Holy Fire - Bruce Sterling [29]
“Some patients,” Mia said. “Maybe.”
“I’m not saying that we’re there yet, or even that we can see it. Obviously there are many hard decades of research ahead. But with NTDCD, some of our patients may, possibly, live to see that day.”
“I didn’t ask you for any such promises, Doctor. Anyway, I’ll believe in immortality when I see it done for rats and dogs.”
“We’ve done it already for fruit flies and nematodes,” said Dr. Rosenfeld.
“I’m not a fruit fly,” Mia said.
“Too true,” said Dr. Rosenfeld. “I take your point. But you are a very special woman in a privileged position. Only forty human beings have gone through this treatment to date. Furthermore, none of them have had the exact clinical experience that you’ll be undergoing. This treatment in its present form is only two years old. There is very little postoperational experience with patients. And that is a matter that concerns us both.”
Mia nodded helpfully.
“Once you’re out of the tank, you’ll be consciously experiencing the end results of a very profound metabolic change. Once you enter your convalescence, you’re not going to be the same woman who’s sitting here in front of me right now. You’ll discover that you’re not even the mistress of your own body. You’ll have lost a lot of nervous and muscular coordination.”
Dr. Rosenfeld opened a notebook. “You’re ninety-four years old. Your records tell me that you’ve lost about 12 percent of the neuronal and glial tissue that you had when you were, say, twenty. That’s perfectly normal and natural, but NTDCD is very, very far from normal and natural. You’re going to get all that tissue back—not the original tissue, mind you, but a new infiltration of fresh brain tissue that is essentially unimprinted. And brain tissue is not something you can turn on and turn off, plug in or plug out. It’s going to be part of you. The new you.”
“How dangerous is that?”
“Let’s just say you’re going to require a lot of surveillance and counseling during the integrative process.”
“What’s the worst I can expect?”
“Very well … As you know, in the early days we had two fatalities. Catastrophic neural failure, cessation of higher functions, euthanasia. The customary ethical procedure—tragic, but customary. You could die in this treatment. That has happened.”
“And?”
“And profound dissociation. What they used to call schizoid behavior, in the old days. Some preepileptic manifestations. We understand these mental processes fairly well these days, on a cellular level. Unless there is gross physical damage, strokes, infarcts, amyloid degeneration, then we simply don’t allow our patients to enter states of dementia. We can interfere and avert most gross neuronal misbehavior.”
He leaned back in the chair. “But there are other and subtler disturbances: culture shock, anomie, postoperation letdown, a few hints of bipolar disorder. Plus good old-fashioned human mulish impatience … Human consciousness is the highest and most complex metabolic function in all of nature. We can throw medical terms at the soul, but we can’t box it up. We simply can’t give people their identity the way we might give an injection; in the end, people have to find their own souls.”
“Are you religious, Doctor?”
“Yes, I am, actually. I’m a Catholic lay brother.”
“Really. How interesting.”
“I wouldn’t advise any use of entheogens under your medical circumstances, Mia. If you want to see your Savior face-to-face, then He will wait for you. You’ll have plenty of time.” Dr. Rosenfeld smiled.
Mia nodded and wisely said nothing.
Dr. Rosenfeld hesitated. “May I ask something? When was the last time you had an orgasm?”
Mia thought it over. “I’d have to say about twenty years.”
“Very wise. I’m sure that has helped your metabolism. But you’re going to become a sexual person again, with something