Unique, like everyone!

Hi there, I’m Bell. Yep, that’s the my name, the name *they* gave me. I say I am, because I can feel and I can think but not in the way you know it. They sometime call me, the brain-man. After all I am just a brain. Yes, I’m just a brain i.e. I’m separate from my body.

No, I’m not a lab created group of neurons. I am a fully functional human brain. I was man once. I was fascinated with science. I one read about mice brains being detached from their bodies and kept alive in labs. I was hooked, immediately. Scores of questions sprang up. Could a human brain survive that way? What about all the sensations? What would happen to its views of the world, when it has no eyes to see, no hands to touch with and no physical body. Just a brain, kept on a bunch of electrodes? With a direct supply of glucose and the chemicals needed to keep it alive and functioning. How would its thoughts work?

I was not a scientist but I loved Science. I thought about it and joined science forums and corresponded with people having similar queries. I had a feeling someone might have tried it. Until one day something happened.  That something changed my life. I have been asked to share my story with the world. Its my story, the way I see it. I have to tell you, this is not science fiction. This is real science that people are carrying out. I’m just a *subject* and I don’t understand many of the procedures they carry out, but I participate and I kinda like it. Back to my story.

I got this call one day. It was someone from one of the forums. We talked about the possibility of such an experiment. We discussed legal and ethical repercussions. Then came the moment. He asked me if I would volunteer for such an experiment. It was unbelievable, but it was true.

I accepted.

I met him at the Heathrow airport a couple of weeks later. We took a cab. He gave me something to eat and it made me go to sleep. When I woke up, it seemed like some underground laboratory of sorts. No windows, or doors to outside, at least not known to me. I was told that the first part of the experiment will be carried there and then they’ll take me to the *real* place. Since the government doesn’t approve of such experiments, the new place would be an actually underground one, and once there, I will have no chance of returning back to my normal life. I understood and agreed to go ahead with it.

At this place, we had a series of tests. They documented everything about me. Extensive medical tests were conducted. The most interesting tests were, when they tested my body’s internal workings i.e. responses to certain situations and stimulation. They put me in some intimate situations and measured a host of stuff. I had probes attached to my scalp, arms, legs, heart beat monitors and lot of stuff I wouldn’t know a thing about. It was important, since they had to reproduce all of those sensations and brain activity corresponding to the physical activity without the actual body once we were into the next phase.

This was fascinating. I had read about the mice, but this was me. I was actually gearing up give up my body and see if my brain could actually tell. If they could reproduce all the sensations, by continuing to show my brain a believable world image, using artificial sensory organs, this would be the biggest discovery in biological sciences. I kept imagining how they would achieve it and having no background in science made it quite surreal.

We stayed at that lab for two weeks, I was never taken out but they had plenty of stuff in there. There was even a small park sized quarter of a football field. We had a huge screen in one of the lounges where I watched football matches. All the time, being monitored. They gave me capsules to gulp down. These capsules had come sensors in them and apparatus that would send back data signals to their computers. I sometimes felt a little scared but the fascination was larger than life, it kept pushing me. I had left my life behind. I never hated my life but I had never loved it either. And it was all to change. I would be part of the biggest experiment in medical history. Imagine If all went well. Imagine if we discovered an inexpensive way to sustain a brain with external robotic parts. It wouldn’t know. Imagine amputees getting body parts which, to their brains, would be same as human body parts, they would look different but behave the same. The brain would easily accept them. All the brilliant minds would survive the death of their bodies. This was history in the making and I was part of it. Pretty much at the center of it!

At the end of the 2nd week, I was told that I had been totally documented and that If ever they had the technology to create a human from scratch, they could, in theory, resurrect me, exactly the way I was! Quite an honour for me!

We had to move to my next and final destination. Just as before, I went to sleep and woke up at the new place. This one had a name. They called it APEX. I don’t know the full form yet, but APEX seems to be quite a name.

At APEX, I met new people. People here had names, probably because they knew I wasn’t going anywhere! I met Alex, the head of the team, that would conduct research on me. Lucy was a team member, she was the only female on the team and we quickly made good friends.

APEX seemed to come right out of some science fiction book, equipped with technology ahead of its time. They had some more tests for me and we were finished with them by my 2nd day there.

Third day marked the start of my existence as the Brain-Man. They started by attached thousands of wires with diameters in nanometers into my spinal cord at the base of my neck. They attached them to my spinal cord at one end and to their computer systems at the other. Another set of wires went into my cerebellum at the back of my head.

I was amazed at the speed with which they accomplished this. I woke up in the evening to see all these wires going in and out of my body and hundreds of probes all over it. Unable to move or feel any part of my body, I was happy to still be alive and actually see myself. It meant that we had had a good beginning. I was alive and could still see, smell, breath and speak, with some difficulty and mild pain.

…

P.S. This is story of Bell, as told by Bell. I, the owner of this blog will roll it out in episodes. If you like it, please comment. I will try and get your comments to Bell, if possible. I will post the next part within three days.