“Does this mean you’ll be going with Ella to Port Siroc?” said Mala.
“Port Siroc?” As soon as I said it, I felt my stomach twist.
“The Meaningful Information Management course,” Mala ploughed on, oblivious to Ella’s suddenly peculiar expression. “Three months isn’t long to be apart, but it’d be nice if you could keep her company.”
I glanced at Ella, and I could see her drawing several quick conclusions.
“We haven’t had a chance to talk about it much,” said Ella.
“I thought you said he—” began Tijon.
“Dad,” said Ella firmly. “Mark’s had a lot on his mind.”
That was the understatement of the year. I excused myself, and plunged my face into a basin of cold water. Ella had obviously told me about Port Siroc. It had to be the missing Sunday.
Port Siroc was a six-hour flight away, and notorious for a nightlife fuelled by college students and experimental herbs. Ella was moving forward, while I was going down my own personal gurgler.
I splashed more water on my face, and tried to look alive. I’d lost weight, and I noticed the tips of my ears were sunburned. I suddenly felt a deep sense of disconnect as I looked in the mirror, as though there were another person standing a foot away, staring at me.
The rest of the afternoon was a haze of distant chitchat. As dinner approached, the tingling in my temples became a full-blown headache.
“If you’d rather stay home, I can tell your parents you had a bad eggnog,” said Ella.
“And let Keir look like the reliable son?” I said wryly.
“This isn’t four-thousand BC,” said Ella. “Birthrights went out around the same time as wrestling with lions.”
“Tell that to Trev Manning.”
“He doesn’t wrestle lions,” said Ella. “He hugs them.”
“Tell that to the lions.”
My forehead pulsed painfully when I smiled, and Ella turned my face towards her.
“Mark, if you don’t want to go, we don’t have to go,” she said.
I kissed her knuckles gently.
“There’ll be trifle,” I said.
#
I knew I should have gone with the eggnog excuse the moment my mother asked if Ella was expecting. It was all downhill from there.
Ella’s smile remained valiantly neutral as the dinner conversation went from awkward to excruciating, covering weight-loss tips and teeth straightening. My brain started to wooze, and I still hadn’t said a word to Keir, who looked as uncomfortable as I felt. He’d filled out a bit, cut his hair. Looked less like a Tokyo drifter and more like an urban architect. He’d brought a girl I didn’t recognise – Lillian – long, dark hair, eyes like autumn sky.
“How’s work?” said Dad.
“Got fired,” I said.
Killed the conversation, but it was a mercy death.
“I have something to say,” said Keir, and the silence took on a nervous buzz. “Lillian and I are getting married. And we’re moving to Sudan.”
My parents’ expressions froze, mangled somewhere between joy and horror.
“Lillian’s been appointed a position at the new fistula hospital,” continued Keir. “And I’m taking a contract with the educational development commission.”
The only noise was my stomach doing squelchy acrobatics. My baby brother was marrying a medical crusader and moving to a warzone. Hell had frozen over, Keir had grown up, and I was going to reintroduce everyone to my dinner.
“Congratulations,” I mustered. “Excuse me.”
I made it halfway across the room before I blacked out.
#
I woke with tension fizzing through my bones. I was at home, in bed, and the calendar told me it was Boxing Day. I couldn’t find Ella – just a note on the bedside table saying: Burger in the fridge. Back soon.
Everything felt distant and muffled and out of control. My grandad would have said ‘Maybe it’s all in your head, but it’s still your head. Be the captain of your life, not a passenger.’ God, I missed him.
I reached over to my bedside table and my heart stopped. I yanked the drawer off its rails and emptied the contents onto the carpet.
My grandad’s watch was gone.
#
This was war. Whatever was happening to me had to stop. Surgery, medication, exorcism – whatever it took.
Ella reassured me I hadn’t done anything strange after I’d blacked out. I’d staggered to the couch and slept for about an hour, then resumed dinner, pleasant as a picnic.
“Then you went for a drive around midnight,” said Ella.
