Of Half a Mind

by Bruce M Perrin

  “Of the Katy trail,” said Nicole, finishing my thought before I could, then grinning at me.

  “You too?”

  She nodded. “Definitely. It goes, what, maybe three quarters of the way across the state? I hope they finish it someday, so I can ride all the way to where I grew up – Independence.”

  My eyes went wide. “Seriously? Independence, Missouri? Home to Harry S. Truman?”

  “Yeah, you know it?”

  “I grew up on a farm…well, technically, about a mile from the city limits, although it’s probably ten miles from anything commercial.”

  “So, we grew up within 10 or 15 miles of each other.” She tilted her head, her gaze going far off for a moment. “I wonder if we ever met?”

  “No,” I said, bringing her eyes back to mine. “I would have remembered you.”

  Nicole smirked, giving my trite line all the respect it deserved. “I like your antiques,” I said, moving on. “I have a few, including a reproduction phrenology head. The kind that was used by psychologists in the mid-1800s.”

  She paused, the beer bottle only inches from her lips. “Sure. Those heads with areas labeled for different traits like truthfulness or friendliness.”

  I sat up a bit straighter, looking at her closely.

  “Don’t be surprised,” she replied to my reaction. “The idea that different types of thoughts or emotions are in specific areas of the brain parallels current findings, right?”

  “Yeah, I guess. But I always thought that reading bumps on the head paralleled reading tea leaves.” Her comment, however, triggered thoughts I had while driving over. “Do you think…. Oh, sorry, I was going to launch into shop talk.”

  “Isn’t that what I already did?” asked Nicole, holding out a hand. “I’m guessing you’re as surprised as I am about where Dr. Worthington’s technology might be going.”

  “Assuming you’re totally astonished, then yes. What I was going to ask was, do you think there were other capabilities affected – other than those used for memory span?”

  She frowned. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, when Worthington asked which hemisphere I’d block, I said the left because language is usually located there. But maybe A.T. did something different when he was trying to remember the numbers. Something that didn’t involve language.”

  “And if he did,” Nicole continued, “it might become the deficit that plasticity tries to fix.”

  “Right. There’s a lot of other functions on the left side besides language. I believe the split-brain studies put logic, science, and math skills there.”

  “Those studies? They’re the ones where the hemispheres were surgically separated as some sort of medical treatment, right?”

  “Yeah, they cut the corpus callosum as a last-ditch effort to control epilepsy. The treatment went out of favor around the end of the 1900s.”

  Nicole looked at me closely, her brow wrinkling. I wondered if I should say, ‘random factoid, not sure why I remember that.’ But she’d find out that I’m a research nerd eventually anyway…if she didn’t know already. I took a breath.

  “Yeah, one semester, I became fascinated by that research. Once the corpus callosum is cut, nearly all the communication between the hemispheres is gone. Because you can get information to one side at a time, scientists can study the hemispheres separately. And the patients? They can end up with one side not knowing what the other is doing.”

  “Seriously?” asked Nicole.

  “Sure. I remember one case study where a patient was trying to button his shirt with his right hand, while the left hand was busy unbuttoning it. As one scientist put it, we really can be of two minds.”

  “Interesting,” Nicole said. “But I can’t picture it – having two different consciousnesses.” Her open hands were in front of her, her gaze shifting back and forth between them as if looking for the two worlds sitting there.

  “You know,” continued Nicole after a moment. “Besides the things A.T. might have done to remember those numbers, it seems like a lot of other things could have popped into his head. What if he was planning a trip? Or thinking about a movie?”

  My reaction didn’t quite reach the level of a gasp, but I was struck by the thought. “The procedure probably kept him pretty busy...but yeah, a lot of other thoughts could have slipped in. And if they involved a function that was suppressed…. Wow, we could get plastic changes that weren’t expected.

