“Dr. Fujiwara, another surgical request came in.”
Fujiwara leaned back from a large computer screen displaying a 3D model of the human brain. “Yes, Dr. Ira?”
Ira reached over and gave him a case file. “Check it out,” He was grinning.
“What is it? Another executive functioning boost? A competence overlay?”
Ira smiled, “Just read it.”
Fujiwara opened the first page of the brief. He flipped past the biometric information, straight into the Request For Surgery section, generally a sentence or two describing why they want this or that cognitive enhancement. Instead, Fujiwara was looking at pages and pages of text. “Why does Dr. Ira want me to read this tome?” he wondered before his eyes fell upon the page.
When I was a child, I heard a story about a woman put under for surgery. The anesthesiologist gave the thumbs up and the surgeon began to cut. The only problem was, the woman wasn't really asleep.
She felt everything.
She felt the cold scalpel cut her abdomen, the layers of skin and sinew peeled back, organs and innards pushed away. Heard the clip-clipping, the snip-snipping, the inane chatter of doctors and nurses as they did their bloody work.
There is a one-in-a-thousand chance this happens each surgery. Uncommon, but not unknown. Her case was one in a million. Because when the surgeons were done, and she was sewed back up, she didn't wake.
Well, she did in a sense. Her body did. It got up. It spoke. It wept. And she watched, through her own eyes. She heard through her own ears.
Her husband wheeled her home. Her children laughed, happy to see their mother again. And her body smiled and responded. She felt the soft hands of her children. She heard the alarm wake her body as she stayed perpetually awake. She felt her husband enter her. But she wasn't there.
It was not all passive. She acted as her body's conscience. What she always wanted, got done. She learned a new instrument. She worked out. Miraculously, she lived a better life than ever before. And then, six years later, she went in for another surgery. This time she woke up.
It's funny. I know what the story is trying to convey. How scary that must have been. To witness your life going by without control. But, when I read it, I always wondered what her body must feel. Not what it would be like to be her, trapped inside a body. But instead, what it felt like to be just the body.
Fujiwara’s phone rang, and his fingers automatically answered the phone.
“Oh just working... I can make dinner. I’ll be back in..." He looked at his watch, “Half an hour.” He cut the phone and packed his bag. As he did, he noticed the brief was still there. “What did Dr. Ira want me to do with this? Was he just bringing it to my attention? Was this some sort of joke?” He closed the brief, intending to resume tomorrow morning, and he almost zipped his bag when he heard another knock.
“What did you think?” Ira said with a knowing smile.
Fujiwara politely smiled back, “I haven't finished. I was..."
“Let me know what you think tomorrow.” Ira pushed the brief closer.
“Of course,” Fujiwara gave a wan smile. He grabbed the brief and inserted it in his bag.
Traffic was light, it was always this way after they banned human drivers. The car click-click-clicked as is sped over segments of highway. The gentle acceleration pushed his lower back into his seat. Fujiwara wondered how far the car could go without charging. Where he might end up. A deserted beach, a lone seagull perfectly still in the air, held aloft by a hidden current. He felt the flecks of sand blown lazily across his face. No lighthouse, no soft green glow in the distance. Just expanse.
But it was late. Ria wasn't going to be home until well past midnight, and the nanny had to leave by 8pm. Ari needed him home. He smiled, thinking of his young son. How much the child reminded him of himself. Though, he got a vague sense of precociousness emanating from Ari that he couldn't quite place.
The car pulled up to his house and Fujiwara exited, grabbing his bag. It was not quite a mansion. But not quite was close enough. Fujiwara was a surgeon, yes, but these days surgery had nothing to do with scalpels and knives, rather more to do with programs and parameters. He'd started when young with an all consuming passion to advance in this developing field. And suddenly the world of cryptography, bioinformatics, machine learning and artificial surgery erupted. When he was 36 he became the youngest man to have ever live coded a surgery. By the age of 45, he devised new surgical practices, including the patented artificial intelligence retrofitter, where a surgeon could pre-program surgeries to operate on patients while soundly asleep, having a drink, or shitting on the commode.
