The Supernatural Enhancements
Page 11
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[…] It was 1906 Nobel laureate Camillo Golgi who inadvertently directed scientific interest to a field previously worked only by occultists (Jacques Sandoz, Conversation des âmes, 1728) or mediums (Salomon Percevaux, allegedly dead from brain stroke during a public exhibition of telekinesis in 1846). Golgi’s reticular theory, which views the brain as a continuous network of cells communicating via electrical impulses, revived some curiosity about the idea of thought transmission, not among doctors, but engineers and physicists: Tesla’s 1922 experiment with seals is a good example. Even after Golgi’s theory lost favor to Ramón y Cajal’s neuron doctrine, it still inspired some achievements in the study of brain-body connections (Furshban & Potter, 1957). However, these studies hold no interest to a new school of German scientists who seek something even more ambitious: the brain-mind connection—or, as Humphrey Bogart put it, “the stuff that dreams are made of.”
Despite its mystic connotations, these researchers’ quest is purely a physiological problem. Bergemaier, Kuttner, Dänemarr, they are all neurologists, not psychologists. The contents of the mind are for Jung’s successors to study; what these men and women are searching for is the physical support of those contents.
Electricity seemed an elegant solution: a form of energy, impalpable and ephemeral, just like thoughts. Konrad Bergemaier (b. Mainz 1899), one of the earliest advocates of this school, seemed to be on the right track when, in 1927, he managed to transmit the sensations of cold and warmth between two individuals. Unfortunately, the oversimplification of this principle in the hands of Nazi scientists led into the dead alley of wire-based telepathy, culminating with the human experiments in the forties that brought shame to the discipline. And still, Dr. Eva Ruff’s work on prisoners in Dachau shows how a wrong theory may lead to atrocious accomplishments.
Nevertheless, Bergemaier’s true disciples are far from discouraged, and even now new methods are being applied to old ideas with remarkable results. Jan Kuttner’s work with animals is quickly assimilating the techniques of mainstream neurology. In his words, “The electric nature of thought seems to be the right principle, but our predecessors omitted the biochemical support.” This omission is now being mended. In East Germany, Karl Hannemann started replacing the old copper wire, first with animal collagen, next with the sophisticated gel developed by W. Opfstau that provided the breakthrough of 1967, in which two subjects shared a mental image (a rampant horse). Isaak Dänemarr (ironically, a subject of Ruff’s experiments) expects to be able to “project” thoughts on photographic paper.
Should these researchers succeed, they will not only clean the name of a deprecated science. They will “transmit ideas, fantasies or dreams, not by the mediation of a word or a drawing, which is a mere suggestion, but keeping the substance of which ideas are made” (Bergemaier, Nachwirkungen, 1955). They might implant or remove ideas. They might record dreams. It will be the dawn of electric memories.
A.’S DIARY
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I think we discovered the place from which Wells and his Society drew the inspiration for their fashion statement. It must be Midburg, Virginia.
The town is a two-hour drive from Point Bless, but the landscape is as different as one coast is from another. Point Bless feels southern; Midburg is pure North, Northernly old, New England style. Narrow streets look narrower thanks to trees meeting overhead, laying an elegant carpet of autumn leaves on the cobblestones. Redbrick buildings gaze incurious behind wrought-iron railings. Engines do not eclipse birds. Everyone looks like a librarian and none pay any notice to our conspicuous car.
I can tell why Ambrose chose a therapist this far from Axton House: He felt at home here, among other men with hats and civilized pigeons. We hardly drove a hundred kilometers, but judging by the cityscape alone we could have crossed several state lines.
Which we might have done, actually. Apparently I slept most of the way.
We located Dr. Belknap’s office by the café below referenced in Ambrose’s letter: dark green awnings and a flock of small round tables behind the rain-sprinkled windows. It had to be here.
It was two forty-five p.m.—in time for my first therapy session.
AUDIO RECORDING
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A.: Well, I don’t know.
[Continued sound of scribbling in the background.]