  “If nothing else,” I said after a moment, “we should compile a list of capabilities located in the left hemisphere. If we find evidence that the capability changed anytime during the study, it’ll help us flesh out the effects of the device. But as a guide to what we should look for…. Well, it won’t be perfect.”

  “Is that because there can be variation in where a function is located?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  “Exactly. People are different, and averages tend to hide all that variation. Saying that math is in the left hemisphere is like saying that the average person is right-handed. Or saying that the average biomedical engineer is an asocial male with a pocket protector, while you’re….”

  What am I thinking?

  My common sense engaged, because the phrase running through my head to finish that sentence was ‘sexy as hell.’ I managed to mumble, “not one.”

  If Nicole read my mind, she took it in stride and laughed. “A pocket protector? Yes, I seem to have misplaced mine, but I have slide rules that match all of my outfits.”

  I laughed. Stealing a glance at the clock on her mantel explained my near faux pas. It had been nearly an hour since I had arrived. My beer was gone, and I was hungry and mentally fatigued. It was time for me to go.

  I thanked Nicole as she walked me to the door. Given that this was a date only under the broadest of all possible interpretations of that word and that we had found common ground in an extremely esoteric topic, I decided not to try for a kiss and merely said ‘good night’ at the door.

  After I did, she said, “Good night to you too. And by the way, thanks for noticing that I’m not male, asocial or otherwise.” There was a slightly mischievous smile on her face as she closed the door.

  I stood in the hall, staring at the wall. I hadn’t seen that coming.

  Tuesday, August 11, 12:57 AM

  The Experimenter skulked in the shadows born of the hour and the concrete structure above his head. “What an idiot,” he mumbled under his breath, as he scanned the eerie blackness of massive support columns and immense footings. It was part of a bridge over the Mississippi River, but its designer was a fool. There were a dozen ways to simplify it, make it the elegant engineering marvel it could be.

  Or maybe its design was an intentional miscarriage of logic and reason, spawned by human greed or politics. A tidy sum had gone into making it as unwieldy as it was.

  His musings were broken by a soft sound – breathing. It emanated from deeper in the shadows to his right. The Experimenter changed course. After walking about halfway there, he stopped and donned a set of night-vision goggles. He disliked them. The glowing, wavering images they produced were chaotic, unpleasant. The sensation, he knew, was a byproduct of using the Neural Activity Blocker; he perceived too much.

  Numbers were troubling enough. He had difficulty stopping the process of combining and re-combining them in constantly evolving patterns, producing an ever-expanding array of results – sums, averages, correlations. But complex patterns of bright colors were worse, much worse. It was almost as if his mind was trying to decompose them into wavelengths, intensities, and saturations. Art was not a pleasing and soothing experience; it was disturbing, nearly debilitating.

  The gray-green ghosts from the night-vision goggles were not as bad simply because of the limited color in this shimmering world, and after a few moments he adapted. He looked around. Sometime during the day, sunlight had warmed the concrete where he stood, making it glow under his feet. A few yards to the right, the surface plunged into darkness and it w
as from this void that the sound emanated. He looked closer, but saw nothing. He stepped to one side. There, behind a pile of discarded clothing, bags, and boxes laid a figure.

  Could this be Subject 3?

  The Experimenter crept forward, as the stench of an unwashed body, urine, and spoiled food reached his nose. He removed his Taser from a pocket and raised it to his eyes. The gun’s sights were a mere dot of green, the human figure beyond them the size of his fist. He lowered the weapon, not wanting to chance a miss from this distance.

  He inched forward, testing each footfall before shifting his weight. The stench worsened. That problem was correctable, but there was something else. He bent closer, listening carefully. There it was – a slight wheeze with each breath, a rattle in the lungs. The man would not long endure the rigors of Blocker training with a respiratory problem. The Experimenter removed the goggles, pocketed the Taser, and moved on.

  After a few moments walking, the Experimenter heard voices off to the left. The authorities? Some of his prey? These were fertile hunting grounds and he didn’t wish to leave, but neither did he care to stumble upon anyone alert at this hour. He veered to the right.

