As I'm being driven back to the compound, I waken to discover that my head is being cradled in Gretchen's lap. The emotions are so strong I believe I'm still in horrible trouble. I look up to see them looking on with quiet concern. I've done my job. But I feel the void trying to pull me back down. I'm still very sick and I suspect they know it. These private seizures have been the bane of my existence.
I could tell I was getting squeezed through my own perceptual aperture again. Most of my work on brain mapping came from studying the tight lens of awareness as it's twists the world through the pinhole window. All of my work had been the reworking of the unprecedented writings of Maimonides and Spinoza. I just knew that the inside self has a boundary. People have been plucking at the fiber bundles of perspective for as long as we can remember. That the brain could be seen as a simple modular form was something I had long suspected from when I was working the hidden disability service. Dyslexics untie. Reflections of reflections, Rotations on rotations, Symmetries in symmetries. It's always been so simple for me. But did I have to turn my brain machine into a reading industry? Was it all my attempt to fight the downward pull of consciousness? And here I am again, circling the drain.
"We're here." Gretchen says. Ben is here to help me out of the van. I've lost control of my body and I can't move. I'm locked out. "Here help me." "Let's get him back to the lab, I don't want him to stop breathing." I see this extraction unfolding beneath me from above the van. From my minds eye, I look up through the mist and clouds to see a bird high in a bright gap in the clouds. A brief ray of light descends to touch my face but I can only see it from above. I see above and below. Above is eternity. Below is that heap that was my body. Gretchen is starting to yell, but I can't hear what she's saying. I have never been able to stand the pains and suffering of others. I chose to live because I knew that others would suffer if I didn't stay on. I'm not done yet. Soon the equations are floating again, circling, dancing, singing in my ears a poetry of numbers, symbols and forms. I have always hated this loneliness. Just because the machines understand me doesn't mean I ever made any sense.
Ben is on my right and Gunter is holding up my left side, I'm whisked through the doors of Oraca. My consciousness follows from above like a shadow puppet in flight. Through the lobby, the dinning hall, back into the offices and laboratories, back to Ben's laboratory clinic. I'm slid into the examination chair and reconnected to the wires leading to my old friend, the machine. Gretchen is very upset. I think she is blaming herself and regrets abducting me into this carnival of corporate power. Suddenly, I hear a voice.
"Phillip,,,,,." "Phillip,,,." "It's me." "It's your homunculus." "I don't think I can wait any longer." "I need you to get back in you body." "Your friends are going to have to restart your heart." I feel a painful shock to my body and my ears start ringing. But at least they are "My" ears that are ringing. "I'm really here," says the voice.
"Did you say something?" I say. Bewildered glances amongst the relief.
Ben says, "Don't freak us out like that." "Nobody likes to worry." "Follow my finger."
"Why?" I say, "Where's it going?" We all laugh uncomfortably. "I mean did any of you hear what or whom was trying to speak to me?" More bewildered looks.
"They can't hear me Phillip, I'm only attuned to you for now."
