

When you work for the System no information is out of reach.

        “I don’t know what’s going on or what you plan to do about it, but Christmas is coming and I can think of no better way to confirm your instability than to miss the most important holiday of the year.  Your father and I will be expecting you; please try and bring something nice for your nieces and nephews; set a good example. I don’t want them thinking the world is ending just because their uncle can’t tell the difference between day and night.”

How did she know?  Who thinks the world is ending?

       “I’ve set up an appointment for you with a specialist – he’s very good at what he does.  Maybe you can appease me and do something useful for yourself at the same time – go and see him this morning.  It just might save your life.”

It’s either liquidation at the hands of Terina, or interrogation at the hands of the specialist – similarly similar?

       “Next message.”

Beep.

       “Hey Morty… it’s Belay… sorry about last night.  I know it doesn’t help you now, but I just get carried away when I see you together, you and Art… I know he’s just a shadow… but you’re the one casting him.”

…story on my life.

       “I just… I think you know this… but you’ll have to get over him to get to me… you’ve tried so many times before… I just don’t think you have it in you.  Listen; sex is how you say yes, sex is how you prove to the future that you trusted the future… it’s how you prove to yourself you trust yourself.  I don’t know who or what you trust anymore.  Anyway, I love you… bye Mortimer.”

 I love you too… I should call her back, tell her what it’s like… to have her face flicker like a dull flame in my heart, and mind, every day… to wonder everyday what her skin would like… to never be able to say anything meaningful about it… to her or anyone else…

 …maybe that’s the Belay I love…an image of an image, barely burning, inside my heart and mind.

       “Next message.”

I feel sick.  Beep.

       “This is a test of the universal broadcast system, broadcasting to all timeless castaways, in all times and places.  If you can hear this message, you are likely a trans- or super- historical person stuck in the body of a positional individual.  If you can hear this message and none of this makes any sense to you, it is a mistake and you should resume your situated historical life.  For the rest of you the next sixty seconds will be a test, but considering your inability to distinguish sixty seconds from six hundred years, you may wish to take it more seriously than exercise.”

I don’t recognize this women’s voice, but clearly she’s speaking to me.

       “Although it is your persistent wish to hover just above the moments of your lives, extending your wings with tilted head at the incidents and accidents below, it is never the less the case that hints and allegations suggest you can be seen and heard by those around you.  Shocking though it may be; super-historical personages, you are not ghosts.  And so, in the general course of almost actually being normal people who live and will die, you may be required to participate in the world around you.  Some of you will well be wondering, how, why, or some combination of question words meant to express your curiosity about the criteria you ought to use when deciding upon particular participation.  Toward an answer, the universal broadcasting system can only offer opaque directives; you must survey the specificity of time, take honest stock of your abilities and dispositions... and ask: ‘what would I do in this situation, if I was the kind of person who acted in situations?’  Yes, super-historical personages, the time may come when you must drive the action, thicken the plot, twist the narrative… even be the events that normally swirl around your otherwise static lives. 

       You – encyclopedias of the events of history, pregnant with forgone conclusions – you resist the challenge I know, protesting that even the story of your life has been written at least once before. But you have consumed the past in an attempt to humiliate the present, and digested most of what humanity had ever to offer… without an offer of your own.  You are not really encyclopedias at all.  You are manuals of inward culture, fit only for external barbarians.  Remember that there is mortal danger in this inwardness that devours but does not excrete. All that was acquired to make the present a shadow, to make the present a reflection of universality… will make a shadow of you as well! And the both of you will disappear if so much as a spark should fly.  Your wings, outstretched though they may be, will be singed: perhaps, super-historical personages, you will be ghosts after all.”

       “Mortimer, now we are wasting valuable time, please let us continue.”

Can you talk about sex too much?

 And then… the drugs came… and the conversations were over.

       “I’m sorry, I’m here.  It’s just a lot to take in.”
      “I understand.  I’d like to return to the episodes you were describing. They will guide the formal analysis of fluids.  You should tell me everything you can about them.  Have there been any others that you can recall clearly?”

