Donovan’s Brain

by Curt Siodmak

  He walked to the door and left without a good-by.

  The morning had come up. Dawn lighted the sky.

  I felt tired. My thoughts were not coherent. This state of weakness, I recognized, might increase my receptiveness. Schratt’s theory might work!

  I pushed a chair close to the brain. It was awake. The lamp was burning.

  I stared at the grayish mass of nerve tissue whose energies were changing thoughts into electric currents. I tried to clear the path for the message Donovan might have for me.

  OCTOBER 6

  After experimenting unsuccessfully for days I have discarded telepathy.

  Donovan’s brain is unadapted to it. The central nervous system consists of cerebrum, cerebellum, and spinal cord. But Donovan’s brain lacks the co-operation of the spinal cord, and by itself it cannot produce enough power to influence my nervous system.

  I find myself at the dreaded borderline where experiments reach a dead end. A new approach to the problem is needed, but I have no new ideas. Wherever I look I face a blank wall.

  Schratt has not discussed the problem with me again. Since he has no further suggestions to offer, he shuns me. I have nothing to tell him either and we avoid each other.

  Schratt’s incapability has produced a strong remorse and I am angry at his negative attitude toward my work.

  Janice fainted last night. Schratt is taking care of her. I am sure the desert heat has made her anemic. She should get away from here before she pays for her stubbornness. She has been warned often enough. I am not to blame.

  Franklin brought magazines and newspapers with new stories about Donovan.

  One showed his funeral at Forest Lawn. Behind the coffin walked his son Howard and Chloe, his daughter.

  Now Donovan is cremated and the last clue is destroyed. I am safe.

  Donovan never thought his days would end so soon. He left no will.

  A man does not leave power to withdraw aimlessly from his duties. A man wants to retire either to enjoy living or because he is to die soon. Donovan did not give up the reins of a hundred-million-dollar corporation to play golf in Florida or read books. He was a man to whom work was life itself and he could not have lived on when his activities stopped. He knew that, but he resigned from everything that he had lived for. There is some secret behind it.

  The papers have speculated and rumored that Donovan had hid millions away. During the last years of his life he withdrew great sums of cash that have not been found in his private bank accounts.

  A story in one of the Sunday magazine sections was called “The Mansion of Lost Millions.” It showed Donovan’s Florida house, a big sprawling building where the money is supposed to be hidden. Here was a crude drawing of Howard attacking the wood paneling with an axe while Chloe, drawn with all emphasis on her sex, looked on with burning eyes.

  One paper had my picture as I entered the hospital in Phoenix and my house here in Washington Junction. A photo too, of Janice and my car. I remember the shabby looking photographer, who came here for information.

  “Dr. Patrick Cory, mysterious physician who operated on W. H. Donovan and in whose arms the millionaire died,” read the caption.

  There was a drawing of me in White’s kitchen, dramatically holding the dying man, which said: “Did the millionaire whisper his secrets into the doctor’s ear?”

  White was depicted at the station, pointing to the grave where Donovan’s legs are buried. And in a drawing of the plane wreckage, arrows marked the spots where the bodies were found. The press has missed few tricks. Then I threw the papers away. I was not interested in Donovan’s life. My concern was the brain’s future.

  I had a telephone call about making a report on the accident to the airline commission in Phoenix. Since I want to have the inquiries behind me, I sent in my report speedily.

  I want them to forget Donovan.

  OCTOBER 7

  Last night I had an impulse to turn on the radio in the living-room. I do not know what impelled me: I never listen to it. Actually I dislike this instrument, which only distracts me, but impulse born in the subconscious sometimes motivates action which seems without purpose. I recognize this extra-sensory faculty and never resist.

  Janice was still up, mending one of Schratt’s shirts. I was struck again by her anemic look. She has lost weight considerably. When I entered she put her work down, thinking I wanted to talk to her, but I turned on the radio.

  I found a short-wave Spanish broadcast, turned the dial, and a French one came in, less clear, the fadings sometimes blotting out the music. I dialed again and an American coast-to-coast hook-up came through strongly. Suddenly I knew what I was looking for and the inspiration made me flush hotly.

  I rushed out to Schratt’s room to tell him what I had discovered.

  He sat up, then jumped out of bed with fright, grabbing his greasy bathrobe. “Has anything happened to Janice?”

  “She is all right,” I said.

  The fear floated out of Schratt’s face, but there was still despair.

  “She’s in bad shape, you know,” he said.

  My impatience left no time to discuss Janice.

  “I’ve told her to go back to New England. Perhaps you can make her do it!”

  Schratt looked at me and I did not like the look. It was not for him to criticize me, but I needed him.

  “I think I’m on the right track,” I said soberly, not wanting to become drunk with my own enthusiasm and arrive at a wrong conclusion.

  Schratt did not speak. I had a feeling he resented my indifference toward Janice.

  “I tried out your suggestion of telepathy, but Donovan’s brain is not strong enough,” I said. “Thoughts cannot be amplified by electrical devices. But there is a way of making them stronger.”

