Here & There
Page 51
* (PS Just so we’re on the same page, those highlights are mine.)
** When was he performing these “transfers”??
* * *
1) Subject maintained accurate mental map of the residence. He could correctly and without hesitation lead me around to requested locations, i.e. when I asked him to take me to the kitchen, he led me up the stairs, down the hall, to the kitchen.
a) Subject accurately located objects outside of residence (that also were not within view).
i. Ecco correctly pointed through a door to identify sandbox’s location.
2) Subject maintained aesthetic preferences. When eating chicken, Ecco always prefers the wing. When asked to choose between wing and leg, he chose wing.
a) While on its own, not a conclusive event (50 percent probability of randomly choosing wing). However provides correlative supplemental support for hypothesis.*
* * *
* Found it, pages 363-364, Frankenstein and his wooden boy.
* * *
3) Subject also revealed a preestablished, undisclosed hiding place.
a) Eve’s candy stash, which was unknown to me at time of inquiry, thereby eliminating the possibility of Ecco interpreting subconscious clues from me as to its whereabouts. I wasn’t inadvertently guiding him there.
b) Ecco also identified memory for preestablished, communal behaviors.
i. I.e. keeping the remotes in drawer of coffee table.
4) Most significant evidence was reenactment of specific behavior from first day in Providence.
a) Ecco lying upside down on chair and pretending to walk on ceiling.
i. This behavior was only observed once by me on move-in day.
Subsequent tests were also administered by Bertram (under the guise of checking his mental state postaccident), after which Bertram was aware of Ecco’s duplicitous nature. Ecco performed specific tasks that Bertram had witnessed him execute almost six months ago. Ecco ate macaroni salad with a straw,* once again exhibiting a consistency of aesthetic preferences (much more conclusively than the chicken wing, due to the specificity of the behavior). Furthermore, Ecco exactly replicated the tomato Lego “sculpture” he had made when Bertram first examined him.** In order as to not prejudice or influence the subject in any way, Bertram presented Ecco with a bin containing a variety of Legos (of various colors), as well as Capsela and Tinker toys, and asked Ecco to make him the object he had made previously. Ecco proceeded to do so, without hesitation, completely from memory. Bertram confirmed this as evidence of a stable long-term memory.
* * *
* See page 292.
** See page 275.
* * *
Unfortunately, while the cognitive goal was accomplished with Iteration 1, there was a glaring collateral physiological side effect: cognitive insensitivity to pain. Subject appears to have little to no pain capabilities whatsoever. This insensitivity spans the entire spectrum from dull knocks to the head to second-degree burns.*
* * *
* Like a little kid might get from reaching his hand into 212-degree water and pulling out a hard-boiled egg. Turn to page 383. Reidier is sick.
* * *
Sense of touch seems to have remained intact and most likely registers pressure information, as evidenced by subject’s ability to pick up and manipulate objects, walk, etc.
Dr. Roland Staud, a professor of medicine and rheumatologist at the University of Florida, has researched this naturally occurring, though rare, physiological condition. While there haven’t been enough case studies to statistically determine its propensity, Staud believes it to be more common than one in a billion or even a million, but that it goes unnoticed due to those who have the disorder not disclosing it.
Geoffrey Woods, a geneticist in Cambridge, only recently made the connection between pain insensitivity and genes. His research eventually led to ascribing it to a mutation of the SCN9A gene.
The possibility of some sort of genetic aberration is further supported by a secondary physical side effect: Ecco, unlike Otto, does not have an allergy to tetanus. While outwardly the two appear identical, at a base genetic level something must be different. Somewhere in the process, his strand of DNA must have been altered.
… … … …
Ecco doesn’t feel pain
It’s unsettling. It’s chaos. We I have to watch him all the time just to ensure he doesn’t jump too hard and break his ankle, or pick up a pan from the stove and melt the palms of his hands, or dislocate his shoulder twisting and turning when he sleeps, biting his lips clean through, or even drinking rotten milk. His senses of smell and taste, while not necessarily gone, have been hindered or muffled.
I’ve resorted to wrapping his hands in gauze some days or duct taping mittens around his wrists. I have to clean his eyes each morning and night to make sure nothing damaging has lodged itself in his corneas. I check his shoes when he comes inside to confirm he hasn’t stepped on a nail. The other night I found him sitting on his bed ripping out his eyelashes, one by one, giggling. Later that evening I caught Otto doing it. He cried after one particularly hard yank.
Eve can’t stand to be in the same room as Ecco. Her perception of him as an Other, as a freak, as a threat, has only been intensified by his new vulnerability. She keeps Otto away from him at all costs for fear of another incident of Otto mimicking Ecco and severely injuring himself, even though Otto had only superficial burns on the tips of two fingers from the egg incident. Ecco is a living, breathing, horrible hypothetical. It scared her.
So often we think of pain as the enemy when really it’s our caretaker.
