Red Star Tales

by Yvonne Howell

  “But did you play out a reverse reorganization on the perceptron?”

  We did. It is possible. On the perceptron anything is possible, but you, of course, are not a perceptron…

  Patrick Yanovich falls silent: no light, no sound, no touch. And what could he really say? The devil himself wouldn’t understand the mess in my brain. From the retina alone a million nerve fibers run into the depths of the brain… but how many of them are there now, where have they gone, and how? No surgical intervention will help. It’s a miracle that I am still alive and can still understand anything.

  It’s dark, quiet: the zero start of perception. Sounds appear only when I move my eyes. They’re somewhat complex, here higher in tone, there lower, louder, weaker, with all sort of overtones. I am “seeing” them: the excitation signals from the eyes, transcribed for the language of the ears. I move my eyes to the opposite side: the reverse sequence of noises. Now more quickly: the same sounds, but sharper, higher… This, too, can be learned. So do that, correlate these impressions with the images you have in your memory. Patrick Yanovich: our trainer and boss, massive, with a big head and a wide brow transitioning to a bald spot ringed by light blond hair; the hard stare of his dark blue eyes, a straight, broad nose above drawn-in lips; a high voice, his words very clearly enunciated (this is why the flashes from him are separated by pauses of darkness more sharply than those from Boris… there is a correspondence, there is!)

  But I recognized him only because he shook my right hand with his left. His right arm is paralyzed and withering, a souvenir of the first readings and radio-flights.

  I did not recognize my friend and enemy Boryunia so much as I sensed him: he’s here. Right away I pictured his face with gunmetal-blue cheeks, full lips and a thick, craggy nose, his scheming and cheerful eyes and his thatch of red, tightly-curled hair (the kind that, as I once noted to him, it would be more decent to grow somewhere besides one’s head). I know him not only from the outside, but from the inside as well: we switched bodies. I was in his body on the Moon, and he was in mine here. A sensational experiment. I felt his presence, was instantly renewed.

  “But why didn’t the ones from Barnard’s Star and Proxima not warn us about these possibilities? With all of their experience…!”

  My dear boy, that’s the thing: in their radio-flights and exchanges they probably didn’t run into problems like these. The Barnardians are silicon-based, their matter exchange processes are slowed down, their structures are invariable. Just think about how long they live, a few years is nothing to them! But the Proximids are altogether crystalloid, for them moving from corporeal existence to electromagnetic and back is like turning on and programming an electronic machine. They don’t experience dedifferentiation.

  Only people like you experience it… And again “Ha-ha-ha” in scarlet flashes.

  “Of course, you wouldn’t have liquefaction of the brain after a flight, since you have to have a brain for that!”

  Oh, well said, dear man! And even before the noises and the visual fluctuations, I guess that Geraklych is in a state of childish glee and wants to hug me. This is what happens. I struggle free.

  “Take your hairy hands off of me! What manners!”

  Boris didn’t have anything similar happen to him, because his radio-flight didn’t last as long, Patrick elaborates civilly. And if this hadn’t happened to you, then it certainly would have happened to him during his next flight. And it would’ve been even worse.

  I ponder this for a minute: can there be an even worse situation? Of course there can. A complete inability to communicate. Descent into idiocy. Autolysis of the body. So it really could be worse… Looks like I saved you, Boryunchik.

  “What will happen now, Patrick Yanovich?”

  We will immerse the bodies of those on long radio-flights in maximally chilled suspended animation, in order to retard all processes to the utmost. We didn’t think of this before; not I, not you… none of us.

  Yep, this is how it always goes: no one ever makes preparations until it’s too late… At first, we practiced short radio-flights, for minutes, hours, a day at most, and the body had to be kept in reception readiness, at an almost normal level of vital activity. This methodology remained on the books. A lot of people at the Institute are probably throwing up their hands: how did we not think this through?

  “And me… what about me?”

  The question probably had a note of dramatic strain in it (I have no control over this, there is no feedback), because there followed a pause of darkness-silence.

