Omphalos

by Harper J. Cole

  “All of it?”

  “Well, no, not every single bit, but-”

  “What about the bits you don’t remember? If memory is the link that binds the days of your life together, things forgotten are no longer yours, yes?”

  “No, no, I mean, I was there, even if I don’t remember.”

  “Someone was. Someone very similar to you, but not quite the you of today.”

  “That’s, that’s… come on, I mean…” Gypsy wasn’t sure whether she was being laughed at. She tried to approach the matter analytically. “I can’t remember all of it, but I can recall enough to say for certain that it was me who was there and not somebody else.”

  “Because groups of neurons exist in your brain that can shine together and replay the experience for you?”

  “That would be how it, the way how it’s physically described, I guess – I mean, I don’t know about brain science, but you probably do.”

  “The existence of these neurons doesn’t break my theory. I view them as a gift, from the Gypsy of yesterday to the Gypsy of today. You’re nearly the same person, of course, but the exact woman who sat with me last evening and discussed her fears of social humiliation is gone forever. She died peacefully in her sleep.”

  Gypsy abruptly recalled a philosophical conundrum she’d heard two maths professors discussing in the canteen one morning at Cambridge: the ship of Menelaus. Or was it Perseus? She wasn’t sure – evidently her neurons weren’t firing well enough today.

  Whoever it was, they had a ship which had every plank replaced over the years, she remembered. The question is, when does it become a new ship? That’s all Dr. Koli’s doing here, only I’m the ship.

  Armed with this understanding, Gypsy felt able to respond. “Okay, if you take this approach, then why does each day represent a different me? I mean, why not each second?”

  She thought this a rather clever objection, but Koli gave the encouraging nod of a teacher whose slowest pupil has finally asked the obvious question.

  “Our philosophers have argued that point, and there is a school that believes even the smallest fluctuation in the brain creates a new person – those are the advocates of doprinumeshi: sequential existence, with a series of mental states existing one after the other in vanishingly brief slices of time combining in their countless multitude to form a life. The arguments between the two schools are fascinating; incidentally, I’ve found similar questions in my study of human philosophy. There’s one particular mind experiment you might have heard of: the ship of Theseus.”

  Now she’s just showing off, thought Gypsy.

  “For the majority of students, including myself, koro is the superior philosophy. It isn’t that the sequential theory is wrong, you understand, simply that it isn’t helpful, and the purpose of philosophy must always be to benefit the people and lighten the burdens of their existence. Our brains – and yours too, I think – simply can’t grasp the idea of breaking their lives down into such brief, such multitudinous fragments. We need something manageable. The idea of a daily cycle is understood by all. We are born in the morning; continuity of thought makes us the same person from dawn to dusk; sleep breaks the continuity and ushers in death. Our memories are gifts from our past selves – wondrous gifts, sometimes.

  “Gypsy, the moments spent with your mother are treasures, handed down from the you of many yesterdays to the you of today. The you of today need not grieve the loss of Alice. You never knew her, you did not stand in the maze of Gatari and watch her die – only one Gypsy suffered that cruelty, and she has passed from the present onto the canvas of the past. Leave her there. Treat each day as the separate life it is.”

  Just for a moment, everything fell into place for Gypsy. Her spine tingled with excitement. She’s right, isn’t she? She’s right. I don’t need to worry. There’s nothing worse waiting for me after death than there is each time I go to sleep.

  What’s so special about death?

  Her tide of optimism lasted for maybe ten seconds before breaking on the rocks of her OCD.

  What if she’s wrong, though? Something that complicated couldn’t have such an easy solution, could it? Not one that can be proved, at any rate. I need proof that there’s nothing, or that there’s Heaven. If there’s any chance of the bad place existing, I won’t be able to rest.

  Maybe that’s what Heaven is for me, really. A place inside me to rest. But how do I get there?

  “Sorry, what you’re saying makes a lot of sense, but I don’t think I can make myself really believe it. You’re very rational; I’m not. You can ignore wildly improbable ideas, but I can’t. If only … if only I could rewire my brain so I could think like you.”

