Axiomatic

by Greg Egan

  School was the start of a long period of confusion and misery. Although the school building, the classroom, the teacher, and the other children, changed like everything else in my environment, the repertoire was clearly not as wide as that of my house and family. Travelling to the same school, but along different streets, and with a different name and face, upset me, and the gradual realisation that classmates were copying my own previous names and faces—and, worse still, I was being saddled with ones they’d used—was infuriating.

  These days, having lived with the approved world-view for so long, I sometimes find it hard to understand how my first year at school wasn’t enough to make everything perfectly clear—until I recall that my glimpses of each classroom were generally spaced weeks apart, and that I was shuttling back and forth at random between more than a hundred schools. I had no diary, no records, no class lists in my head, no means of even thinking about what was happening to me—nobody trained me in the scientific method. Even Einstein was a great deal older than six, when he worked out his theory of relativity.

  I kept my disquiet from my parents, but I was sick of dismissing my memories as lies; I tried discussing them with other children, which brought ridicule and hostility. After a period of fights and tantrums, I grew introverted. My parents said things like ‘You’re quiet today!’, day after day, proving to me exactly how stupid they were.

  It’s a miracle that I learnt anything. Even now, I’m unsure how much of my reading ability belongs to me, and how much comes from my hosts. I’m sure that my vocabulary travels with me, but the lower-level business of scanning the page, of actually recognising letters and words, feels quite different from day to day. (Driving is similar; almost all of my hosts have licences, but I’ve never had a single lesson myself. I know the traffic rules, I know the gears and pedals, but I’ve never tried going out on to the road in a body that hasn’t done it before—it would make a nice experiment, but those bodies tend not to own cars.)

  I learnt to read. I learnt quickly to read quickly—if I didn’t finish a book the day I started it, I knew I might not get my hands on it again for weeks, or months. I read hundreds of adventure stories, full of heroes and heroines with friends, brothers and sisters, even pets, that stayed with them day after day. Each book hurt a little more, but I couldn’t stop reading, I couldn’t give up hoping that the next book I opened would start with the words, ‘One sunny morning a boy woke up, and wondered what his name was.’

  One day I saw my father consulting a street directory, and, despite my shyness, I asked him what it was. I’d seen world globes and maps of the country at school, but never anything like this. He pointed out our house, my school, and his place of work, both on the detailed street maps, and on the key map of the whole city inside the front cover.

  At that time, one brand of street directory had a virtual monopoly. Every family owned one, and every day for weeks, I browbeat my father or mother into showing me things on the key map. I successfully committed a lot of it to memory (once I tried making pencil marks, thinking they might somehow inherit the magical permanence of the directory itself, but they proved to be as transitory as all the writing and drawing I did at school). I knew I was on to something profound, but the concept of my own motion, from place to place in an unchanging city, still failed to crystallise.

  Not long afterwards, when my name was Danny Foster (a movie projectionist, these days, with a beautiful wife called Kate to whom I lost my virginity, though probably not Danny’s), I went to a friend’s eighth birthday party. I didn’t understand birthdays at all; some years I had none, some years I had two or three. The birthday boy, Charlie McBride, was no friend of mine so far as I was concerned, but my parents bought me a gift to take, a plastic toy machine gun, and drove me to his house; I had no say in any of it. When I arrived home, I pestered Dad into showing me, on a street map, exactly where I’d been, and the route the car had taken.

  A week later, I woke up with Charlie McBride’s face, plus a house, parents, little brother, older sister, and toys, all identical to those I’d seen at his party. I refused to eat breakfast until my mother showed me our house on a street map, but I already knew where she’d point to.

  I pretended to set off for school. My brother was too young for school, and my sister too old to want to be seen with me; in such circumstances I normally followed the clear flow of other children through the streets, but today I ignored it.

  I still remembered landmarks from the trip to the party. I got lost a few times, but I kept stumbling upon streets I’d seen before; dozens of fragments of my world were starting to connect. It was both exhilarating and terrifying; I thought I was uncovering a vast conspiracy, I thought everyone had been purposely concealing the secrets of existence, and at last I was on the verge of outsmarting them all.