I guess it all started in football training. Football meaning soccer, of course. There was this kid. He wasn’t very good either, but he was eager to play, didn’t feel awkward like I felt. I guess I wanted to be like him. One evening the coach got mad at us for some reason, maybe because he’d waved me across the field and I’d waved back while we were supposed to be defending. They had us running around the premises for hours. And I’m pretty sure he slowed down for me. So, anyway, when we got to the locker room, everybody else was gone. And … it’d been raining, so we were wet. So we took our clothes off. And … we watched each other. And I remember the sound of the rain. And the silence of the lambs. I do remember those lambs.
[Pencil scratching on paper like a stressed cat.]
Are you writing all this?
[Writing ceases.]
What … What the fuck—is that supposed to be me? [Scoff, slapping.] I am emptying my soul for you and you’re doodling a— Why do I have wings? Wait, those are my ears?
[Door opens.]
DR. BELKNAP: Mr. Wells?
A.: Oh! Hi.
DR. BELKNAP: [High heels coming over.] I am Dr. Vanessa Belknap. I am very sorry for your loss.
A.: Thank you. Uh, this is my friend, Niamh Connell. We were just …
DR. BELKNAP: Fooling around on my couch?
A.: Er … yes. Wow, you’re good. I already feel like you’re X-raying me.
DR. BELKNAP: [High heels coming closer.] I’ll take that as a compliment. Is that yours?
A.: Niamh, your Walkman’s on the doctor’s desk.
[A hand gropes the microphone. STOP.]
[REC. The following fragment sounds muffled.]
DR. BELKNAP: … version, which of course I am not allowed to discuss.
A.: Why not?
DR. BELKNAP: Because of my work ethics. I am bound by medical confidentiality.
A.: Yes, but Ambrose Wells is dead. Isn’t it like in Masonic law?
DR. BELKNAP: I beg your pardon?
A.: You know, you’re not allowed to say that another person is a Mason until the other person is dead.
[An awkward blank.]
DR. BELKNAP: You know, I happen to be a Freemason and this is the first time I ever heard about that rule.
A.: [In due time.] Oh. Well, so … can’t you tell me what you talked about, in a general way?
DR. BELKNAP: What you talk about with a therapist.
A.: I’m not even sure what a therapist does, to tell the truth.
DR. BELKNAP: Their best. [Leaning back on a leather chair.] I’m not sure Ambrose needed a therapist, actually. I guess he appreciated my listening.
A.: He was fond of you. That much I know.
DR. BELKNAP: Good. The feeling was mutual.
A.: Was there something between you?
DR. BELKNAP: [Leaning forward.] Mr. Wells, you do not seem to trust my professionalism.
A.: With all due respect, I’m seeing you right after the only other patient of yours I know of jumped out of a window. That’s giving you some credit.
[Blank.]
Okay, since I can’t pull anything from you, I’ll push in. Did he tell about his research?
About his being Leonidas?
About his dreams?
[Longer gap.]
Did he tell you how they’d pluck his eye out every night?
DR. BELKNAP: How do you know that?
A.: I don’t know; how should I know?
DR. BELKNAP: Did he keep a diary?
A.: Did he?
DR. BELKNAP: How else would you know what he dreamed?
A.: Perhaps I dreamed it myself.
DR
. BELKNAP: Are you implying that you and a man you never met are sharing dreams?
A.: Is that the craziest thing ever said in this room?
[Slower.]
DR. BELKNAP: It’s funny you suggest it. Your cousin used to talk about that.
A.: About what? Sharing dreams?
DR. BELKNAP: Something like that.
A.: Is this covered by medical confidentiality too?
[A sigh of resignation.]
DR. BELKNAP: Mr. Wells sometimes showed interest in conducted telepathy. Oh, it’s … How to put it softly? It’s a debunked science, like phrenology, a supposedly scientific approach to telepathy. It was widely disregarded in the nineteenth century until some questionable doctors in Germany, grossly misreading Golgi, interpreted that since thoughts are nothing but electric impulses, and electricity can be conducted through wires, thoughts can be conducted through wires.
A.: Yeah, I read something about it. Nazi experiments and stuff.
