by Pragya Gautam
The supersonic aircraft SS27 on its way from New Delhi to London crashed just twenty minutes after its departure. The aircraft took off at 10:00 am from Indira Gandhi International Airport. This accident was possibly caused by a collision of a huge bird with the aircraft. The demise of all passengers along with the pilot and crew is confirmed …
As every day I was watching news on the Internet. Naturally I was more interested in incidents related to India, my native land, but this accident made me restless at once.
Next day there was a detailed report on this accident. I could not restrict myself from looking at the list of the dead people. I was shocked to see a particular name on the list. It was Shubhendu Ghosh! Was it the same Shubhendu who had come with his father to our hospital for treatment? And it was the first case we failed to resolve.
I called Fredrick. The phone kept ringing but he did not answer the phone. It was 11:00 pm, but I didn’t care about the time and left for his house by car.
I could see that he was still awake as the windows of his house were throwing blue light.
“Fred … Freddie …” I softly knocked on the door. Since there was no response I pushed the door open myself. Fred, sitting in a chair with his elbows resting on the table, was reading something. His eyes were fixed on the screen of the computer and he looked so lost in reading that he had not even heard me entering the room. His spectacles had slid to his nose. His brown hair was dry and tangled. His narrow, fair face looked meeker because of the beard he had grown on top of it. There were some books scattered on the bed. A slice of bread had dried in front of him.
“Freddie….” I shouted coming exactly behind him. It startled him.
“Is it you, Ram?” Fredrick asked. “You’ve almost stopped my heartbeat. Why are you scaring me like this at midnight?”
“In fact, I am scared by your appearance”, I said. “I bet you haven’t taken a bath for two days of vacation and haven’t even eaten anything today.”
“Absolutely right. It seems that my company has increased your analytical capabilities”, He broke into laughter. He was at ease now. He shut down the computer and sat a little more comfortable.
“What are you reading?” I asked.
“A solution to Shubhendu’s problem….” He replied.
“There is no need of that now. He is not alive anymore … perhaps you haven’t watched the news today.” My voice sounded heavy.
“Wh … what?” He was shocked.
Fredrick was passionate as well as emotional. Only these qualities had drawn me to him, to London, thousands of kilometers from my home. Apart from that there had been nobody for me in India. We came into contact six years ago through social media. That time I was pursuing post-graduation in neurosurgery. Fredrick belonged to a prestigious British family and was doing research in cerebellum science. Similar interests and subjects brought us close. This was the reason that we also shared personal matters. I told him how I spent my life in a hostel after my parents died in a road accident. When I returned home after becoming a doctor, I dreamed of opening a hospital there. But my uncle captured my whole property and thus my dream had been destroyed.
When Fredrick proposed me to work with him, I left for London. Then Yoshi and Bhaskar also joined our team. Yoshi was Japanese and a specialist in information technology. Our team needed a psychiatrist so we also also included Bhaskar. We all met on social media. What we all had in common was that our lives were related to some kind of painful memories.
“Ram….” Fred’s voice restored me. “How did it happen?” he asked. I told him step by step. Fred closed the book and switched off the lamp. He paced the room restlessly then sat down on the bed after he had removed the scattered books. Then resting his head on the pillow, he said, “Have you informed Yoshi and Bhaskar?”
“No, I came to you directly”, I replied. “They must have seen it in the news anyway.”
“This is our defeat”, he stated sorrowfully.
“We are doctors and scientists, we are not God”, I insisted. “We can help people, but we can’t elude destiny.” Fred didn’t want to fail. It was his passion that resulted in revolutionary inventions and the development of new technologies in the field of phrenology. Initially I was dubious when he told me about his plan on the phone, but soon I realized that he was not a person who surrendered easily.
It was only five or six years ago when he called and offered me to come London.
“Ram, you are not ignorant of the fact that brain decoding is being used a lot on the people who are unable to speak or even are paralyzed”, he said.
“Yes, Freddie. It is really a boon for them.”
“But I’ve planned something else. It would be a kind of revolution in the whole world!” He exclaimed. There was always a tint of zeal and fervor in his announcements.
“What’s that, what is your plan?”
“You do come here. We will work on this technology together”, he said. “Yoshi is also going to join us.”
“Right, coming over there would also improve his English. The poor fellow is unable to understand half of our conversations”, I added.
Finally, our team was successful in developing a device based on a technology which was able to remove hurtful memories from the brains. Also, we could carve the desired and beautiful dreams in the brains. This treatment included three stages. Our advanced AI based brain decoder could perfectly read the human brain and was able to observe its activities at the same time. There was no need of any kind of surgery. All that was needed was to wear a kind of cap on the head. We designed it and Yoshi gave it a form.
The toughest and most challenging task was to remove the painful memories. Bhaskar’s counselling was useful in this but we had to use other technologies in more traumatic situations. I was a neuro surgeon so I took the responsibility of this work. We took help from optogenetics for this task.
Then in the initial stage of sleep (hypnagogia) we installed desired dreams in the brain with the help of our progressive device. There was little room for even a slight mistake as entire memories could be removed if something wrong happened. It also involved some moral issues but we remained successful.
