The Vestigial Heart

by Carme Torras

  Captivated by such a disturbing sensation, Leo has taken the final step and has forgotten himself completely. His brain, drowning in Celia’s feelings, adopts patterns of activity that until now have lain inert, and sends brand new nerve signals to the other organs in his body: his lungs take in less air than usual and his muscles weaken to favor his heart, which is beating wildly and pumping more blood than necessary to his face.

  Who knows what might have transpired if ROBco hadn’t intervened. Upon recording such consistently unsettled vital signs, there was no doubt it had to apply the emergency protocol to gradually cancel the session. To do it suddenly might have caused irreparable damage to its PROP.

  Leo takes a while to come back to himself and, once he has, he looks around him, astonished: he doesn’t know where he is or what has happened, and when he sees ROBco so close by, the shock makes him jump, reminding him he’s wearing the helmet. Of course, the helmet, the experiment. He goes to stand up without knowing why, and ROBco has to stop him.

  “Warning: I cannot allow you to stand up until your parameters have returned to their base values.”

  “What was that? Did I lose consciousness?”

  “Affirmative.”

  “You mean I fainted and that’s why I don’t remember anything?”

  “Negative.”

  “So what is it? Come on ROBco, don’t break down right when I need you most. Explain yourself.”

  “Information: You did not faint, because your muscles maintained their tonicity, but you were not conscious. The injection of the signals altered your vitals and I had to abort the session. It will be necessary to analyze the recordings to find out exactly what happened to you.”

  “Will we find anything? They must be very short.”

  “Specification: thirty-three minutes and fourteen seconds.”

  Leo is stunned. The most he can remember is a couple of unfinished drawings and how their completion was imposed on him, out of nowhere. But more than half an hour … Now he does have a good reason to get up and this time ROBco doesn’t stop him.

  Standing before the neurovisual player he can’t believe what he’s seeing: his face, placid to begin with, contracts more and more until it becomes unrecognizable. He’s never seen himself looking so disturbed, and he has to thank ROBco for putting an end to such extremes of distress and excitement. He hadn’t noticed Celia suffering from anything similar while he was recording her. When correlating the limbic activity with the retinal images, he realizes that the highest peak coincides with him observing his own hand, and he wonders if the transmutation can be so true to the original that the girl was looking at the same thing. How can simply seeing a hand cause so much fuss?, he asks himself as he looks at it in detail. It doesn’t make sense, none that he can think of. He’s in a real muddle: if the interview caused such an upset in Celia, he’s even further from understanding why she wanted to come back to CraftER. He’s got no answers for Silvana.

  He’s not a man who gives up easily, however, and, taking advantage of the fact that he has the prosthesis at his disposal, he turns to ROBco for help. Among the many questions the robot bombards him with, one in particular takes Leo by surprise.

  “Statement: You keep speaking about the impression your hand might have made on Celia. I suggest that you symmetrize the thought: what impression did her hand make on you?”

  He must admit, with surprise, that he has no memory, either visual or tactile, of the hand that he assumes is small, even though he did see and touch it. Leo, who attributes his success to a portentous memory, capable of reproducing information in the most minute detail. He would argue that the sensory world didn’t matter to him if he couldn’t still feel, very much real, the imprint that another hand had left on his chest. That had never happened to him before, but neither had any woman touched his chest, aside from during sexual gymnastics.

  Ignoring Leo’s silence, ROBco continues along the same lines:

  “Addition: As well as symmetrizing, you could try generalizing and searching for analogies. I remind you that the same idea applied in different contexts is reinforced as a result.”

  “Stop, stop. It’s pointless telling me so many things at once. You have to let me think between one piece of advice and the next.”

  “I am reducing the velocity_of_suggestion parameter by half. Do you approve?”

  “No. You have to wait for a response before moving on to the next thing.”

  The confirmation that, thanks to the trick of installing the prosthesis in ROBco, the Doctor ends up profiting from all his actions, shoots through Leo’s mind like a rocket. He pushes himself to stay focused on the train of thought that was opening up an unexpected perspective for him, the one about hands and different contexts: could it be possible that Celia wanted to see him, just like he wants to see Silvana? The illusion doesn’t last even five seconds, he might as well get it out of his head right away: there hadn’t been a single moment when he had wanted to touch the girl, whereas if it weren’t for the touch of that other hand, right now he wouldn’t be caught up in these digressions. It must be something else … and that feeling of suffocation, that anxiety … Without being plugged into the machine, he can’t feel any of that.

  He plays the recordings back again, and it must be one thing or the other: either the transmutation is faithful and the girl is capable of feeling things in absence of any kind of contact and without letting anything show, or he’s going to have to revise his invention, because it causes unpleasant side effects. It’s a shame he wasn’t able to record what he was going through when he was making that face, because he’s sure it was an innovative experience; but, although he likes a bit of adventure, he’s not prepared to go through that predicament again.