“Where to?”
“I asked, but I don’t think you heard me,” said Ella. “You looked okay when you came back.”
I was okay like a scarecrow falling into a volcano was okay.
I finally asked Ella about the missing Sunday, and her mood clouded over.
“We just hung out,” said Ella. “I told you I got accepted to the Meaningful Information Management (Biotech and Medicine) course at the Port Siroc Mature Students College. I can still cancel it…”
“I’m happy for you.” I squeezed her hand. “Something else happened, didn’t it?”
“We talked…” said Ella. “You asked if I wanted to get married.”
I knew I hesitated too long before saying, “What did you say?”
“It’s okay,” said Ella. “I had a feeling you weren’t quite yourself that day.”
And then she changed the subject.
#
My first appointment with Griswold Kinsley was a bust when the receptionist couldn’t find my name on the booking sheet.
“I made the appointment weeks ago,” I said.
“I’m sorry,” said the receptionist. “You’re not on the schedule.”
He must have seen my Raging Bull expression because his typing speed increased.
“Oh… it looks like you did have an appointment but then you cancelled it.”
I forced myself not to react. I made another appointment and left the office looking like a nutcase.
When I did finally see Kinsley, I didn’t care if I sounded like a celebrity before rehab. I laid it all out there, from the missing time to the strange behaviour.
Kinsley was only a few years older than me, with short ginger hair and a crisp wardrobe. He listened sympathetically, and asked me about work, family, medical history.
“I wish I could make a simple diagnosis,” said Kinsley. “But your situation seems unusual, especially in the absence of physical pathology.”
So it was more psychiatric assessments, psychometric tests, and endless multiple choice questionnaires.
“Aside from understandably elevated levels of anxiety, your psychological health seems fine,” said Kinsley. “Dissociative Identity Disorder usually involves distinct changes in personality and mannerisms. Your results don’t indicate delusional thinking, mania, or schizotypal tendencies. Your episodes don’t fit the profile of parasomnia, and there’s no clear etiology for your memory loss.”
“So you’ve got no idea?”
“I’m saying the brain’s complicated,” said Kinsley. “And stress can exacerbate dormant predispositions. I’d recommend a course of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. They might take the edge off what you’re going through. Look into meditation, try yoga, do more cardiovascular exercise, and come back in a few weeks.”
It wasn’t exactly ‘Take two aspirin and see me in the morning’, but that’s what it felt like. The meds were a disaster. I kept losing the bastards, and went through about four or five packs in a week. Memory loss was supposed to be one of the side effects, but that’s what I was taking the bloody pills for. I tried getting Ella to hang on to them, but hers kept going missing too. I caught myself having paranoid suspicions that Ella was messing with me.
I downloaded some yoga vids, and Ella tried doing meditation with me, but she was flat-out getting ready for the course. I had to fix this before she left, or
the odds of her coming back weren’t so hot. Having an eccentric boyfriend was cute in uni, but now it was just embarrassing.
Conventional science had let me down, so it was time for random desperation. I tried acupuncture, reflexology, kinesiology, hypnosis, traditional Chinese medicine, ayurveda, feng shui, and aura cleansing. I spent a week trying to maximise my Qi, and another week eating raw food and drinking boiled cicada shells. The aura cleansing convinced me that the Consumer Protection Agency needed to beef up its act, although the feng shui guy encouraged me to finally clean out the garage.
So I was knee deep in dented rims and covered in needle marks when an unexpected visitor showed up.
“Hey,” said Keir, shifting slightly in the sagging garage doorway.
“Hey,” I said. I wasn’t sure how things had ended at Christmas, but apparently there hadn’t been bloodshed.
“Lil and I are leaving for Sudan tomorrow,” said Keir.
My insides felt queasy, which could have been from the raw potato, and the back of my neck was prickling like hell. Ten years of estrangement didn’t heal overnight, but he was family. He was my brother. And maybe I should have tried harder when he’d needed guidance, not judgement.