… … … …
Nevertheless, it cannot be ignored that this disorder, this condition, is new. He felt pain before the July 25th iteration.* He hurt himself and cried many times. The very fact that he keeps proclaiming how different foods taste implies that he was registering that sensory information differently before.
* * *
* See page 83, Galilee 6:21, Experiment 19. Cross-check the date . . . It’s right there in plain sight. The Coke experiment must’ve been a cover. Masked the power usage while he iterated his son.
* * *
A biopsy was sent to Cambridge. Woods has confirmed that Ecco’s SCN9A gene has in fact mutated. Clearly the adjustments made in order to transfer long-term memories during teleportation also altered something at a genetic level. He was not the same coming out as he was going in.*
* * *
* He’s iterating his kid.
Ecco isn’t Ecco: he’s Eccos.
He’s R’s little guinea pig.
* * *
If this alteration can be pinpointed, could this effect be controlled and targeted on other genes or cells? If so, then perhaps it is possible for a subject to be repaired during teleportation. Can I perform quantum surgery?
Maybe Curzwell is not all crazy.
December 1, 2007
Iteration 2* has made the same ambivalent progress as its previous version. Subject exhibited seamless short-term memory retention across teleportation process.
* * *
* See Galilee 6:21, Experiment 9 Delta pages 197-200. Reidier was running a double bluff. His after-hours experiments were supposed to be noticed by the powers that be. They were supposed to spy on and transcribe the “not-so-secret” infractions he wanted them to spy on. They were supposed to feel superior gathering all their surreptitious intel on his Gould Island extracurricular affairs. All the while it was a misdirection, a means of covering his power usage (see page 245) to obscure the massive energy drain.
* * *
Before, “during,” and after process, I engaged Ecco in a game of Concentration.* I played several rounds with him as we prepared, shuffling the cards each round and then dealing them all animal pictures face down. Through this play, I determined that one minute and forty-eight seconds in would be the optimal time to engage Quark Resonator. By this point in the game, it had been on average sufficiently long enough that half of the cards had
randomly been flipped and turned back over for Ecco to have created a rough, though incomplete, mental map of which animals were where (i.e. the lion card was face down in the bottom left corner, the hippo card was in the middle row two from the right).
* * *
* Page 198 . . . the card from the game.
* * *
In order to create fluid play (and short-term memory activation), I arranged our deck in front of the transmission pad, but also laid out a second deck of Concentration cards face down in the exact same pattern in front of the target pad (making sure to remove whichever matched cards had been paired together and removed, so as to replicate our landscape of play exactly).
At roughly a minute forty in, so as to engage and evaluate short-term memory precisely, I would wait until Ecco turned over a previously unturned card and replaced it (unmatched face down). In that moment of completion, Ecco was teleported from transmission to target pad. And play ensued.
1) Subject exhibited no sign of disturbance of state of mind, nor emotional state, as evidenced by calm demeanor and continued participation in play.
2) Subject maintained knowledge of identity of last card flipped the instant before teleportation.
a) Ecco correctly remembered/identified/matched the last card he viewed before teleport.
i. This experiment was repeated several times to corroborate results.
3) In conjunction with memory game’s visual component, subject was also exposed to aural stimulus and tested on this.
a) Right before transmission, I would say a random word or term: purple, argyle, lettuce, etc.
b) After transmission, when prompted, subject accurately repeated the term 100 percent of the time.
i. “Ecco what did Daddy just say?”
ii. “Argyle.”
Quark chromatic adjustments proved to successfully transfer short-term memories.
Once again, however, there appears to have been an unintended side effect. Iteration 2* has developed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It manifests itself in a variety of tendencies, inclining toward the more compulsive end of the spectrum. The most glaring behavior along these lines is his constant teeth brushing.** Iteration 2 can brush his teeth upwards of ten to almost twenty times a day. After several weeks, this has led to problematic gum bleeding.***
* * *
* Which Iteration 2? Iteration 2A or Iteration 2F? He ran the experiment several times!
** Pages 460-61.
*** Page 458.
* * *
However, while the tendency is toward compulsivity, Iteration 2 is also fascinated and consumed with detail. So much so that it can sometimes preclude even the simplest of tasks. For example, when both boys were presented with a new pack of Legos, Otto jumped right in and started playing, while Ecco focused on the packaging: the feel of the glossy finish of the box, the slightly rough edge of folded-in tabs, the extensive pictures and little descriptions that covered the box front-and-back (even though Ecco is not literate he had to take in every detail of the text). By the time Ecco had finished with the box, Otto had already finished playing Legos and moved on to another activity. This attention to detail interrupts the entire flow of his day. Even using the remote to turn on the television can devolve into a ten-minute examination of the remote itself and any nicks, scratches, or stains it has acquired through use. This obsessiveness has proved so disruptive that it has instigated countless clashes and fights between the boys, as Otto cannot adjust to the bizarre sudden changes in his brother’s behavior.
