Prisons of Stolen Dreams

by Christopher St. John Sampayo

  I have been hesitant to do this. He was living in his mind in the past. Now in this darkness his mind is aware of the present. For him it is must be an awful present of darkness and confusion.

  He is aware now of the passage of time.

  But I realize his concept of time must itself be a chaotic torment. In this state seconds are an eternity with no understanding of the future. Does he compare a concept of a future to the memories he has lived in? Does his mind wonder if this present will become at some point like the past again? Like the past when his brain was whole?

  I know in some ways it will. The concepts of his memories will over time become his reality. His understanding of people and objects from the past will in the future become his present.

  I rush to repair more of his mind. I should not but I must. I cannot bring myself to be coldly analytical and leave his mind trapped in silence and shut off from the world.

  Subject L is trapped in a prison. It is a prison of thought without action.

  Day 234.

  My work continues to progress. I have repaired approximately eighty percent of his brain. I have reweaved it, recreated it, and rewired it.

  I moved from the Temporal Lobe of his brain to the Superior Temporal Gyrus. I felt this important to do. The subject was trapped in the dark. Though one of his ears still functioned he could not process a comprehensive understanding of sound. Even though he was not deaf he was trapped in silence. He was trapped in his mind. He was a mass of memories and reasoning.

  The Superior Temporal Gyrus controls the part of the mind that comprehends language.

  Sometimes I sit beside him and I talk to him. I explain the situation. I try to reassure him that in the dark of his mind he is not alone.

  I play music for him. I hope this gives him comfort in the dark. I have not yet repaired his Occipital Lobe which controls visual info processing. All he can do is hear. But at least he can understand now what he is hearing.

  I pray for him. As I look at the days that pass I pray that all this time trapped in the darkness of his mind leaves something salvageable.

  I realize that all this work we are doing could be for naught. I can rebuild the subject’s brain. But nothing like this has ever been done. Repairing and rebuilding a mind this way could leave nothing but insanity in its wake.

  However, that is not for me to resolve. My work is to rebuild an organ and make it whole again.

  Only God can decide how the soul in that organ functions when my work is complete. Or if it even has a soul.

  Day 283.

  I have repaired Subject L’s Occipital Lobe. I am glad I have completed this portion of my work that involved rebuilding the Occipital Lobe and Superior Temporal Gyrus. It is important to connect the Subject to the world around him.

  He is a brain in a vat. I remember studying the brain in a vat concept in college during one of my philosophy courses. The reasoning is that in truth, we are merely brains connected to vessels that bring information to us.

  If I was smarter perhaps I could recreate an artificial world for Subject L’s mind to live in as I repair it.

  Time and evolution have built layers of humanity around us. They have connected us to our environment in different ways. They have allowed us to process what the light shows us as the sun rises. They have allowed us to receive and comprehend the sounds of the ocean as it crashes against the shore. Time and evolution have allowed us to create concepts of these things. They are not just images and sounds. They are sunlight and tides.

  However, we are just minds in vessels. We are just brains in vats. The sensory world around us could merely be a dream.

  Perhaps I am not here. Perhaps I am not doing this work. Perhaps someone is building my mind layer by layer. Perhaps they have added a layer that tells my mind I am working on rebuilding this subject’s brain.

  I sometimes dream now that I am the one whose mind is being rewoven. I dream that this child has pity on me as he puts together fragments of brain that tell me who I am.

  However, in my dreams this child does a kindness to me. He puts my mind together in such a way that allows me to believe that the work I do is important.

  He does this so I do not get truly lost in the dark.

  Day 347.

  He blinked. The subject blinked. He blinked and when he did I saw so much understanding in his eyes.

  I saw sadness.

  I have had a new eye procured to replace the one that was torn away so now the Subject once again has two eyes. The new eye he currently has is not the first one I had brought to me. In my fumblings I was not able to reattach his eye perfectly the first time. Or the second time. I try not to think of how many attempts I made. I try not to think of how many eyes I needed.

  Belili provides me the things I request without question. I understand the horrors that need to be perpetrated to obtain the resources I need. I try not to focus on that and instead focus on my work.

  Now I focus on my subject’s vision. I focus on his eyes.

  Can there be sadness in just the eyes? Can there be sadness in the eyes of a person that has no control of facial expression?

  I think so. Because in his eyes I do see sadness.

  He has no muscle control to move his eyes. I have simply been able to attach his visual synapsis. He just has the muscle control of his eyelids hence that blink. His eyes cannot follow movement. He just stares.

  However, when I saw that blink today after the damage inflicted to the subject’s brain it is the closest thing to a miracle that I have ever witnessed.

  Day 408.

  I have finished my work on the Broca’s area of the brain. It is a part of the brain in the Left Inferior Lateral Frontal Lobe. Subject L can now produce language.