  You… well, the first thing is to dictate a report of your flight. Do your duty, so to say, to the last. Get situated in your new state. I’m not going to take it on myself to give you advice, but… in your place I would try to be as useful as possible to humanity, even as a unique clinical case. Neurophysiologists are going to fight for the opportunity to study you, to experiment with you, because you are now the exception that will help them understand the rules. The rules of information processing in the brain – until now they have been impenetrable.

  “Well thanks a lot! And you’re just going to hand me over to them to be torn apart?”

  Well… you do as you wish. As far as we’re concerned, we’ll do everything we can to maximally restore your ability to communicate.

  No, I’m the one who will do it! I have an idea. You are going to kiss my hairy hands! Boris comforts me in reddish-orange.

  One last thing: Camilla is here. Do you want us to let her see you?

  “Does she know?”

  No more than everyone else.

  “But what does everyone else know?”

  The official statement is: M. A. Kolotilin, psychonaut and doctor of physics has completed the longest radio-flight in the history of humanity, along the median line and with independent course corrections. His return was completed within satisfactory parameters. The psychonaut is under observation.

  Of course, if I am alive, that alone is satisfactory. Like getting a C.

  “No, don’t let Camilla up yet… since I am ‘under observation.’”

  They get up: booming noise from their movements, from changes in illumination. They leave. I feel very tired, either from the method of communication, or from what I have learned. “Abandon all hope…”

  It’s dark, quiet, and lonely. Very lonely.

  6

  English, in school and later at the Institute, was not my easiest subject. It really made no sense to me, especially that horrible sound “th.” I barely passed my exams. This was how things stood until some articles about me appeared in British and American scientific journals. Not just about me, of course, but also about Boris and about the now dead Olaf Patersen, Vanya Ptakh, Arjun, Gumenyuk, about our entire team of psychonauts. But here and there was a paragraph, or even two, about me. And that’s where my commitment to “Inglish,” and my understanding of it, finally came from! I just had to read, to verify whether they had distorted either my inimitable likeness or some tiny fact. Personal interest is a big deal.

  Now I felt the same attitude erupt in me towards neurophysiology, psychophysiology, psychocybernetics, psybionics, and theories of perception – towards that entire knot of sciences attempt to explain why we see as we do, hear as we do, etc. The photoelement glides along the lines of text, and the pins fluently convey the words and symbols to my fingers. I dictate the parts that particularly interest me onto a tape recorder so that I can later see them in light. It’s like reading a detective novel, staying up into the dead of night.

  Unfortunately, this detective novel is not yet finished. The structure of the eye and the ear is understood. The arrangement of nerve paths from them to the brain are more or less known, where they branch and converge, where they intersect… in short, we know all that, in Boryunia’s precise expression, can be found out through dissection. But as concerns the intercommunication of the living eyes and ears and the living brain – orientation, recognition of images, deciphering sounds, searching
for and isolating the information one needs, all the foundations of rational, intelligent behavior – oh, here things are bad! “Despite the fact that the process by which specific objects are found by their visual images is still not understood (!), it should be assumed that…” “What happens to acoustic information as it makes its way from the ear to the brain? The answer to this question can generate only disappointment.”

  This is how the more conscientious authors write. The others, in their scholastic aplomb, are simply silent on the unanswered questions, as if they don’t exist. And what can you say: how can you ask a student to know something if you yourself admit that you don’t know a damn thing about the given problem?

  They conduct experiments on rabbits, frogs, cats (“Why does a cat need frequency-modulating detector neurons in its cerebral cortex? We do not know.” P. Lindsey, D. Norman. “Nor do I.” M. Kolotilin), less often on monkeys. For the most part they all boil down to destroying or removing some part of these poor creatures (a region of the brain, nerves, some component of the ear or the eye), and in this alone they bring to mind – may Mighty Science forgive me – the anecdotal experiment that proves the cockroach hears with its legs: if one taps on a table, then the control cockroach runs away, but the test cockroach, with its legs ripped off, calmly stays in place.

