In the Stars I'll Find You

by Bradley P. Beaulieu

  She squeezed his hand harder. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Mitch.” Her fingers were warm. It was nice.

  The next few hours passed by in a blur. They pulled an articulated arm in front of Mitch’s face. They had him blink at a fluorescent green light that winked in and out of existence. They had him tighten the muscles in each leg. His waist. His arms and neck and jaw. They had him take deep breaths and then exhale. They had him recall some of his earliest childhood memories and then ones from only yesterday. They had him add and subtract and divide. Dozens of different cognitive and physiological tests, so that by the time they were ready to activate the coupler, the step that would change his life forever, Mitch was shivering with nerves.

  Dr. Narayan moved to the box she’d brought in with her. She opened it and pulled out a baseball. White leather with red stitching. It was scuffed here and there, revealing the sandstone color beneath the white finish.

  Mitch went through all the techniques Dr. Narayan had drilled into him. He concentrated on the ball itself. A thing, not a concept. A play toy, not a person, and not that devastating event in his life.

  “Ready, Mitch?”

  “Ready,” he said almost before she’d even finished.

  “Very good.” She stared into his eyes. “Just watch the ball.” Then she turned and nodded to one of the other doctors standing in the corner.

  The tall one pressed something on his pad.

  And Mitch’s world went soft.

  The white lights in the ceiling lost their glare. The stares of the doctors became indefinite. Unremarkable. Almost pleasant. Dr. Narayan, always a force of calm over these past turbulent months, became a guiding angel.

  “How do you feel, Mitch?”

  He had no idea how to describe what he was feeling. “Good,” he finally said.

  Dr. Narayan nodded to one of the techs. They unlocked the clamps around his right wrist and arm.

  “Can you take the ball?”

  What happened next was the strangest thing Mitch had ever experienced. He saw his hand reach up. Saw it grip the ball and hold it in the air before him. Except he hadn’t done it. He hadn’t lifted his arm. He hadn’t willed his hand to grip the ball. He hadn’t urged his body to do anything, and yet it had.

  There was one quick spike of fear, something that felt primal and deep as the earth, and then it was gone, and he was well again. Happy even.

  Happy, after so much pain.

  Another compartment of his mind had gripped the ball and held it before his eyes. Yet another compartment was allowing him to see it. Another still was controlling his levels of emotion.

  Dr. Narayan nodded to the tech again, and Mitch’s other arm was released from its restraints. “Now the other hand, Mitch.”

  His arms worked. His right hand transferred the ball to his left.

  He barked out a laugh—perhaps a quirk in the software, for a moment later the spike of joy was gone, and he was simply grinning while a suffused happiness ran through him.

  “Good. Now relax.”

  And just like that, he fell back into the chair, the scuffed white baseball still gripped in his left hand.

  He knew there was another part of him somewhere that had just taken over.

  He felt like he should care that there were other parts of him—parts that held his memories, his emotions, his regrets—but he didn’t. Not at all. And he didn’t care that he didn’t care. What he cared about was the fact that he felt calm for the first time since…

  He knew his life had been hell before the procedure. He knew this.

  He just didn’t know why.

  And he didn’t care about that either.

  Why should he?

  This? Sitting back while the rest of him dealt with the world? It was like lying on a beach while the blue waves rolled in. Like staring up at drifting white clouds, taking his cares with them.

  He didn’t remember a lot of his old life at the moment—Dr. Narayan said that would come back slowly—but he remembered enough to know the old Mitch would be afraid of something like this. And the young Mitch? He would have thought this was hell.

  “How does it feel, Mitch?”

  Mitch watched her, but it was like viewing a monitor. His eyes were no longer his. Neither was his voice.

  “You have to request access to your voice.”

  He did, a thing as simple as thinking about it.

  “It’s great.”

  The words were a lie, though. Or at least, they weren’t the whole truth.

  It wasn’t merely great.

  It was pure bliss.

  Compartmentalization Design Document - Section 2.1 - The Coupler

  The primary component of the compartmentalizing architecture, the coupler, shall be situated between the two hemispheres of the brain once the shearing of the corpus callosum is complete. The coupler shall allow the hemispheres to communicate with one another, but only as defined by the compartmentalizing super-architecture.

  Mitch sat at a table in a small room—Dr. Narayan’s one-on-one therapy room. The walls, the lone table, the aerogel cushion on the Lucite chair, all of it was a blue of a barely translucent nature. The four framed photographs on the walls—each accentuated by a red or rusty palette—were of ancient Hindu temples. The ceiling emitted a soft white glow. Weeks ago a room like this might have annoyed him. Today it felt sublime, though after so long in this place he had to admit he wouldn’t mind getting a bit of fresh air.

  The only thing on the table besides Mitch’s restless elbows was a baseball. He had no idea why it was there. Perhaps some final physical dexterity tests once the doctors finally came to see him.

  The heavy black door on the opposite side of the room opened, and in walked Dr. Narayan in her lab coat and powder blues. Her sensible shoes tapped against the floor as she took a seat opposite him; the door swung shut behind her.

  Mitch requested access to his voice and asked, “Can we meet somewhere else next time?”

