The Experiment

PART I: The Experiment

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window. I had been uncertain for a time that I was in the right place, and once or twice I was almost certain that I was lost. In the darkness of the forest, made worse by a cold and steady rain which fell heavily through the overhanging trees, it was difficult to maintain any sense of direction. But rain was good, and sometimes it was useful in our experiments. Unfortunately for me, however, it had turned the pathway through the woods into a treacherously slick morass, and but for the lantern I held in my outstretched hand, it would only have been a matter of time before I stumbled and injured myself. As if was, my boots squished through the mud, and conscious of an urge to proceed carefully, I clutched my medical case close underneath my coat as I made my way down the path. My partner had given me that medical case, --it had once been his, --and contained within it the whole accoutrement necessary for our practice together. Several scalpels of varying lengths and shapes, a Bunsen burner and a canister of its fuel, several vials of our proprietary medications, a syringe for their intravenous administration, and a metronome.

My partner had informed me with a note he had left on my desk that he would ensure that any of our heavier equipment was prepared at the location ahead of time. It was a strange note, providing only what few details he had deemed necessary, and though uneasy as I was to receive it, I was relieved to see the lurid gleam of a candle’s flame flicker in the distance, and quickened my pace towards it.

We had been colleagues for several years by this time, and though I had been unsure of our practice at first, I had soon grown enamored with the man and his methods. He was a strange man, eccentric in the extreme, obsessed with his work, and apart from myself, completely friendless and solitary. Still, I had come to admit to myself that the man was a genius, even if most of the medical community had almost unanimously condemned his methods as questionable. Before becoming his apprentice, I had heard rumors that his fixation with electricity portended an inclination towards the macabre and the perverse, perhaps even a belief in reanimation of the dead. Such things sounded like nonsense to me then, and still did. I was certain then, and even more certain now, that he had no interest in such things, --apart from the usual fascination all men have with the nature of the void. As psychologists, it was our profession to understand the deepest recesses of the human mind, discover its intricacies and fears, and none more so than man’s inevitable approach to the threshold of his own mortality. In pursuit of this understanding, my partner and I had come to believe in the effectiveness of older methods, and had spent years seeking to perfect them.

Our laboratory was located on the outskirts of town, a small, far-flung, rural place, --little more than a farming community which was fortuitous in that it provided our practice a continuous supply of sick and deceased animals for our experiments. Cattle and sheep we could get our hands on most frequently, but we had found swine to be most beneficial to our work with their skin, musculature, and, --most importantly, --their brains being the most approximate simulation to that of the human species we had found to date. The walls of our office were covered with all manner of anatomic illustrations, most of which my partner had drawn himself from the dutiful reference of his patients, --the size and shapes of heads, the proportion of the limbs to the torso, the deterioration of the facial integrity nearest the maxilla with age, and the unorthodox droop of the lower eyelids from acute dystrophy were, --or at least had been at one time, --of great importance and interest to him. Disease intrigued him, and over the years he had come to believe the foulest disease of all was age itself. Not just of the body, but of the mind, which was now his, --and therefore also mine, --singular occupation.

His bookshelves were filled with journals, dutifully arranged in chronological order, the oldest of which dating back many decades to a time when his twenty-something year-old self had been optimistic about the prospects of discovering the secret to immortality.

It came as a surprise to me, however, in the reading of those journals, to discover that he had not always applied himself to the study of the mind and quite conversely had his primary training in the science of anatomy. Indeed, one of these earlier entries, taken from when he was still in school, read as follows:

June 12th, 1947 – I came to the belief today that the body is a machine, a complex and complicated one, but a machine nevertheless. And like any mechanical thing, is constituent of its parts which, for the purpose of its perpetuity, might be replaced as often as they break down. Just as there is not a car which cannot be repaired, nor can there be a body which cannot be sustained – if but the right parts may be manufactured to suit its needs.