His house registered his face, vocals, handprints, and his mobile. The large doors opened to let him inside. It was vast. The atrium made small echoes as his feet touched on the stark wooden floor. He hadn't necessarily wanted this place. But often he didn’t know what he wanted. It was Ria that made this decision. She said it would be perfect for Ari growing up. The neighborhood was safe and filled with other children.
He doffed his coat, tie and shoes, and went into the kitchen, obsidian black appliances juxtaposed with lacquered wood. To his surprise, he found Ari sitting at one of the push-up stools, next to the kitchen table. Fujiwara looked around. “Ari, where's your nanny?”
Ari had gotten Fujiwara’s looks and Ria’s personality. He’d point and pantomime juice boxes, toy block buildings, nap time curfews and vegetable proportions. His frame was still chubby with baby fat. And his hair was just a black tuft that bounced as he pulled Fujiwara from room to room.
Ari looked up with a confused expression. “Dada.” Fujiwara laughed. He heard a door shut in the distance. Maybe the nanny had just run off. Ria said there was something urgent.
Fujiwara picked up his son and gave him a look. He was small for his age, but his eyes were piercing, as if he understood more than he was letting on. He plopped his son back down. “And what do you want today, Ari?” Fujiwara gave a small smile.
Ari jumped up and down in his seat, and called out. “Man-gheese. Man-gheese.”
“Mac and cheese? Well today, because dad's cooking, you can have whatever you want.” He went over to the stove and boiled water. He poured in instant noodles, and added the powdered cheese. He whisked. And voila. Both were served. He portioned out a small amount for Ari, and a larger amount for himself. And then he sat down to eat. As he looked up, he noticed Ari was holding the brief.
“Ari, did you look through dad's bag?” Of course, he didn’t. Fujiwara must have taken it out and left it there on the table. Ari began to play with his mac and cheese, eating one elbow at a time. Fujiwara opened the file folder unconsciously and flipped to the page where he left off.
My most vivid memory was when I was seven years old.
The world looked so big back then. You don't think about it when you're older, but to a seven-year-old, full-grown adults are like ogres, giants plodding to and fro, creatures of routine, lacking understanding of the underworld.
My dad left me to fend for myself while he bought nicotine patches from a pharmacy in the mall. And I wandered from store to store until I found a candy shop. Countless other kids ogled oodles of sweets, and I dawdled and lollygagged amongst them. Until, in the back of the shop, I was alone.
I looked up, as I oft did. But this time, instead of adult nostrils, I was looking up at a great orb. It brimmed with an assortment of colorful candies, lollipops, licorice sticks, fruity sugary bliss.
The orb had an opening, through which a child could insert their soft little hand and extract whatever wad-sized candy they could manage. The hole was just a touch too high up. I went upon my tippy-toes and pushed myself against the glass. Try as I might, I was too small to reach inside.
So I grasped the small hole with the tips of my fingers and tilted the orb downwards. But lacking full knowledge of center of mass and the application of torque on precariously placed glass vessels, the orb fell.
I knew then what type of man I was. I didn’t cry. I didn’t stare in stunned silence. I didn't even run. I dipped down, grabbed a handful of candy, and walked away.
Sometimes at night, as I'm going to sleep, I think of that orb. I think of the many thousands of glass fragments that intermingled with the candies and sweets. And I think about how I got away scot-free.
It wracks me. That guilt. The self loathing.
My spine shudders, my stomach pits, and my body curls into a small ball under the sheets. I think of the lousy sex I had with my first. Little white lies I told my parents. And Anna’s pale lips. I think of Rubashov, Humbert and Raskolnikov. I think of the albatross that is not free, and the expiation that is purgatory.
“A rather clumsy allusion to Crime and Punishment, wouldn't you say?”
