In Vino Veritas (Short Story)

Updated 12/15/2014

Would it surprise you to know that I am not human? Most people are not surprised when I tell them that. They just think I am insane.

I wonder what it says about me that people are never surprised to find that I am insane.

When I found out, surprise is more or less the furthest thing away from what I felt. Instead, it was closer to validation. If I were a human memoirist, then the sentence “I guess I had always known” would no doubt appear in this paragraph. But I am not human, and I guess whatever I am instead demands more self-honesty. I have not known for very long. I had, however, suspected.

My earliest memories, or what I spent many years believing were my earliest memories, were of being strange, of not truly fitting. I never had the least bit of interest in what the boys were doing. It was only very moderately more interesting than doing nothing at all, and that margin, slim as it was, is why I went along. That, and I was almost certain that if I just kept doing it, I could learn to fit.

I even wondered if all of them experienced the same disinterest. After all, they treated one another the same way they treated me–almost. The voices, as well as the gestures and the physical violence that accompanied them, were a little more emphatic, almost as though they were meant to be final, rather than to invite a response. The words those voices spoke, though, were the same.

Of course, the truth is that the words and the actions that came along with them were meant to be final, because against me, they were truly meant. I only learned this much, much later, when I saw a psychiatrist for my not fitting in.

For a while, I decided to experiment by spending time with the girls instead. This was very, very moderately less interesting than spending time with the boys, which I eventually went back to.

After this experiment, the treatment I received from the boys became quite noticeably different. The physical violence they directed at me went from leaving visible results to leaving injurious results. Once, the people I believed at the time to be my parents were worried that an injury I sustained might be life-threatening. They became quite agitated.

Though this fact was of no comfort to those two humans who raised me, I just barely noticed a difference. I have always been detached from the physical world around me, even more than from the people. It wasn't that I didn't feel anything. There are people like that. They have a condition called CIPA, and they do not feel any pain. I do. It just doesn't feel like my pain. It's a little like I spend my whole life playing a video game with a controller that vibrates when I make a mistake or when someone else attacks me. There's definitely a sensation. It's undeniably negative, and at times it's even startling. It just feels secondhand.

Eventually, the boys' behavior more or less returned to what it had been before my experiment. It felt familiar. Of course, even in my earliest memories, I recall that the behavior of other boys seemed familiar in some way. I always assumed that I had simply spent my days with those boys for some time before I managed to create a long-term memory of it.

I'm sure I did, but I'm also sure that it wasn't that simple.

In any case, the old but ill-fitting state of normalcy returned for a number of years, before it was forever altered by two incidents that were far more permanent and far more profound than a couple of months spent among the females of the human species. The first was that my brain quite suddenly began to work much faster. It had always worked faster than those of the boys and girls I had assumed to be my peers. I was far ahead of them in all of our subjects of mutual study. At night, while they slept, I studied a number of additional subjects that I'm sure they had never heard of. (That was another way in which I never fit in. I have never needed, wanted, or even understood sleep. To this day, I have no idea how it is accomplished.) Yet, as I did all this, I could not shake the feeling that the electrical impulses my neurons generated were moving through some sort of mud or sludge, that I was meant to think much faster and about so much more. The fact that I knew what neurons were at all was evidence that my brain was fine, and better than fine, by the standards of my peers. Still, it took me nearly thirteen years on earth to shake the feeling that there was something holding me back.

With a whole world in front of me, and a suddenly improved capacity to think about it, I quickly stumbled upon a second realization: that however little I fit in with other boys, I fit in less with the adults in my own home. Each of them had interests, and antipathies. Each of them had a passionate reaction to both. While it was true that there were some subjects of study which I found moderately more interesting than the others, I never experienced a visceral reaction to any of them. I can't imagine how one would accomplish that, nor why they would want to.

Some of the interests or passions my caretakers shared were the same as those of boys: television, movies and cars, for instance. However, my parents had a whole additional set of interests that were collectively referred to as “nice things.” They encompassed clothing, furniture and money, among other human inventions which have already become too tiresome to list.

There was a time when I could learn from these “nice things.” Money, for instance, has no use of its own. It is simply a symbolic stand-in that represents “nice things” in general, which can be carried easily or converted into something more specific. It also tastes somewhat more pleasant than the most of human cuisine. Clothing is only considered “nice” once it includes bland, nonfunctional decorative elements. If it is purely functional, or if its shape or coloring is unique enough to attract the eye, it is considered to be “low class.” Additionally, the more clothing discomforts the wearer and restricts his or her movements, the “nicer” it is considered. As for furniture, some of it is considered so “nice” that it is not fit to perform its standard function at all, for fear of ruining it. These facts all strike me as being somewhat banal, and in fact I'm quite sure that you are familiar with all of them. Nevertheless, these proved somewhat useful in my continuing study of anthropology.

