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But I Had No Body
Despite being thirty-five and still single, neuroscientist Sari Mitchel didn't consider herself cool to romance—she liked a good dream as much as anyone—but for several months the only man she was waiting for was a dead one. When she finally got a call, it interrupted one of her better dreams. She glanced at the clock. Three AM. Slipping into her robe, she closed the window against the cool breeze that fluttered at the curtains. The smell of damp air lingered. She stepped to her console and authorized call reception. Rob Burns, her graduate intern, appeared in the monitor. “What’s up?” “We have a candidate." She took a breath to absorb his words. “He’s ...” She started to ask if he was dead, but decided she didn’t want to go there. “He’s intact?” “The right frontal cortex is badly damaged, and extensive general trauma resulted in brain death. But large tracts of cells are still alive. He's on life support.” “But there’s no brain activity?” “No. He’s dead. Our request had priority.” “Is the family OK with this?” Sari chewed the inside of her cheek. Despite her frustrations with Sam, she, too, worried about the ethics of it all. Rob's eyes dropped. “Actually, there isn’t any family, at least that we can find. He has a wife, but they're separated.” Sari’s heart sank. They couldn’t proceed without permission of the family. “We have to find his wife.” Rob didn’t look up. “If he has no family, we thought ... well ... that he would be a good test subject.” He shifted uncomfortably. “If we succeed, all to the good. If we fail, no one has to be disappointed.” “We thought” must mean Jan was at the hospital with Rob. Sari nodded. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes,” she said. “Have him ready.” “Should I ...” Rob hesitated. “Do you want me to call Sam?" Sam. She could do without Sam. “Of course. He has to know.” She couldn't quite keep the tension from her voice. Failing to face Sam now would only make facing him later worse. And, if things didn't go well, then, as head of Bioneurology and as the only other division head with any meaningful understanding of her project, he might provide some shelter from the political fallout. She took the Advector to the hospital. It was quicker than a private vehicle, and she didn’t have to worry about where to park. Plus, she liked the sound of wind whistling around the system’s magnetically driven capsules. She sat down on the single padded seat, and the capsule accelerated away. She could hear Sam's challenge in her mind. “We can’t play God with human life,” he would say. If she heard it once more, she was sure she’d barf. Why were religious people always so opposed to scientific progress? In this case, what was there to fear? If something saved lives, it was good. If it cost lives, it was bad. It wasn’t that hard to figure out. Her project couldn’t cost a life. There was only upside potential with no down side risk. If she failed, well, a dead guy was still dead. But, if she She watched the streetlights flash past the capsule window like strobes. Her thoughts went to the romantic dream that the call interrupted. Yummy guy. Handsome despite the baseball cap. Why couldn't she meet someone like that in real life? The warm glow of the dream had faded. She often joked at the lab that her name scared away most of the men. Sarina. Like the deadly nerve toxin. When she wasn't joking, she suspected her name wasn't the problem. Sam was in the waiting room when she arrived. He couldn’t have dallied after Rob’s call. At least he took the project seriously. He was dressed informally. She noticed a baseball cap, canted slightly askew, sitting on his head. It looked remarkably like the cap in her dream. She grimaced. Fortunately, the similarity ended with the hat. His slightly pudgy frame and graying hair didn't resemble her dream man. He spotted her across the lobby, and his face lit with a big smile. He hurried to meet her half way. “Congratulations!” He seemed genuinely pleased for her, but she wondered if he had some agenda. He started to give her a hug, but she stepped back, and he ended with an awkward pat on her shoulder. Amazing that, in this modern day, he didn’t realize the inappropriateness of open affection between colleagues. He stepped back to look at her, and his face grew sober. “Sari, are you sure you want to do this? There's so much we don’t know yet.” She winced. At least he didn’t talk about playing God with life. “Sam, we’ve been over this a dozen times. What, realistically, can go wrong?” “I don’t know”—finally, something they agreed on— “a million things. We just can’t play God with human life.” Sari thought about barfing, and it struck her as so funny that she laughed out loud. Sam looked at her strangely, and she stopped. Sam continued, “For example, what if your computer brain revives your patient, but his own brain never heals? Will he be alive? Will he be human? Will he have a soul? Can we turn off the computer if the project fails, or would that be murder? There are so many questions ...” That wasn’t going to happen, and if it did, so what? Technology was now part of the evolution of life. Sari decided to turn some of Sam’s own reasoning against him. “If God made the universe, and what we call natural law is simply a manifestation of His consistent character, then it's impossible for any part of the universe to be anything other than His creation. There are no abominations, except those we impose on each other by our lack of caring, or by our failure to pursue what's new and good.” Sam nodded, whether because he agreed or simply to acknowledge that he heard, she didn’t know. "Sari, I'm behind your project, you know that. Just be careful." She snorted. "Careful with the project, or careful with your religious feelings?" Sam smiled faintly. "I know you've had some bad experience with religious folks. But, not everyone who's concerned with moral choice is anti-science. After all, I've given my life to science." “Are you going to do the surgery?” She hated to admit he was a better neurosurgeon than she, but the success of her project trumped her pride. “You know I will, Sari,” he answered. “I agree that we have to try this ... eventually. I just think we should proceed more slowly.” “We have permission and a body, right now,” said Sari, somewhat coldly. “Now is our opportunity.” “If you want to do it now, I’ll do it now,” Sam said. “I just don’t want you getting hurt if something goes wrong.” That sounded goofy. Sari ignored it, glad to accept his willingness to proceed.