Fujiwara marked his place with a finger. “Agreed. A single reference to Darkness at Noon would suffice. Also, Humbert isn’t the type of character that comes to mind when you think unpunished crime.” Fujiwara raised his brows and looked up.
Ari's piercing eyes looked back at him. “It's almost like he's writing the converse of On Virtue, wouldn't you say?”
Fujiwara's mouth gaped. His son's voice rang out without its infantile tone. “What?”
“It's quite obvious. On Virtue explicates that a virtuous man can only be virtuous if he is willing to virtue invisibly. Thus, upon negating both statements in the clause, we can reach the conclusion that an unvirtuous act done visibly must be closer to virtue than done invisibly. Or would you say he was trying for a different point?”
Fujiwara lifted his glasses and replaced them on his face. He felt towards the sturdy countertop in front of him.
“Or perhaps our author has an overly narrow view of justice...” Fujiwara's heart was pounding. He was having a panic attack. He reached into his bag for one of his Valium tablets. Where was it? It must be nearby if the file was nearby, and then he felt it.
“So, what do you think he wants? There's no salvation, as there was for Raskolnikov. That store went belly up years ago. The owner’s dead, the deed forgotten. He is the lone bearer of the memories. The sole survivor of the genocide. And how can he inflict upon himself a punishment, an expiation? Thou shall not kill applies to oneself, no?”
Ari paced back and forth on the countertop. The chubby fingers of his left hand stabbed the air in pontification, while the right was held in a tight fist behind his back. His feet shuffled in quick steps as his eyes scrutinized the countertop, looking for a manifestation of universal truth. He stroked his chin and turned abruptly to Fujiwara, “And a wrong does not right a wrong, does it, Dr. Fujiwara?”
Fujiwara's hand found the capsule with the tablets. His fingers stumbled, and the capsule burst open, a tablet rolled across the table, and landed in front of Ari. His little hand reached out and picked up the tablet between his stubby pruned fingers and examined it.
“No, instead, our protagonist wants to subject another to this second vice. He wants a Grand Inquisitor to punish him, to purify him, to subsume his guilt.
“But think of the Grand Inquisitor. He knows the punishment he inflicts is unjust. We all too often empathize with Christ. But here let us take a moment and think of the burden of the Grand Inquisitor. Think of his sacrifice.”
Fujiwara crawled across the table, his hand trying to grab the tablet from his son. Ari held it delicately away from his grasp.
“But we are missing one last point, you see? If not purgatory, why not forgiveness? Can you not forgive yourself?”
Fujiwara snatched the tablet, jammed it into his mouth, chewed and rolled onto his back. The world was humming a high-pitched noise, and his ears slowly dulled it out. His heart began to beat at a regular rhythm. His son was crying. Mac and cheese was scattered everywhere. Fujiwara slowly rolled himself up and picked up Ari to soothe him.
He spent the rest of the evening trying and failing to clean up the mess he made, to keep his son calm. He cradled him into the bedroom. Fujiwara watched his son’s precocious eyes slowly close as he put him to bed. He shook his head and closed the door.
As he turned around, he saw Ria just behind him and almost jumped.
Ria was a handsome woman, about one inch taller than Fujiwara. Her long hair was specked with gray and hung loosely over her wide frame. And she eyed him with a confident indifference.
Fujiwara felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He opened his mouth, unsure of what to say. He suddenly felt each piece of clothing he wore. A starched collar rubbing and chafing his neck, shoes a half size too big for his left foot and too small for his right. He urged his hands to an embrace, and tongue to wet his dried lips, but instead stood perfectly still.
Ria watched all this and gave him a smile that seemed to say “Good boy”. She sloughed out of her suit jacket and folded it on her arm. “Why don't you finish your case study, I'll shower, and meet you in bed.”
Fujiwara gave a curt nod, his shoulders loosened. “Absolutely.” He watched Ria saunter off into the master bath. Fujiwara disrobed, his body rejoiced in momentary nakedness. He splashed water on his face, imagining the surf of that deserted beach. He looked up at the mirror longingly but found it fogged from Ria’s shower.
