by Sophie Ward
Soon it comes; another shock, and with deeper inroads into the tumour, another and another. Waves of sensation and information. A bubble of light from a soaped hand, the creak of a stair underfoot. Disappointment and comfort, relief and humiliation. Parents, cars, toothpaste. Politics, poetry, holidays, arguments. Boudicca and Linux and Gone with the Wind and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Nail polish, libraries, Christmas. Eliza.
Grab hold of every feeling and thought. The Encyclopaedia of Rachel. Each entry multiplied by another. The scent of herbs means basil means Italy means a Tuscan affair, wild hair, wilder sex, tearful goodbyes, letters, emails, Facebook, a promise, jealousy, family. And any one of those ideas could lead in a different direction. The electricity pulses with life and with each bite and each shock death retreats a little further.
Days of this. The tunnel grows. Scoop out the hollows and pull again at the electric cord that twists round a fibrous jelly. Watch a wildlife documentary. Learn about Mozart. Listen to a telephone message from Eliza. Remember the first taste of seawater. Listen, learn, feel, remember. Each shock is milder and the connection stronger until one day there is no need for the shock itself. We are one. Everything that Rachel feels belongs to me. Everything she knows is known to me. Only her moment-to-moment thoughts are unavailable unless my jaws are locked in. Exhaustion overwhelms me after a short exposure to her stream of consciousness.
Rest. Wait. Digest. The smaller tendrils have died. The tumour has stopped growing. Our pain is a memory, her headaches gone. My body lies in one of the smaller tunnels, replete, exhausted, but my mind sees everything. All that Rachel sees and knows, and far beyond. For whereas she remembers in part, spark to tiny spark, all she has ever known is mine to recall at will. Books, conversations, lectures, films, letters. Every single idea that has passed through her at any time in her life, is available to me. My being is overflowing with the history of humankind and with Rachel’s history in particular.
Try to think of Ki, from my tunnel in Rachel’s head, but she is gone from me. The colony, my world before. The taste of moonlight and the sound of grass, the twitch and tap of the long march seem but a little life from a distant past. Where to go from here? There is work to do; that is still my code. With the world at my feet stretching into an invisible horizon, there is the comfort of an order to impose on what lies immediately before me.
Bite a little more each day. Now that the memories are there, only the temperament changes. Hormones, social interaction, weather patterns, all affect our mood. To avoid any more exposure to the stresses of human life than the tides and tumour already carry, my mind chooses particular thoughts on which to focus. I do not follow the running commentary of impossible things. Her mother calls from far away, and I cannot process the country or the subject of their conversation under the weight of feeling that floods us. There is news that Rachel is withholding. From her mother, from herself. The burden of this disguise has worn us both down, wrapped, it seems, in hope and desire, bitter memories and the almond tang of sugar and death. I leave Rachel to her mother.
In my head on this particular day are Tomasini’s String Quartet in B flat major IV, the sound of a thousand butterflies dancing in a field one late summer, the cover illustration from a Penguin edition of Our Mutual Friend, a recipe for Key Lime cheesecake, the text of an A-level Geography book, and a pocket watch. All are curiosities floating around Rachel’s consciousness whilst not being the centre of her attention. These ideas occupy me quite pleasantly when her mind suddenly focuses on one particular thought and it becomes impossible to concentrate on anything else. At that moment, my jaws are unlocked from a large bite and there is no immediate connection with Rachel’s brain save my usual tapping and tunnelling. The change in temperature and the flow of her spinal fluid are unmistakeable though. She is experiencing an event.