Any details beyond these were somewhat immoderately less interesting than doing nothing at all. In fact, my caretakers' discussions of these things brought me the closest I have ever come to experiencing a visceral reaction. Indeed, I felt quite strongly that I must leave at once, and so I would always excuse myself, either to spend time with the boys, who mercifully showed as little interest in “nice things” as I did, or else to continue my studies.

As a result of this, I grew to consider myself somewhat distant from my parents. The psychiatrist I have mentioned came to the same conclusion, and to one more. He believes that my parents could not possibly have failed to notice, nor could they have succeeded in ignoring, this growing distance. In fact, they probably realized it long before I did.

It is to their credit, according to the psychiatrist, that they did not react to the change with any sort of violence or other juvenile behavior. Indeed, they continued to provide for my extracurricular education as reliably as they ever had. Eventually, about two or three years before I left their immediate care, they did cease all attempts to engage me in conversation. I found this development to be neither a relief nor a disappointment.

As it turned out, it was that parting of ways that brought the whole situation to a head. During the same period over which I became more distant from my caretakers, the boys I knew were growing very interested in ingesting a number of psychoactive substances. The psychiatrist has told me that it would have been quite natural for me to join in, and I did–exactly one time. I found the effect to be entirely unpleasant. It was uncanny how it mirrored the prevailing sensation of my youth, of something gumming up my ability to think. Though asked over and over, I always refused to repeat this experiment.

For a while, I was able to simply avoid any exposure to the stimulus, and even to people who would try to stimulate my interest in it. I took so many classes as an undergraduate that I literally had no free time to do anything else. Graduating in record time was an unintended and somewhat undesired side effect of this approach. After this, I did study for an advanced degree, but unfortunately, they actually forced me to spread that work out over a three-year period, setting the stage for the return of free time. Still, the other boys took my constant answers of “no, thank you” at face value. At least, they did for a while.

That answer stopped being good enough for my social cohort exactly twenty-one years after the official record of my birth. Apparently this day is considered to be of some import by humans. In any case, my “friends” insisted that I accede to the consumption of intoxicants. I insisted otherwise. Eventually, one of the other boys just grabbed my face, squeezed my mouth open, and jammed the open end of a bottle of foul-tasting liquid into it. I felt gravity push the fluid deeper and deeper, toward my throat. At this point I decide that, objectionable or not, a choice between temporary stupidity and permanent death wasn't much of a choice. I felt a burning sensation as I swallowed.

Apparently, this particular liquid was a far stronger intoxicant than the first one I tried. It took no more than a few minutes for this intoxicant to render me even duller than youth had. It also had the strange affect of making some heretofore-silenced corner of my brain go crazy for more to drink. Most of my brain, the smarter parts, were against this notion entirely, but unfortunately, I had become stupid enough that the smarter parts were no longer active enough to mount an effective defense.

After that, the night turned into a slow-moving blur of things I wish quite fervently to forget. But I remember.

I remember laughing for the first time. I remember being unable to walk properly, and being unduly amused by it. I remember speaking in incomprehensible gibberish, and thinking myself brilliantly clever for it.

I remember regurgitating. While there are humans who react to this act as though it has humor value, I can't say I find it to be anything other than repellant and unpleasant.

I remember engaging in the human reproductive act, or at least attempting to. I'm not certain I know the entire procedure. For some reason, the boys had strapped a cellular communication device to my head. “Pork that pig!” a voice in my ear said, before making a few animal grunts and then breaking down into laughter.

Mostly I remember asking for more to drink, receiving more to drink, and then drinking it.

The last thing I can remember that happened that night was falling to the ground outside an acquaintance’s house. A crowd of people gathered around, some of them familiar, some of them strangers. But all of them, every single one, pointed and laughed. I remember the feeling of fatigue, and of darkness approaching.

Eventually, though, I remembered something else from a very different night, much longer ago than that one.

“I can't believe you grew a disguise,” a voice said, the sounds foreign but their meaning unmistakable. “I can't believe you know how to grow disguises. That's pure spytech.”

“I can't believe you did such a good job on it,” shouted another voice, using the same language.

“I do a lot of things you wouldn't believe,” a third voice responded. “Now you two close it back up. I have something to do.”

I could not see any of the speakers, but I could hear them moving around. Somehow, I could sense that there were more than three of them.  I had no sense of where they were, though. I felt crowded, but only in the same way one feels crowded on awakening from mostly asleep to half-asleep, when the sizes of things, and the distances between them, and even one's own body dimensions all become illusory.