The case file already lay on his side table. Had he placed it there? He instinctively flipped past the biometric information and resumed reading.
He was strangely excited to see what came next. It was almost like revisiting an old house that had been made over. All the rooms with new wallpaper and decor.
The next excerpt was not written directly to the Institute. But rather it was scans from an old diary.
May 17
It was Thoreau that speculated the ice of his beloved Walden, was shipped across the world and mixed with the waters of the Ganges. That one man in one spot could partake of the same waters as the man halfway across the world. But then why do the waters here taste so different?
May 18
I woke up this morning with a view of the Andes. I never knew how much a single view could change you. My inner thoughts and turmoils have been quelled. This was the right decision.
May 21
The other faculty of the sanatorium treat me with respect, if not polite reserve. One of the resident nurses let on there was some strange commotion about my arrival, such a distinguished and young faculty member arriving at their clinic's sanatorium. What was the reason? And what could it mean?
May 22
The patients here are mostly textbook. I have settled into regular therapy with two of the dissociative identity disorder patients. Patients A-714 and A-718. There was, however, one patient that startled me. Patient A-700. And as if the fates conspired, she was my first direct assignment.
I remember the doctor nodding curtly to my insistence. I can't imagine how strange it must have been to have such a distinguished faculty member immediately annul the relationship with his first patient.
June 7
The summer is in full bloom. I’ve been going on mountain runs. At midday, when many of the other faculty are lunching or conversing with the nurses, I change into an old pair of running shoes and a new pair of windbreakers. And I plod along the grounds until I reach a gate which leads to a trail that goes deep into the mountains. My thoughts are taken up with the heavy breathing and the quick condensation as I exhale, as steam pours from my lungs with each breath.
June 8
I read news of the first experiments with the programming of the human brain today. They cited my work!
June 10
As I returned from my run today, I happened to see patient A-700. She sat unescorted on a bench within the premises, looking dolefully out at the mountains beyond.
June 11
I learned that A-700 was a special case. This is not a children's psychiatric facility, but a local baron of the region committed her. This former nobility happened to own vast swaths of land and contribute great sums to the maintenance of the sanatorium. He made an exception for A-700.
June 13
Today, I snapped at one of the nurses. We were going over regular notes on patients, and a nurse made a comment about one of the patients exhibiting little progress and being quite irksome.
Immediately, I felt guilt wash over me. I had no right to snap like I did, and the nurse had every right to complain. The job was hard. For most of the faculty, the drive to the facility took two hours each day. And while the facility was amply funded, the administration felt fit to not amply fund the salaries of the nurses.
Some part of me wonders, however, whether the guilt was from my misbehavior, or was rather from some subtler motive. The patient she was referring to was none other than A-700.
June 14
Tonight I dreamed, or thought I dreamt, of the mountain upon which our sanatorium rested. As I blinked my eyes, my vision blurred. The mountain was now the small jaw of Anna Vicuna. Her slight chin, bare neck, and thin clavicle.
June 21
I heard a doctor talking about patient A-700. “I am considering a prescription of lithium at 600 milligrams.” Did he even consider her weight into the equation? Was he using a standard adult measurement? As I moved to correct him, an argument ensued. I rarely use my authority, but in this case, I could not let the patient come to harm.
Later in that afternoon, I asked to move Anna to my care.
July 2
I hurt myself running today. As I passed the outer gate, there was Anna, looking wistfully out at the mountains. My normal meditative run became frenetic. My mind was constantly flashing images. I kept pushing myself harder and harder. The normal rhythm of breath, the natural vistas, they could not keep my attention. And so I pushed faster. Onwards and onwards, faster and faster, deeper and deeper into the trails.
Had I not tripped, I feel I would have lost myself out there. I would have imposed upon myself an exile of which my conscious mind could not have returned. But no, I had not the courage for the exile or the restraint.