… … … …
Hiding Ecco from Eve has become difficult. The fact is, she’s simply home more, or more present when home.
At least to Otto.
Ecco’s teeth brushing, while constant, has occurred under the radar. Eve notices Ecco’s hourly disappearances, but they rarely register with her. Furthermore, she never pursues/follows him to find out what he’s doing. Instead she stays with Otto or simply continues to invest in whatever her task (whether it’s work or writing or cooking or simply watching a television program). The only area where Eve is aware, or even hypervigilant, is in the kitchen. Whether it’s for Ecco’s or Otto’s protection (or both) is unclear. But the egg incident is still clearly present for her.
It wasn’t until the bleeding that Ecco’s behavior became too obvious to deny. However, I have bought some time, I think, with the explanation that he’s just brushing his teeth too hard or a little too often.
The stuffed animals have been easy enough to defuse. Eve almost never goes into Ecco’s room. So, at least as far as I know, she’s never seen how, every night before bed, he turns all of his stuffed animals to face the wall. And as I learned after the first confrontation with him about this, if you don’t fight it, he won’t cause any sort of ruckus. He just needs to face them all against the wall to fall asleep. Just as a precaution though, a few hours after he drifts off, I turn them back in a haphazard manner.* While I realize that this might actually be anxiety-provoking for Ecco (to wake up and the animals have turned themselves around), and may even reinforce the behavior, I am more concerned with the potential anxiety from Eve becoming aware of this habit.
* * *
* Page 515.
* * *
The fingerpainting, unfortunately, was unavoidable and startling. Ecco’s obsessive consumption of detail and compulsive driven stamina enabled him to conjure the door practically out of thin air.* It stirs a cyclone of ambivalence within the viewer, simultaneously awed at the skill and verisimilitude, while also horrified by the mental state necessary for the child to create this. I’m sure as an artist herself, Eve must have been both drawn to the work and to Ecco, while also being repelled by both. Perhaps that’s what drove her to Spencer.**
* * *
* Page 506.
** pages 210, 435, 476: Foucault to suspicious toasters to absinthe.
* * *
… … … …
It is still unclear as to whether this is, strictly speaking, a physiological side effect or a psychological one. Has this iteration’s neurology been changed or simply his thought patterns? Can these two things even be separated? From a biological perspective OCD can arise from changes in a body’s natural chemistry or have a genetic component (although no specific genes have been identified yet). Insufficient serotonin could also contribute to this disorder, which is why SSRIs can be effective for treatment. That being said, there are some theories that it can be a behavior learned over time, both from the cognitive behavioral and the psychodynamic camps. Clearly, Iteration 2 would not have had time to “learn” a behavior over time, but my variations within the quark landscape might have drastically terraformed his mental one.
Carbon allotrope alteration proved only partially successful. While on a microlevel, diamond lattice was successfully shifted to improve clarity from VS1 to VVS1, the macrostructure was compromised.*
* * *
* Page 199. Compromised? I’ll say—he cracked his wife’s diamond in two!
* * *
Need to more precisely isolate the adjustments made to the quark chromodynamics.
May 28, 2008
Iteration 3 has been a horrifying failure. I am deleting all of the chromodynamic settings.*
* * *
* See Galilee 6:21, Experiment 7 Alpha.
* * *
… … … …
I am still shaken.
… … … …
While the goal of this experiment was achieved, he’s a monster.
… … … …
Purpose: to successfully transfer subject’s emotional state during teleportation.
Method: instigate emotional state within subject that manifests in clear demeanor immediately prior to Q resonation and track maintenance of behavior/emotion.
Conclusion: Initial attempts to prompt joy through laughter proved challenging. Negative emotional states offered clearer consistency. Ultimately, pleasure and laughter were exchanged for pain and crying. Negative state
s were more consistent, less ephemeral.
Subject was pinched until pained crying ensued. Subject remained in this distressed state while Q resonator was engaged.*
* * *
* Page 316.
* * *
Emotional state (as evaluated by facial expression, crying, sobs, posture) stayed consistent across teleported distance. To that extent, the experiment was effective.
However . . . What he did to the rabbit . . .
… … … …
While the instantaneous emotional state of the Iteration 3 was successfully transmitted, the base temperament was drastically altered in fundamental ways. Subject has come to exhibit psychopathic behavior, the most drastic example of which was with the leporid. The subject, once alone, somehow caught the rabbit either behind the garage or sought out the isolated area behind the garage after snaring it. Within this solitude, the subject proceeded to torture the animal. The rabbit was staked to the ground with a number of metal cooking skewers. Each of its limbs was snapped. The rabbit’s ears were both sliced off and subsequently placed on the ground one centimeter away from the bleeding nubs they were cut off of, like one might do when laying out the pieces of a model one were about to construct. Throughout this whole process, the rabbit was kept alive.