Sari waited at the hospital. She didn't have much to do, unless there was a problem with the Theracom or a question about how to connect it. But the project was hers, and she couldn't bring herself to leave. Sam's word's bothered her, but she didn't want to dwell on possible problems. The Theracom wouldn't fail. It had always struck her as odd that the brain, so plastic and adaptable, could heal from an injury under modern medication, rewiring neural connections and retraining neurons to new tasks, up to the point where that injury exceeded some mysterious threshold. Then, a person became a vegetable, and there was no healing even if entire flotillas of healthy brain cells remained. Why? She thought she knew the answer. The brain could heal itself so long as its internal workings connected one cell to another and guided the healing. Once an injury decreased intercellular communication below some critical level, the brain didn’t know how to heal, and it waited forever for guidance that never came. The tiny artificial brain that she had developed could change that. Inserted into a vegetative brain, connected to the surviving neurons, providing intellect and forcing neurons to fire and work, the Theracom—short for therapeutic computer—would raise the human brain back above its death threshold so it could heal. Occupational therapy for the brain. Once the natural brain healed, the artificial brain could be shut down. The person would live again. At the very least, her plan would either work or not. Certainly her patients would not become Frankensteinian monsters. Sam’s concerns seemed short-sighted. About 10 o’clock, Jan came in and told her that they had contacted the man’s wife. “Is she OK with this?” Sari asked, nervous that she had decided to proceed without permission. A lawsuit would definitely tarnish the high praise she imagined would follow her accomplishment. Jan pushed her Personal at Sari. “Here's her response.” “How did you find me?" the woman wrote. "Our divorce was final a week ago. I don’t want him to know where I am. Jack is not a nice man. Please don't contact me again.” Sari stared at the message. So, she was bringing “not a nice man” back to life. Too bad he couldn’t have been, like, a scientist or great humanitarian. A Nobel laureate would have been good. Sari frowned. "I suppose Sam will point out that we could have waited for a better candidate." Jan glanced away. "Don't you think you're being a bit unfair?" Sari ignored her question. "The opinion of a jaded ex-wife doesn't mean much anyway." "Sam will understand that." Sari handed the Personal back to Jan. “Is there any other family?” Jan shook her head. Sari felt disappointed. No one to appreciate her bringing their loved one back to life. The operation lasted until just after noon. Sam’s face when he emerged indicated success. He asked her if she wanted to go for lunch, but she wished to be alone and get some sleep.
They brought Jack to consciousness the next day. When his eyes fluttered open, Sari was the first person he saw. “Hello,” she said, smiling encouragement. “Hello. Where am I? What happened?” “You had an accident and were badly injured. We're trying a new kind of treatment for you.” She decided not to tell him yet what that new treatment entailed. He nodded abstractly. He seemed to have no emotional response to the news, as she had expected. The Theracom, to insure that it didn't impose an artificial personality, had no capacity for emotion except what it learned from the patient’s own brain. Sari scribbled a few notes on her Personal, writing the label “Jack-E” on the record file to distinguish the original Jack from the electronically modified Jack. Jack-E had a few more questions, pursuing factual information with little emotional attachment: “What part of me was injured? How many days have passed? How long will recovery take?” Sari answered each truthfully, although she held back somewhat concerning the severity of his brain injury, choosing to focus on the less severe injuries to his leg and back.