We were able to control the conscious and subconscious mind of a human being completely. The people who suffered from depression, anxiety and nightmares could get a new life by this treatment. Student classes could be helped to achieve goals.
We initiated experiments on animals and they were successful, but the human brain structure is more developed and complicated. Therefore, first we chose ourselves to test this device. Yoshi became the very first volunteer. The poor fellow was broken in love. He was modest, laconic and introvert.
“Before launching it in the market, we need a human being who could test the device first on him.” I stated worriedly.
“Do it on me, I’m ready”, Yoshi concluded.
“Your memory might be affected if any malfunction occurs or you can lose your consciousness forever … ”, I pointed out.
“I’m convinced that the experiment would be successful. Anyways, my life is nothing without Eva …”, he said, blinking his dizzy eyes.
Our experiment had been efficient. Yoshi was really the perfect subject for this experiment. He was a living confirmation of Freddie’s theories. After the experiment, all memories of Eva were erased from his mind. His personality was also changed. An introverted and unsocial Yoshi turned practical and extrovert.
“Now he can think about my cousin’s marriage proposal which she gave him last week”, Freddie teased Yoshi.
“Oh, so now I came to know that Sarah liked him! What do you think, Yoshi? See how crimson his ears have turned!” Bhaskar added little spice.
“You’re lucky, Yoshi, that she has chosen you over Bhaskar.” I asserted.
Yoshi’s cheeks and ears turned crimson. It was a huge fun to tease him.
The next experiment was to be done on Lucy. Fred told me everything about her. His childhood friend, laughing and blooming Lucy… she was in a coma now.
“She was coming to meet me”, Fred told me. “Her car broke down on the way. There was no clue what happened to her … perhaps she had been molested. Someone admitted her to the hospital. She didn’t recognize me when I went to see her. She keeps screaming. The memory of this accident doesn’t go from her mind.”
“That’s why you’re so engrossed in solving entwined mysteries of brain. Because of Lucy, right?” I asked.
“Love is that powerful, dear”, Freddie said.
And we succeeded in removing that painful memory from Lucy’s brain. Happy memories, related to her family and friends, had been installed. We filled her dreams with Fred’s memories. She had got a new life.
This was our triumph. Our technology was granted a patent. The fame of our hospital spread far and wide. Time rolled on. We were deeply engrossed in our mission.
Then Shubhendu’s case came to our hospital. He was an eighteen-year-old school boy. His father was a software engineer. He had been mentally disturbed for a few days. He would have the same kind of dream almost daily. A huge eagle was eager to grab him with its deadly talons. He was so scared of this dream that he stopped to attend the school. His father brought him to us. We put him into a subconscious state and analyzed his brain. We separated the memories related to that dream from his mind.
Then Bhaskar did his counselling. He talked to him related to his school, friends and dreams connected to his future.
“Son, what would you like to be when you grow up? Doctors like us…? So, you are studying biology and a nature lover like me … look at this video … oh, see, it’s a lovely bird only … it would be our friend … Where would you like to spend these vacations? Would you like to go on a picnic at a beach …? We deal in beautiful dreams …”, he asserted. “Do tell us what would you love to dream? We will only send you on a picnic today … tell me what else you want to do in your dreams …?”
We installed the dreams in his brain according to his interest and goals. Now his subconscious mind could see only whatever we had installed. Two more days passed normally.
On the third day Shubhendu’s father again came to us with his son. He had screamed and woke up last night. That dangerous bird had invaded a pleasant dream where he was enjoying a picnic and swimming with his friends. It came as a great surprise for us. The dream of that bird had intruded the intriguing dream that we had installed. We conducted a few experiments and called him next day but he could not come. His father phoned us to inform that he was sending him to his grandparents in India for Christmas vacations. Perhaps a change in environment could be helpful in getting rid of this scary dream. He went to India accompanying his mother. The accident happened when he was returning home after the vacations. Perhaps that dream had been a simulacrum of the future.
It was midnight when we were talking about Shubhendu in Fred’s room.
“Ram, we’ve divided time into three dimensions – past, present and future … it is a mystery of nature that sometimes one period of time is imposed on another”, Fred said looking somewhere at a point far away.
“A dream is a kind of a door that can lead us to the mysteries of time and space”, I said.
“This is true. In deep sleep, which might also be called the delta wave brain condition, Shubhendu’s mind somehow had captured energy waves coming from future”, Fredrick declared. “It’s sad that our instruments were not sensitive enough to capture them.”
“Freddie, the future is full of unlimited possibilities”, I tried to console him. “You’re not made to accept failure.”
“Absolutely right. Man has unfolded many mysteries of nature. My friend, I hope we will be able to develop such susceptible instruments that we could capture those waves coming from future and determine the nature as well the time of an incident. Then perhaps we would be able to avoid any misfortune or misery.” Fredrick spoke without a pause. His words were full of determination and so were his eyes, full of the same passion.
Pragya Gautam is a biology lecturer in senior secondary school and a popular science writer. She lives in Kota, Rajasthan. She has published three science fiction collections and a novel. She has also received several awards in the fields of writing and teaching.