DR. BELKNAP: Yes, well, some of them resumed the work after the Nazis, hopefully using more ethical methods. Some people claimed to have gotten results in East Germany.
A.: Guy named Dänemarr? With a double R?
DR. BELKNAP: Very good. He intended to record dreams. Yeah, sounds pretty cool, doesn’t it? As far as I know, he’s still trying.
A.: So tell me about Ambrose’s dreams.
DR. BELKNAP: I can’t. Medical confidentiality.
A.: Okay, then tell me about mine; they seem to be the same.
DR. BELKNAP: Are you requesting a therapy session, Mr. Wells? Because in that case, you might start by sharing your real name.
[Blank.]
A.: Niamh, why don’t you go to the café downstairs for some cake?
[…]
Please go. I’ll come later. Hey. Don’t forget your Walkman.
CASE NOTES FROM DR. VANESSA BELKNAP6
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Case file #0262
Name: ############# Sex: Male
DOB: 6/25/1972 DOE: 11/21/1995 (23 years old)
Address: Axton House, Axton Rd., Point Bless, VA 26969
Phone: (755) 963-4000
OVERVIEW ON ARRIVAL: Patient is a newcomer to the U.S. after inheriting a large piece of real estate from his unacquainted second cousin twice removed Ambrose G. Wells from Point Bless (no loss grief). He avoids talking about his BG. Doesn’t mention any family, except for an aunt Liza. Probable only child or more likely far youngest. He lives now with an “intimate friend” or “associate” (female, about 17, Irish, mute, acquired condition) with whom he shares a house big enough for six families. Their relationship is challenging: Body language says mutual interest, no sex. He likely feels guilty or unworthy, compensates by means of paternal care. She feels rejected and can’t express her feelings (due to disability), which he takes advantage of. (Note: I didn’t get whether Liza is his aunt or hers.)
He first approached me to inform that Ambrose G. Wells of Point Bless (cf #0178) “defenestrated” in September this year. Despite his lack of grief, he manifested deep interest in his ancestor’s profile. In the course of the conversation he mentioned a recurring dream of Ambrose W., whom he claims to have never met. (Later in the session he said it was his own dream.)
SESSION 1
1995 NOVEMBER 21, 3:30 TO 4 P.M.
Icebreak by questions on BG and relationship with friend Niamh. Admits dependency. She drives and takes care of the dog. He avoids talking about his homeland. Idealized vision of the U.S. through movies and TV. X-Files fan.
On his second night in Axton H. wakes up, goes to bathroom, sees “a shadow against the tub curtain.” The lights glow brighter and explode. Doesn’t remember how he got to bed again. In the morning he had severe subconjunctival hemorrhage (Note: Right eye isn’t healed). House is rumored home to the ghost of a slave girl dead in the Civil War. (Note: Ambrose G. Wells lived in the same house and confirmed the ghost story. He claimed to have seen a shadow in the bathroom on his last session, April ’95.)
Prompted on belief in ghosts, claims he “wants to believe.” He has felt the “presence” in the bathroom several times. Yesterday saw “her” again in a “stronger” way. He shrugs at my pointing out that he’s only begun to distinguish the shape of the ghost after being told how it would look.
Suffers very vivid dreams. (Note: He never says nightmares.) Relates the eye one as cued: He is tied down to an operating table in a basement in Africa with a blood-splattered surgeon and a black army officer. They pull his eye out. Extreme pain. Then he gets free and kills both. (Note: He narrated the dream combining first and third person.) Prompted, he “just knows” it’s Africa. Queried, he knows somebody who is in Africa now.
Prompted, not all dreams are that bad; “these are the least enjoyable.” Asked for an enjoyable one: He sits in a car in a traffic jam and he’s solving a Rubik’s cube. (Note: first person all the time.) The driver is a girl in underwear, “spit-in-your-facingly beautiful.” Queried, “I don’t touch her.” Queried, he has other dreams like that: He’s walking on a snowed roof and sneaks into a bedroom, inside a red-haired girl’s bed and feels “her breath in my face.” He remarks that, in that dream, he is a girl too. (Note: Explore possible issue of repressed sexuality.) He asks, “Am I not supposed to dream what I live?” We discuss dreams. I demystify Freud for him. We track the sources for the dreams. Revelation: He sleeps with Niamh. They never touch. “We keep each other company.”