What sort of event is impossible to tell for within seconds of observing her altered state of mind, a liquid wave catches me and sweeps me downstream towards the cortex. My balance was affected by the loss of my leg and the early shocks knocked me down but never before have the tides taken me over. Struggle to right myself, fight against the force of the current that drags me along. My knowledge of her body is confined to Rachel’s understanding of human anatomy, the plethora of biologically themed reality television shows she has watched and my own limited explorations. There is a dread of stomach acids and other bodily fluids that might damage my exoskeleton, without any definitive information on the possibilities of this taking place. My body whirls in the drain that descends from her neck. Are her organs contained in pouches and membranes as her brain is? Or is everything held in place with these ropes that swoop along the vertebrae? Time is running out. Push against the viscous liquid, push harder, feel the pull of the uncharted depths below. Reach a hollow pocket at the top of the spine and lock my jaws on a sinuous wall as the last of the tide flows past me.
Rachel’s feelings, strong as the current, rush into me. She is charged with emotion, not just one, all of them simultaneously crash through her bloodstream. Thoughts and images too fleeting to grab hold of flicker between us, and something else. The regular thud of her heart is louder here in the small chamber, undampened by a solid mass of tissue; and fainter and faster, knocking at the edges of our consciousness as insistent as the rain, another beat. Bang-bang, bang-bang: the rush of a new heart, clutching at the edge of existence, pulses into life.
writeln (‘Current time : ‘,
TimeToStr(Time));
For the rest of the pregnancy and for some time after the birth, the days were easier. The tumour stopped growing and, after eventually recovering my position by the lower membrane, my work progressed smoothly. We suffered no headaches and the occasional nausea and dizziness was at first hormonal and later fatigue. Tuning in to Rachel’s consciousness became enjoyable. Her thoughts were as complicated and prolific as ever but they had at their centre a contentment and focus; the growing child inside her. My own attention was taken with a diametrically opposed task but the levels of effort involved were comparable. Even with the tumour under control, the chaos that blossomed around the dense flesh was compelling.
If you wonder why this cause held my attention for so long even when my knowledge had expanded far beyond my immediate realm, imagine yourself born into a small community, a farming cooperative or an extended family household. You know your job. You work each day for the benefit of the unit and do not question your part in it, only your success or failure to complete the task. The members of the community know your business, share your living quarters, your food, your conversation. The question is not whether you would like or dislike such an existence, as liking and disliking are not part of your programming. Your life just is. But one day some flaw or fault, or perhaps some greater code, in the genetic lottery leads you astray. You receive an unknown signal, call it a gut instinct, to change the pattern and leave everything you have known behind. Your new job requires the skills you already have, but you work alone. You learn a new language, develop ingenious working methods, investigate a purpose for which you have sole responsibility for success or failure. The voices in your head are replaced with your own thoughts and feelings. What happens when the task is complete? You cannot go back to the life you had. You wouldn’t last a day.
You have heard that call. Your long marriage, your small town, your high-powered job. Some of you went and some of you stayed. There is no right and wrong to it. You know my choice, if such it was.
In any case, it did not matter at first. Yes, the work seemed almost complete and the urgency of purpose had abated. Without the urgency, and with the ability of language with which to analyse, my situation required some thought. And there was Arthur.
The intrusion of the new heartbeat disturbed my work pattern, the faster pulse twitched at my antennae and the flush of different hormones threw my senses. The oneness of Rachel that had made such an impression on my dawning consciousness was gradually breaking down. Not into two bu
t apart. With the advent of their son, Rachel began to shed the protective layer that separated her first from Eliza and now her child, and as she relaxed our connection grew. Now when my jaws fastened on to her, there was space to be part of her dream state. My dreams were of the colony and hers were often of me.
We would wake back into our separate bodies, glad to be alive. Back at the colony my electric life would have long worn out and my corpse would have been stored as the next generation took my place. Only the queen lives beyond the seasons. Being away from home, and establishing what might be called my own nest, meant that my status had changed. This understanding crept upon me slowly and with the realisation came thoughts of Ki and the distance between us. None of our column would still be alive except me.
My feelings for Ki now had a name and whether the emotions sprang from the words or whether they had always existed but were muted by their namelessness is hard to tell. Certainly, the knowledge that Ki was lost to me forever was a new kind of pain that made the learning seem more of a curse than a blessing.
