The Descartes Project

Note: This is a passage from a short story I wrote.  Brook is a medical intern who takes care of Descartes during the daytime.  Descartes is a man who is actually made up of organs, muscles, eyes and a brain.  He does not have any bones or skin.  He lives in a tank and communicates via a computer chip in his brain which is connected to a monitor.  Here is the snippet:

After all the visitors had left that day, Brook turned to her microphone, which used the computer chip in the brain to facilitate message input, and said, “So, what happened to make you live this way?”
            Brook, who had been interning for some three weeks, was still uncertain whether she should look at the eyes when she was talking, or whether she should look at the monitor.  And so she compensated by looking back and forth between the two, sometimes looking at the eyes on the stand and sometimes looking at the monitor that was at the center of the monitors on the wall.  Since Descartes had no skin, and since eyes without the surrounding facial structure are not apt at providing insight into emotion, it was hard for Brook to tell whether the man was amused by her question or angered, for there was a slight pause before words appeared on the monitor.
            When the answer came, it read thus: “Oh, Brook.  Are you sure you are ready for this story?  It was only a week ago that you were staring distractedly at my heart for your entire shift.”
            Miffed, she said, “Just tell me the story.  Someone wanted to know and I told them I would get the answer for them.”
            “In that case, I will comply.  Brace yourself; there’s nowhere close for you to vomit without making a mess,” read the monitor.

Brook glowered, and Descartes began.  There was no audio; soft blue words appeared on the screen when Descartes “said” them and disappeared again when the sentence was complete and he began the next.  “I was born like all humans are born.  I had a mother and a father, and my body was formed in the womb.  When I was born, I had a perfect body.  I had ten fingers and ten toes, I had vocal cords and lips.  I was sustained through my mother’s milk, and later, through proper food.  My mother’s name was Helen, and my father’s name was Phil.  I had an older brother who was named Benjamin.”

Without bothering to excuse herself, Brook left the room to fetch her crocheting.  At present she was crocheting a green and brown blanket for the homeless shelter, though it rather looked more like a potholder at the moment. When she returned, Descartes continued.

            “Some older brothers mercilessly tease their younger brothers and do not include them in their fun.  Benjamin was not one of those.  Benjamin always included me, and we had a lot of fun together.  I had blond hair back then.  Benjamin and I had a tree house to play in, with one of those communication systems which is a can connected to another can with a string so you could listen and talk from the bottom to the top.  We would spy on the neighborhood.  Ben was about three years my senior.
            “One day, the circus came to the town over the hill from our home,” Descartes was saying, and Brook muttered something to herself which the microphone did not pick up.

She checked the time and then, seeing that Descartes had paused in his story, sighed and said into the microphone, “Keep going, I’m paying attention.”

There was a long pause before Descartes continued, and Brook took her shoes off and sat cross-legged in her chair, resuming her crocheting when she was once again comfortable.  “For about a week, Ben and I begged our parents to take us, and finally they agreed and drove us over.  The circus was not only a circus; it was more like a circus connected with a fair, and besides the events, there were booths set up.  There was a strongman, and a…” Here Descartes paused for a moment, as if in thought.  Brook checked the time again.

            Then he continued. “I can’t remember everything.  I just remember that there was a man who was standing by a tub.  Benjamin and I went to see it together, because our parents wanted to go look at something else, I can’t remember what.
            “Ben and I went over there and peeped into the tub.  It was full of what looked like liquid fire.  The wind made ripples across its surface that coalesced, and the sunlight would shine off them to create the illusion of flames.  It was the most beautiful liquid I have ever seen.  The man told us that it was poison, and he had trained himself his whole life so he could withstand it when he got in the tub, but that for anyone else to get in would be disastrous.  I watched him step into the tub and step out and nothing special happened.  Benjamin and I looked at each other and I could tell we were both thinking he was playing us, that it wasn’t poison.
            “We were about to go away when Ben said to me, ‘I dare you to go step in the tub.’
            “I said ‘Naw, Ben, I don’t want to get my shoes wet.’
            “And he said ‘You’re just bein’ a chicken.’
            “I didn’t want my older brother thinking I was a chicken.”  Brook rolled her eyes at this point in his narrative, but Descartes either did not see the gesture or he chose to ignore it.  “I had always liked thinking my older brother thought I was kind of cool.  So I turned around and I walked over to the tub.  I took my shoes off, and my socks, and right then the man was busy talking to some other folks.  I looked back at Benjamin.  He gave me a thumbs-up sign.
            “I stepped into the tub and immediately fell over, because that fire was slick.  I had never imagined fire being slick before, but it felt like fire.  I bumped my head against the bottom, and I must have passed out because that is all I remember.  I heard the rest of the story later, from Benjamin, when everything had settled down a little.
            “My body floated there for a second.  The man in charge of the tub, the freak show man, the poison man, had heard the splash and he turned around and quickly pulled me out.  He was the only one who could have; no one else could have stood the harmful effects of the poison.  By that point, my body was black, and it was coming apart in his hands.”
            Brook had stopped crocheting and was staring at the monitor in dismay, her stomach the antithesis of the placid stomach in the tank.

Meanwhile, Descartes’ story continued, heedless of Brook’s discomfort.  “He put me down on the grass.  They called in medics and rushed me over to the hospital.  Everyone thought I was going to die.

            “But there was a scientist in town who had been doing research, and there was a brave doctor who wasn’t going to give up on me.  So while my heart was still pumping and my brain was not dead, they decided there was nothing they could do for my skin.  When they looked past that with their x-rays and other machines, they saw that most of my bones were charred as well, and there was no way to save those, either.
            “Somehow, the man by the tub had gotten me out fast enough that my organs, heart, and lungs hadn’t been burned.  These eyes are not my real eyes.  These are from somebody else who donated their eyes to science.  For a long time, I couldn’t see.  They did what they could, and they decided this was the best way for me to keep … to keep going.  As I was unconscious, I didn’t have any choice in the matter.  And now here I am.  Took them about five years before they found some eyes for me, and I’ve been like this, ever since.”
            Brook found herself staring at the body in the tank, looking for signs of burns anywhere, any tissue that had been scarred, but it all looked perfect.  The monitor was blank, and she was trying to come up with something to say while digesting this information and fighting her stomach.  The night intern, Jake, walked in.  “Hey Brook!  Looks like it’s my turn.  Anything happen?”
            “No, just a regular day,” she said.  She put her shoes back on, gathered her things, and left with a quick “good bye” to Jake.
            She had a date set up that night with a guy who lived in her apartment complex.  She was especially glad she had not puked, because she did not have time to brush her teeth before her date showed up.  They went bowling with Brook’s roommate and her boyfriend, and Brook kept score, as she normally did.  Descartes was on her mind the entire night.
            The next day, after visiting hours were over, Brook turned to her microphone and said, “I have been thinking about what you told me yesterday, and I was wondering how often your family gets to come visit you.”
            The response she read on the screen was, “You believed me?  I didn’t think you would!  Brook, I made the whole thing up!”