  When I reached Danny’s house, though, I didn’t feel triumphant, I simply felt lonely and deceived and confused. Revelation or no revelation, I was still a child. I sat on the front steps and cried. Mrs Foster came out, in a fluster, calling me Charlie, asking me where my mother was, how I’d got here, why I wasn’t at school. I yelled abuse at this filthy liar, who’d pretended, like they all had, to be my mother. Phone calls were made, and I was driven home screaming, to spend the day in my bedroom, refusing to eat, refusing to speak, refusing to explain my unforgivable behaviour.

  That night, I overheard my ‘parents’ discussing me, arranging what in retrospect I now believe was a visit to a child psychologist.

  I never made it to that appointment.

  * * *

  For the past eleven years now, I’ve been spending my days at the host’s workplace. It’s certainly not for the host’s sake; I’m far more likely to get him sacked by screwing up at his job than by causing him one day’s absence every three years. It’s, well, it’s what I do, it’s who I am these days. Everybody has to define themselves somehow; I am a professional impersonator. The pay and conditions are variable, but a vocation cannot be denied.

  I’ve tried constructing an independent life for myself, but I’ve never been able to make it work. When I was much younger, and mostly unmarried, I’d set myself things to study. That’s when I first hired the safe-deposit box—to keep notes in. I studied mathematics, chemistry and physics, in the city’s central library, but when any subject began to grow difficult, it was hard to find the discipline to push myself onwards. What was the point? I knew I could never be a practising scientist. As for uncovering the nature of my plight, it was clear that the answer was not going to lie in any library book on neurobiology. In the cool, quiet reading rooms, with nothing to listen to but the soporific drone of the air conditionings, I’d lapse into daydreams as soon as the words or equations in front of me stopped making easy sense.

  I once did a correspondence course in undergraduate level physics; I hired a post office box, and kept the key to it in my safe-deposit box. I completed the course, and did quite well, but I had no one to tell of my achievement.

  A while after that I got a pen pal in Switzerland. She was a music student, a violinist, and I told her I was studying physics at the local university. She sent me a photo, and, eventually, I did the same, after waiting for one of my best-looking hosts. We exchanged letters regularly, every week for more than a year. One day she wrote, saying she was coming to visit, asking for details of how we could meet. I don’t think I’d ever felt as lonely as I did then. If I hadn’t sent that photo, I could at least have seen her for one day. I could have spent a whole afternoon, talking face to face with my only true friend, the only person in the world who actually knew, not one of my hosts, but me. I stopped writing at once, and I gave up renting the post office box.

  I’ve contemplated suicide at times, but the fact that it would be certain murder, and perhaps do nothing to me but drive me into another host, makes an effective deterrent.

  Since leaving behind all the turmoil and bitterness of my childhood, I’ve generally tried to be fair to my hosts. Some days I’
ve lost control and done things that must have inconvenienced or embarrassed them (and I take a little cash for my safe-deposit box from those who can easily spare it), but I’ve never set out to intentionally harm anyone. Sometimes I almost feel that they know about me and wish me well, although all the indirect evidence, from questioning wives and friends when I’ve had closely spaced visits, suggests that the missing days are hidden by seamless amnesia—my hosts don’t even know that they’ve been out of action, let alone have a chance of guessing why. As for me knowing them, well, I sometimes see love and respect in the eyes of their families and colleagues, I sometimes see physical evidence of achievements I can admire—one host has written a novel, a black comedy about his Vietnam experiences, that I’ve read and enjoyed; one is an amateur telescope-maker, with a beautifully crafted, thirty-centimetre Newtonian reflector, through which I viewed Halley’s comet—but there are too many of them. By the time I die, I’ll have glimpsed each of their lives for just twenty or thirty randomly scattered days.

