Caroguay frowned. He was so down. The problem itched his cerebrum and taxed him mightily. Nothing about his chosen line of research was easy. He was feeling the tug of doubt pulling him into the vortex of dysthymia. I must not let that happen, he thought to himself as he rubbed his right eye with the pad of his thumb. At times like this, everything turned dark. Nothing seemed possible and he so very often resigned himself to doom, becoming nearly paralyzed with despair. The sun imploded in his universe and he was sure one of his peers would expose him for the fraud he thought he was. The feeling was physiologic. He felt his physical systems shutting down—muscles weakening, concentration lapsing, fatigue growing, energy dissipating. He knew it was a hyperbolic response and yet he was nearly powerless once the feeling’s talons took hold of him. He knew he had to abort this line of thinking. He was the man, he told himself. He was brilliant and was the only person in history who could put this kind of project together and bring it to fruition, he told himself. He was okay, he told himself. 

He suddenly rose from his desk in the predawn light. His meditation and self soothing technique was working. He thought about his past treatments for his bipolar disease. The fact that he even had this condition nearly derailed him from achieving leadership of the project. Despite this one little disability, which Caroguay always saw as an advantage, but usually only in his manic phases, he was the obvious choice. He had made it happen, after all. Before he, neuroscientists tended to work rather independently on various aspects of neuro-physiology, neuro-anatomy, neuro-pathology, and the most recently derived field of neurophysics. Caroguay was really the first to harness all aspects of neurology research. Obviously, all these sub specialties were working towards the same thing: total understanding of the nervous system; Caroguay was really just the force to connect all the disparate dots and allow for practical modeling of the brain to occur. He was always surprised that his stubborn colleagues had to be bullied into directing their interest this way or that to help Caroguay’s vision to be realized. Didn’t they all really in the end want to make their own functional nervous system? A lofty goal, indeed, but far more compelling than the shortsighted efforts, as he saw it, of his fellow researchers, who typically only wanted to answer one isolated, esoteric, idiosyncratic, minute aspect of neural function. Crazy. What good, for example, was knowing how some phospholipid denatured in response to some limited change in stimuli? But when one considered how this affected neuronal cell migration during embryogenesis and the effect on neural network connectivity, that really was something to be reckoned with. 

Caroguay decided whenever he thought of all the threads of research that brought the group to this point, that it was worth going through all the treatments of his bipolar disorder. There were so many of them, many he designed himself from the research he was coordinating. Reverse heterotopic transcription; Cation electrocohesion; receptor blocking; receptor augmentation; immunotoxicology; diet; exercise; and psychotherapy of course. Lots of psychotherapy. This last treatment option actually was perhaps the most useful because it allowed him to see the gestalt of the neurology field. In picking apart and analyzing the workings of his own dysfunctional mind, he paradoxically gained an appreciation, no, it was more like gaining an esthetic of the nervous system and basking in the wonder of the beauty and elegance of it. Without a nervous system, we would not even be able to distinguish that we were individuals. We could not know the existence of the universe beyond our corporeal selves. We would not be able to assay our position in that universe and to what degree we were functioning in the milieu. 

That none of the treatments Caroguay underwent had any success never seemed to bother him. He was convinced that his mind was uniquely formed in such a way as to be resistent to the neurochemical changes to free him from his bipolar disease. Indeed, he believed his intellect derived from his bipolar condition. When he was manic, the expansion of his consciousness was at once exhilarating and absolutely necessary for him to have the leaps in thought he was prone to time and again. A level headed affect could never have had the big thoughts he had. Still, when data suggested a possible treatment option for him, he never backed away from contacting the researchers to consider the practical applications of what they were doing. More often than not, he would offer himself as a test subject, a habit that never failed to frustrate his upper management colleagues. They thought it was ludicrous that he would risk his own mental health on some whim of treatment that had not even been tested on cell culture colonies, much less in vivo animal test studies. More than once, his authority was challenged by others claiming he had been negatively affected by the human experimentation he had performed on himself. More than once, Caroguay would retort with a quantum leap forward  in creating the artificial intelligence that not only shut up his critics, but often destroyed their credibility to the point that they became only an insignificant member of the research team, if not outright cast out in toto.