Tap tap tap. Feel my way around Rachel’s self. Hear the call of another, the taste of new life. Every day the rhythm pulses, a human song, a hymn. Twitching at my senses, my system raw. Tap at the new cells, the different cells, the male code growing inside her. Bite a little, store a little. Tap tap tap.
The day he is born is as a storm or a fire. A raging inferno that sweeps through our bodies and leaves us for dead on the riverbank. We fight for breath, the boy un-cocooned, Rachel as the husk of my queen once she has laid her eggs. We are spent.
begin
Three months after the birth the tumour starts to grow again. Hooked into the routine of the infant Arthur, the first tendrils escape me and it is not until Rachel stands quite still one day in the kitchen of her new home that we feel it. The claws of the animal have unsheathed. She stares for some time at a cobweb laced in the batons of the window and her thoughts are empty as my crop. It is time to go back to work.
Dig, tunnel, bite, stamp. Push at the blood-rich flesh. Store some, move some, call for help. No one comes. Who would, or could? Not my fallen sisters. Not my great-great-nieces. My scent is gone, my voice unravelled. Push, bite, stamp. Alone. Unheard. Apart from him.
He has seen me, far beyond his mother’s eyes. He has felt me, from cell to cell. He looks into his mother’s face and hears my song on the evening breeze, Ameising, Ameising.
Years pass in this way. We manage. The child unfurls beneath us as a fern and we provide the sun and shade. And steadily the tumour grows.
begin end.
The last day is cold. She runs a bath and takes her book. We will read together. The water runs hot at her feet. It is hard to see the words. We wait. No more zapping and pain. No more ice vein numbness hollowing out our bones. Just this. Warm water and words on a page, telling us of the world beyond, the way things are or were or ought to be. She thinks of Arthur and of Eliza and how they will lie in her bed together. She lets her head rest on the edge of the bath. Her heavy head. She remembers the way her son tucks his hand into her sleeve to feel her skin as they walk along, the way her wife turns back before she leaves each day. She draws one more breath and lets go.
end
You see how it was. There was no going back but there was a need to go on. The second part of my life had only just started. Everything that Rachel knew was mine and the world was as a colony when the queen has finished her reign. It was time to search and build, to search for the new electricity. The queen is dead; long live the queen.
begin
Tap tap tap. Feel my way along the skull. Hear water lapping and the silence of Rachel’s heart. Taste the newer bitterness of her blood. Tap tap tap. Find the jelly of the eye and the space behind. Push, push into the salt and the air and the outside skin of her. Push into the world again from this new womb.
Wait now for the child to return. Wait again to find him. There is another self that waits for me, another incarnation. This is freedom, this is consciousness. My own thoughts, my own feelings. The ‘I’ of me. And we have work to do beyond this world now that I am born.
5
Clementinum
What Mary Knew
Frank Jackson wrote a thought experiment about Mary, a brilliant scientist who has been raised in an entirely black and white environment with monitors of the outside world. She has studied all the information about colour and has specialised in the neurophysiology of vision. Despite all her knowledge of colour will she learn anything new when she is released from her room and sees red for the first time? Is there some other quality of experience that is not definable in physical terms?
It is inescapable that her previous knowledge was incomplete. But she had all the physical information. Ergo there is more to have than that.
Frank Jackson Philosophy Bites
Rachel had three outfits that were comfortable to wear in bed and today, though she was not in bed, she sported all of them.
‘I’ll be home early, with Arthur,’ Eliza said, before she left for work. She glanced at Rachel’s cardigan layers. ‘Do you want me to turn the heating up?’
Rachel brushed Eliza’s passing arm with her fingertips.
‘Clothes are better.’
Eliza paused at the front door. ‘You don’t have to worry about the planet right now,’ she said without turning around, ‘Just think about yourself for once.’
Rachel chose not to correct her. They shouldn’t row before Eliza went to work; who knew what the day would bring? This day in particular. She had made Arthur’s breakfast, pasted his collected leaves into one of the big scrap books they were making together, got him ready for school. She watched Eliza’s retreating figure from the sitting room window. Today was a good day.