  Ideas and language do not necessarily have to exist at the same time. Until now Subject L was ideas. Now I have repaired the part of his brain where he can truly articulate those ideas with words.

  I reflect on what words represent to the mind. A person can feel the need for sustenance. Their body can shake for nourishment. Subject’s L’s mind could understand these things but could not form the word “hunger.”

  His memories and thoughts have been formless.

  The reconstructive surgeons have begun repairing the damage to Subject L’s face and skull. In Verse Zero we have gathered the most brilliant surgeons in existence. I know once their work is complete there will be no indication of the significant trauma that Subject L’s head and face experienced.

  However, though there will be no physical trace of what Subject L experienced I have to wonder about the scars that may linger in his mind.

  I have not allowed Subject L to see a mirror. Even after he started to regain control of his body and learned the ability to walk again I did my best to make sure there were no reflective surfaces in his environment. I have even replaced the usual metal trays I use with ceramic trays.

  There has been a heavy silence in regards to this between Subject L and I. Though he has not brought the matter to my attention I am sure he understands that right now his form is incomplete.

  I try to encourage him as we work together that we are making his mind whole. I hope he understands that this includes his face as well.

  In truth when I reassure him I am reassuring myself. As I stare unflinchingly at his damaged face I tell myself that we will repair him perfectly.

  Or as perfectly as I am able.

  Day 473.

  With the Broca’s region of the brain repaired the Subject is still having difficulty with language.

  He has the use of his tongue but words at times defeat him. He often cannot connect his thoughts with the words that represent them.

  I use flash cards to show him objects and asks him to tell me what they are. He gives the items in the flashcards names but they are the wrong names.

  I know he knows what they are but the brain does not allow the mouth to produce the accurate words.

  Subject L can at times put together sent
ences of nouns and verbs. But other types of words confuse him. Articles and adjectives are, at the present, still a complex puzzle.

  He shows signs of what is often referred to as Broca’s Aphasia.

  Initially even with his Broca region reconstructed Subject L could not speak. He was mute. The portion of the brain was formed properly but the Subject himself had difficulties organizing words at all.

  He saw ideas. He could understand what I said to him but he had difficulty expressing words back to me.

  When he first began to use words they were simple ones. They were words like “yes.” Or “pain.” I could see the frustration in his eyes as he tried to express more ideas but could not.

  He can think normally. He can process information.

  However, at present his mind is still having difficulty connecting the proper words. I can see him struggle. I can see how it frustrates him.

  Today I asked him what time it was. He looked at the clock. He stared at it and he turned to me. It was a simple question with a simple answer. But he had difficultly forming the right words. He began to shake with anger. He knew the answer but he could not put the words together.

  The aphasia frustrates him and sometimes he cries. However, he is persistent. He wants to be whole very badly. I see how hard he works at this. It gives me the ability to be patient. How can I become frustrated when I am not the one in his condition?

  Day 491.

  The brain plasticity is fascinating. These pieces of mind are different. They are not connected. Not truly. They are alien things from alien Universes placed side by side. But I made the connections. And the brain learns. The brain plasticity learns to rewire these pieces of mind and make them work together. This mind built of fragments of brain is complete.

  We have a finished mind. Now we must teach it all to function as a whole. The parts of the brain that create speech are all there and perfectly formed. However, the fragments of mind need to learn how to work together.

  Words need to learn to pull from concepts, that are partially created by memories, which in turn are composed of images and sounds.

  The part of the brain that controls speech must learn to work with the part of the brain that holds memories. These must work with the parts of the brain that control higher reasoning. They must work with the part of the brain that sees so the mind can process new visual data.

  All these things together form a person. A complete person.

  Day 552.

  The child is becoming whole.

  Praise God. Praise God for his goodness. Praise God for allowing me to complete this task that was beyond me.

  The child is a miracle. He is a miracle because he should not be. He is dead. He is dead and now he can recite all of the poems Yeats and Tennyson. He can play the music of Chopin. He can explain the math of Niels Bohr.

  He still has difficulty with his speech at times but he is improving. He sometimes writes his ideas down first and then very slowly repeats to me what he has written. He chains the ideas together. He follows each word to the end of his statement. He is learning patience. He is learning patience with himself. He is learning patience with the words that are too slow at times to keep up with his mind.

  He is learning and he is improving at an accelerated rate. All these pieces of mind are starting to work together perfectly.

  His face has been reconstructed flawlessly. Our surgeons did work, that upon reflection, was in and of itself genius.

  Yesterday I watched him play his violin. The music this child made was beautiful.

  I can refer to him as a child now. He is a child whose name is Patrick. He is no longer just a medical case. He is a person. He is no longer Subject L.

  I gave him the designation of Subject L because in the end I needed to bring him back from the dead.

  To me he was Lazarus. This child was brought to me dead and I needed to put back into him the spark of life.

