Here & There (70 page)
Authors: Joshua V. Scher
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Page 198
. . . the card from the game.
In order to create fluid play (and short-term memory activation), I arranged our deck in front of the transmission pad, but also laid out a second deck of Concentration cards face down in the exact same pattern in front of the target pad (making sure to remove whichever matched cards had been paired together and removed, so as to replicate our landscape of play exactly).
At roughly a minute forty in, so as to engage and evaluate short-term memory precisely, I would wait until Ecco turned over a previously unturned card and replaced it (unmatched face down). In that moment of completion, Ecco was teleported from transmission to target pad. And play ensued.
1) Subject exhibited no sign of disturbance of state of mind, nor emotional state, as evidenced by calm demeanor and continued participation in play.
2) Subject maintained knowledge of identity of last card flipped the instant before teleportation.
a) Ecco correctly remembered/identified/matched the last card he viewed before teleport.
i. This experiment was repeated several times to corroborate results.
3) In conjunction with memory game’s visual component, subject was also exposed to aural stimulus and tested on this.
a) Right before transmission, I would say a random word or term: purple, argyle, lettuce, etc.
b) After transmission, when prompted, subject accurately repeated the term 100 percent of the time.
i. “Ecco what did Daddy just say?”
ii. “Argyle.”
Quark chromatic adjustments proved to successfully transfer short-term memories.
Once again, however, there appears to have been an unintended side effect. Iteration 2
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has developed Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder. It manifests itself in a variety of tendencies, inclining toward the more compulsive end of the spectrum. The most glaring behavior along these lines is his constant teeth brushing.
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Iteration 2 can brush his teeth upwards of ten to almost twenty times a day. After several weeks, this has led to problematic gum bleeding.
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Which Iteration 2? Iteration 2A or Iteration 2F? He ran the experiment several times!
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Page 458
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However, while the tendency is toward compulsivity, Iteration 2 is also fascinated and consumed with detail. So much so that it can sometimes preclude even the simplest of tasks. For example, when both boys were presented with a new pack of Legos, Otto jumped
right in and started playing, while Ecco focused on the packaging: the feel of the glossy finish of the box, the slightly rough edge of folded-in tabs, the extensive pictures and little descriptions that covered the box front-and-back (even though Ecco is not literate he had to take in every detail of the text). By the time Ecco had finished with the box, Otto had already finished playing Legos and moved on to another activity. This attention to detail interrupts the entire flow of his day. Even using the remote to turn on the television can devolve into a ten-minute examination of the remote itself and any nicks, scratches, or stains it has acquired through use. This obsessiveness has proved so disruptive that it has instigated countless clashes and fights between the boys, as Otto cannot adjust to the bizarre sudden changes in his brother’s behavior.
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Hiding Ecco from Eve has become difficult. The fact is, she’s simply home more, or more present when home.
At least to Otto.
Ecco’s teeth brushing, while constant, has occurred under the radar. Eve notices Ecco’s hourly disappearances, but they rarely register with her. Furthermore, she never pursues/follows him to find out what he’s doing. Instead she stays with Otto or simply continues to invest in whatever her task (whether it’s work or writing or cooking
or simply watching a television program). The only area where Eve is aware, or even hypervigilant, is in the kitchen. Whether it’s for Ecco’s or Otto’s protection (or both) is unclear. But the egg incident is still clearly present for her.
It wasn’t until the bleeding that Ecco’s behavior became too obvious to deny. However, I have bought some time, I think, with the explanation that he’s just brushing his teeth too hard or a little too often.
The stuffed animals have been easy enough to defuse. Eve almost never goes into Ecco’s room. So, at least as far as I know, she’s never seen how, every night before bed, he turns all of his stuffed animals to face the wall. And as I learned after the first confrontation with him about this, if you don’t fight it, he won’t cause any sort of ruckus. He just needs to face them all against the wall to fall asleep. Just as a precaution though, a few hours after he drifts off, I turn them back in a haphazard manner.