“Good luck,” I said. “Look, Keir…”
I was surprised to see him blinking back tears, and he hugged me suddenly.
“It meant a lot,” said Keir. “What you said on Christmas night.”
He slid something from his shirt pocket and tapped his heart.
“I know what this means to you,” he continued. “I’ll always keep it with me.”
Silver curves caught the sunlight, and I felt my chest ache.
Grandad’s watch.
“Just take care,” I said. “Grandad would have been proud of you.”
Keir wiped his eyes, slapped me on the back, and then he was gone.
When Ella got home, I was still sitting in the garage, staring at the dusty junk.
“Christmas night,” I said. “When I left in the middle of the night. Did I take anything with me?”
“I don’t remember…” She saw my gutted expression, and something in her eyes rang tiny silver alarm bells.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I said.
“You went to your brother’s house,” said Ella quietly. “I’m sorry. I put my phone in the glovebox and tracked it online. But I didn’t want you to think I was one of those crazy girlfriends who puts tracking devices in your car.”
I let my instinctive reaction fade.
“Our car,” I corrected. “And under the circumstances, that was pretty smart.”
“Mark…” Ella hugged me. I was getting a lot of hugs today, and to be honest, I needed them.
I hadn’t told Ella that I’d been missing more days. One last week, and two this week. As far as I could tell, I was just pottering around the house trying to create a water feature. But I couldn’t live like this – half my life disintegrating from memory.
I was out of cash and out of ideas. Ella was leaving in a week and I had to hold what was left of me together. I thought I was doing pretty good until Ella gave me a leaflet for The Altara Sleep Clinic.
“They use EEG equipment to record brain waves,” said Ella. “If we can analyse what’s happening when you switch between you and the other you—”
“The other me.” It was like an electric shock to hear her give it a name like that.
“Mark, do you love me?”
I only paused because the question came out of nowhere.
“What? Sure, of course…”
“The other you never hesitates,” said Ella without accusation. “I know it’s been happening more often. The other day you wanted to go shopping for an indoor hammock.”
I glanced at the leaflet again.
“We can’t afford it,” I said. Ella started to protest but I cut her off. “Plus, there’s no point in spending a fortune if nothing happens.”
“If I can get you into a sleep clinic for free, will you go?” said Ella.
“How would you to manage that? Disguise me as a pillow?”
“Just leave it to me.”
Which was how I ended up at the Associate College of Rosterdam’s Sleep Laboratory. I didn’t know what an associate college was, but the peeling paint and duct-taped doors gave me a hint.
Doctor Creel was a meticulous looking woman in her late thirties, with charcoal hair pulled back in a ponytail. A poster in her office read:
Don’t mess with your brain, or your brain will mess with you.
I gave Creel the director’s cut, and she asked me a bunch of questions about what I liked to cook and what my hobbies were.
She booked me into the sleep lab that night. The trolley bed looked like it was about to collapse under the weight of its own ennui, but it wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as the electrodes taped to my face. My stomach was a mess of butterflies, so I was surprised when I woke the next morning feeling rested.
“The preliminary data looks normal,” said Creel, scrolling through screens of wavy lines. “Good beta and alpha waves, nice delta, standard REM.”
I didn’t bother hiding my disappointment.
“I’d like to book you in again tonight,” said Creel. “Just for observation, no EEG.”
I was too drained to argue. I just told Ella the results looked good, and Creel wanted to do some follow up.
“Let’s go somewhere today,” said Ella. “I’m almost done packing, and it’s a beautiful day.”
So we drove out to Tullama National Park for a picnic. Summer was starting to wane, and the breeze by the river was deliciously cool.
“No canoeing today,” said the ranger. “Some jerk released a bunch of goldfish a few months back and they’ve mutated into papaya-sized carnivores.”
So, Ella and I had avocado sandwiches under the willows instead.
“Ella, do you like the ‘other me’ better?” I said.
“That’s like asking if I like ‘happy you’ or ‘sad you’,” said Ella. “It’s still you. Whether you remember it or not.”