This belief seemed to fade, however, sometime around the middle of the century, and with great heartache he seemed to despair of some missing component to the great mechanism he had so meticulously studied in the hopes of its ultimate mastery. By this time, he had become a sort of autodidact in the study of the mind, and a true believer in its power to master the material self, setting for itself whatever course it might choose, a belief memorialized in another of his journal entries:

April 18th, 1968 – just as function follows form, so too must then the body follow the mind, capitulating to both its direction and its provocations, yielding to its fears, and then surmounting them no sooner than they are displaced by that most essential of constitutions: courage. I refuse to accept that life itself, --though contrary to all human experience, --is destined to remain elusive in this regard and so then also do I believe, --for believe I must, --that the study of the mind holds the secret to eternal rejuvenation of the body.

By the time I had become his apprentice some years back, however, he seemed incapable of dedicating himself to any theory or practice which advocated any one aspect having a monopoly on the question, and now he oscillated wildly between them, some days seeking his answers in all manner of biological minutiae, littering our laboratory with samples of rotting flesh at various degrees of putrefaction and studying each’s response to various stimuli. In contrast, on other days he would dwell in meditation, staring without hardly blinking at the wall on which was projected from a carousel nearly identical copies of the same photograph, their rapid shutter advance keeping time with the static popping of a metronome he kept regularly on hand. "Spotting the differences. There’s eighty-three of them. Keeps the mind sharp," he had said to me before insisting that I do the same for several hours afterwards, assisting as required with the administration of eye-drops.

Much to my surprise, I was able to count up to forty-six before all was said and done and he allowed me to start working on something else, --the dissection of a cow’s lower intestine, a task complicated by the fact that it was sedated but still alive.

Tonight, however, was different, and in a departure from our usual routine of experiments and patients, --most of whom were either the elderly or the terminally infirmed, --he had insisted that I meet him at the cabin, or what he called the hunting lodge. He said it was for his latest experiment, but had not offered any further details, other than to bring my usual equipment. A crow cawed ominously in the trees overhead as I approached the door and then knocked. My partner answered then showed me inside.

Though never a particularly congenial man, he was unusually silent now and no sooner was I inside than he retreated back to his chair by the candle and opened up his latest journal volume, scribbling away as if writing something of great importance.

"What’s the experiment?" I asked, hoping to understand why he had insisted I come to such a remote location and at such a time of night.

"You’ll see," he replied quickly, even dismissively. I went to the table to unload my case.

"Live one? Or a dead one?" I continued, as I began laying out my scalpels in cascading order by size just like he had taught me to do, --a leftover from his surgical days.

"Neither. Or both. I’ll let you decide when it’s done," he answered vaguely.

"What’s both dead and alive?" I asked, confused by his answer. He was never one to explain his experiments in great detail, and usually that was the thrill of them. You never knew when you were also their subject. That was a part of his genius which had taken some getting used to, but in the end, I had come to find the mystery of it all exhilarating and now I knew better than to corrupt whatever he hoped to learn from studying me with too much curiosity. This time, however, I could not help myself and the words tumbled out of my mouth involuntarily. But my partner hardly seemed to notice.

"Everything. Here, look at this," he answered, taking my question seriously much to my surprise. He stood up and handed me one of his notebooks. This was a first. Normally I was not allowed to read anything that was not yet a year old. My hand reached for the journal tentatively, and then I thumbed through its contents. But there was nothing intelligible in it. Only scribbles, the kind we had come to expect to be produced by many of our other patients once they had been administered their medicine.

I shook my head and lay the book down on the table.

"I don’t understand," I said. "It’s just scribbles."

"My experiments require that we train the mind. Have you learned nothing from our work together?" he asked, irritated and somewhat disappointed.

"No," I said, "I learned everything you said I should."

"And that is?"

"The body is a machine. The mind controls the machine. The machine controls the mind."

"Very good. And what is sleep then?"

"Sleep is the body escaping the mind."

"And dreams?"

"The mind escaping the body."

"That’s right. And why do we sleep?"

"Because without sleep the body infects the mind and the mind infects the body. They corrupt each other."

"…and therefore, we die. Death is the bi-lateral corruption of body and mind."

"Of course. I already know that. But what’s this have to do with tonight’s experiment?" I asked, not meaning to sound as impertinent as I did, but it was too late. It couldn’t be helped.