  * * *

  I drive around the perimeter of the Pearlman Institute, seeing what windows are lit, what doors are open, what activity is visible. There are several entrances, ranging from one clearly for the public, complete with plushly carpeted foyer and polished mahogany reception desk, to a rusty metal swing door opening on to a dingy bitumen-covered space between two buildings. I park in the street, rather than risk taking a spot on the premises to which I’m not entitled.

  I’m nervous as I approach what I hope is the correct doorway; I still get a pain in my gut in those awful seconds just before I’m first seen by a colleague, and it becomes, very suddenly, a hundred times harder to back out—and, looking on the bright side, a whole lot easier to continue.

  ‘Morning, Johnny.’

  ‘Morning.’

  The nurse continues past me even as this brief exchange takes place. I’m hoping to find out where I’m meant to be from a kind of social binding strength; the people I spend most time with ought to greet me with more than a nod and two words. I wander a short way along a corridor, trying to get used to the squeaking of my rubber-soled shoes on the linoleum. Suddenly a gruff voice cries out, ‘O’Leary!’ and I turn to see a young man in a uniform like mine, striding along the corridor towards me, wearing a thunderous frown, arms stuck out unnaturally, face twitching. ‘Standing around! Dawdling! Again!’ His behaviour is so bizarre that, for a fraction of a second, I’m convinced he’s one of the patients; some psychotic with a grudge against me has killed another orderly, stolen his uniform, and is about to produce a bloodstained hatchet. Then the man puffs out his cheeks and stands there glaring, and I suddenly twig; he’s not insane, he’s just parodying some obese, aggressive superior. I prod his inflated face with one finger, as if bursting a balloon, which gives me a chance to get close enough to read his badge: Ralph Dopita.

  ‘You jumped a mile! I couldn’t believe it! So at last I got the voice perfect!’

  ‘And the face as well. But you’re lucky, you were born ugly.’

  He shrugs. ‘Your wife didn’t think so last night.’

  ‘You were drunk; that wasn’t my wife, it was your mother.’

  ‘Don’t I always say you’re like a father to me?’

  The corridor, after much seemingly gratuitous winding, leads into a kitchen, all stainless steel and steam, where two other orderlies are standing around, and three cooks are preparing breakfast. With hot water constantly running in one sink, the clunking of trays and utensils, the hissing of fat, and the tortured sound of a failing ventilation fan, it’s almost impossible to hear anyone speak. One of the orderlies mimes being a chicken, and then makes a gesture—swinging one hand above his head, pointing outwards, as if to take in the whole building. ‘Enough eggs to feed—’ he shouts, and the others crack up, so I laugh along with them.

  Later, I follow them to a storeroom off the kitchen, where each of us grabs a trolley. Pinned up on a board, sheathed in transparent plastic, are four patient lists, one for each ward, ordered by room number. Beside each name is a little coloured circular sticker, green, red or blue. I hang back until there’s only one left to grab.

  There are three kinds of meal prepared: bacon and eggs with toast, cereal, and a mushy yellow puree resembling baby food, in descending order of popularity. On my own list there are more red stickers than green, and only a single blue, but I’m fairly certain that there were more green than red in total, when I saw all four lists together. As I load my trolley on this basis, I managed to catch a second look at Ralph’s list, which is mainly green, and the contents of his trolley confirms that I have the code right.

  I’ve never been in a psychiatric hospital before, either as patient or staff member. I spent a day in prison about five years ago, where I narrowly avoided getting my host’s skull smashed in; I never discovered what he’d done, or how long his sentence was, but I’m rather hoping he’ll be out by the time I get back to him.

  My vague expectation that this place will be similar turns out to be pleasantly wrong. The prison cells were personalised to some degree, with pictures on the walls, and idiosyncratic possessions, but they still looked like cells. The rooms here are far less cluttered with that kind of thing, but their underlying character is a thousand times less harsh. There are no bars on the windows, and the doors in my ward have no locks. Most patients are already awake, sitting up in bed, greeting me with a quiet ‘Good morning’; a few take their trays into a common room, where there’s a TV tuned to news. Perhaps the degree of calm is unnatural, due solely to drugs; perhaps the peacefulness that makes my job untraumatic is stultifying and oppressive to the patients. Perhaps not. Maybe one day I’ll find out.