  After rounding a second set of footings, he saw two shopping carts against an embankment. They were placed on their sides, end-to-end, forming a crude wall. Inside the makeshift compound slept a figure. The Experimenter crept forward and donned the night-vision gear.

  Despite the warmth of the evening, the figure was heavily clothed, producing only a faint, spectral glow in his glasses. The barbs from the Taser might not penetrate that much cloth and paper, so he shifted to the right, deeper into the shadows. Here, part of the figure – perhaps a leg – was more exposed, its glow in the night like a welcome sign to the Experimenter. He listened closely. The breathing was deep and slow, with no sound of illness. The scent that reached his nose was putrid, but perhaps less than most. He could find no fault.

  He raised the Taser, steadied the weapon, and squeezed the trigger. The barbs flew true. The glowing shape jerked with their impact, then started quivering as the burst of electricity continued.

  The Experimenter pulled a light-weight tarpaulin from his backpack and spread it over the ground. He rolled the figure into the middle. He removed the restraints from his bag and secured the person’s hands and feet. Then, he pulled on two handles that were attached to ropes laced through the edges of the canvas. The tarp drew up around his prey like a cocoon.

  His van was about 50 yards away, parked next to the river. It was too far to chance leaving his prize, so he pulled it across the concrete in its canvas bag. This mode of transport made more noise than he would have liked, but between the sounds of the nearby river and the sporadic traffic overhead, it was acceptable. About halfway there, the Experimenter tired. As he rested, the figure started moving. He depressed the stun gun’s trigger a second time and stillness again prevailed.

  Reaching the van, the Experimenter opened the side door. He had installed a small, electric winch for heavier loads, but this individual weighed little. He hefted the figure inside, then shoved it toward the door on the far side of the van. He climbed in, closed the door behind him, and started attaching the leg and arm restraints to the tie-downs in the back. Even in the relative emptiness of the back of the van, the bindings were necessary – a lesson he had learned with Subject 1.

  His prey started moving, so again the Experimenter hit the Taser’s trigger. A yelp of pain reached his ears as the burst of electricity disrupted the normal messages between the brain and the body. But something was wrong with his prey’s voice. He put on a pair of disposable, latex gloves to examine his acquisition. After a moment, he recoiled, turning away in disgust. When he turned back, he hissed, “You’re a…woman.”

  Even though he knew of no differences between the brains of men and women – and even if none had ever been found – he wasn’t going to chance it. The mere thought of a woman’s thoughts contaminating his own? It made him ill. He removed the restraints from her hands and feet, then opened the door on the far side of the van. He placed his feet against the woman’s back and shoved with all his strength. A moment later, he heard a splash, only then remembering how close he had parked to the river.

  “Good riddance,” he muttered, reasoning that it made little difference if she pulled herself from the river’s muddy grasp or not. He had left no fingerprints. There was none of his DNA. There was no way he could be traced to this time and place.

  He repacked the tarp in his backpack, checked his goggles, and closed the van’s door as he exited. He still needed Subject Number 3, and although it was getting late, this was fertile hunting ground.

  Tuesday, August 11, 9:28 AM

  By the time I reached Starbucks, I’d already hit my self-imposed coffee limit, with a cup before my jog and another after. So, I opted for another scone, more to disguise our meeting than because I was hungry. I took a seat toward the back. The place was busy, as one might expect for that hour of the morning, but most of the people were absorbed in their morning paper or surfing the Internet on phones or tablets. Soon, I saw Sue and Nicole enter and head for the counter. My scone cover was apparently unnecessary.

  “Morning, Sue,” I said as she approached the table, coffee in hand.

  “Hi ya, Doc.” She took the chair across from me, then pulled a small notebook and her reading glasses from a bag. Nicole was only a few moments behind and took the seat beside Sue.

  “Morning, Nicole.”