Switches topic to Ambrose Wells. Prompted, he denies that Ambrose killed himself. “Something happened” to Ambrose, and he fears the same “might happen” to him. He denies black thoughts and sleepwalking. (Note: Niamh would know.)
I ask why he guessed that his cousin had the same dreams: “It seems the kind of stuff that would make you jump out of a window.”
(Note: Ambrose G. Wells (cf #0178) reported an extremely close and gruesome nightmare about a surgeon who pulled his eye out in his last visit, April ’95. He also mentioned the black army officer and hinted at the violent outcome. Probable extraordinary case of subconscious suggestion triggered by something in the house. Ambrose mentioned other dreams along the same line: knocking out two policemen, and stumbling in a dark house running away from a man carrying a pitchfork. The notes from that same session quote Ambrose on his father’s suicide: “Everything seems to be laid as a path for you to follow, like when you just see the solution to a Rubik’s cube.”)
PROVISIONAL DIAGNOSIS: Inhibited loss trauma, paranoia, delusion, pathological fantasy. MORE THAN HALF OF HIS STORY ISN’T TRUE.
VIDEO RECORDING
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BATHROOM WED NOV-22-1995 01:33:03
Lights wink ON.
[A. leans over the sink, breathing hard. He doesn’t touch the faucet.]
[In frame comes the top hemisphere of NIAMH’s demishaved skull. She stands by the door.]
A.: It’s okay, Niamh; sorry I woke you. Go to bed.
[His eyes return to the drain hole. Nothing moves.]
[Not looking.] Go to bed, Niamh.
[Niamh withdraws. The door closes.]
[A. pulls his shirt off and turns around, trying to inspect his back. He turns around again. Presses three fingers on his sternum.]
[The light in the bulb drones brighter for a couple of seconds. A. checks the bathtub.]
Shut up.
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6 This is a transcription from Dr. Belknap’s file. Her handwritten notations are included in italics.
NOVEMBER 22
DREAM JOURNAL
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The baby stirs, head pressed on the Latina’s bosom, and I hope my heartbeat won’t disturb her sleep, while my other hand is aiming the shotgun at the countermen behind the windows, hands up in the air. With imprudent flies buzzing dumbly through the path planned for the slug.
I pull the tubes out of my arm. A tiny Styx of blood trickles down my skin. Green industrial tiles.
The Chinese student sits at the piano, playing the keys one at a
time and writing ideograms on a notebook.
And the four notes run deep under an ultraviolet water mass of dancers, sparkling with white smiles and white bra straps. And I am torpedoed toward the surface along a shaft of sunlight, and spit out of the warping sea, out into a tempest of chrome clouds, and the surfboard under my feet knifes a vaulting amphitheater-shaped wave of a billion tons of salt water curling overhead, and I feel I’m God.
(Then there’s the eyeball, and then the pitchfork again.)
VIDEO RECORDING
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MUSIC ROOM WED NOV-22-1995 10:57:38
A. lies cuddled on the sofa.
[HELP trots in, straight to the breathing bulk. He clambers onto the sofa and sniffs the body. Head tilted, he stares at A., gently pokes him with his paw. A. doesn’t move.]
[Exit Help through the ballroom door.]
LIBRARY WED NOV-22-1995 10:59:01
NIAMH sits on the desk, the ciphered letter in front of her. With a pencil, she encircles groups of letters, as in a word-seek puzzle.
[HELP straggles in from the gallery, sits by Niamh’s desk expectantly.]
12:51:13
[Niamh flings the pencil at a bookcase in frustration.]
[Help swiftly retrieves the pencil with his mouth and offers it to his mistress.]
NIAMH’S NOTEPAD
* * *
(At Gordon’s for lunch, over the cipher.)
—I think it’s a grille.
—What’s a grille?