  An innovative experience—the expression is going around and around in his head—isn’t that what Silvana was looking for? Creating new emotions … not quite, she called them something different: extinct, she said. It makes no difference whether the unease he suffered was anachronistic or an unwanted side effect of a defective transmutation … he’s sure she’ll be interested, it’s not like any existing emotion. And she was very clear that, aside from anything to do with Celia, he should inform her about any discovery of new feelings. Now he can use the personal connector without being embarrassed about showing up empty handed, and who knows, she might be able to help him untangle the knot in his recordings. Since she dedicates herself to the study of emotional states, surely she can detect and classify the one in there.

  He turns to ROBco to thank it for the last suggestion and ask it to activate the connector, and finds that it’s left his side without warning him. Once he’s over the initial strangeness, he realizes that he’d removed any possibility for it to interrupt him and, of course, after a period with no response, other processes must have taken priority. He’ll never manage to get it right.

  Once he calls it, though, connection is immediately reestablished. Before he’s even had time to think about what he’s going to say, Silvana appears on the monitor and takes the initiative:

  “I thought you’d never get in touch. Does it take this long to process a few signals?”

  “Noo no …,” he stutters. “I’ve been snowed under finishing a prototype.” How can it be that he finds talking with this woman more daunting than answering to Dr. Craft? “But I’ve made a discovery that might interest you.”

  He could never even begin to image how much. The enthusiastic reaction he receives when he explains it to her so surpasses his expectations that Silvana’s offer to try out the transmutation herself takes him completely by surprise. How can she say that now, if she was so against letting him record Celia? For a moment his wires are crossed and he wonders if he’s confusing her with the mother, but he soon regains control:

  “I’ll have to get an entry permit. And I must warn you that it might be unpleasant: in the recordings it’s clear, as I told you, that I’m pretty distressed.”

  “That must have been the an
xiety the girl felt about striving to give creative answers in the test.”

  “No, it was different. I also perform creative tasks and I’ve never felt like that.”

  “You told me you play chess, right? So you must have noticed that when making critical moves just before a win you sweat more and your pulse and respiration accelerate.”

  “Why do you say before winning? It’s when I’m about to lose that I get anxious … but that’s nothing compared to what I can see in these images of myself.”

  “Everyone thinks that the one who gets worked up is the loser. But it’s been demonstrated that just the opposite is true: a certain level of anxiety stimulates your mind.”

  “I’m telling you it was really different, it felt more like suffering, like when you experience physical pain.”

  “In the old days women knew full well that to procreate they had to suffer.”

  “Are you comparing the pain of childbirth with what Celia was feeling when she looked at …”—he’s about to tell her about the hand, but he corrects himself at the last moment—“I mean, when she was looking at the pictures?”

  “Let’s see, I don’t know, anxiety can be caused by many things, often all mixed up. All I’m saying is that creation requires a certain discomfort; and it’s curious to me that you of all people are surprised, since you’re carrying out an investigation on that very subject.”

  “So you’re not afraid of subjecting yourself to that discomfort?”

  “Is there some problem that makes you want me to take it back?”

  “No, quite the opposite.” It’s foolish of him to show reluctance when given the best opportunity he’s had for days: he will receive a visit, of her own accord, from the woman he’s been longing to speak to again, he has a volunteer for his experiments, and at the same time an expert in emotional states, all in one fell swoop. “I’d like to meet you before the interview with Celia, which we’ve set up for next Wednesday. Could you come this weekend?”

  “Perfect, that way I won’t have to make any changes to my work schedule.”

  They agree that he will let her know as soon as he acquires the permit, and when there is nothing left to arrange, Leo thinks to ask after the girl and whether they’ve told her that her friend threw herself off the platform yet.

  “Poor thing, that really is suffering. I doubt that all your devices combined would be able to capture it.”

  A timely shudder seizes Leo, allowing him a glimpse of what it would be like to transmute himself into Celia right now.

  28

  Silvana feels strange, she’s not used to hiding where she’s going and why, though she’s always claimed she doesn’t have to explain herself to anyone. Luckily she’s already in the aero’taxi and on the way to CraftER, without having raised any suspicions within the ComU. Baltasar being totally snowed under all week with the preparations for the annual gathering of ComUs made it easy for her; and when it came to Sebastian, she’s avoided being alone with him the last few days, just in case. She’s convinced that she has to keep quiet about it, but some part of her nature, which she’s been suppressing, keeps nagging at her. See how foolish she’s being: not only is she mixing with a pro-techno, like when she was with Jul, but she’s also going right into his lair. No matter how much proof she might obtain of extinct emotions that might be recovered, no one at the Ideological Committee will ever approve of her having taken this step. Not even she would agree with it, if she were a member.

