Doctor Who_ Bad Therapy - Matthew Jones [100]
There wasn’t time to explore this interesting clinical development. The whole project was over and this incident needed to be sorted out, and quickly.
Julia was aware that she hadn’t yet alerted Moriah. If she was honest, she knew that she wanted to find out more about what was going on here for herself, before Moriah could exert his overbearing presence over the proceedings.
Thinking of Moriah reminded Julia Mannheim of where she had seen the aristocratic woman before. Julia turned to where ‘Tilda’ was standing. That was it, she was one of the early results of the Petruska Programme – the director’s own private research project.
‘Tilda’ had paused by one of the dormant Toys which stood like a starved and broken tree in the middle of the ward. She gently caressed the mannequin’s arm. Julia was shocked when it stirred under Tilda’s touch for a moment, before slipping back into stillness. ‘Tilda’ was quite unlike any of the therapeutic mannequins that had operated at the Institute.
‘I don’t understand,’ Julia began, trying to give voice to the many questions in her mind. ‘How can you exist like this?’ She gestured at the young West Indian man who was holding the child tightly in his arms. ‘Where is your 171
patient? Who are you bonded with? Why do you have these personality traits and physical characteristics? Whose needs are you reflecting?’
The ‘Tilda’ Toy only returned her gaze, her face a mask, and wrapped her arms around the frozen Toy, its chest beginning to rise and fall in the embrace.
Slowly, it began to come alive. Julia was unsettled by ‘Tilda’ touching the dormant Toy. She couldn’t understand how one Toy could possibly activate another – surely that ought to be fundamentally impossible?
‘Please leave that equipment alone,’ she demanded, trying to fill her voice with authority.
For all her affectation, ‘Tilda’ looked genuinely shocked by the request.
‘Equipment?’ she said, a look of horror crossing her face as if she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe what Julia was saying. ‘Equipment!’ Now she sounded angry. ‘That’s really how you think of us, isn’t it?’ she said, beady eyes narrowing. ‘Don’t you understand? These are my people. You may have made us with your so called science,’ she said, spitting out the word, ‘but we are a race of free people.’
Julia had never heard a Toy talk like this before. ‘No. No you’re not. You can’t be. You’re an emotional mirror reflecting the needs of your patient. You don’t have a life of your own. You can’t. Wherever you go, whatever you do, you will be offering a therapeutic relationship to the patient with whom you are bonded. You’re a therapist, not a human being.’
‘Tilda’ laughed, humourlessly. ‘I could say the same about you.’
Julia shrugged off the insult. ‘Then explain how you could have become sentient?’
‘Tilda’ glared imperiously at her. ‘ I don’t have to explain anything to you! I know who I am. Just because we live in relation to others does not mean that we aren’t real people.’
Julia didn’t like the way was arguing. It was too close to the ethical issues she had raised with Moriah during the planning stages of the work. Was the definition of a human being really the ability to live independently? Was the essence of being human the ability to survive in isolation? In the end, the research team had agreed that it had to be. Julia had always felt uncomfortable with the idea that what differentiated her from a Toy, what made her human, was her capacity to be alone.
The Toy called ‘Tilda’ was still talking. Julia felt embarrassed and angry that she was being made so hot under the collar by one of the therapeutic mannequins. She had a nagging suspicion that might be reacting to her own ambivalence and uncertainty with the work at the Institute. She cut across
‘Tilda’s’ words with all the authority she could muster. ‘Listen. Listen to me.
Moriah made you. I watched your body grow from a clump of cells. Not in a womb, not in a human being, but in a glass tank filled with a chemical so-172