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While I realize that this might actually be anxiety-provoking for Ecco (to wake up and the animals have turned themselves around), and may even reinforce the behavior, I am more concerned with the potential anxiety from Eve becoming aware of this habit.
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Page 515
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The fingerpainting, unfortunately, was unavoidable and startling. Ecco’s obsessive consumption of detail and compulsive driven stamina enabled him to conjure the door practically out of thin air.
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It stirs a cyclone of ambivalence within the viewer, simultaneously awed at the skill and verisimilitude, while also horrified by the mental state necessary for the child to create this. I’m sure as an artist herself, Eve must have been both drawn to the work and to Ecco, while also being repelled by both. Perhaps that’s what drove her to Spencer.
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Page 506
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pages 210
,
435
,
476
: Foucault to suspicious toasters to absinthe.
… … … …
It is still unclear as to whether this is, strictly speaking, a physiological side effect or a psychological one. Has this iteration’s neurology been changed or simply his thought patterns? Can these two things even be separated? From a biological perspective OCD can arise from changes in a body’s natural chemistry or have a genetic component (although no specific genes have been identified yet). Insufficient serotonin could also contribute to this disorder, which is why SSRIs can be effective for treatment. That being said, there are some theories that it can be a behavior learned over time, both from the cognitive behavioral and the psychodynamic camps. Clearly, Iteration 2 would not have had time to “learn” a behavior over time, but my variations within the quark landscape might have drastically terraformed his mental one.
Carbon allotrope alteration proved only partially successful. While on a microlevel, diamond lattice was successfully shifted to improve clarity from VS1 to VVS1, the macrostructure was compromised.
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Page 199
. Compromised? I’ll say—he cracked his wife’s diamond in two!
Need to more precisely isolate the adjustments made to the quark chromodynamics.
A
May 28, 2008
Iteration 3 has been a horrifying failure. I am deleting all of the chromodynamic settings.
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See Galilee 6:21, Experiment 7 Alpha.
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I am still shaken.
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While the goal of this experiment was achieved, he’s a monster.
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Purpose: to successfully transfer subject’s emotional state during teleportation.
Method: instigate emotional state within subject that manifests in clear demeanor immediately prior to Q resonation and track maintenance of behavior/emotion.
Conclusion: Initial attempts to prompt joy through laughter proved challenging. Negative emotional states offered clearer consistency. Ultimately, pleasure and laughter were exchanged for pain and crying. Negative states were more consistent, less ephemeral.
Subject was pinched until pained crying ensued. Subject remained in this distressed state while Q resonator was engaged.
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Page 316
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Emotional state (as evaluated by facial expression, crying, sobs, posture) stayed consistent across teleported distance. To that extent, the experiment was effective.
However . . . What he did to the rabbit . . .
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While the instantaneous emotional state of the Iteration 3 was successfully transmitted, the base temperament was drastically altered in fundamental ways. Subject has come to exhibit psychopathic behavior, the most drastic example of which was with the leporid. The subject, once alone, somehow caught the rabbit either behind the garage or sought out the isolated area behind the garage after snaring it. Within this solitude, the subject proceeded to torture the animal. The rabbit was staked to the ground with a number of metal cooking skewers. Each of its limbs was snapped. The rabbit’s ears were both sliced off and subsequently placed on the ground one centimeter away from the bleeding nubs they were cut off of, like one might do when laying out the pieces of a model one were about to construct. Throughout this whole process, the rabbit was kept alive.
It was still breathing when later discovered.
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pages 513
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14
. I guess now we know what made Reidier vomit. Truth be told, just reading that, I almost did myself. I had to stroll out on the Stuck-Up Bridge to look down between the tracks into the river’s depths. I kept thinking about Shelley’s
Frankenstein
. Most misinterpret the story as a condemnation of science. What horrors we can unleash with our ambition and intelligence: creatures, atomic bombs, Eccos. But Shelley was warning us about losing touch with our humanity, admonishing us about forgetting compassion. The sin isn’t that Dr. Frankenstein made the Creature, it’s that he abandoned him. Somehow Reidier went in the opposite direction but ended up in the same place.