When Sari visited on the second day, Jack-E had more probing questions for her. “Tell me more about my injury, it’s not an ordinary one is it?" She told him more. He asked about his treatment. She continued to withhold the basic truth that, at present, he had a human-made computer running his thinking, fearing that he might react badly. She did, however, tell him that his treatment was a very new and exciting one for healing severe brain injury. He nodded at her answers, seemingly content.
On the third day, as she rose from the chair at his bedside to leave, he took her hand and asked quietly, “You've done something special for me, haven’t you?” Sari nodded, smiling slightly. “I don’t remember ...”, he paused. “ I don’t remember anyone doing anything special for me before." He squeezed her hand. “Thank you.” After she left his room, Sari wrote down the exchange in her Personal. His words, and the sentiments expressed, surprised her. It didn't surprise her that the Theracom could access memories, since many of those must reside in undamaged areas of the brain. It surprised her that Jack-E summoned forth so much emotion and personality so early in his recovery. Three days was too soon for meaningful neural rewiring or for new cell assignments and growth, even given the enhancements from medication. Certainly, the Theracom was not programmed to initiate such sentiment on its own. Whatever part of Jack-E’s deeper mind survived must be awakening and interacting with the Theracom, teaching it about being human. That was not completely expected. That the Theracom was adaptive was essential, but that her Device could learn about being human surprised her even though she had hoped for it.
With the project taking precedence over her other responsibilities, Sari found herself spending more and more time with Jack-E, talking or just sitting with him through the day. He seemed to enjoy her company, and never tired of long conversations on a variety of topics. She found him to be a remarkable man, smart and kind and so interested in the world of ideas. Soon, she shared with him all her thinking and plans for the Theracom, no longer keeping its nature secret. He didn't seem to be at all troubled by the idea that a significant part of his working brain was artificial. Of course, she assured him that soon they would be able to disable the computer, and he would be fully himself again. He asked "how soon" many times, and each time she simply said “soon.” She told him about her name, Sarina, like the nerve toxin. He laughed, and after that he called her "Rina" rather than "Sari". She liked the way it made her feel special.
One day when she came into the room, the nurse was just finishing taking Jack-E’s pulse. A few minutes later, without thinking, she took his pulse again. She realized that she liked the feel of his hand in hers. She wondered if she were falling in love. The thought rattled her so much that she left early. Sam was in the lobby, and he waved her to a couch on a secluded side of the room. She really didn’t want to chat right now, but acquiesced. Hopefully he wouldn’t talk about his former wife. She had left him over two years ago, and he didn’t seem to be over it. Why he chose to confide in her, Sari couldn’t imagine. He didn’t talk about his wife. He talked about Jack-E. “Sari, you want to be careful about getting too close to a patient. There are legal concerns as well as emotional ones.” Sari managed to contain her temper until she was alone with Jan back at the lab. “How dare he!” she exclaimed. “Who I share my time with is none of his business.” Jan didn’t answer for a moment. “Have you considered the possibility that he might be jealous?” Sari fell silent. “That’s ridiculous,” she said, and dropped the conversation.
The day came when Jack-E was nearly well and would have long since left the hospital were it not for the unusual nature of his surgery. Sari often walked with him in the gardens across the street from the hospital. On their third outing, they sat on a bench beside an ancient oak tree. “What makes us who we are, Rina?” he asked. “What do you mean?” She felt the warmth of his body pressed against hers and pressed back gently. “Our soul has to be more than a physical presence, more than electrical impulses. How do body and energy interact in such a way as to create a mind, an awareness, that's more than the sum of both?” The sun warmed her back, but the air was cool. She tightened her jacket against the breeze that rustled the last of the autumn leaves. “What makes you ask such things?” “I feel like this body belongs to someone else, the person you set out to save. I'm neither a human brain nor your new technology. I'm like a sundog—not sunlight or cloud but a mysterious pattern of color created by the brief interaction between those two, different from what either could be alone.” “Don’t talk that way,” Sari complained, squeezing his hand. “Soon, we can turn off the Theracom, and you'll be healed. Then you won’t have these troubled thoughts.” “Are my thoughts troubled?” Jack-E caught her eyes into his. “Or is it reasonable to wonder who I am?” "You're who you've always been." He leaned over to pick up an acorn at his feet and pressed it into her hand. Sari frowned, confused. "If anything should happen, maybe you can plant a tree and remember me." He rose and walked back toward the hospital. She slipped the acorn into her pocket and hurried to catch up. Jack-E's conversation worried Sari, and that evening she called Sam. When his face appeared on the monitor, much of her angst melted away. She told him what Jack-E had said. “He probably wonders what will happen when you turn off the Theracom,” Sam told her. “Haven't you wondered that, too?” “But he's a real person, right?” She chided herself for doubting even as she asked. Hadn’t she and Sam discussed this many times already, long before they began the test with Jack-E? Hadn’t she always been the one persuading Sam? “Of course he's a real person, Sari. Of course he is. But the question he's asking you is this; is he the person you set out to save?" Sari bit at her lip. “I haven’t done something wrong, have I?” “You are doing the very best that you can.” Sari appreciated Sam’s support. It felt good to talk to him, to hear him tell her things she wished to hear. But she had no answer to Sam’s, or Jack-E’s, questions.