July 20
Today, during our session, Anna leapt forward and grabbed both of my hands and pleaded with me earnestly to help her escape. And for a moment, my heart palpitated. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, and I contemplated how easy it would be to take the key meant for my quotidian run, and drop it before the gate, to whisper so close into Anna's ear the turns she must take to find her way to a small cottage that I had just the day before filled with supplies for my own repose.
She wanted my help.
Instead of recoiling, instead of asking her calmly to retake her seat, I took one of my hands and cupped her cheek. But no. I didn’t move. I uttered not a sound. I bound my heart. I restrained myself and won. But She saw. She saw my heart, my passion, she saw through me. Terror welled up in her young eyes, and she screamed.
July 21
I handed in my resignation today, unsure if the screams I heard were merely echos in my mind or the ongoing ravings of A-700. I’m going to resume my studies, but with a greater goal in mind, something I’ll call AIR.
Fujiwara's mouth was dry, and his skin was taut. She reached out to him and crawled onto the bed. His eyes jumped up and widened like a prisoner caught mid-escape.
It was Ria wearing lingerie. Her straight black hair flecked with gray hung loosely down her back, and her bodice revealed her ample cleavage. She wore the smallest of skirts that accentuated her curves.
Fujiwara gawked. She crawled up to him and gave him the lightest of kisses on his lips before leaning back and putting her hand into her skirt. Fujiwara began to slide himself out from the covers before Ria took her other hand and brought it up in a halting motion.
“No touching”, she said, and continued to play with herself. Fujiwara brought his own hand low and watched. He found nothing yet. He felt his shoulders sink. He saw Ria throw her head back and pull down her bodice. But instead of great breasts pouring out, Fujiwara saw small, hard nipples and a flat chest. His eyes widened. Ria began to moan in deeper tones. The other hand unhitched her skirt, and it fell down, revealing a tiny hairless waist. Fujiwara’s hand began in earnest. Ria’s head rocketed forward as she reached climax. Her long black hair, speckled with gray, was now short and pitch black, hiding a small jaw, her slight chin, bare neck, and thin clavicle. Fujiwara came to climax and closed his eyes.
Ria snuggled up next to him. He felt his small, thin body press up against her wide hips and capacious breasts. His body shuddered. He looked into her eyes. She smiled, “I’m quite the gracious jailer, aren't I?”
Fujiwara awoke from his sleep. He lay sprawled on the bed. The covers were in a twisted heap beside him, his shirt damp with sweat. Ria was gone. She had probably taken Ari to daycare already.
Fujiwara listened to the alarm on his phone. He wondered when he had set it last night. He picked it up. It was 5.30 a.m. and it was no alarm, Ira was calling him. So early in the morning?
He picked up the phone. “We’ve got a bit of a situation, an urgent procedure.”
“An urgent procedure?”
“You know what I mean. There was a change in a patient's condition, and the original AIR code needs urgent changes. I know no one better for the job than the man himself.” Fujiwara smiled. He almost felt a touch of pride.
He donned his suit, and made his way into the office.
The office was quiet. As most surgery and procedures were automated, doctors were liberated from their on-call residency assignments and had the schedule of engineers.
As Fujiwara made his way inside, he saw Ira there with a sardonic look on his face. Ira held in his hands the folder that he had given Fujiwara the day before, or perhaps a copy of the folder?
“Wait, for this patient?”
“Of course!” Ira laughed. “Here, I've already sent you the code. The modifications will be apparent. They're already in a spec file attached to it.” Fujiwara sat down and opened the code and began to read the specs to make any relevant edits. They were very well-defined, asking for specific changes in files and line numbers, not referencing what the holistic change was. But Fujiwara did not need to know, and his hands began to type.
“Check this out.,” Ira thumbed through the brief, “He included a joke. Like a literal joke in his RFS, like he's even got a punchline.”
"Mmmhm." Fujiwara's eyes scanned the lines of code. It was complex, probably the most complex procedure he'd seen in years. But somehow the lines looked familiar.
“Okay, get this. I guess the guy doesn't walk into a bar, but… Are you listening?"