  I saw he was interested, and it made me feel I was on the right track. I continued:

  “To give you an example: If you broadcast from a station with a weak transmitter, a receiver cannot amplify the sound waves beyond a certain distance, and increasing the power of the receiver does not help. The power of the transmitter has to be increased.”

  I waited for Schratt to digest my thoughts, but he still did not see what I was driving at. I went on.

  “We must increase the electric thought discharge of Donovan’s brain until it can contact a sensitive brain.”

  Schratt grasped the idea, but he could not perceive at once the method I was contemplating.

  “If the vesicular or gray cells,” I explained, “could be charged with ten thousand or more microvolts instead of with ten to one hundred, the output of the telepathic power would increase tenfold. It might become strong enough for the brain to influence every living being.”

  Schratt nodded, but fearfully. “You may be right, Patrick,” he said slowly, “but—”

  He hesitated. I hated his reluctance, his negative attitude. I wanted help, not discouragement.

  “Don’t start throwing ethical monkey wrenches into the works again!” I said hotly. “I must go forward. I have no time for ideals outside my researches.”

  “You’re dealing with a power you might not be able to control,” Schratt said monkishly. “Brain-power is unlimited, and unpredictable…”

  “Should experiments stop because they might become dangerous?” I asked, tired of him and his cowardice. “I can terminate my research anytime I please.”

  “How?”

  “Shut off the pump. Cut off the circulating blood and Donovan’s brain will die.”

  “Let me think it over,” he answered, but I left his room.

  OCTOBER 10

  Installed another ultraviolet lamp, added fresh blood serum to the arterial blood to carry away the CO2 more quickly. Prepared a new blood plasma, enriched it with concentrated bases, acids, salts, amino-acids, fats, proteins, so that it had the proper hydrogen in concentration.

  I want to overfeed the brain. The increase in nourishing substance will affect the metabolism, increase the sum of the chemic
al and tissue changes.

  OCTOBER 12

  The encephalograms are more vivid, alpha frequencies have disappeared completely. The brain does not relax any more, but it falls asleep more frequently.

  The lamp burned only six hours and thirty-eight minutes yesterday, six hours and twenty-five minutes today. The increased nourishment seems to have a soporific effect and the brain sleeps as if recuperating. The demand for sleep increases in direct proportion to the brain’s gain in strength.

  OCTOBER 14

  Electrical potential and electric capacity have increased to five hundred and ten microvolts.

  New tissue cells have added to the gray matter. Since every normal lobe of the human brain has been identified, named, and examined, I wonder what functions these new enlargements can have.

  OCTOBER 16

  Schratt came to see me. I showed him the enlarged brain and demonstrated its reactions. The electric beat has increased to more than a thousand microvolts. Soon I shall be able to measure with an ordinary voltmeter.

  Schratt has been thinking about how to feed the brain. He has brought back human brain ash from the Phoenix morgue. It contains all the elements of which the living organ is comprised. It is far more efficient to add tissue ash to the blood serum than to mix in dozens of gland extracts.

  I should have thought of that myself.

  I thanked Schratt and he used the opportunity to talk about Janice. She is leaving for Los Angeles, and he asked me to see her.

  He spoke seriously as if he has only been thinking of my problem in exchange for something he wanted me to do.

  I promised to see Janice before she leaves.

  OCTOBER 17

  Through a criminal negligence I produced an electric short. I dropped a pair of pliers and the 110-volt line for the pump short-circuited.

  There was a spark at the edge of the vessel, the pump stopped, and the encephalogram was blotted out. The pen ran straight.

  I repaired the wiring as fast as I could and the pump started again, but the brain did not react.

  I was petrified with fear lest I had killed it!

  I added half a cc. of 1-1000 adrenalin to the serum.

  After a few minutes the lamp began to glow and the pen moved in excited delta waves.

  I was exhausted and faint.

  The electric equipment must be strengthened, a second pump must be installed for an emergency. At once!

  OCTOBER 18

  I found a message on the pad I use for notes! It was an illegible scribble written in ink.

  The door of my laboratory was locked and bolted. The fingers of my left hand were ink-stained.

  I seem to have got up in my sleep, taken the pen, and written these meaningless scrawls. But I never walked in my sleep before! And I do not write with my left hand!

  I studied the scrawls without being able to make out a meaning. I turned the paper around until I finally recognized a definite D, a V, an A, an N, and two single letters in front, one of them unmistakably an H, the other an M or a W. The whole word was enclosed with a wavering line.

  W. H. Donovan.

  It was, without doubt, Donovan’s name. I had written Donovan’s signature with my left hand, during my sleep!

  I walked over to the encephalograph, which I had left running all night. The brain was asleep, but part of the paper strip was marked with straight pen-strokes which paralleled the edge of the paper and could only have been produced in extreme excitement.

  I suddenly felt weak and sat down.

  I remembered that Donovan was left-handed. I had read it in one of the magazines.