On the day she told Jack-E the good news, Sari took him out for a celebration dinner. After ordering baked cod, and he a steak, medium-well, Sari announced her decision. “Tomorrow we begin turning off the Theracom.” She expected him to be as excited as she was. Success was so near. Instead, he looked away and shivered. He recovered quickly. “Whatever happens, I’m glad for this time you gave me. I’m glad I got to know you.” “Your brain is healed,” she said, tapping her water glass with a fingernail. “Nothing bad will happen. If it does, we can turn the Theracom back on for a while longer.” Jack-E didn’t answer for a moment. His eyes fell to the plate of food newly brought by the waiter. “I’m sure that this body will be fine,” he said. “And the brain that's in it will be fine. But, what about me? Will I be fine?” Sari shook her head in frustration. “Jack-E, nothing in the Theracom imposed a will or personality. The Theracom is information, analysis, extra dynamics to bring you to consciousness. Any personality is your own.” “But, it had to interact with my brain,” Jack-E pointed out. “Fire neurons, send messages, call forth memories or ideas. Otherwise, it couldn't have brought me awake. Even now, it must be interacting with my brain, perhaps in different ways than my brain would interact on its own.” “Yes, but it doesn’t change who you are.” “How do you know?” Sari had no answer. After a moment, Jack-E continued. “I remember doing things I wouldn't do now. I don’t want to be that person again.” Sari frowned slightly and reached across the table to place her hand over his. “The Theracom is only a machine, not who you are.” Jack-E brought his other hand over hers, so hers now rested between his. “Whatever comes tomorrow, I have valued today. I would like to know if ..." he paused a moment before continuing, "Rina, do you think you might ever want to marry me?” She gazed at him, stunned by the proposal from this man she didn’t know a few months ago, this man she had spent nearly every waking moment with since, this man she had come to love. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, I might.” Jack-E appeared to be on the verge of saying something more, but he released her hand and, taking up his knife, began to dissect his steak. Sari returned to the lab. She couldn’t wait to tell everyone about her and Jack-E. She expected her colleagues to be surprised. They thought she was too strong to marry, too independent. She had cultivated that belief of course. That probably hadn’t helped her prospects much, sending the message to everyone who knew her that she wasn’t interested in a relationship. But it had always felt safer than hoping for something that might never materialize. Then they would have pitied her, and that would be worse than loneliness. Worse, she would have pitied herself. She found Rob and Sam working late at the lab and told them her happy news. She saw Sam start in surprise--he probably couldn’t imagine anyone finding her appealing. His smile looked a bit forced, but his words sounded sincere enough. “I’m really glad for you, Sari. Congratulations.” Rob seemed less enthused. "Are you sure about this? We don't know what will happen when we turn off the Theracom." Sari frowned. "Nothing will happen. He's well now."