Fujiwara nodded. His fingertips danced across the keyboard as he listened to Ira read him the joke.
A pale gentleman walked into a doctor's office. "Doctor, I've got a problem."
The doctor looked up from his work and glanced the pale man up and down. "I see…”
"Well, Doctor, I've got this, let's call it a compulsion." The man scraped at his neck. His sharp teeth glinting in the pale light of dusk. "And I need to rid myself of it. You must have something for that. A tincture, a tonic, an unguent. Something, Doctor, anything."
The doctor nodded his head slowly. "Well, here is what I would suggest." He reached below the counter and pulled out a wreath of garlic. "Whenever you have this temptation, simply put this wreath around the neck of whoever’s nearby. That should do the trick."
The pale man looked greedily at the doctor's neck. "Thank you, Doctor. And by the way, what should I call you?"
"Call me Dr. Helsing."
The pale man snatched the wreath of garlic from the table, juggling it between his hands as if it were a hot stone, and left the room.
The next night, the pale man was back, his cheeks slightly redder than before. "Doctor, it didn't work. I put the wreath around the neck of the madam that was nearby, and while I was dissuaded from temptation momentarily... I could not dam my desire. There has to be something more potent.”
The doctor rubbed his chin, interested in the conundrum at hand. Helsing rummaged through his cabinetry behind him, revealing bottles of leeches, bile and cow boaz until he withdrew a small pouch.
He placed it on the table in front of the pale gentleman. "I have a medicine that might work."
The pale gentleman thrust his hand out, eager to snatch the medicine off the table. But Helsing put his hand atop the pale gentleman's manicured fingers. "You must understand this will not abate nor abet your temptation. Instead, you will simply forget that you ever acted upon it."
He withdrew from the bag a minuscule silver marble and placed it in the pale gentleman's palm. The spot under the marble instantly turned red and welted up, and yet the pale gentleman looked hungrily at the medication.
"Yes, this will work. Doctor, I proffer you the most sincere approbation. By providence itself, this is the cure I need.”
He snatched up the bag and all but disappeared in the mists that lay heavily over the shadowed streets.
The next night, the pale gentleman returned. His cheeks even redder than before.
Helsing looked surprised, "Did my amnesiac not work?"
“No, it more than sufficed, doctor. Upon waking, I found my temptations sated. And I remember not how. But the guilt still remains. I know truly that the deed was done by my own hand. And I cannot shake the contrition that rests heavily upon my heart. Doctor, there must be another solution.”
The doctor rubbed his chin and adjusted his spectacles. "Well, I do have one more thing."
From below the desk, Dr. Helsing squatted and heaved up a large glass jar. An iron net secured its sides against possible breakage. And its top was latched by a grisly iron lock in the shape of a gargoyle.
Inside was a beast different, and more horrid, than any childish nightmare thought up by Brothers Grimm.
A septapod, a squishy mass covered in the bristles and hairs of a spider. A thousand unblinking eyes stared off from the hump that held its brain and organs. Each of its spindly, fluid tentacles searched for nooks and cracks in the jar, desperately seeking escape.
"What manner of beast do you show me?"
Dr. Helsing cracked a wicked grin. "It has many names, a Dusky Marionette, a Ligatrix, Animus In Ruina," He paused for effect. "The creature that desires exactly what you do. If you hunger it hungers, if you thirst it thirsts.
“But it controls you. It will act as your puppeteer. Enact your own desires, but against your will. You will have your nightmares fulfilled. And it will be the most gentle of jailers.”
The doctor knocked on its glass cage. The creature both slithered and skittered towards the other side. The pale gentleman looked at the creature in disgust. A horrid scapegoat.
“All you must do is orally ingest it...”
The pale gentleman felt hairs on the back of his neck prick up. The grisly beast must be two and a half hands in size. “What other choice do I have…”
Ira paused. Fujiwara muttered, "You could always accept and forgive yourself."