  I will not bring my “ailment” to the doctors. Sure, they can provide me with the minimum preventative care or operate according to equipment safety standards. But there’s just no hope for me in seeking a cure from them.

  But just the same, reading these “detective novels” has gotten me in a good mood. What did the job was one particular little chapter – as intoxicating as a car chase after gangsters with guns blazing – called “Temporary Encoding in Neurons.” Here is what it talks about. We perceive sounds with a frequency of up to twenty thousand vibrations per second (whereas bats can perceive much higher vibrations). But the fibers of the auditory nerves – the so called “hair cells” – cannot send vibrations of this frequency: they are limited to hundreds of nerve impulses per second, and they still have to keep a reserve of frequency to transmit intensity (the stronger the sound, the faster the impulses). So how do they transmit high-frequency notes? It’s very simple: a dozen or so neurons divide up the work amongst themselves. One nerve fiber transmits the first high-frequency vibration, and then runs out of steam for a few milliseconds; but the next vibration gives rise to an impulse in the neighboring neuron, the third in the next one down… and so it goes, until the first nerves recharge and once again switch on to work. But if the sound is not only of a high frequency, but is also intense, then more neurons switch on to transmit it: everything is accounted for.

  Let them suspect me of bad taste, but I savored this little chapter with the delight one would usually reserve for a great work of art. Somehow everything became clear at once.

  This is the reason why this kind of research is difficult, because the brain, a very responsive and sensitive hypercomplex system, does not tolerate rude intrusions. And it is a more honest system than all the sense organs. The world is integrated, and all of its manifestations that we perceive as distinct in quality actually differ quantitatively (the simplest example: “red” light and “blue” light are distinguished only by the length of the light wave), though this extends across an enormous range of values. But the brain transforms even the quantitative coloration of our impressions back into something whole, something universal: into impulses, impulses, impulses, racing along our neurons. Thanks to this we can isolate, from the motley variety of life, essence, meaning, the point.

  But if this is so, then what should I trust more: the world as others perceive it, or the world as I myself perceive it?

  The brain is a living homeostat,5 inexhaustible in its striving for the balance that life (impressions, experiences, the influences of the environment, bodily processes, problems) is constantly pulling it out of. But the usual impressions/problems/processes pull the brain out of sync by just a little, and balance can be restored by the usual reactions: having something to eat, exercising bodily functions, blushing or turning pale, saying “come by tomorrow,” and so on.

  My breakdown of balance is far more severe. To restore it, a fundamental reconstruction of how the brain works must take place. Such a reconstruction is probably already underway inside me. How? Some sort of new interpretation of all these bursts of impulses?

  I still have one advantage over the “not mixed up,” and generally over all those frantic scientists experimenting on cats; namely, I have flown as a “radio-essence,” and while doing so I perceived the world not at all in the usual way.

  7

  “…Reading is a conscious, willed process. I comprehend the essence of my essences, the wholeness of my nature, the continuity of my existence. At the same time, I, so to speak, survey and weigh, appraise the differential distinctions of my personality with an inner glance. I appraise the distinctiveness of my health and life force, my manhood (and it exists, Yulia, in addition to my irresistible exterior), the distinctiveness of my intellect, the depths of my memory, and, finally, the distinctiveness of my character. These essences, I have to say, are distributed predominantly in the upper part of my body, for I, as you know, am high-minded…”

  This is me, following Patrick’s order, fulfilling my duty to the last, dictating my report. Even when it was just an ordinary task, these dictations always seemed boring to me, translating into words that which is more meaningful and deeper than any words, and now I’m not at all in the right mood for this. My thoughts drift away.