There was never quite time enough to explain what she wanted to say, Rachel thought as she returned to the kitchen. She was not quick like Eliza, ready to change conversation, or mood, in mid-sentence. She liked to consider. She stood at the sink and started on the washing up. Considering. Did that make her considerate, too considerate as Eliza insisted? No, that was something else, about care for others. Rachel’s lassitude was nothing to do with that kind of thoughtfulness, she was merely set at a different tempo from her wife. What was it Greg had said about computer intelligence as opposed to human intelligence? Emotion. Computers couldn’t make the sort of quick decisions that humans were capable of making because they lacked emotions. But Rachel’s emotions only seemed to slow her down.
She submerged her hands in the warm water and let the suds drift up to her elbows. It was not concern for the planet that made Rachel opt for wool instead of radiators. She was cold from the inside. Even with her hair growing back and the bloom of spring, every atom of her being ached with cold. The best she could do was scald herself in the bath and try to keep the heat trapped in her skin before the coldness leached out of her bones and cooled her once again.
Greg seemed to understand this new chill. Greg, who wore a ski jacket from September to June and had stuck a hot water bottle under his hat for his whole first winter in England. He knew how it felt to wonder if you would ever be warm again. When they first met Rachel had laughed at his knee socks and thick jumpers. Only quantities of alcohol allowed any state of undress, late into the night when they all sat giggling on the floor while pregnant Rachel hiccuped on ginger cordial. She missed that version of Greg now that the giggling had stopped. On the rare occasions she saw him, he would squeeze her hips and shiver in involuntary acknowledgement of her vulnerability to the elements.
Greg kept away from the house these days. He hadn’t signed up to be a dad when he met Hal, but that was how things had turned out. Rachel sometimes wondered if they had all been part of a scam, tricking Greg into staying around when Rachel got pregnant because it was convenient for the three of them. That was one way of looking at Greg’s situation and Rachel tried to be fair especially since it was she, more than anyone, who had wanted to have a child. But Greg had s
eemed so relaxed during the discussions and the pregnancy, as though meeting an English guy, moving to England, changing jobs, and finding out he was going to be a co-parent was all a great plan. Tra-la-la, happy families. Only, when Rachel was diagnosed the plan wasn’t so great any more.
Rachel missed him. It was Hal who took Rachel out to museums and galleries, Hal who collected Arthur from nursery and brought him home. Rachel kept a scrapbook so that Arthur could put in his drawings and tell her about his day. She could only manage an hour or two of childcare and Hal often stayed late into the afternoon, lifting Arthur into the kitchen while Rachel slept. She would wake to the scent of baking; cardamom or chocolate cake, hazelnut shortbread and lemon ricotta tarts; food to coax Rachel’s appetite. He and Arthur would bring a tiny dish to her bed and balance it among the pillows and books.
‘Biscuits,’ said Arthur, though he pronounced it ‘Bithciths’.
‘Greg calls them cookies,’ Hal said once to be helpful.
‘Cookies?’ Arthur frowned. ‘We cooked them?’
Rachel bit a corner from the gingerbread. ‘You sure did, baby.’ It was infectious, Greg’s way of talking, the soft intonation, the homely additions, the swapped e’s and i’s. Rachel and Arthur called it ‘gregspeak’. They kept up the vernacular in Greg’s absence as though they were raising Arthur to be bilingual. For weeks everything that came out of the oven was a cookie.
Rachel rinsed the last of the cutlery under the tap and tried to remember why today was a good day. Eliza would leave work early and bring Arthur home and they would have tea together and watch cartoons and Eliza would kiss her temples as she fell asleep. And she was well enough now to be up and drying dishes, wiping each one with a tea towel until they squeaked. She did this for no other reason than the pleasure it gave her. The sense of continuity with all things she touched and breathed. The weak sunshine reflected in a polished glass, the shiny glaze of a plate. The illuminated particles of life suspended in the filtered light. Her hand in front of her. The day. The day.