  Exhausted from overwork I must have walked in my sleep and unconsciously imitated Donovan’s signature. My fever to get in touch with his brain had produced this phenomenon. Considering my concentration on the experiment it was not strange it had happened.

  But suppose Donovan had ordered me to do this? During the night mental resistance is at a low ebb. This is the time to influence a mind when consciousness, latent between dream and reality, can sometimes be commanded to motor responses, like walking or writing.

  No! I cannot believe it!

  But then the electric short may have shocked the brain into activity as the brain of a mental patient is electrically shocked into action.

  OCTOBER 19

  I did not sleep all night, probably because I tried too hard.

  I had left paper and ink handy on the desk, but I received no telepathic commands. When, sometimes, I felt an urge to get up and take the pen, I fought the impulse down, fearing it might have resulted from my nervous state and not from Donovan’s influence.

  I had to be sure!

  The more I have thought about the scrawls on the paper, the more I am convinced that I was merely sleep-walking.

  I have relapsed into deep despair, convinced my experiment is a failure.

  OCTOBER 20

  Janice left today for Los Angeles.

  I talked to her before Schratt took her to the station, but I do not remember the conversation.

  My mind revolves around the problem of Donovan’s brain. I am impatient to sleep and give Donovan a chance to get in touch with me.

  Tonight I will take a sleeping draught. This may blot out my resistance.

  OCTOBER 21

  How stupid to have taken Veronal! It paralyzed my mind and prevented any response.

  I am in such a nervous state I hear voices talking. I must control myself. A nervous doctor is not a scientist.

  The best thing is not to force the experiment. To wait.

  OCTOBER 25

  Nothing has happened these last days. The brain’s electric output has risen to fifteen hundred microvolts and still increases.

  I have lost weight. Franklin prepares the food. I realize now that Janice, knowing how little I eat, added vitamin concentrates to my food. She kept me healthy with a reinforced diet which I seem to miss now. My sudden despair and weariness are due to lack of vitamin B1.

  I am exhausted.

  OCTOBER 27

  I have received the message. I wrote it myself, but clearly Donovan ordered me to write while I was asleep.

  It is Donovan’s name written shakily like a weak signature of a sick man, or it is shaky because I wrote with my left hand, as Donovan did. It is exactly Donovan’s signature. I found a reproduction of it in a magazine. This is the same scrawl. The whole name enclosed in a typical oval, the same hard lines of the H, the familiar flourish of the N at the end of the word. It is not my writing at all.

  The brain has found a way to get in touch with me. Probably the electric current shocked it into activity, perhaps charged the protoplasmic cells to the point of mental combustion.

  I sat on the corner of my bed for hours without moving, too exhausted to think.

  I want proof, more proof!

  OCTOBER 30

  The proof came today.

  I had not administered a shock to the brain again, for the electric voltage has risen to two thousand five hundred microvolts, and I do not know how much ohm resistance the brain has.

  I was sitting at my desk when I suddenly felt tired. It was a strange, soft fatigue that entered not my body, but my brain. I was still thinking, but in a hazy, drowsy fashion. Then I saw my left hand move, take the pen, and write.

  The name was written out stronger this time: Warren Horace Donovan. The long flourish encircled it again, as if to prove its authenticity.

  My hand put the pen back and my own thoughts slowly returned from the back of my mind. They reappeared as if emerging from water, wavering first, then shaping up clearly.

  I walked over to the vessel. Donovan’s brain was awake.

  “Did you ask me to write your name?” I patted out against the glass in Morse.

  I waited. I repeated the message again, slower. A third time.

  I walked back to the desk.

  Suddenly I felt the same sensation again as my mind retreated into dimness. I was completely aware what I was doing, only t
he motor impulses were out of my control.

  I saw my left hand pick up the pen, and in firm letters I wrote: “Warren Horace Donovan”!

  NOVEMBER 3

  The human brain cannot work on continuously, without restoring itself at regular intervals to transform potential into electric energy again. The more intense the activity, the more sleep is needed. Donovan’s brain lapses into sleep more than half the time.

  Around its bare tissues a new layer of grayish-white matter is forming. Donovan’s brain is growing into a new shape. A new species of creature is building here, which never before existed in this mortal world. A ball of flesh whose life depends on an electric pump and artificial feeding, but capable nevertheless of sending out energies of thought surpassing our limited strength. Every day it grows in potentiality.

  It can impose its power over my thoughts whenever it pleases.

  First I have the strange sensation of another will compelling the movements of my hands and feet, commanding all the motor responses of my body.

  Then other thoughts than mine enter my mind. The brain, bodyless itself, uses my body with my consent to achieve an independence of its own though stolid, mute, and deaf.

  I live a double existence. My thoughts retreat into the back of my mind as I observe, detached, the phenomena which Donovan’s brain directs. I am then a schizophrenic, a person whose personality is split. Unlike a man suffering from intrapsychic ataxia, however, I am at all times conscious of my actions.