  “Where would you rather meet?”

  He was about to answer, but then realized this was a test. Another test. He felt a twinge of annoyance, but only that. He knew the tests were necessary, and in fact it only increased his estimation of Dr. Narayan that she would take such care with him.

  “Outside the hospital. In the park, maybe.”

  The park—not memories of it, but the notion that it existed—had simply popped into his head. A laugh burst from him at the absurdity of it all.

  “What is it, Mitch?”

  “It’s just strange is all.”

  She tapped a few more things. “Do you remember the conversation we had just before the procedure?”

  He thought back, but he couldn’t remember a thing. He couldn’t remember anything beyond this room, beyond this singular, blue box.

  Dr. Narayan spoke into her pad. “Increase coupler sensitivity five percent.”

  The moment she was done speaking those words, he’d forgotten what she’d said. And a moment after that, he’d forgotten that he had even wondered about it.

  She studied her pad and spoke again. “Another five.”

  He remembered a room. Dark. Much darker than this room. Brown curtains. Hospital bed. People coming and going, especially the worried-looking man with the tousled blond hair. He remembered Dr. Narayan stepping into that room wearing exactly what she was wearing now, only the stud earrings she’d worn then had been small gold dolphins. Today they were simple aquamarine.

  Pretty, he thought.

  “I remember,” he said. He didn’t, really—not enough to feel whole—but he wanted to.

  “Tell me about it.”

  And just like that, the rest of it came. “I signed papers, for the procedure and my end-of-life orders.” He thought he should be concerned over that last bit, but the plain truth was he wasn’t.

  Dr. Narayan reached into her pocket and pulled out a simple metal top. “I think you’re ready, Mitch. Shall we prove it? For the record?”

  He request
ed access to the muscles in his neck—he was getting a lot better at the little things—and nodded his head.

  The top was no bigger than a toy jack, but it looked heavy, and it sounded heavy as she set it on the tabletop and gave it a spin. The chill air of the room rang with the sound of it.

  “Stare at the top, Mitch, and tell me what’s over my left shoulder.”

  He stared at the top—it was an imperative he couldn’t ignore—but in doing so he was able to release all controls and access only the visual feed. Days ago he couldn’t have done anything but stare; the concept of abstraction, the releasing of his senses, had been too much for him then.

  But now…

  He read the words easily on the backlit wall as his center of vision remained fixed on the spinning top:

  What is this mind?

  Who is hearing these sounds?

  Do not mistake any state for

  Self-realization, but continue

  To ask yourself even more intensely,

  What is it that hears?

  He read the poem to Dr. Narayan. They felt right, those words, but in what way he wasn’t sure. They just did his heart good. Had he been nervous when the doctor came in? He thought so, but a moment later, he couldn’t recall even having the notion.

  Compartmentalization Design Document - Section 2.2 - The Bus

  A communication bus shall be established. Each subsystem shall be connected directly to the bus with no intermediary communication interfaces allowed. The bus, through logical connections, shall allow each compartment to send packetized messages to one another. No compartment shall be allowed to communicate directly with another; only indirect communication through the bus shall be allowed.

  Mitch’s body was jogging. He was old—sixty-eight, he remembered now—but he’d never jogged. He’d hated it before, but now he could just tell his body to do it while he sat back and read a book by video overlay. He could have set it to audio and listened to it—he could have even turned off the sound of the seagulls and the chatter of the people down by the beach—but he liked the sounds. He even liked the slightly fishy smell of the lake that lay bright and blue beyond the running path. It reminded him of his youth and made a nice backdrop while he read.

  Like a vacation.

  He worried about the stress jogging would take on his body, but Dr. Narayan had said it would be fine. The primary compartment—he’d taken to calling it Prime—wouldn’t allow him to overexert himself. So if he felt like he wanted to jog, he could jog.

  He’d been out of the hospital for three months, and though he was still living on the hospital campus, they said he was doing well. Better than expected, actually.

  His own compartment—it felt like his, even though he knew the entire apparatus was now him—had felt confining at first, but they’d told him he’d adjust, that he’d begin to enjoy the solitude.

  And he had. For the most part.

  Sometimes he missed people.

  He just couldn’t remember who.

  Ahead, beyond the pewter gray words of Lonesome Dove—he’d always wanted to read McMurtry, but had never found the time—he saw an ice cream stand.

  He requested access for primary control of motor function and after a moment received it.

  He suddenly felt the huffing of his lungs, the burn in his legs, the sun on his skin and the sweat on his brow. It felt good. But an Eskimo Pie would feel even better.

  He purchased one up from a college-aged girl, a redhead wearing short shorts and a shirt that were both too tight for her own good. He smiled at her as he took his ice cream and began unwrapping it. A man in his thirties with dirty blond hair was watching him beyond the vending wagon. He turned away when he noticed Mitch watching him.

  Mitch, feeling a little embarrassed, turned away as well.

  Then stopped.

  Ahead…

  A boy smiles at him.

  Ahead there was a diner—one of the original diner cars, still on rails, converted into a restaurant. He couldn’t remember ever having gone there. He was sure he had, though. It felt too familiar for him not to have.