       “Just one, I guess, the other day I was taking transport because my apartment was late picking me up.  We went down a hill and I reached out to hold the pole so I didn’t fall, and in the moment before I grasped it, I felt completely weightless.  As I floated we passed a tree farm and I looked out across the median, past the lamp posts, to the trees, and everything seemed to be made of a gray concrete… the trees, the ground, the lamp posts, the road… silent gray pillars rising over the slab, gray, forest floor.  And just before my fingers finally touched the metal rail, my eye reached an aerial view. I saw rivers of flowing concrete, flowing out to grey seas, harvest forests and plantations of concrete pillars punctuating towering grey cities of uniform cylinders.  It was all the same; it all looked the same.”
       “And how did this experience make you feel.”
       “Carried away.”
       “Anything else?”
       “Nothing concrete, I just… sometimes, these days, when people are talking…”
       “Yes…”
       “I can hear the words… before they speak them.”
       “Listen to me Mortimer: sometimes when we feel like we are not in command of our lives, our brains invent patterns that offer a sense of control.  In the past they would have said serendipity, déjà vu. We call it illusory pattern perception.”
      “What?”
      “False memories Mortimer; when the brain cannot connect the experiential information it encounters with known patterns, it begins to connect the perceptual data with personal – ”
      “My… mind is broken?”
      “Its not exactly that Mortimer, its just that all the clinical precedents for this disorder have shown that some extreme physical trauma usually initiates the condition.”
      “Well I haven’t had any ‘physical trauma’…”
      “Exactly.”
      “What do you mean exactly, how do you know that?”
      “Mortimer calm down, it was the first question I asked your mother and she assured me – ”
      “No – ”
      “Just calm down, she assured me that you had not suffered any external frustration.”
      “And?”
      “And I told her, as I will tell you now, that in the absence of an external trigger for a disorder like this we must look for… internal factors.”
      “…internal factors?  You think I’m doing this?”
      “Mortimer, no one is accusing you of anything; it is my opinion, in consultation with your family, that we must expose any changes in routine or habit that you have undergone and see if we can’t find the cause of your discomfort.”
     “Look, I’m not discomfortable, its them… its my family…  it’s Terina…it was Leonard who called it in…”

The wild accusations of the guilty.  Even if I didn’t sound crazy when I came in here I’m sure I’ve convinced the good doctor now.

       “Mortimer…”
       “Okay listen, I’m calm… is there a name for this ‘disorder,’ I mean what should I tell my friends… or Terina?”
       “Until we meet a couple more times, I’d prefer if you didn’t let anyone know in any official way the nature of your condition – I will need more from you to determine that.  However, it certainly has helped some of my other patients to name the intruder in their life, to absolve themselves of the guilt they feel for misbehaviour.  I think I can say, in a strictly preliminary way, that you are suffering from paralexia, with intermitatnt prosopagnosia – possibly achromatopsia – to explain your inability to differentiate faces and colors.
       “With all due respect doctor, those words don’t really capture the experience.”

They have grabby hands though.

       “Well, Mortimer, if you calm down some, both of us might have the opportunity to explain ourselves better.  Although it is highly unorthodox procedure, and one I might add which is likely to obscure rather than illuminate your condition, perhaps you would like to tell me more about what you’re going through?”

That seems more reasonable, except the part about it not helping.  Maybe let’s try something a bit more honest; disarm with humanity.

       “It just seems like… the spheres of my life won’t hold apart anymore.  You know the fuzzyness of your eyes just when you wake up?  When you can tell they were fixed for dreaming and darkness, but are struggling to adjust to the light?  I feel like I must have been living in that haze entirely, between two worlds, day and night for years.  Because now, I feel like I’m waking up.  My dreams are collapsing into waking life… I need both for there to be one… one story I mean.”

I’ve said too much; I haven’t said enough.

       “I see.  Mortimer, you know that we don’t talk about dreams anymore.”
       “I know.”
       “Do you know why?

Because a story about nothing in particular has more particular interpretations than any particular story ever could?

       “Not really, no.”
       “It’s because the scientists of the Reconstruction, while perfecting the physiology of the Executioners, discovered that dreams were the brain’s rather imperfect way of managing the information and nutrients gathered during the day.  They developed the first injections, the biological machines we all now depend on.  The injections do the work of dreams.  They manage the distribution of acquired information and nutrients, but are superior to dreams in that they simultaneously monitor and control pathogens and disease in the body, as well as the moods, emotions, and memories of the mind.”
       “…”
       “Do you understand Mortimer?”
       “What do you mean, understand?”
       “We no longer dream, you no longer dream, we have outgrown the use of both the word and its operation.”

I feel cold.

       “It’s not that I don’t’ appreciate you taking the time to meet with me, doctor, I just don’t believe your medicine; your descriptions of my brain are too abstract, and the biology of the injections is too concrete.  My grandparents always told me – ”
       “Is that what this is about Mortimer?  That your ascendants were regressive homeopathists?  Are you prepared to ignore the limitations an obsolete science even as you survive and thrive by the accomplishments of the innovation that replaced it? Let me be clear Mortimer; the rhythm of your synaptic fire is disrupted, you are no longer properly deciphering memories from immediate experience.”
       “How is that clear? You’re offering what I can only assume you believe to be the sanitized or comforting version of my ‘condition’ – but I don’t think there’s anything wrong with me, so its no comfort.  I know you have a manual, like everyone in the System, the DSM or whatever you call it, your tome…”

My tomb?

       “Yes I do have some professional guidelines, Mortimer, because I am a professional.  I don’t see what you’re after.”
       “I want you to tell me what it says: I want to know what you really think is wrong with me, what my file is going to say, what my fate is going to be.”
       “Your fate?  You really cannot help yourself can you, Mr. Blithe, a fanatically foolish myth-chaser and incorrigibly so.  I’ll tell you what I will do.  I will read you the entry in the DSM for the condition I believe you have, and if you can explain to me how your experience differs from the description, I will have you back and we can work through the misunderstandings that brought you to me.  If, however, you cannot discern any difference between yourself and the hypothetical patient described, then you must submit to the treatment the manual outlines.  How does that sound?”
       “Exceedingly tricky, but I do appreciate you allowing me behind the curtain Dr. O’Brien.  I agree, just read it to me.”
       “Okay Mortimer, Listen closely.”