Only Caroguay knew exactly the effects all these treatments had on his own mind. While he would only admit the benefits these varied combinations and sequences of treatment had, he knew there had to be some drawbacks. He knew his own psychological makeup would not allow him to see the detriments, the wear and tear, on his poor little neurons. He knew that if his connections fired faster, there  he did not recognize her. He dreamed that the world was a cheerful bright place without worry.

“But I don’t need to do this,” Caroguay said morosely. “I can control it. I need the energy. The drugs make me so…blunt.”

“I’m afraid that one of the symptoms of your disease is that you do not know how profoundly it is affecting your behavior. You are totally out of control.” Dr. Magent said with no small amount of disgust. “This treatment, however, should leave no ‘blunting’ as you put it, of your mental functioning. It has been used extensively over the last few years; it’s the latest, best treatment we can offer. Soon will be the first tier treatment. Already found in the textbooks.”

“And what about mitochondrial de-differentiation? Isn’t that one possible adverse effect?”

“Well, most anything in life worth doing comes with some risk. I believe the potential benefit outweighs the small risk. If this does not work, the next step in the algorrhthm would indicate brain biopsy, which I wish I had done long ago. You’re peculiar reactions to therapies is just…weird. Well not weird so much as unexpected and profoundly interesting  to my research.”

“So I am become your lab apparatus after all? I didn’t want this…” Caroguay complained. He was become flushed in the face, hot under the collar. He hated to be pushed or to even perceive that he was being pushed. It always caused him to feel like he had to make a snap decision. Many was the time he did make quick decisions, only to regret them later. Like not going to see his favorite lecturer the last time he was in Caroguay’s region of space. It was the neuroscientist Zenser, a frequent lecturer on the wave and in holo’s. Zenser was brilliant but even better than that he was a dynamic, passionate speaker who could tie everyday experience to the most obscure, esoteric datum from neuroscience research. The man was just plain eloquent. And he seemed to be everywhere. He was a favorite at conferences and as a commentator on any number of subjects, not just neuroscience. Caroguay’s dream was to hear him talk in person, but the tickets were proffered at nearly the last moment, and to go would have meant tremendous upheaval of Caroguay’s schedule and finances. The friend even said, “Pay me whenever; its okay.” Caroguay had some kind of gut feeling that he should not go, and said no, he would catch Zenser the next time; surely he would be back in the region sometime soon. Famous last words, as they say. Not even a standard year later, Zenser’s ship got caught in the gravity well of a star about to supernova. He and his entire retinue were lost forever. Caroguay never forgot the lesson he learned that day. He must strike when the moment presents itself; tomorrow, next week, next year or next time might never come. 

Caroguay had let his mind wander to these connected memories. The synaptic interdigitation therapy, as it was called, was an abomination. Like playing a vocal with a holo projector, only instead of defaulting to the incompatibility mode and not giving any output, SIT actually tried to rewrite one’s synapses using an alternate codex. It fractal transgression analysis to do this, the equivalent of putting your brain through a blender, then seeking where was the most likely glob of cells responsible for saying, “Mama.” Caroguay will never know how many connexions he lost between his brain cells. In effect his brain was functionally torn apart and reassembled on a near-random syntax. The amazing thing was that to the casual observer, it seemed like everything was okay. Caroguay could speak. He knew who he was and most of his memories were intact. But Caroguay was subtly changed after the SIT procedure. Those who knew him best could not put their fingers on it, but he was different. Creepier, was the consensus, as if he got a glimpse of something about them that no one should see. Caroguay reported an increased understanding of nature and the world around him. He had said that he had never saw things the way he was seeing them now. The way Caroguay was telling it, he seemed to have gained a savant way of seeing things, much like the idiot savants who could tell you every prime number up to 10 billion and beyond, but lacked enough sense to come out of the rain. The thing was, Caroguay was no idiot either before or after the procedure. If anything, the SIT procedure unleashed something latent in his mind. 