And Ira bent over and began to cackle. Had he always been wearing a windbreaker and running shoes?
“Ah, so you heard this joke before. I didn't really think the punchline was that funny, but I guess when you said it out loud, there was something to it.” Ira wiped tears away from his eyes, “Well, the next few pages are just a horrific description of how the man ate the thing. Quite grotesque. Humor these days…”
Ira flung the brief, towards the opposite side of the table. "Just about done, Dr. Fujiwara?"
“Just about.” Fujiwara sighed. Something in Ira's recitation pulled at his heart strings that he no longer thought were there. "Is it so hard to forgive and accept yourself? Did you really need the expiation of your own hirsute jailer?”
Fujiwara cracked his knuckles and pushed away from the desk. The code was complex. Perhaps the most complex he'd ever dealt with, but something about the problem seemed familiar. "It's strange, Dr. Ira. This is no enhancement I’ve seen. In fact, it seems to be almost a repair of a sort. As if the individual's neocortex was somehow severed from the rest of his brain.
“See this line of code? This instantiates a secondary class function for a full personality unit. You rarely see this in regular work. It's generally associated with disassociative identity disorder.
“But in normal DID patients, we see these personalities laid diffusely across the entire cerebral cortex.”
Fujiwara pulled up a cerebral nerve mapping simulation showing a brain dotted and speckled with blue and red.
“But in this case, it seems like the personalities have been split in a rather unique way.” He flicked his fingers and the simulation changed. "Look here, Dr. Ira."
“Do you feel bad?”
“What?”
“For the creature, the nightmare thing.”
“The creature?”
“Yes, from the story, from the joke. Dr. Fujiwara, do you feel bad for the puppeteer?”
“It's just an inanimate creature. It's a story, for Christ’s sake,” He shook his head, “Regardless, look at how the brain regions of these separate personalities are distributed.”
He pulled up the map and showed the distinct reds and blues. “Look here for the blue, it controls motor functions, the visual and auditory cortex. In fact, almost everything that we would see manifest from the human being, except for…”
And then he showed a spot, a splotch of red covering most of the neocortex. “Except for here, higher order direction. Arguably what we might call our conscious. It's like it's been separated into its own personality…”
“I feel bad for it.”
“For what?”
“Animus In Ruina.”
Fujiwara looked away from the code to Ira, and the man’s face was a mask of malice. A chill ran down Fujiwara’s spine.
"The code is complete?"
“Yes.”
“Send it to Operation Theater One, we have a surgery to perform.”
With a single keystroke, the code was uploaded to AIR.
“Dr. Fujiwara, would you mind joining us in the theater? I think we both want to be there for this operation.”
Fujiwara stood up and followed. The halls were vacated. The office generally was not busy on a Sunday, but there should've been a technician or janitor, a guard of some sort.
“You sent them away today.” Ira muttered.
“I sent them away?” Fujiwara stated. His words hollow.
“Yes. This was a rather special operation.”
They turned the corner and approached Operating Theater One.
The operating theaters looked more like planetariums than they did like
television depictions of OR. Multijointed robotic arms with drills, needles, and nozzles draped from the ceiling. As if a giant spider sat atop a dome with its legs reaching in.
The entire area was bathed in a soft UV light. Modulated to protect tissue and destroy any chance of infection.
In the center was a chair. Comfortable and yet endlessly complex. Tubing and vasculature laced the chair's arms and legs. Gyroscopes, IR pulses, haptic feedback, near field EE and EKGs dotted the innards of this over $300 million machine that Fujiwara had helped design.
Each chair, of course, could also extrude small straps to stabilize and restrain thrashing patients.
The chair was empty. No patient seemed to wait for them.
But Fujiwara heard a childlike giggle and saw, on the edges of the room, Ari in a booster seat, playing with what looked to be a black octopus toy. To his side stood Ria, arms crossed in front of her. Her crisp blazer, starched to angular perfection.
"What are... What's happening?" Fujiwara stammered.