  “Maybe you can.”

  Gypsy, who had been returning her attention to the board, looked up sharply. The doctor met her gaze steadily, inscrutable and in control as always. There had been something about the way she’d spoken those last three words that filled Gypsy with a sudden desperate hope, one she had to choke back for fear of crushing disappointment. Koli might have simply meant that therapy would slowly change her way of thinking, but Gypsy didn’t believe so. It was the sudden brevity of the sentence, she decided; coming on the heels of such lengthy philosophical musings, it was a quality surely chosen to convey significance.

  “How do you mean?” she asked cautiously.

  Koli inspected her fingernails, the wrinkles on her face deepening into a frown. “Our psychiatric sciences are quite advanced – only Kerin is comparable. There’s a recent invention which may be able to help you. A Mental Imprinter.”

  Gypsy couldn’t entirely suppress the quiver of excitement that infiltrated her voice. “Oh. What does that do?”

  “The Imprinter can change a person’s reaction to stimuli. It does this by electronically prompting certain synapses to fire. A template is required for this – that, I think, would be me. We each wear a helmet, connected to the machine. It can then make your thought processes resemble mine. Repeated sessions are needed to make the changes stick, though; the mind will settle back into its familiar grooves otherwise.”

  “Like teeth,” muttered Gypsy. Realising that she’d spoken aloud, she explained: “When I was younger, I had lots of dental work done. They made me wear these plastic retainers for a long time afterwards. My teeth would have drifted out of position otherwise.”

  “I see the analogue, but the brain is far more complicated.”

  “Ah … do you think there might be side effects, like with the drugs you gave me?”

  “We must certainly be careful, but the Imprinter is designed to compensate for differences in brain size and layout. We’ve already scanned you and found your thought matter to be close enough to ours to pose no problems. Hemispheres and lobes, neurons and cells … these we can understand.”

  Gypsy wondered fleetingly when they’d scanned her. Back when they first captured her seemed most likely. Or maybe there were invisible devices hidden in her cell which were silently spying on her even now? The thought might have bothered her at another time, but not now, with the answer to all her prayers at hand.

  “I’d like to try the Imprinter.”

  Koli’s expression was beyond Gypsy’s ability to read. “You accept that there is slight risk? Brain damage isn’t impossible.”

  “I’m not a big fan of my brain, to be honest. A bit of damage might do it some good. When can we start?”

  “I’ve already asked that the equipment be sent up – it should reach us in a few hours. We’ll need to spend most of the day with assembly and testing. Tomorrow evening, after dinner?”

  “Yes,” said Gypsy. Yes, yes, yes …

  They finished up their game of Jigadi; Gypsy gained her first win at the alien pastime without serious problems. A good omen, perhaps? But if the Mental Imprinter did its job properly, she wouldn’t believe in those anymore.

  “Koroko na ma krisola,” she said, when the doctor rose to leave.

  “Koroko na ma krisola,” returned Koli
with a smile.

  Gypsy flew through her night-time routine, and treated herself to an episode of Hearts in the Permafrost before bed. Her fears were still there, but they lay dormant, cowed into submission by this sudden ray of hope.

  Yes, she thought as she snuggled into bed. I go to my grave. What a fitting phrase! The only shame is that they can’t give me Annie’s personality, but Dr. Koli will do nicely. She’s rational, focussed and composed – everything I’m not.

  Tomorrow we’ll bury the old Gypsy.

  * * *

  Inevitably, the next day dragged for Gypsy. She stayed in her cell, unwilling to go down to the tech labs and see the Mental Imprinter being assembled, for fear of somehow jinxing her means of deliverance.

  Gypsy tried watching television, but the attempt to decrease her tension through distraction had the reverse effect. She picked over her mental landscape, telling herself that she was just going to make sure everything was in order before the evening’s session, and wound up deep-diving into her memories, trying to prove beyond doubt that, yes, everything was going to be okay. It took five hours to crawl out again.