 Deep breaths, minimal facial contortions.

       “Defect of the perceptive power, consisting in an inaccurate interpretation of the objects of the external world.  Perception lacks certain specific and differential features and accordingly gives rise to defective recognition of objects already known and of new objects having relation of similarity or analogy with those. Some objects or experiences are mistaken for others that resemble them only superficially.”

Does that describe me?

       “Does that describe you, Mortimer?”   
       “I want to tell you that it doesn’t, that I’m different, but I can’t see how.  What’s happening to me?  What’s the name of the condition you just read?”
       “We used to think that Paralexia could only be linguistic or phonetic, but cases of more complex sensory disorders have increased so rapidly in recent years that paraxial has subsumed what was once False Memory Disorder and many forms of Synesthesia.  Your misapprehension of immediate experience is due to your brain’s mistaken feeling that it has already experienced what is taking place.  You are experiencing repetitive, familiar, and singular moments. Your brain is prepared with memories for events that have not yet occurred.”

I’m like a song you can’t quite remember but will never forget…or like a baby.

       “Mortimer, Paralexia is the dream of waking life; you must come back from this waking dream and its false memories to an authentic awakening.  The dream can be dissolved Mortimer. The immediacy of clarified perception, achieved by a new treatment I am authorized to prescribe to you, can and should be yours. 

We don’t talk about dreams anymore.

        “What do you think?”   

What you do think?

       “Quarters so even.”
       “What’s the matter Art?”
       “Nothing.  Can we go somewhere less…open…”
       “The sun’s nice… just a couple minutes…”
       “You know Morty, I’m trying to be patient, but some days I just can’t stand it.  The monotony: same city, same seasons, same Art.  I just can’t help thinking we’re waiting on the weather, you know.  We’re supposed so leave… on the boats… but I don’t know… no one will want to leave unless something enormous happens.  Do you know what a hurricane is?”
       “I think so, like a big storm, right?”
       “Sort of.  When warm air rises off the ocean, it leaves low pressure behind it.”
       “And that’s a problem?”
       “Not by itself.  But more air rushes to take the place of the air that’s risen.  More and more like that… and because of the earth’s rotation, all of it slides sideways and begins to spin… more and more like that… until it’s self sustaining.”
       “Could that ever happen here?”
       “The weather machines allow big rain storms, but nothing with winds strong enough to affect the grid… or our apartments.  But if a hurricane formed over the oceans, the aerosols wouldn’t be enough; the storm would overwhelm the chemical clouds… and then maybe something would happen.”

We had a storm like that, Art and I, when we were kids.  I think the Executioners let it into the city just to show how prepared they were.  There were emergency reports and serious faces, but nothing was affected, nothing happened.  It would be like that again; all concern, and nothing would change.

 To bet your hope and life and future on the wind… poor Art… 

       “How did you do anyway?  Morty’s all kinds of crazy?  Clogging of the viscera, obstruction of the body and soul, fermentation of the wishbone, passivity, corruption of liquids and spirits?  Did he offer you treatment?”
       “It wasn’t much of an offer?”
       “What’s that piece of paper say?”
       “It’s my official diagnosis, I’m supposed to show it to Terina, to the family, and any patrol officer that finds me wandering the streets at odd hours because I’m no longer fit for work.”
      “This is a great opportunity for you Morty.  They’ve pushed you out of their world, but you can walk right into mine. Most of the Fire-Starters were engineers and physicists until their mode of cognition was deemed unsuitable for indoor occupation.”

Extremely comforting; inside, outside, still executing other people’s plans.

      “Don’t be so cynical.  Anyway, what’s the paper say, what’s your diagnosis?  Read it to me.”

My life, frailties, down to a handful of clauses, so easily capsulated.

       “Mortimer Blithe, patient number 505.  Memory: weak and unreliable, enormously reduced not only for recent but also for old acquisitions.  Does not utilize past experience, persists always in repeating the same actions, without profiting from the futility of previous attempts, and without making alternation so as to arrive at a determined goal. 

       Diagnosis: acute paralexia.  Synesthesia.  

Symptoms:  Stagnation of the ventricles, convolution and false ideas, fixation and attention on a theme that gradually prevails over all others.”

I’m doomed…

       “It’s not that bad Morty, really, you know what they say…within the problem is the solution to the problem…”
       “Who says that?”
       “I think you should come to the next meeting with me.”
       “I think Belay is gone.”
       “You mean like forever.”
       “Yeah.”
       “Morty… what she wanted you to do… there’s just no way… it’s not right, anymore.  Times change, people change; we fix and find a better way.  Its too dangerous anyway, and dirty and reckless.”
      “Mostly its scary…”