  This is a good reason not to assume that kind of responsibility, Silvana tells herself fiercely: If she had to give up her sense of adventure, what would she have left? A long string of years stretched out before her, dedicated to the same old bodies and identical slogans, what a stimulating perspective. She’d always have old books to turn to, of course, and cases like Celia’s … Celia. With her it’s been difficult not to let slip anything she didn’t want to say. Every time Leo has come up in conversation, and he’s come up a lot over the last few days while they’ve been doing the sessions at the ComU, a spike of adrenaline has put her on high alert inside, though on the outside she’s made an effort to maintain her voice and posture, so as not to give anything away, or, on the contrary, to come across as too inscrutable. It’s been really difficult, as Silvana is moved when Celia confides in her, but she always has the sense that Celia keeps her most intimate thoughts to herself. Rarely in her entire life has Silvana felt so powerless. The more she learns about Celia’s hidden depths the more it seems she has to discover. And the more she realizes, painful as it is to accept, that her massage is but a superficial tool, completely useless for any further excavation.

  She wishes she could convince herself that the bioengineer, for whom Celia feels a strange affection, she’s sure of that now, could help the girl in some way. Maybe by putting herself in the child’s skin and experiencing her feelings, she will be able to help her too. She’s not afraid of suffering if it’s for a good cause, and Celia is the best cause she’s had anywhere near her since she became affiliated with the ComU. Yesterday, when the tips of her fingers were manipulating those muscles that form part of a landscape she now knows so well, she felt a bit treacherous keeping today’s appointment a secret, but on a conscious level she didn’t know how to tell her. She has no desire to cause Celia any more harm than they all already have.

  As soon as she begins to discern CraftER’s shining facade, the aero’taxi starts its descent. Today it won’t be landing on the eighth floor like last time, nor will she have to remain on the platform. Leo has gotten her a permit to enter not only the company, but also his cubicle, a privilege that not even Celia enjoyed but that would certainly make her happy.

  Silhouetted against the brightness of the main entrance, a masculine figure begins to take shape as she gets closer. The backlighting, the angle of approach, the imminence of the unexpected as the figure gets closer and closer, everything comes together in a flash: a memory of Jul coming to find her, without warning, to give her a heads up that things weren’t going well in the negotiations between her commune and his colleagues. It was the best result of a long and otherwise sterile mediation: confirming that she could seduce a pro-techno to the point that he would risk betraying his convictions. How moving, that gesture of loyalty that kept her company at her lowest moments. She can’t believe she’d forgotten that. If it weren’t for this combination of circumstances she might never have remembered, and her memories of Jul would have been reduced forever to the moments of hand-to-hand combat—both the rational and the not so rational—with that powerful yet inexperienced colossus that are so easy to evoke.

  For Silvana it’s an excellent sign that Leo has arrived early and is waiting for her outside. He’s wearing a jacket similar to the other day, but this time it’s a maroon color that suits him better, with the same horizontal, black stripe across his chest that highlights the width of his shoulders. She was already looking forward to the meeting, but now it feels even more exciting.

  When she gets out of the aero’taxi, holding his hands, she feels an impulse to kiss him on the lips, but she suppresses it just in time. She must avoid any outpouring of emotion that could embarrass him; last time they met it was pretty obvious that the mere touch of her hand, outside of the established conventions, made him uncomfortable. They’ve come so far with technology, these pro-technos, she thinks, as she puts her hand into the opening the boy is showing her, but when it comes to physical contact, they haven’t moved on since Jul’s time. Perhaps they’re even more ignorant: the third and fourth generations probably don’t even know why they live here and us over there, what it is that separates us.

  Neither the downstairs security system nor the mobile platforms that take them to Leo’s cubicle surprise her much compared with what he explains about the timeout device. She’s not at all pleased that, when she leaves, she’ll forget part of what has happened, and, most of all, she fears there may be harmful side effects. Frozen before the device, she complains that he hadn’
t warned her when they made the appointment, and at the same time wonders whether she should back out.

  “I was so surprised you offered to come that I didn’t think to warn you about it. But there’s no need to worry: I can guarantee it’s totally harmless. I’ve been in and out loads of times.”

  “And has your brain been wiped every time?”

  “It’s not wiped, the information is still in there, but you can’t access it.”

  “How terrible to be denied access to a part of oneself.”

  “Actually, it’s not that strange or artificial. Memory works like that anyway, you must know that. Often an old object or specific visual or auditory surroundings can recall a memory that, otherwise, we never would have recovered.”

  The boy has a gift for this, Silvana thinks: the other day, despite his total ignorance, he guessed that she longed to discover extinct emotions, and now he’s hit the nail on the head with that perfect memory of Jul, without knowing anything about it.

  “So with which object or surroundings will I associate what happens in here?”

  “I’ve simplified things a little: it’s not actually a physical object, but signals that are captured by the brain when it crosses the threshold of the cubicle. Everything related to the project uses this encryption base. When you come out, the base disappears and it becomes impossible to decode the information.”

  “I don’t really understand, but since I’ve come this far …” The analogy of the natural mechanism of memory has put her well enough at ease.