My partner said nothing but instead shuffled across the room and pulled back a curtain I had not noticed when I first came in. Behind it was a man, --an old man, not unlike the ones we typically worked with from the nursing home, --almost completely limp and slumped over in one of the special chairs we had developed together. The basic frame had been salvaged from the asylum after it had closed and then retrofitted with a network of electrodes and several dials controlling the current. The patient was in a hospital gown and appeared dead, but for the fact that his eyes were open, --wide open. The mouth was slightly agape, and the tongue hung thickly against the lower lip. Nothing else about the body was out of the ordinary apart from several toes appearing blackened.

"Let me guess, he’s neither dead nor alive," I said to my partner, observing the body for any movement as I checked his pulse and breathing and took measurements of his particulars as I had been taught to do by my partner.

"Something like that," my partner answered. "He’s what I like to call ‘suspended’ or ‘being held in suspension’."

"What’s suspension?" I asked.

"That’s difficult to say," my partner replied candidly. "I want to say it’s something like being neither asleep nor awake, neither yourself nor someone else. A suspended person simply is, dangled between states of corruption. He sees himself now as you or I never have, that’s for certain. By my understanding, it is as if he’s dreaming of himself being as he is now, but with his mind as something not himself and outside of his body, though still somehow tethered to it. It’s very confusing, I must admit."

"And how long has he been suspended?" I asked, my head spinning at the notion. My partner thought for a moment and then consulted his journal, flipping it to a page at apparant random.

"Almost six months he answered," charting the passage of time with a trace of his finger in the air. "It’ll be six months next Tuesday."

"Six months!" I exclaimed in disbelief. "Won’t he be missed? Won’t someone be looking for him?"

"No, don’t be ridiculous," my partner admonished with chilling candor. "As far as anyone else knows he’s already dead. He should’ve died already if traditional medicine had their way. They even proclaimed him as such, but I knew better. I bribed the mortician for the body, --you know how that goes."

I looked at my partner, incredulous with both curiosity and horror.

"So you’ve been keeping him alive?" I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me.

"Well, not really ‘alive’ but yes!" my partner replied, his old, beady eyes flashing with pride at his accomplishment. "That’s the thing – you don’t age in suspension! It’s immortality! As you know, for the longest time I thought it could be found in the body, then in the mind. But then I discovered that it had to be both, --or neither. They need to be separated, but not severed. It’s tricky but I think I’ve found the secret!"

He was nearly ecstatic as he told me this, and who could blame him. His whole life’s work sat accomplished before us in that chair, --neither alive nor dead, but suspended between the two. It was remarkable to observe, but there was something inside me that recoiled at idea and what methods he had undertaken to achieve such a miraculous feat of science.

"And is this your first?" I asked with some trepidation.

My partner chuckled to himself and scratched the wiry gray stubble of his chin, as if he was embarrassed to have me discover his secret experiments.

"No, not hardly. The first had to have been several years ago, about the time you started working for me. I think I’ve finally perfected the medication – you know, the sedative we use in all our experiments. Full suspension just requires a little heavier dose. Some didn’t make it, and it took me longer than I had hoped to find out why."

"And what was the reason?" I asked, ignoring the twinge in my gut. I was no stranger to his strange practices and had even learned to redefine what I considered to be humane, but even then I wasn’t sure I wanted to know what extreme lengths he had resorted to without my knowing.

"A paradox, much like everything else," he answered slowly, while rubbing his chin again. "On the one hand, the mind has to want to remain in the body, and yet be repulsed by it at the same time. It’s like gravity, or splitting the atom, --things can only be separated if they’re meant to be together, if there’s attraction. Suspension is like introducing a kind of negative magnetism between the body and the mind. Natural forces wish to bring them together, my forces push them apart, --without breaking them, of course."

"And how do you accomplish that?" I asked, looking at the motionless body in the chair with a growing sense of horror.