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I can’t bring myself to tell Eve. The mole crab incident
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was unsettling enough. I do not know what to do. I cannot stop. Not now.
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I didn’t delete them. It was too dangerous. What if I did it again, accidentally? I had QuAI deal with it. She wrote a restriction algorithm that will prevent, disrupt, and erase any future implementation of these settings while quarantining the specific data behind a quantum lock.
Tonight I have to do something about Iteration 3.
A
June 18, 2008
Iteration 5 is stable and safe enough; subject has yet to manifest any psychopathic behaviors.
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It has been five days, and thus perhaps still too early to be determined. I must still keep Ecco with me at all times. Although to give him room to “misbehave,” I often leave him alone in a room with a video camera, and monitor the feed from another location. I have concurrently escalated the temptations presented to Iteration 5 in these isolation tests. Initially subject was left alone with several stuffed animals, then stuffed animals and scissors, pliers, and knives; next, subject was left alone with a live frog, then the frog with scissors, pliers, and knives; onto, a baby chicken, then a baby chicken and the weapons; lastly, a baby rabbit, followed by the baby rabbit with the weapons. While Iteration 5 showed interest in the animals and the objects, he never became aggressive nor violent toward the animals. He exhibited no weird/bizarre/unsettling behavior. Just “normal” childlike conduct. Nevertheless, side effects still plague the work. Iteration 5 does not sleep. He’s amenable enough to “go to bed” but simply lies there. He never seems to slip into sleep, let alone achieve REM state. Oddly, while Ecco seems unperturbed by his state, he has intuited that it is abnormal and will engage in pretend behavior. He will close his eyes and fake sleep. His intuition is actually so sharp he has been able to infer my anxiety about this condition and my need for him to pretend around Eve. The other night, I went downstairs while he was “sleeping” to get QuAI to run some
gedankens
for me. When I returned, he lay there in the dark. I whispered to him if he were still awake. Ecco nodded and whispered back, “Yes, but I closed my eyes and pretended when Eve checked. She watched a long time.” She’s watching him. I am unclear as to
whether Eve’s watchfulness is a manifestation of her suspicions or rather a growing “maternal” bond that has seemed to develop since the burn damage from the egg incident. These two are not necessarily mutually exclusive. So far, subject has proved immune to a variety of treatments. Melatonin, children’s Benadryl, normal Benadryl, NyQuil, Ambien, Lunesta, scotch—none of these soporific substances have any sleep-inducing effect. (The scotch makes him sick.) Unfortunately, this is not the only side effect. Iteration 5 also appears to have an insatiable appetite. He’s always hungry, so much so that I’ve even caught him eating sweet-smelling cleaning supplies (which also, expectedly, make him sick). Are the hunger and cleaning-supply cravings a result of a fault in the scanning and/or animation processes of teleportation, or are they due to some biological rebellion in response to his body’s dearth of sleep? Did I make my
son
crazy, or is he going crazy? At least Iteration 5 is only self-destructive, instead of outwardly destructive. Regardless, his demeanor is sweet, engaged, generally appealing. I have devolved him from monster to self-saboteur. Toying with a more holistic hypothesis, psychology has an influential dynamic on neurology. Bertram’s been a helpful sounding board. Perhaps the emotional state during transfer has an effect on the underlying topography of brain-wave patterns when restored. So the use of pain to measure the transfer of emotional states with Iteration 3 actually damaged/deformed Ecco’s fundamental wave patterns. Sour Golem’s breath makes for an angry monster. Apparently my use of music instead at least circumvents the issue. By engaging the subject in singing “The 59th Street Bridge Song,” I have been able to transfer a more harmonious emotional state. Ultimately, the goal is not to alter one’s demeanor, but simply
mirror
replicate it.
