and hair. Rob set the
instrument aside and pulled off the top half of David Bailey’s skull. The brain
glistened under the glaring overhead lights. With Lawrence Wills he opened up
the chest cavity first, but most of Wills’ brain had been power-washed off some
Portland side walk nearly 24 hours before they even got the body, so he hadn’t
gotten a chance to look at it.
Whistling Mack the Knife , Rob sliced a thin layer of
brain off the outer cortex of the left lobe, laying it on a glass slide like a
strange bit of toast, and put the slide beneath the microscope. The whistle
dried on his lips like a funeral dirge when he dialed the grey blur into
perfect focus.
The slice of brain was laced with tiny filaments, millions
of them threaded across the specimen in a circuit-board pattern.
And they were moving.
You know this isn’t real , the voice in his head said.
He swallowed the dry lump in his throat and stared. The tiny
organisms were shivering ever so slightly; billions of microscopic epileptics
embedded in the brain.
Under a black light they had a dull blue glow. But they were
fading, dying as the host had died. Rob aimed the black light at Bailey, still
in his chair. The brain lit up like a dim cobalt bulb. The entire cerebral
cortex was threaded with some kind of organic bio-circuitry. He was a living
computer-had been, anyway.
Rob stimulated the slice of cerebrum with a mild electrical
charge and the circuits glowed brighter, coming most of the way back to life
for about a minute before starting to die again.
Rob sat next to the body and tried the same experiment on
the actual brain. The circuitry blazed and Bailey’s left arm twitched violently
under the thick leather binding.
“Intevesting ... veddy veddy intevesting.”
Rob cut away the back of the skull to get a peek at the base
of the brain. It was made of entirely foreign material. At some point in his
short life, David Bailey’s medulla oblongata had been excised from within the
confines of his skull and replaced with this. It looked a lot like silicon, but
Rob couldn’t be sure until he ran a few tests on it. Four thick wires plugged
into it from the spine, two on either side. Rob pulled them out and the blue
glow died immediately.
With the overheads on again Rob examined the
pseudo-oblongata closer ... there were no holes. No female receptacles for the
wires to go into; yet he had just unplugged them. Confused, Rob took one of the
wires and poked it against the slick surface. The material displaced itself to
receive the plug, and then bonded to hold it secure.
Would something else plug in, like a video monitor? Rob
spliced the line on a monitor and pushed it into the gelatin-like substance. It
flickered, but the screen remained black ... or did it?
Rob cranked the contrast up and the black turned to a deep
maroon, stitched with capillaries. He was looking at Bailey’s closed eyelids as
the light shone through them. Shaking with excitement, Rob went around the
table and thumbed open the eyes.
“Just like the pigeon,” Rob said to the empty room. He
turned and looked at the back of Bailey’s head, cackling with excitement.
“You’re nothing but a goddamn pigeon!”
Rob pulled the plug on the brain, the monitor went black. He
plugged it into the other side and it came alive, but in a different way.
Instead of a clear digital representation of what was in front of Bailey’s
glazing eyes, the world appeared on the monitor in infra red. He moved the plug
again and it was a thermographic image.
The fourth position was just left of center and toward the
bottom, and at first the image came up normal. Then a targeting reticle
appeared on the screen, in the center of what would have been Bailey’s field of
vision, had he been more than a video camera encased in cooling meat.
Rob realized he was holding his breath again and let it out
slowly. “Ho-ly shit .”
He took his glasses off, admiring the way the overhead
lights gleamed off the
instrument aside and pulled off the top half of David Bailey’s skull. The brain
glistened under the glaring overhead lights. With Lawrence Wills he opened up
the chest cavity first, but most of Wills’ brain had been power-washed off some
Portland side walk nearly 24 hours before they even got the body, so he hadn’t
gotten a chance to look at it.
Whistling Mack the Knife , Rob sliced a thin layer of
brain off the outer cortex of the left lobe, laying it on a glass slide like a
strange bit of toast, and put the slide beneath the microscope. The whistle
dried on his lips like a funeral dirge when he dialed the grey blur into
perfect focus.
The slice of brain was laced with tiny filaments, millions
of them threaded across the specimen in a circuit-board pattern.
And they were moving.
You know this isn’t real , the voice in his head said.
He swallowed the dry lump in his throat and stared. The tiny
organisms were shivering ever so slightly; billions of microscopic epileptics
embedded in the brain.
Under a black light they had a dull blue glow. But they were
fading, dying as the host had died. Rob aimed the black light at Bailey, still
in his chair. The brain lit up like a dim cobalt bulb. The entire cerebral
cortex was threaded with some kind of organic bio-circuitry. He was a living
computer-had been, anyway.
Rob stimulated the slice of cerebrum with a mild electrical
charge and the circuits glowed brighter, coming most of the way back to life
for about a minute before starting to die again.
Rob sat next to the body and tried the same experiment on
the actual brain. The circuitry blazed and Bailey’s left arm twitched violently
under the thick leather binding.
“Intevesting ... veddy veddy intevesting.”
Rob cut away the back of the skull to get a peek at the base
of the brain. It was made of entirely foreign material. At some point in his
short life, David Bailey’s medulla oblongata had been excised from within the
confines of his skull and replaced with this. It looked a lot like silicon, but
Rob couldn’t be sure until he ran a few tests on it. Four thick wires plugged
into it from the spine, two on either side. Rob pulled them out and the blue
glow died immediately.
With the overheads on again Rob examined the
pseudo-oblongata closer ... there were no holes. No female receptacles for the
wires to go into; yet he had just unplugged them. Confused, Rob took one of the
wires and poked it against the slick surface. The material displaced itself to
receive the plug, and then bonded to hold it secure.
Would something else plug in, like a video monitor? Rob
spliced the line on a monitor and pushed it into the gelatin-like substance. It
flickered, but the screen remained black ... or did it?
Rob cranked the contrast up and the black turned to a deep
maroon, stitched with capillaries. He was looking at Bailey’s closed eyelids as
the light shone through them. Shaking with excitement, Rob went around the
table and thumbed open the eyes.
“Just like the pigeon,” Rob said to the empty room. He
turned and looked at the back of Bailey’s head, cackling with excitement.
“You’re nothing but a goddamn pigeon!”
Rob pulled the plug on the brain, the monitor went black. He
plugged it into the other side and it came alive, but in a different way.
Instead of a clear digital representation of what was in front of Bailey’s
glazing eyes, the world appeared on the monitor in infra red. He moved the plug
again and it was a thermographic image.
The fourth position was just left of center and toward the
bottom, and at first the image came up normal. Then a targeting reticle
appeared on the screen, in the center of what would have been Bailey’s field of
vision, had he been more than a video camera encased in cooling meat.
Rob realized he was holding his breath again and let it out
slowly. “Ho-ly shit .”
He took his glasses off, admiring the way the overhead
lights gleamed off the
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