  A guard brought Gypsy her dinner. He tersely explained that the Imprinter had taken longer than expected to assemble, but Dr. Koli intended to conduct their first session shortly. Gypsy thanked him, and set about the slow task of eating her roots and seeds. Adrenalin seemed to be flooding her every organ, and she had to fight the gag reflex several times.

  Still no Koli. Gypsy attended to her ablutions, finishing off by tapping the mirror seven times with fingers that trembled slightly. The woman she saw reflected there was haggard and hollow-eyed, her yellow garments tattered, faded … plastered onto her like a second skin. She wondered whether she would ever take them off again. There was a long rip along the left forearm of her shirt, and she didn’t remember how it had got there. The flesh beneath was pallid. Sickly.

  I look like a corpse. Maybe I’ve died already, and just didn’t notice?

  Gypsy returned to sit on her bed and tried to work out what a graph showing her anxiety levels throughout the day would look like. Logarithmic growth, she decided. Hopefully an exponential decline was on the way, but the certainty of last night seemed far away now.

  She waited.

  She waited.

  The clock on Gypsy’s wall showed 19:79 when she heard the squeak of the door to the cell corridor opening, and 00:00 when Koli appeared with a single black-clad orderly behind her. Between them, they were steering a trolley; on the trolley sat a large metal box, ugly and asymmetrical. Smooth grey casing cover only half of it – the rest wore a grill with irregular circular holes showing a mess of wires and packets of what looked like liquid or gelatine beneath. On the top of this uninspiring mess sat a control panel, the dials and buttons unlabelled.

  There were two other objects on the trolley, which became visible once the two Anasadans had hefted the Imprinter to the ground. They looked like helmets, or metal skullcaps perhaps; one was noticeably broader than the other. Gypsy had no doubt that the narrow cap would fit her head perfectly.

  “We’re ready,” said Koli. The orderly took that as his signal to leave, which relieved Gypsy. Perhaps they would still be watched from afar, but she preferred at least the illusion of privacy for this potentially momentous hour. The doctor, meanwhile, reached into her tunic pocket and drew out a pair of scissors. “You don’t need to be bald, but we’re going to have to thin your hair to allow a proper fit.”

  Koli pulled a chair away from the table, and Gypsy seated herself. She hadn’t had a haircut since her mother died. Closing her eyes, she cast her mind back to that last time – when had it been? Yes … a few days before the Zakazashi. Alice had been humming Here Comes the Sun as she circumnavigated Gypsy, snipping away. Just for a moment, Gypsy felt as safe now as she had then. The memory washed over her in twin waves of joy and pain, prompting tears that she had no hope of restraining.

  Gypsy resented the pain – it sullied the memory, she decided. Perhaps, when this was over, only joy would remain.

  “Finished,” pronounced Koli, and Gypsy opened her eyes to find the doctor turning to activate the television screen by her bed; it would evidently be involved in this process somehow. Koli worked her way through some menus until she came to a particular file, then placed a chair facing the screen, indicating that Gypsy should do the same.

  “We can begin now,” she said, “though the hour is late. Perhaps you would prefer the morning?”

  “No. I mean … thanks, but no. I don’t think I can wait any longer. I’d like to start now, if that’s okay?”

  Koli gave no verbal answer, but she stepped to the trolley and returned with the metal skullcaps. Gypsy noticed for the first time that hers bore a series of holes, describing a three-quarter circle that would arc back from her temples.

  The cap fitted snugly when Koli placed it on her patient’s head. It looked quite thin, but nonetheless exerted a firm pressure that Gypsy found surprisingly pleasant. Koli looked her hard in the eyes when she’d finished, maintaining her gaze for long enough that the human woman felt compelled to ask whether something was wrong.

  “No,” said Koli, with a softness in her voice that seemed like sadness. “I’m fixing the Gypsy of today in my memory, so that the Koli of tomorrow can see her clearly.” She snapped her own cap into place. “We’ll watch a series of images together. Our responses will be monitored – just relax and let them wash over you. Okay?”