  “But this does not happen to everyone. Some have characters centered in the stomach, concerned only with matter transfer, with the working of their internal organs. Other’s hearts are entirely in their boots. Of course, we won’t exchange those kind of people with the Barnardians or with the Proximids…”

  You’re getting side-tracked… I perceived the yellowish-green phrase even though my fingers at that moment were not touching the pins of the blind reader. These were maybe not the exact words: don’t get side-tracked or even stop being silly, but the meaning is right, you have my word. I can already do a little.

  “No I’m not, Yulia, why do you say that! The question of exchange-partner personality equivalence is important. It has been insufficiently studied, and here we could run into something unexpected. Did you know that we and our stand-ins place different, sometimes even opposite content in certain identically designated personality features? Let’s take morality…”

  Max, you’re impossible! I’ve just turned on the tape recorder.

  (The mores of the Barnardinians is a subject that shocks not only our women…)

  It’s not that I’m completely impossible, kind Yulia Vasilevna, and it’s not that I’m a vulgar jerk: it’s just that right now I have to excite emotions in people. Negative emotions, positive emotions, any emotions at all. Then I understand them better. The information collected by the senses cannot be boiled down to what we see and hear, otherwise how is it that we feel it when someone directs their gaze at us?

  “Fine, I’ll continue the report… So, self-control, a renunciation of all that is earthly; I allow (and then aid) the machine to read, in the correct order, my psy-charges, to imbue them with energy of super-high-frequently oscillations, and to transmit them to the vortical antenna array. In this way I launched in the form of a “radio-packet,” eight hundred meters in diameter, with a duration of two seconds (or, and this is really the same thing, a length of six hundred thousand kilometers), a carrying frequency of twenty gigahertz, my own energy output being 5.5 megajoules. This is serious energy, the amount we consume in the form of food calories over ten years. The rotational period of my energy vortex, naturally, was also two seconds: the antenna formed it this way. You saw how this happens, Yulia, a pillar of radiant ionized air pierces through the whole of the atmosphere above the Institute, and then nothing…”

  I’ve seen it, I know, don’t get side-tracked, sema
phored my assistant in green light.

  “Um-hm… I should say that I did not even for a split second feel separate from the material world. I had simply moved from one state to another, and then, in an electromagnetic state, I sensed outer space far more closely, more palpably. It’s probably how a fish senses the water.

  “My basic concern during the flight was to compress my vortex, not to allow it to diffuse. As for the other worries, well… we are probably still at the beginning of our evolution in the Universe, we exist in space on the same level as mollusks in the ancient seas or worms in the soil; my interference interaction with the surrounding radio emissions had the character of tangential contacts, of the touch of something diffuse, sometimes of warmth or cold, sometimes of fear or pain, nothing higher than that. The Sun, the Earth, and later even Jupiter warmed me with their radio waves, like three stars; I even got a little replenishment from them. But soon they were left far behind.

  “This energy diffusion – and only a small fraction of my vortex reached the first retransmitter – gave rise to a feeling of weakness, fatigue, and then even hunger, as well as fear that I would be lost in the emptiness. Only the pings of the radio-impulse beacon from the retransmitter, which grew stronger and stronger, increased my buoyancy and hope. And when I reached the receiving antenna, and then the power plant, I experienced a wild joy: I satiated my “hunger,” increased my energy and distinctiveness. And I flew forward as a mighty vortex!

  “No, of course it was not all just animal sensations. There was the feeling of my own enormity and impetuosity, commensurate with the scales and movements of the real world, the Galaxy, the feeling of confluence with space-time, with the mighty and calm stream of matter. Besides that, I recalled – somehow at a remove – my former station, a petty corporeality, with a false isolation from the environment (on which one wholly depends), but rich in the sensations and complexities of relationships. I recalled how I had been transformed, where I was rushing to, my objectives… not in words, but in essences, through a readiness to do the thing. And of course there was a feeling of triumph when I myself consciously switched over the second retransmitter and set off on the way home. Now I could recognize the surrounding “radio-landscape”… On the whole, Yulia, the Galaxy in radio emissions looks not at all like it does in the visible spectrum.”