  My last patient, the single blue sticker, is listed as Klein, F. C. A skinny, middle-aged man with untidy black hair and a few days’ stubble. He’s lying so straight that I expect to see straps holding him in place, but there are none. His eyes are open but they don’t follow me, and when I greet him there’s no response.

  There’s a bedpan on a table beside the bed, and on a hunch I sit him up and arrange it beneath him; he’s easily manipulated, not exactly cooperating, but not dead weight either. He uses the bedpan impassively. I find some paper and wipe him, then I take the bedpan to the toilets, empty it, and wash my hands thoroughly. I’m feeling only slightly queasy; O’Leary’s inurement to tasks like this is probably helping.

  Klein sits with a fixed gaze as I hold a spoonful of yellow mush in front of him, but when I touch it to his lips he opens his mouth wide. He doesn’t close his mouth on the spoon, so I have to turn it and tip the food off, but he does swallow the stuff, and only a little ends up on his chin.

  A woman in a white coat pops her head into the room and says, ‘Could you shave Mr Klein, please, Johnny, he’s going to St Margaret’s for some tests this morning,’ and then vanishes before I can reply.

  After taking the trolley back to the kitchen, collecting empty trays along the way, I find all I need in the storeroom. I move Klein on to a chair—again he seems to make it easy, without quite assisting. He stays perfectly still as I lather and shave him, except for an occasional blink. I manage to nick him only once, and not deeply.

  The same woman returns, this time carrying a thick manila folder and a clipboard, and she stands beside me. I get a peek at her badge—Dr Helen Lidcombe.

  ‘How’s it going, Johnny?’

  ‘OK.’

  She hovers expectantly, and I feel suddenly uneasy. I must be doing something wrong. Or maybe I’m just too slow. ‘Nearly finished,’ I mutter. She reaches out with one hand and absent-mindedly massages the back of my neck. Walking on eggs time. Why can’t my hosts lead uncomplicated lives? Sometimes I feel like I’m living the outtakes from a thousand soap operas. What does John O’Leary have a right to expect of me? To determine the precise nature and extent of this relationship, and leave him neither more nor less involved tomorrow than he was yesterday? Some chance.

  ‘You’re very tense.’


  I need a safe topic, quickly. The patient.

  ‘This guy, I don’t know, some days he just gets to me.’

  ‘What, is he behaving differently?’

  ‘No, no, I just wonder. What it must be like for him.’

  ‘Like nothing much.’

  I shrug. ‘He knows when he’s sitting on a bedpan. He knows when he’s being fed. He’s not a vegetable.’

  ‘It’s hard to say what he “knows”. A leech with a couple of neurons “knows” when to suck blood. All things considered, he does remarkably well, but I don’t think he has anything like consciousness, or even anything like dreams.’ She gives a little laugh. ‘All he has is memories, though memories of what I can’t imagine.’

  I start wiping off the shaving soap. ‘How do you know he has memories?’

  ‘I’m exaggerating.’ She reaches into the folder and pulls out a photographic transparency. It looks like a side-on head X-ray, but blobs and bands of artificial colour adorn it. ‘Last month I finally got the money to do a few PET scans. There are things going on in Mr Klein’s hippocampus that look suspiciously like long-term memories being laid down.’ She whips the transparency back in the folder before I’ve had a chance for a proper look. ‘But comparing anything in his head with studies on normals is like comparing the weather on Mars with the weather on Jupiter.’

  I’m growing curious, so I take a risk, and ask with a furrowed brow, ‘Did you ever tell me exactly how he ended up like this?’

  She rolls her eyes. ‘Don’t start with that again! You know I’d get in trouble.’

  ‘Who do you think I’d blab to?’ I copy Ralph Dopita’s imitation, for a second, and Helen bursts out laughing. ‘Hardly. You haven’t said more than three words to him since you’ve been here: “Sorry, Dr. Pearlman.”‘

  ‘So why don’t you tell me?’

  ‘If you told your friends—’