I felt odd that night as I sank onto the laboratory bed. Thoughts about me, the other me, and Ella bounced around my mind, and I was only half asleep when Creel knocked on the door.
“Phone call for you,” she said.
It was Ella.
“Sorry to bother you,” said Ella. “My Wednesday flight’s been cancelled. The only plane that’ll get me to Port Siroc on time leaves first thing in the morning.”
“I’ll be right over—” I said.
“No, Mark,” said Ella. “I want you to stay at the lab tonight. Please see this through.”
“Ella—”
“If you love me, stay.” She paused. “I love you.”
And I was left cradling a dialtone.
She’d never pulled anything like that before, and I wondered for a horrible moment if there was an ‘other Ella’. Either way, tomorrow, she’d be gone.
I didn’t remember falling asleep, just sinking into a whirlpool of emotional debris.
I woke feeling exhausted and empty.
“Good news,” said Creel. “I have something to show you.”
Her office had several piles of printouts, and Ella was sitting by the window.
“Mark!” Ella hugged me tightly.
“What happened to your flight?” I said.
“It was a deception,” said Creel. “At my request.”
“Excuse me?” I said coldly.
Ella mouthed ‘I’m sorry’.
Creel flicked on a video display, and a grainy image of the sleep lab bloomed onscreen. I was lying on the bed in an unflattering position, and Creel skipped forward.
“What’s that?” I said, as onscreen figures entered the room and hooked me up to an EEG. Other figures wheeled in some kind of giant mechanical donut. “You said it was just observation.”
“One of the advantages of not being a registered institution is I don’t have to sign their ‘ethics clauses’
,” said Creel. She clicked the remote, and playback returned to normal speed.
On the monitor, I was stirring. My body sat up, and after a pause, got out of bed. My body looked around like a new arrival in a terrarium, and then stared thoughtfully at the camera.
Creel paused the footage.
“Then you tried to convince me to unlock the door,” she said.
Amidst my growing agitation, I felt the faintest spark of hope.
“Okay, Doc,” I snapped. “You seem to have this figured out.”
“You’re experiencing an unusual form of somnambulism,” said Creel.
“Sleepwalking? My psychiatrist said it wasn’t that.”
“That’s because sleepwalking usually consists of simple, repetitive actions, with episodes lasting less than thirty minutes,” said Creel. “Your situation is far more interesting.”
She turned her computer screen towards me, and I stared at the meaningless waves and spikes.
“During last night’s episode, your brain showed a combination of delta, alpha, beta and theta activity,” said Creel. “Alpha and beta waves occur while you’re awake. Delta waves occur while you’re asleep. Theta rhythms occur while you’re awake or dreaming. Here, they’re all occurring at the same time.”
Creel held up a sheet of dark film, covered in tiny multicoloured brains.
“The SPECT scans show increased activity in the thalamocingulate pathways, and decreased activity in the thalamocortical systems,” she continued. “Consistent with activity in the absence of consciousness.”
“Why’s it happening, and how do I make it stop?” I said.
Creel steepled her fingers.
“Your brain doesn’t need you anymore,” she said.
“Sorry. What did you say your doctorate was in?”
Which snaps me to the present. Some kind of here, some kind of now, with some kind of answer to a question I never should have asked.
“What he means is, why is the profile so atypical?” says Ella.
“Consciousness used to be an evolutionary advantage,” says Creel. “It didn’t just coordinate and direct your actions, it motivated you. It made you invested in the outcome. But society evolved beyond us. Food that tastes good is no longer good for you. Behaviour that feels good can be harmful. Consciousness has become a liability. And your brain has figured that out.”
So my subconscious brain is having its own French revolution.
“It tested the water with simple actions,” continues Creel. “Buttering bread, watching TV. As it gained confidence, behaviour became more complex: going to work, having intimate conversations. Your unconscious brain started making changes it perceived were to your biological advantage: disposing of unnecessary pets, rebuilding familial relationships—”