  Gypsy nodded, and her treatment began. The screen before them began to show a mixture of still images and short clips, never tarrying on any one spectacle for more than a few seconds before moving to the next. Matans featured in many of the clips, but there were humans too, the archive Hunter had traded to the Ramirans some months ago evidently being put to good use.

  The images appeared to have been assembled in a random order – at least, they weren’t grouped together by theme, nor by the emotions they might be expected to evoke. Gypsy saw two ox-like creatures goring each other, followed immediately by a human mother cradling her child, then grass rustling in the breeze, a volcano erupting, a vat of paint swirling in psychedelic fury, piles of dead Matans lying in the snow, Krikili’s claws emerging from the darkness, lovers bucking in the throes of passion, the sun breaching the horizon, a baleful mushroom cloud signalling nuclear destruction. There were familiar faces too: Hunter, Ferguson, Annie. Alice Cumberland sitting against a stone wall with tears in her eyes. Then a blizzard of Christian imagery, showing both the divine and the demonic.

  When the sequence had run its course, ending on a still image of an unusually hairy Matan smiling at the camera, Gypsy felt quite sick with the mix of emotions coursing through her. The ever-present press of the cap about her temples lent the experience a confused quality; she didn’t know how long it had lasted, but hoped not to repeat it.

  Unfortunately, Koli promptly informed her that she must do just that; the second viewing was no more enjoyable than the first, and was followed by a third and yet a fourth run-through before the doctor glanced down at the Imprinter and pronounced herself satisfied.

  The orderly then briefly reappeared with a further piece of equipment – this one also seemed designed to fit over the head, but was rather bigger and more elaborate. Needles were mounted about the outside, pointing inwards.

  “These will penetrate into your brain,” explained Koli. Gypsy must have shrunk away at the sight, because she added, “It’s a lot less painful than you’d imagine.”

  Gypsy would have preferred it not be painful at all, but she sat still and allowed the new helmet to be affixed to her skullcap. Koli then touched a control on the needle by Gypsy’s right temple, and she felt a sudden sting that swiftly faded.

  “Tell me at once if you feel anything strange,” said Koli as she moved onto the next needle. Gypsy couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt anything that wasn’t strange, but she kept quiet while the doctor continued her work. Soon the full complement of e
ight needles were in place. Koli nodded in apparent satisfaction. “We’re ready for the next stage. The two of us will watch the sequence again. This time, your brain will be incited to react differently, using my responses as a model.”

  “Okay.” Gypsy didn’t nod, for fear of what the motion might do to the intrusive needles. This is it, she thought. Work. Work. Please, God, let it work!

  She felt no discernible difference in her reactions during this newest playthrough of the images, nor were there any physical sensations to suggest the needles were actually doing anything to her brain. Koli appeared unconcerned when told this, explaining that it could take time for the Imprinter to show tangible results. After checking the machine, she began the sequence again.

  Gypsy watched the now familiar images rush by with a growing sense of disillusionment. It was going to fail, of course. It had only ever been a fantasy, this miracle cure.

  Then it hit her. Right at the end, when the screen showed that final still image of a smiling Matan, it hit her. Emotion. A burst of strong emotion, where there had been none before.

  “Yes,” said Koli gently. Gypsy glanced across to find the doctor scrutinizing her even more carefully than usual. “You felt something new. Describe it.”

  “I … I felt like I knew him for a moment.” She turned back to the screen, which still held the same image. The Matan’s shaggy chest was bare, his beard was full and yellow. A great shock of golden hair rose from his crown, catching the rays of the sun. The picture had been taken outside, in some sort of stockyard boasting an array of sturdy wooden boxes; the man carried two of these, one balanced on each hip. His mouth was slightly open, as though he had just been laughing, and his smile showed every one of his gleaming teeth.

  “I think I love him,” said Gypsy. “So much strength and energy, always cheerful. The feel of his muscles beneath his hair … he’s beautiful. But there’s sadness too, when I look at him, and determination. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure no-one else suffers like I did when they took him from me. My husband.” Gypsy was crying again, but this time the tears were not truly hers. “Your husband.”