  “Hi, Sam. Oh, I forgot to ask. Did you like the beer?”

  Sue peered at me over her glasses as if to say, ‘exactly what happened after I left you two yesterday?’ Of course, the answer would have had her rolling on the floor, so I’m glad she didn’t ask.

  “Yeah, I did. I even jotted the name down for future reference.”

  Nicole smiled. The dim lighting of the restaurant was accentuating the brown in her hazel eyes, and I found it impossible to look away. Sue cleared her throat, which brought me back to the present.

  “OK, for the 10 AM with Worthington,” I said. “Given the chilliness of the reception yesterday….”

  Sue snorted quietly. “Chilliness? And yesterday, you said he was ‘intense.’ Did I miss a class at work on mastering the understatement?”

  I gave her a what-can-I-say shrug, then continued. “I was thinking we could focus on the research files mentioned in the contract and limit our questions. He’s not going to volunteer much anyway. And once we’ve studied the data, we can come back with specifics.”

  “Yeah, pick your battles, as the saying goes,” said Nicole as Sue nodded her concurrence.

  “OK, toward that end, I went by the office earlier and copied the section of the contract that describes those files.”

  As I dug through my papers, Sue said, “Right with you, Doc.” She was waving a couple of pages at me. Another copy of the section appeared in Nicole’s hand.

  “I should have known I didn’t need to make a special trip.” I glanced at my copy, reading the entries. “We should get the data from each trial. That’ll be at least the numbers he was trying to remember, his answer, and his response time. We also get the completed Beck Anxiety Inventories, the observation reports for each post-treatment period, and the specifications on the Neural Activity Blocker. Sue, did you run across what’s in those reports?”

  “I did, and it was just the standard. A.T. filled out the Beck, then answered a few questions. After that, he sat in a waiting area for 30 minutes while someone took notes on what he did. Then, they let him go, reminding him he shouldn’t do things like write a will that left all his worldly possessions to the experimenter.” Sue struck her most thoughtful pose. “I never really understood the need for that when I was running studies.”

  “So you wouldn’t inherit a pile of dirty laundry and a few, lightly used textbooks,” I said. “That’s all that most graduate students have. Now, is there anything we need to ask Worthington before we go off and study those files
? And don’t let his intensity and chilliness stop you from asking.” The emphasis I put on the two adjectives brought a smirk to Sue’s face.

  Sue started tapping her pen on the tabletop, staring at her notebook. Nicole looked at me, a slight frown on her features.

  “I should ask how the Blocker stimulates the brain,” Nicole said after a moment.

  “Think there’s some surprises there?” asked Sue.

  “Possibly. There’s some cutting-edge work in the field – things like nanobots or neural lace that positions itself around or on the cortex. If Dr. Worthington used something like that…well, a word or two from him on who to talk to could save us hours looking for the right lab.”

  I nodded, appreciative of her foresight. “OK, that’s on the agenda. Other ideas?”

  “I think we should ask for more information on A.T.’s behavior after each session,” said Sue. “We’ll have the observation reports, but I’d like to know if Worthington thought there were other changes? Places where the Blocker’s effects bled over into other behaviors?”

  “Is there some reason why you think there might be?” I asked, thinking her question sounded a lot like what Nicole and I had discussed.

  “Yeah. The technology’s new, its use for training was unplanned, and frankly, the approach is a bit brute force. He’s blocking half the brain. What besides memory span might have been affected?”

  I glanced at Nicole, smiling and shaking my head.

  “Sam and I were wondering the same thing last night,” said Nicole. This time Sue didn’t peer over her glasses, as she probably got a better grasp on our evening.

  “We thought we’d compile a list of left side functions and then watch for anything related in the reports,” I said. “But your idea’s a great addition – see what Worthington recalls that’s not in the written stuff. How about we put it first on the agenda, then follow up with Nicole’s question? Anything else we need to ask?”

  “Not that I can think of,” said Sue.

  “Nothing from me.”