E. Doctorow - Andrew's Brain

So there came that moment of realization and it was time to let them know who they were dealing with. I gave them Android’s last lecture on neurological developments around the world. I told them the great problem confronting neuroscience is how the brain becomes the mind. How that three-pound knitting ball makes you feel like a human being. I said we were working on it, and if they valued their lives, or life as they knew it, they would do well to divert whatever government funding there was for neuroscience and add it to the defense budget. More rockets, landmines, jet fighters — all those things you love, I said. Because if we figure out how the brain gives us consciousness, we will have learned how to replicate consciousness. You understand that, don’t you, Doc?

I do.

So what, you mean computers who talk back? Chaingang said. I’ve seen that in the movies. Computers, of course, I said, and animals genetically developed to have more than the primary consciousness of animals. To have feelings, states of mind, memory, longing. He means like in Disney, Rumbum said, and they laughed. I laughed as well. Yes, I said, and with all of that the end of the mythic human world we’ve had since the Bronze Age. The end of our dominion. The end of the Bible and all the stories we’ve told ourselves until now.

Andrew, you really think that?

How insulated these men were. They were imperial in their selfhood, these corporate culturists running a government. They lived, heedless, infallible. They understood contention and expected nothing else. I told them it depressed me to be in the same room with them. The president looked at me — did I mean him as well? You all live unquestioningly inside the social reality — war, God, money — that other people invented long ago, I said, and you take these things for raw existence. It was quite a speech I gave them.

Apparently.

They were careless of life, I said, they were prime examples of human insufficiency, I said, and I told them I spoke as an authority on the subject. Then I took a deep breath and did a handstand.

A what?

It just came over me, I was up on my hands almost before I realized it. Perhaps it was the image of Briony on the high bar — my first glimpse of her — that animated me, my brain having decided that this was the thing to do, a mimetic act to bring her into resolution there in the White House. At least that is my interpretation now. At the time it was possibly no more than an act of inspired madness. Or maybe it was just my brain saying if it’s a fool they want it’s a fool they will get. Or maybe I just wanted to be out of there.

So you actually did that?

What I’m saying. I’d never done a bona fide handstand before. I was another man in the Oval Office.

I can tell you that as Andrew wavered there, his arms aching, his feet moving to and fro like the shuttles of a loom, he found himself weeping, either from the effort or from the image in his mind, Briony smiling, her clear blue eyes in their sturdy innocence assessing him. What was she saying? I heard her voice, her soundless voice: Going for a run, Andrew. For her morning snack, Willa likes the applesauce.

And the door closes and then the arc of her balletic leap into the fire.

I think I groaned, the blood pounding in my head, but it seemed to me a matter of honor to remain upside down as long as possible. They, the president and Chaingang and Rumbum, had risen from their chairs, Chaingang stepping behind the president’s desk and shouting into a phone. I collapsed then, landing not the way you’re supposed to, but painfully, with a thud, and I think now that almost simultaneously a pair of marines in dress uniform were yanking me to my feet and twisting my arms behind my back. So one way or another it was a very physical day for me.

Apparently it was.

What did you say?

I was agreeing.

But it was more than that. I doubt if anyone had ever done a handstand in the Oval Office before. Really it was a triumph. I had for a moment risen out of my characteristic humility, my ordinary citizenness, and in one upside-down gesture achieved equity with these governors of my country. I knew the future whereas they didn’t. You might not have known from all I’ve spoken of my life that I was not without a keen political awareness. As I stood there, functionally disabled by the two marines, Chaingang and Rumbum were deciding what would be my fate. They ordered my arrest. Rumbum saying I had threatened the life of the president. Get this fool out of here, he said.

Make that a Holy Fool, I said.

Is that what you felt you were?

What else could I be if my old roommate was The Pretender? Because that’s what he unquestionably was. And never again would I be another man according to the situation. I could feel my brain becoming me — we were resolved as one. As I was led to the door, I turned and said what a Holy Fool would say: You are only the worst so far, there is far worse to come. Perhaps not tomorrow. Perhaps not next year, but you have shown us the path into the Dark Wood. I suppose that was Dante I was doing right there. My roommate didn’t like to hear it. Oh, come on, Android, he called, lighten up. Was he asking me to retract? Was he expecting my blessing? But how could I? What makes a fool holy is that he mourns for his country.

I stood tall, nodded to my guards, and they led me away.

So, Doc, how long have I been here?

It’s been a while.

And you won’t tell me where this is?

I can’t.

It’s not home.

How do you know that?

The air. There’s a softness to it. It gives one a settled sweet earth taste of the spring air. I’ve never experienced that in the New World. I think this is a countryside of low hills and wildflowers and grape arbors. I can’t see over the walls, but in the exercise yard I hear birds and they’re not the birds of home. Also it stays light long into the evening. I think this is Mediterranean Europe you people have dropped me into, and it’s not bad — the torture is not exquisite but only in my reflection of what has happened to me — apart from talking to you I have no one and no lawyer has been appointed and I’m being held without trial and it’s already been indefinitely. That’s celestial time, you know. I’m sentenced to roll round with the planet, to count the suns, the moons, the seasons.… Do you think I threatened the life of the president?

No, actually.

Yet I won’t accuse you of following orders and being a nullity. You know why?

Why?

Without you to talk to I’d be even worse off than I am.

You don’t have to worry.

Although I have my collected MT on the shelf I think how can I keep my mind from going? And if my mind goes can the country be far behind?

So you’re saying there’s a connection?

My mind is shot through with visions, dreams, and the actions and words of people I don’t know. I hear soundless voices, phantoms loom up out of my sleep and onto the wall, lingering there, cringing in anguish, curling up in visible contortions of pain and crying out wordlessly for my help. What are you doing to me! I shout, and fall back into bed only to stare at the black ceiling and my room is a darkened movie theater where another silent horror show is about to begin. I speak of a broached integrity. Only by hoping that there is a science behind this am I able to endure it. Perhaps I’m carrying in my brain matter the neuronal record of previous ages. I know you haven’t gone through anything like this, you’re too accepting of your own experiences. They thrive in you, maxing out to your brain’s capacity. But when you’re as unfeeling as I am—

Ah, we’re back to that?

— there may be an opportunity for the dormant genetic microtraces from earlier times to express themselves in dreams.