The next day, Sari began turning off the Theracom. It was designed to be shut down in stages, allowing assurances to be made that the brain was fully healed. "So, lady, when do I get out of this dump?" Jack asked as she prepared to leave for supper. Sari jumped at his tone. "Two more days and the Theracom will be inert. We have a few days of testing after that." He nodded. "Good to be out of this place. Get back to work." She crossed the room to retrieve her Personal from the window sill. She felt his eyes following her in ways that made her uncomfortable. When she faced him, he turned away. She watched him for a moment, but he didn't meet her eyes. "I'll see you tomorrow," she said. "Sure, whatever." He called out to her when she reached the door. "Don't forget to plant some acorns, Rina." She turned back with a big smile, but his attention had drifted to the outside window. She left without answering. He didn't talk much on the second day. "Are you still interested in marrying me?" she asked toward evening, suppressing a tremble in her voice. He turned away. "I don't think so, darlin'. I doubt you'd much like me now." Her eyes stung, and she busied herself taking notes on her Personal. She had known it could be like this. She just hadn't admitted it to herself. She was good at that. Denial. Keeping distant. Maybe that's why she accepted his proposal. She knew it couldn't go anywhere. Still, Jack-E must be in there somewhere, warning her away from this other Jack. By the third day, the Theracom was completely shut down. When Jack asked her for a drink of water, and she was busy writing notes in her Personal and said “Just a minute”, he became suddenly angry, seizing her wrist so tightly it hurt. “You're hurting me,” she said. “Look lady, I said I need water, and I need it.” He smiled, but it wasn't a nice smile. Not the smile that she knew. “I know what I need better than you,” he finished, his sudden anger fading. She began spending less and less time with him. By the end of the week she did what she had to—overseeing the tests needed to reconstruct what happened to Jack-E—and quickly left. He didn’t seem to care whether she stayed or not. Sari thought about reviving the Theracom, bringing back the personality of Jack-E. The one whom she loved. But how could she justify that? Every indication was that this was, indeed, the Jack who had died. He had truly healed, healed too perfectly into the person he had once been. Sari needed a confidante with whom to talk over her sense of guilt and loss. She called Sam. They arranged to meet for supper at a little café near the lab. He was waiting for her when she arrived, a booth already reserved. He stood up as she approached. He gave her a hug, and she hugged him back, crying for a minute on his shoulder. Somehow, it didn't matter that such intimacy between colleagues was inappropriate. Sam was, she realized, her best friend in the world. Sari wiped her eyes and sat down, at first gazing blankly at a silly picture on the wall beside the booth, cats driving an old classic Suburban. She looked at Sam, watching her, patiently waiting. "I anticipated that the electronic brain could join with the organic one, strengthen it, give it space to heal," she said a last. "I even thought, maybe secretly, that the organic mind might teach the electronic one how to think and feel like a human. What I didn't anticipate was that together they might form a different person, another soul, different from what either part could be alone." There was a catch in her voice, and she stopped. "It’s always what we don't know to think about that gets us," Sam said quietly. "But you've learned things that will save lives, and, perhaps, change life for the better in ways that we can't imagine now or even bring ourselves to consider." "You would have waited, been more careful." "I would have waited," Sam agreed. "But sometimes, there are things we can't learn, however long we wait, until we step into the unknown." "He knew what would happen, I think." "Then why not stop us?" Sam asked. "That would have cost a different life." "We did what we set out to do, Sari." Sam paused to thank the waitress as she gave them each a cup of hot tea. "We saved a life, brought him back from the dead." "To do that, I made a new person, and then let him die." Sari wrapped her fingers desperately around the warm comfort of the ceramic cup. "And now I am left to wonder, am I healer, creator, or murderer?" "There are moral questions that we have yet to answer." A faint smile softened his face. It wasn't a smug I-told-you-so smile which he could have easily justified, but an I-understand-and-we're-in-it-together smile. It made her feel less alone. "If there's no body, can we truly say that anyone died?" Sam continued. "And if someone did die at your hand, someone who would otherwise not have lived at all, is it truly a reason to weep?" "It is reason to weep." Sari stared at the cup in her hands as though it were a time machine that might take them back to try again. "It's reason indeed."
Sari's message light was blinking when she got home. She ran to the console to read it, not pausing to take off her coat or shoes. "From Jack-E" it said.
Sari cried for a while. Later, a smile grew from the tears. Maybe Sam was right. That Jack-E had lived, that he had been her friend for a brief few months, that he had loved her as she loved him, was cause for gladness, not weeping. Together, they became something different than either of them could have been alone. Her hand found a small acorn in the pocket of her jacket. She remembered the day Jack-E gave it to her. Maybe she could plant it in the garden outside the lab, if Sam agreed. He would agree, she knew. He was a good man. Why had she built such a wall between them? She sat down at her consol and called.
Russ Colson lives with his wife Mary on a farmstead in northern Minnesota where he teaches planetary science, meteorology, and geology at Minnesota State University Moorhead. Before coming to Minnesota, he worked at the Johnson Space Center in Texas and at Washington University in St. Louis where, among other things, he studied how a lunar colony might mine oxygen from the local rock. He writes a variety of speculative fiction tales. |
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