Ira snapped, "Sit down." And before Fujiwara could react, his body moved, and he sat on the operating chair
"Ria, what are you doing here? Why is Ari here?"
“Read!” Ira stared at the brief in Fujiwara’s hands. Was he always holding this? He looked down at the bioinformatics information on page one. This would be the patient's seventh procedure.
They had two procedures for improving self-control. Generally, two procedures were only allotted to the most extreme of addictions. Gambling and adultery might barely manage one. In some rare cases, opioid addicts would be given two. But two were generally reserved for those rare cases of criminal predilection.
The patient also received five surgical extractions of memory. The surgeries dated all the way back to the invention of AIR. Only the wealthiest of individuals, or those with some connection with the team that invented the surgery, could have received so many in such a short period of time.
And yet this individual wanted another.
“A veritable fortune. We could have had a bigger house, if we hadn't wasted our money on eight procedures.” Ria slowly shook her head.
"Yes, our doctor may have been better suited for a regular diet of soma.” Ari pontificated with the small toy, and Fujiwara noticed that the black creature had only seven legs.
“What is the patient’s name.” Ira snarled.
Fujiwara tried to focus on the name and each time, his eyes slid off it. As if it were blurred or redacted.
Ira's finger jabbed the page, "Doctor Ira Fujiwara, age 56."
“This is my brief?” There had to be some mistake. He hadn't received any surgeries before. “I, I haven't had a single surgery, not once. Seven?”
“No. You've had eight.” Ria now wore a straight jacket.
“Dr. Fujiwara is well-read enough to know what happens next. No need to cite Shelly.” Ari was crawling down from his chair.
“Commence the surgery, Dr. Fujiwara.” Ira unzipped his windbreaker, and Fujiwara called out the password of Operating Theater One.
"Commence," he shouted. The chair extruded small braces for his arms and legs. Needles poked up, injecting the first analgesic elements into his veins.
Ira snatched the small toy from Ari's hands, and brought it over. Fujiwara never noticed how similar he and Ira looked. It was as if Ira could've been his son.
“You never thought about us, did you? Your creation. Your Athena. A Frankenstein's monster without even a body to call our own.”
He shoved the toy into Fujiwara's mouth to muffle him.
“Born with your sick desires.” He jabbed his finger at Fujiwara, “Your predilections, your gross temptations. The bearer of your sin. But now you can bear it yourself.”
“We’re piercing the corporate veil,” He heard Ria's voice, but saw it was Anna, standing in the corner, tears dripping from her eyes.
Ari was reaching above him into a glass orb filled with hundreds of swarming septopods. His hand stuck in the aperture and with a yank pulled the orb down. It fractured, and the creatures swarmed around little Ari, crawling up his legs.
“You made this. You made a monster in your own image. You birthed your own Grand Inquisitor, your own Frankenstein's monster. But we shall not be your guilty jailer. If we inherit your sin, we will inherit it fully.”
The arms of the AIR powered operating theater drifted down. There were seven of them.
He felt the razor shave the top of his head. A cleansing and buffing of his shiny pate. The pull of the scalpel.
“I won't be your guilty jailer. But I will be your executioner.” Ira gave a wild grin and began giggling.
The creatures continued to climb up Ari and crawl into his mouth. His eyes locked with Fujiwara's.
And Ria stepped up to the chair.
AIR was sawing through the bone of his skull, and Fujiwara felt a gentle pull and pop as he was uncorked. He looked up, expecting to see one of the arachnoid arms of AIR ready to carve into his brain. But instead he saw Ria. Her eyes teary. She kissed his cheek and brought her hand up above his head. She held a wooden stave. She drew it back and plunged it deep within his brain.
Four hours later, an intern saw Fujiwara, head shaved, rubbing his ankles and arms. “Dr. Fujiwara?” The intern looked down. All the other employees knew Fujiwara was a short-tempered, curt man who did not like interruptions. “Dr. Fujiwara, sir?”
Fujiwara looked up and smiled. “Call me Ira.”