ST Notes: After a long time, a new post and that too in the fictional category. The following is an article that was formulated upon request and on the promise of a Domino's pizza. The article was typed but the pizza is yet to be had.
Some may analyse this is as a commentary on our disconnected personality, with others and ourselves and the hope to reverse it. Others will say it to be a subtle remark upon karma and few will see this is as the dark side of enlightenment.
The truth is: It is a Sci-Fi rambling made palatable for the ink.
Certainly not my best attempt but one that is very close to my heart.
(First published in GoSuMag 13. Released 25th April 2014.)
The Medical Marvel
It started one day when I was brushing my teeth. Time seemed to slow down. I noticed a strange sharpness in the way my hand moved. For the first time in my life, I was aware of the fact that my hand was moving.
Dont get me wrong. I am not a paraplegic, nor am I disabled. I was very much capable of moving my arm and every other conceivable body part. But for the first time was AWARE of my hand moving. I not only could acknowledge my hand moving but also FEEL it. It was and still is difficult to explain but it happened. The brilliant, tingling sensation went away as it had come.
The next day, I fell asleep on the couch on my left arm. As I woke up, I realized I must have slept on it for hours because it felt heavy and cold and powerless. As I tried to move it, IT happened again. I could FEEL my arm WAKING up, as if it was a separate entity, yet a part of me. I could FEEL the veins emptying and the warmth returning. I could FEEL the power in my arm, the tone of my muscles and the tension in my sinews. There was a change this time though. IT remained.
The whole week, I marveled my new sense. I called it Appreciation. We can see, smell, touch, taste and hear things but do we really appreciate them? For the first time in human history, I could. I could Appreciate my left arm and through it, the world. Even with my eyes closed, I could Appreciate each physical variable my left arm could 'feel'. The best way I can put it is that I could suddenly very finely resolve the impulses that came from my arm to my cortex. Like my usual senses had been amplified a 100 times. I could feel the temperature gradient over each square inch of my arm, the tension in each muscle fibre, the stresses on my bones and the force of my blood. If I concentrated, I could dissect through my arm, in my head, and understand my physiology and anatomy. The more I concentrated, the better I got and the more volume of my body I could Appreciate. It took 2 weeks for it spread across both my arms, 5 days for my torso, 3 for my legs and 1 for my head. Finally, I could Appreciate myself as a whole and as a million pieces.
It did take a toll on me. I was exhausted rapidly at first and developed a fever. From my new found skill I could gather that it was the price I had to pay. While walking, I could feel my individual fibres contracting, individual muscles. I could feel the build up of metabolites, the change in blood flow, the change in pressure in my lungs, even the motions of my bowels. I knew my body better than anyone. More than that, I could sense the world with a new reverence. Each surface, each blow of the wind brought ecstatic impulses in my mind. It filled my body with light.
Slowly, I made an organization system. I could decrease my sensitivity to a bare minimum or highlight one portion of my body. I had filters through which I could sense one particular stream of information of my body. Be it oxygenation or the molecular concentration of glucose. Every quantifiable information was available.
However, soon I realized that apart from my increased sensory skills, there slowly crept in increased motor skills too. From gross to the fine, with increased details available to me, I could now control my body as finely too.
It was great. I had finally figured it out. I could control my metabolism. Surprisingly, homeostasis is a wasteful practice. As I directed my body, I put up increased insulation, redirecting extra fat exclusively to my skin, burning the rest up into proteins. I contracted a certain group of fibres at a time and randomly changed them to avoid fatigue. This way my stamina tripled but my consumption dropped to 20%. Emotions, stress and exercise were a joke now that I could control even my neurotransmitters. I had voluntary control over everything. Liver, kidney, lungs, glands, muscles and heart. Everything. I took it too far once, heightening my Appreciation by focusing on increasing my I/O impulses using redirected neurotransmitters. My brain started burning up, my vitals going haywire. I imagined with increased capacity, I could handle the cost but it was vicious cycle of exponential proportions. The more I Appreciated, the more I had to take care of my body and its requirements. Before I burned up, I closed my eyes and focused just on my breath. The rapid rhythm and tried slowing it down. It started working and I slowly infused melatonin, growing drowsy and finally sleeping.
People never can understand my condition but it was amusing indeed to me, I was a superhero in myself. I could manage my strength, stamina, longevity of life, fatigue in an invincible way. I could outlive everyone, I could outperform everyone, I could outdo everyone. But I couldn't. This mutation was my boon and my bane. It all started when I started wondering about what was under my skull (using what was under my skull).
You see, there are some properties of receptors that you can overcome only till some time. This one was called tolerance. Once I got used to my heightened sense, it became my baseline. I felt normal. I hadn't felt normal in years. However, I couldn't erase my memories. I remembered the awesomeness and now sorely missed it. Life became depressingly normal. Even though I still retained my Appreciation, it was no longer special. Change is eternal. But once you attain the limits of perception, what then?
I went deeper.
From what I Appreciated, I knew that it was not extra sensorial perception but a mixture of hypersensitive neurons and highly diffused connections. So basically, my brain was much more than normally wired with the different receptors and motor organs of my body. Each area of my brain received, interconnected and sent much more data than normal. But what about my brain? Can I FEEL my brain think up my thoughts, my actions? Could I Appreciate my brain? Could I Appreciate the thing that was Appreciating? Could I merge the physical and psychological aspects of the human mind? Could I analyze the brain, my thoughts, how they were formed, my memories, how they were stored? I went into a trance. I had never concentrated harder on anything else. I had to do it. I had to test my limits or forever be stuck in this hellish prison of a boring static reality. I had to Appreciate not my body but my being. I ended up Appreciating my Appreciation. Now that is an explosion right there. I'm surprised I didn't die. It was probably cause of tolerance that I survived for 5 seconds before flat lining.
The funny thing was that in this whole experience I had almost forgotten that I was a medical student and, though I had been hardly performing my duties, I was on hospital campus 24 hours a day. The first thing I remember after I was resuscitated was her eyes. She was leaning over me, crying, Her tears fell on my face, my lips. That was the most real thing I had felt in months. The amplitude of impulse related to wind velocity didn't matter, the force distribution of various surfaces didn't matter, the pressure dynamics of my left renal artery didn't matter, What mattered was that she was crying. Because of me. It struck me like a thunderbolt. I had to stop.
And I did. All because of her. Her smile was the strongest impulse I needed. Her lips, the only surface that I cared about. Her walk, the only motion worth appreciating. She brought me back.
No, I didnt lose it. I still have it, locked down in the recesses of my mind like cancer, waiting to come back. First it was hard but like every de-addiction program, it slowly became easier. I no longer felt the need to dissect and divulge and distort and discover. I started to experience the world as it came. I wanted cause and effect to affect my fate, not my mind. I still observed but with a chuckle on my lips. I remarked on the subtleties of nature. But there was a time of the day when it all came back to me, when it was an necessary evil.
To keep my brain in the natural rhythm, my brain must sleep or else IT will come back and I would again become absorbed with the details and mechanically go about myself. And sleep is not easy to come once you have Appreciated all physiological processes. Then it was an order, now I wanted it to be a routine, involuntary. So as a quick remedy, I Appreciate my mind every night. Just the right amount. Just a little bit and the last thought always is her smile.
Every night, I die.
What brings me back each morning isn't me, isn't my brain, isn't my mutation, isn't God.
It is her smile.