"Torture, mostly," my partner replied with stunning candor. "But don’t worry, they’re under sedation the whole time. The goal is to create a kind of electric fence around the body, --that’s what the electricity is for, --and let the mind reach for it, --feel for it, if you will, --only to be turned back by the shock. It’s a delicate balance, but I’ve mapped it all out. In that journal there’s a table with all the factors that go into it, --voltage by heart rate, how and when to pulse the charge through the brain, how many micrograms of hallucinogen to administer and at what times, --it’s all in there. And don’t worry about the notes that talk about burning the toes. I found a simple dose of capsaicin extract into the bloodstream does the trick without causing any of the damage."

It was difficult for me to hear him speak so clinically about his methods, and how meticulously he had documented everything as if it was simply another experiment. But more disturbing still was that after he had finished speaking, I could see that, as he turned up the sleeves of his shirt, my partner had already prepared his arm for the administration of our medication. Then turning to me once again he said,

“And you brought all the equipment I asked you to?”

I nodded my head, and my partner seemed pleased, even eager.

"Good. Everything you’ll need to know is in that journal there," he answered, pointing to the one on the table. "Now let’s get started."

PART II: The Ghost

Dr. Altergheist awoke to a low rushing sound, something between a summer wind through fields of uncut hay and waves breaking upon the shore. There was also the sharp staccato of a popping or clicking sound which cut through the midst of this persistent noise with unusual clarity. He didn’t remember being asleep, but neither did he remember being awake to anything prior. He felt nothing, apart from the fact that the low rushing hum and the popping click seemed to emanate from within himself and not be exerted upon him from without. Both were easy enough to ignore at first, but as he looked around, found that it seemed to grow in intensity the more he tried to ignore it, until it almost throbbed like a heartbeat. He understood that he was weightless, perhaps even formless, but understood too that he belonged to a particular time and place. Objects moved like shadows around him, and though they had a strange familiarity to him, they escaped any specific memory or even naming. He simply was, and so were they, each able to produce little to no effect on the other. He saw a body strapped to a chair, and next to it, a young man sitting on a stool, dutifully attending to several notebooks, copying some entries from another into his own, supplementing as he went with his own interjectory notes as needed. Every now and again, he would pause, take a measurement with either a stethoscope or two fingers applied to the wrist of the man in the chair and then looking at his watch until the reading was complete. These figures were then transcribed to the notebook, and some of the knobs affixed to a kind of control panel on the chair were adjusted.

Periodically, the young man would stand up and stretch, or adjust the speed and volume of the metronome which pronounced its consistent meter with a sort of popping, clicking noise. The metronome was attached to the control panel and responded in like manner to the adjustment of the knobs. Soon Dr. Altergheist discovered that the pulse of the rushing hum was the same as that of this metronome, and its frequency and volume amplified the nearer his thoughts gravitated to the man in the chair. With the metronome, the distinction of the shadows faded and clarified. The further he allowed himself to be from the man, the more tolerable was the pulse and the tingle which accompanied it, --likewise the closer he became, the more it seemed to burn him and tear him apart so that he retreated.

He felt himself moving between these two states involuntarily, simultaneously wishing to be both nearer and farther away, yet unable to coerce himself to prefer the torturous throbbing of proximity to the body or the desolation of finding his perception dulled to a state of only a dim and formless ether, like a thick and disorienting fog.

Soon, however, if indeed he could understand the passage of time, he began to feel himself become queasy at the incessant motion, a sensation which only grew in severity. He wished to scream for it to stop, and though he could feel a sensation like the convulsing strain of is throat and lungs, he was unable to produce a sound.

But the young man, upon the impulse of his continued measurements, only adjusted and readjusted the knobs on the machine or injected another dose of medication from the vial into the man’s arm. Otherwise, he was unaware of any change, and contented himself with reading or sipping a cup of coffee, though his sighs belied a sense of boredom at the monotony of the whole affair. Once or twice, he was obliged to get up from where he was reading and, taking a scalpel from the table, cut into the man’s scalp to remove one of the electrodes which were attached to it and clean it with a damp rag before reattaching it in another location. Sometimes he would leave for a while and come back, looking happier and more invigorated, before once again succumbing to the doldrums of his melancholy vigil.