  God worked through me to complete this task. Now this brilliant child is almost ready to go forth into the world and accomplish what we so desperately need him to do.

  Day 581.

  Today Patrick smiled. I woke and did not find him in his room. He was sitting outside on a bench that overlooks the hills of this glass world.

  As I approached him I saw he was looking at the sky. I sat on the bench next to him. We did not speak. Instead we sat together in a moment of silence as we both stared off into the horizon. It was a shared moment with no words.

  The sky was beautiful. I turned my gaze away from it and I looked to Patrick. He was now staring at the city below.

  As I stared at him I saw a smile spread across his face.

  I was awe struck in that moment as I stared at this child as he smiled.

  I did not ask what he was thinking.

  It was a very strange moment for me.

  I put together his mind. I put it together piece by piece. I composed it from the memories of others. I know every piece of mind that I used to reform his brain. I know where each and every fragment came from.

  But I do not know why at that moment he smiled.

  We humans are strange compositions. We are made up of so many different parts. The sum of those parts defines us.

  As I look at this child whose thoughts are unknown to me in this brain that I built I wonder who he is? What thoughts flow in this perfect mind we created?

  Belili says soon he will join the other children from this generation.

  I never had a son in the life I was taken from.

  However, in this strange land with its Sea of Glass, Patrick is my son.

  And I am proud of him. I do not know how to explain the feeling. I saw him come together fragment by fragment. I repaired who he was one layer at a time.

  However, he did it. I put the pieces together but he worked to make himself whole. From pieces of memory and higher reasoning he worked to become a complete person.

  Now he goes out into this world to live into the potential we were afraid we had lost. He goes into this world complete. He goes into this world with a beautiful and perfect mind composed of pieces of shattered minds.

  ***

  The Philosophical Principles of Death. The Scripture of Farinata Uaegli Abertio.

  Gospel 000021

  Where does the soul reside? What defines it? What defines the person?

  It is circumstance. It is memory. It is pain.

  In truth we are compositions of pain. Of suffering. Of muscle. Of mind. Of fear. Of past. We are fragments of experience and wretches of circumstance.

  We are all these things which is why our souls are so incomplete.

  These fragments do not make a whole. They merely make an illusion of individuality.

  The soul is just another imagined concept. It is a construct with no true meaning yet we for millennia have deceived ourselves by granting the idea of the soul so much value.

  The idea of the soul is nothing more than a moment created by objects, events, and memories.

  The existence of which is always relative.

  We pretend that throughout our lives…

  Verse Fifteen: The Beginning of the Fall

  Catalina lived a beautiful life. She lived in a beautiful world. Of all the Verses in all of existence she found the perfect one. She found one Verse that contained perfect love. It was everything that Catalina could hope for and more. Catalina had stumbled into heaven.

  Was that not a part of the law of averages, Catalina at times wondered. Didn’t the laws of chance predicate that one place should be perfect beyond others? In the game of randomness and chance shouldn’t there be one place where everything went right? Catalina discovered this to be the case. She discovered a place where all was as perfect as she could have ever dreamed it could be.

  Much of her happiness in this Verse started with Hector. He worked for the crown. His family knew her family. The age that Catalina lived in was not a perfect age. No age ever truly is. However, with Hector, Catalina found her happin
ess and she was content to live in this happiness as long as she could.

  Catalina had stayed twenty years in this Verse. She knew when she returned to Verse Zero she would have been gone for mere minutes. So, what was wrong with her enjoying this life till the last possible moment?

  Catalina was walking back to the estate she shared with Hector. In this world they were married with two children.

  As she walked through the cool night she looked up at the stars. Catalina reflected on how blessed the people of the Sea of Glass were. They were given opportunities to see what others could not. They were given the opportunity to see all that could have been.

  Catalina witnessed a multitude of lives over the years that she spent on the beaches of the Sea of Glass. Some of them were tragic. Some of them were sad. These lives where everything went wrong made Catalina truly appreciate the perfect life she was now experiencing. How many people could ever be blessed in this way?

  Seeing her children each day made Catalina’s heart fill with joy. Her oldest son was named Juan and she had a three-year old daughter named Ariana.

  She knew they would be excited when she came home tonight. Catalina had been out picking strawberries. Her children loved strawberries.

  Catalina smiled when she saw her home. She never wanted to leave this place. She at times thought perhaps she might not. She knew she was not the one that had been sought by the makers of the Sea of Glass.

  She had, however, taught those in her generation how symmetry could be used to leap from Verse to Verse. This allowed the people of Verse Zero to create deeper paths through the Multiverse. This method was how Catalina stumbled upon this perfect world. She had not been limited by the Verses along the shore of the Sea of Glass. Instead she had leapt from Verse to Verse and discovered this one perfect place. It was as if she discovered an island on the ocean far from the horizon she had always known.