  A boy…

  He dropped the Eskimo Pie into the trash and walked forward in a daze, staring at the diner’s rounded roof, the glass windows, the people inside.

  His mouth filled with spit, so much and so fast his jaw hurt. He swallowed, trying to clear the misshapen lump in his throat. It wouldn’t go away. It just wouldn’t go away.

  Inside the diner, a boy was sitting with his father. The father pointed out toward the water, but the boy caught Mitch’s eye. He stared at Mitch, his face blank. Not happy, not nervous or distrustful, but emotionless—old enough to wonder what the world had in store for him but too young to know he should be afraid of it.

  Mitch pulled back.

  Gave up motor control.

  Put up walls and stepped back into darkness.

  He went inside his box. His compartment.

  Here he saw nothing.

  Heard nothing.

  Felt.

  Nothing…

  Compartmentalization Design Document - Section 4.1 - Emotional Filters

  The decision processor shall contain emotional filters. The filters shall have access to all data being fed from the monitoring subsystem. Emotions deemed harmful to the subject shall be dampened or eliminated entirely, while emotions deemed beneficial shall be passed through as-is or enhanced, as determined by the Watchman.

  Mitch didn’t jog anymore. He couldn’t remember why he’d stopped. Just that he had.

  He still liked reading, but he’d stopped reading McMurtry. He’d moved on to Ayn Rand. Why, he had no idea. He’d never had one bit of interest in her before. He’d also called up Nietzsche and Kierkegaard. When he’d told Dr. Narayan about it in one of their follow-on sessions, she’d nodded. She’d seemed amused somehow, though he didn’t know why.

  “It’s natural to wonder who you are and why you are after going through a procedure like this. Nine out of ten go through a phase of self-awakening. Some go through several.”

  “So I should keep reading them?” he’d asked.

  She’d shrugged. “If you wish, but don’t feel like you have to.” And then there’d been the briefest of moments when she’d seemed sad, as if she had compartments too, and one of them had just gained control of motor function and he’d seen a short glimpse of her real self.

  Two days later, while he was stepping out of the shower one morning, he saw in the mirror, for the briefest of moments, his wrists.

  He blinked and stared down, then back up at the mirror.

  He’d had terrible scars over his wrists. Big, nasty gashes. Healed, but not so old that they could have been from early in his life.

  They’d been recent—nearly as fresh as the scar at the base of his skull—but as he looked now there was nothing but smooth skin. A bit wrinkled. A few sunspots. A freckle here or there. But smooth.

  His breathing was up. So was his heart rate. But then he ceded motor control and sat back and watched.

  Or had control been taken away?

  Sometimes he couldn’t tell.

  Compartmentalization Design Document - Section 1.1 - The Lockbox

  Memories stored in the lockbox shall be granted only upon formal request. All requests shall be given to the primary compartment, which shall act as a broker with the Watchman. If deemed sufficiently benign, memories will be granted. If not, they will be denied and one of two things will happen: either smudging algorithms will be applied to fill the gaps caused by the denied memories, or, if sufficiently sensitive, they will be denied entirely.

  A full year after implantation, a glitch showed up in the compartments.

  Mitch was walking down Broadway, window shopping along the antique stores, when he saw himself in the display window of one of the shops. Inside was an old wooden washtub, and next to it some massive iron stand, a relic from an old church, perhaps, holding an open book as big as he’d ever seen. The showroom was dark and m
ostly vacant—odd for an antique store—and Mitch could see himself clearly in the window’s reflection.

  As he watched, his mouth moved, but he hadn’t asked it to.

  Auditory input was active, but he didn’t hear anything. He was simply mouthing words soundlessly.

  He didn’t understand at first, but then he watched more closely.

  Help, his lips were saying.

  Help me!

  Mitch blinked, a chill running down his body. His mouth watered again, just like… Where had it happened before?

  Help me, please!

  He turned and ran. He thought Prime was going to take over, but it didn’t. It didn’t. He just kept running, the memory of himself in that window playing over and over again.

  Help me, help me, HELP ME!

  Compartmentalization Design Document - Section 4.2 - The Watchman

  The decision engine, known as the Watchman, shall have full authority to grant or revoke compartmentalizing system resources, including, but not limited to, Motor Control, Emotion, and Memories.

  Dr. Narayan said it was nothing to worry about. Our fears sometimes bubble to the surface.

  “Like dreams, Mitch. They’re no different than dreams.”

  “This was no dream.”

  “Just lie back,” she said, helping him to lie down onto the hospital bed. She smiled, her bright green eyes telling him she’d fix everything.

  And she did.

  He left the hospital later that day with a reassurance that they’d found the Watchman to be performing a touch less than optimal. A few tweaks, Dr. Narayan said, was all it took.

  He was living off campus now, but still only four blocks away from the hospital. He went home to his temporary apartment. His compartments within compartments. He had two bedrooms, one-and-a-half baths, a narrow kitchen with a sonic-cooling fridge, a living room with a bureau and a Fluoro TV that projected a barely detectable, box-shaped halo to the limit of its 3D capabilities.