In time, the motion and the rushing hum and its tingle became intolerable in both its monotony and severity. There was no rest from it, no reprieve. He wished he could find a way to reach the young man and tell him to leave the body in the chair alone. He tried to scream again, then again, and again, --each time more frantically and violently than the last, --but it was no use. The foggy ether only smothered it until, like everything else around him, it too became suspended in its silence.

PART III: The Breakthrough

It had been several years since I had cast my partner, Dr. Altergheist, adrift on his wild experiment. The body still looked fresh, --only some minor discoloration around the eyes and in the extremities, --and showed no further signs of aging, even if somewhat emaciated, which was promising. The doctor’s notes indicated that was to be expected and meant everything was working as intended. Surprisingly, too, the other patient on which his partner had perfected the method was also still alive. At first, I had found myself wondering how my partner was doing, at other times I found myself missing his company and learning from his unorthodox genius. I figured I had no choice but to attend to him since I had little better to do, --no friends, no family to speak of, no colleagues who took my work with him seriously regardless of their many applications. And so I wasted away, year after year, continuing my partner’s work, and ensuring that his ongoing experiment continued as he had intended. Perhaps one day I would find someone like myself, to learn his work, and then eventually undertake the task of my own suspension. Until then, however, I passed the time reading his many journals, taking notes and replicating the many experiments which they contained. Some were frivolous, others positively mystifying, but all were exciting in some regard, if only because they were the only real thing I had left of my former partner and mentor.

One day, however, as I sat reading his journals, --this time one about the the effects of micro-doses of cyanide on memory, --Dr. Altergheist's body started convulsing in the chair, quite violently and unexpectedly. My training prevented me from becoming panicked and I quickly consulted the journal he had left me for any indication as to how I should attend to it. To my surprise, however, I could find nothing, --no indication that a body in a state of suspension should ever convulse. I grew nervous, and felt beads of perspiration form on my forehead and hands. What was I to do?

I tried adjusting the knobs on the machine, but that only caused the body to convulse more. I tried injecting another dose of the medication, but was reluctant to administer too much. I attempted it in small does at first, then larger and larger ones, but to no effect.

Frantically, I poured over his journals for anything I could find. I knew that any more of the medication and I ran the risk of poisoning the body. But what did that mean for the suspended mind? The thought was terrifying. Should I simply allow the body to continue with its convulsions? Let the experiment take its course? Perhaps the electricity was artificially animating the body and needed a moment to recalibrate? With as much medication as he had received, there was no chance of his suddenly becoming awake, --that would take time, perhaps even days.

Maybe I only needed to readjust some of the electrodes on his head? I took up my scalpel and began working feverishly on those that looked most out of place, but still nothing. All the while, his convulsions grew more violent, to the point where I needed to reinforce his restraints, and through it all, his eyes, just like that of the first suspended patient I had seen, were wide open yet sightless.

Then to my surprise and horror, the other body started to shake like that of my partner, slowly at first then faster and faster. The fingers twitched, then curled into a contorted claw that scratched ferociously at the padded armrest, tearing it to shreds. The back arched, and the mouth, slack and open all those years, now clenched suddenly and bit off the tip of its tongue, filling the mouth with blood.

Suddenly it was too much. I couldn’t let them stay like this. Surely it meant that something was wrong, and that the experiment should be over. I rushed to the wall and pulled the plug in desperation. Everything stopped suddenly, the low whine of electric current being pulsed through the wires gradually faded then came to halt. Then everything went dark, apart from the candle which burned in the window.

PART IV: The Void

Dr. Altergheist saw his apprentice reach for the cord, and tried to scream for him to stop, gripped with existential terror. He had felt himself become insane at the torture of the rushing hum and the electric tingle, but some primal instinct for preservation told him that its absence would be far worse. He tried to scream again, straining to the point of agony to somehow reach the convulsing body in one final attempt to preserve himself. And then there was nothing, apart from the vague awareness of a bleak vastness, a lightlessness so thick it seemed to reduce his own awareness of himself to something increasingly small by comparison, as if the horizon of the void was escaping from him faster than any light had the power to conquer. He felt himself become terror stricken, certain that all that remained were his silent shrieks into the eternal blackness of the void.

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