“I think he's waking up,” a voice said. “Stick him again.”

The conversation faded , but eventually returned.

“What are you doing messing with those?” asked one of the voices.

“What do you think I'm doing?” the cocky voice retorted.

“Come on! That's dangerous. You have no idea what they'll do.”

“I know exactly what it'll do. This is for beast control, designed to slow down brain function so that it can't formulate or carry out any actions. But he's no beast, so this will make him just dense enough to pass for a child on this worthless rock.”

“Don't you need one of them for all of the rest of humans, though, so that they'll actually believe it?

“No, no, no need at all. I'm pretty sure they're dumb enough to fall for it as is. The caretakers and a few others will need some false memories, but that's it. The human capacity for delusion is quite boggling.”

“Won't the implant wear out?”

“Eventually, yes. But it's good for two generations of warbeast, which is close to four of our cycles and a little bit over twelve of theirs.”

“But it'll still wear off?”

“So what? That's after he's more than halfway out of his youth. Do you honestly imagine him getting that far without someone deciding to kill him first? I mean, I want to kill him right now, and he's unconscious. But I wasn't unconscious, not all the way.

Apparently this phenomenon is called “state dependent memory.” I don't know enough about human neuropsychology to say whether it's a real, scientifically-measurable thing, but I'm certain that I have experienced it myself.

In fact, I have pursued it many times since my first recollection of a life before my time among humanity.  With my most important questions about myself answered, a new set of questions arose. Foremost among them was to wonder what to do about it.  As much as the sensations I must experience in order to do so disgust me, I repeatedly enter a state of intoxication seeking additional memories, new information, anything more.  I repeatedly gain nothing more than my original insight.  I have now experienced that same memory countless times.  It is always identical, and I learn no more from it.  I still have not ascertained how to remove the disguise.

If you have any idea, feel free to pass it along.

The Transplant (Short Story)

Updated 2/21/2014

Would it surprise you to know that I am not human?

I suppose that depends upon where you are reading from. Most of the democratically-governed world seems to be familiar with posthumanity. Or with, as it is known legally, alternative personhood.

I know that in other places, where religion's or superstition's influence outstrips technology's, people like me are considered sinful and unnatural abominations. For people in those places, the fact that I am not human is not just surprising, but shocking and disgusting. I have learned not to be bothered by those attitudes, but if you are one of those people, I would advise you to stop reading. You might learn something you don't want to learn.

For those of you still reading, my transition to alternative personhood came five years ago today. Perhaps some corner of this artificial brain is still capable of sentiment, and perhaps that is why I am writing this today, on the fifth anniversary of the day I became other than human. I read that it is a long procedure. There's a legal obligation to research the transplant before undergoing it. The journal articles I read all put the average length of the procedure at somewhere between seventy and seventy-two hours. I experienced none of that. As far as I know, and as far as I can remember, it happened in an instant. I closed my eyes. I went to sleep for a blink. I woke up outside of the body I had inhabited for a little less than thirty-six years.

I also woke up outside the brain I had inhabited during those years. I don't know exactly how it works, but neurologists can map a person's personality while (s)he is unconscious. The doctors stored mine in what was at the time a very innovative piece of computing technology. These days, regular people can go down to the nearest box store and buy one just like it, but five years ago it was top-of-the-line. I requested that this computer be placed at the helm of what was, five years ago, a rather innovative two-wheeled motorcycle drone. Even today, it is a pretty powerful piece of machinery, at least when I'm outside. Indoors, it runs on an electric motor that seems a little dinky and underpowered, although I suppose that is the point. In the past five years, I've learned how to get the most out of it.

But I have to be honest with you. Today is only the fifth anniversary of my legal posthumanity. It might only have been five years since the world began to recognize me as an unusual brain inside a motor vehicle, but I have never known myself as anything else. The old motor vehicle had a very different propulsion system, what with those unwieldy arms and legs doing all the work, and the new one is certainly much more powerful, but it was only an upgrade, not a a truly fundamental change. And the brain? The brain! The new one works faster, and it remembers more, but it still feels like me. It is me. It's just better.

In fact, having the old brain transplanted into an artificial humanoid body was an option. That was the earliest form of alternative personhood conceived by science, and it's a whole lot cheaper. Getting the chip instead of keeping my fleshy brain doubled the price, and the motorcycle doubled the price again. I had to wait another seven years and save a lot more money to get what I wanted, but I wanted to make sure that the world would stop seeing a body and identifying that as me. What is outside of me is still not a true reflection of what I am, but at least the falseness of the reflection has become obvious to the world at large.

I am not myself, only closer.

I am still myself, only better.