It was a no-brainer for Caroguay to pursue a career in the neurosciences. He initially wanted to be a neurophysicist. The idea of tuning synaptic firing to specific purposes greatly appealed to him. The idea of designing neurotransmitters and synthetic neural networks nearly overloaded his own neurons. As he did his research, he found that he could not possibly perform all the experiments percolating in his mind. He needed several others to actually do the work; several others turned into several dozens of others, then hundreds, then…well, you get the idea. His great talent was compiling data. Like the savant who could count at a moments glance the number of jellybeans in a jar of any size, Caroguay could look at reams of numbers in differing arrays and matrices and waveforms and elicit the correlation immediately. All of this did nothing but enhance his “creep” reputation. To see him in action really was freaky. At once he had lost the sparkle in his eye that had ingratiated himself with others so famously in the past, but he also gained a kind of second sight. 

Caroguay, of course, became exasperated with others who could not see what he saw as plainly as the red dwarf sun in the sky over his home world. He became a bit of an overbearing jerk, to put it lightly. But it became ever more clear that he should be more concerned with management of large numbers, than overseeing a few techs in a lab on some asteroid somewhere. 

“Stop! I can’t…I can’t…” Caroguay panted. His head vortexed and he felt like he was changing shape. He truly did not know…

Dr. Magnet did not mean to become a sadistic bastard. He acknowledged to himself that he was moving into some uncharted territory when the treatments he prescribed went “off-label”. When something didn’t work, he would try something else of course, but he overlooked the application of logic. He overlooked the use of precedent. He overlooked the idea of evidenced based practice. And sometimes, despite his best efforts, the patient improved. Based on these rare victories, he made a reputation of being the doctor of last resort. If Dr. Magnet couldn’t fix it, abandon ye any hope. Magnet took on the more and more complicated cases. Magnet took on cases that were increasingly complex and complicated, stuff that was truly hopeless. It almost, but not quite, excused his throw-everything-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks approach. 

Even Dr. Magnet knew that what he was doing was sometimes outside the sphere of logic. He felt for his patients; sometimes that was good because he would cease his torturesome therapy. Sometimes when he felt for his patients it was bad because he would convince himself that the healing was just a moment away and so would continue blasting away at the patient beyond the point of doing no harm. 

Dr. Magnet looked at Caroguay strapped to the tilted to nearly upright table. He seemed to be drinking in the sight of the man, or possibly weighing in his mind how much treatment Caroguay could take. Caroguay, weakened already to the point of near incomprehension, mumbled a slow song of, “No, no, no, no…” It was the only thing he could get out. In his mind, Caroguay was beyond language. His refusal of the treatments was a whole body response that his conscious self could not express. At once, he was stunned that Dr. Magnet could not or would not see that the treatments were not working and should be stopped. He was stunned that Dr. Magnet could not or would not see that the treatments were causing untoward effects and should be stopped. He was stunned that Dr. Magnet could not or would not see that what he was doing had long ago crossed from the territory of medicine and was now well into the territory of torture.

“No, no, no, no…” was all Caroguay’s body could sing in a low, slurred drawl.

“Now mind you, young man, this will feel a bit uncomfortable because this treatment is specific for neural tissues. Unfortunately, some of the nerves involved in the manic depressive condition are also involved in the general sensorium of the body. Thus, a severely depressed person may present with a chronic back ache where there is no pathology to be found in the muscles, bones, connective tissues, vasculature, or the even the nerves for that matter, of the back regions. I’m sure you did not know that.”

“No, no, no, no…”

Dr. Magnet really was getting a bit exasperated with this guy’s droning reaction. He was trying to help him and all that this man was doing was being negative. If he did not want to be helped, why did he come see Dr. Magnet in the first place?

“No, no, no, no…” Pathetic. I have had patients who tolerated twice as much treatment wave as he was receiving, Magnet swore to himself. We were only just getting started, he told himself. Hmm, maybe this man is having an adverse reaction, Magnet wondered. He checked his view screen and the indicator lights. No, Magnet reassured himself, everything is going as planned. Lymphocytic histamine vesicle disruption rate was within normal range, so it could not be an allergic reaction. What if he was latently immune compromised? Dr. Magnet wondered. Then there might not be much of a histamine release and he might be falsely negative allergic response. Dr. Magnet considered this. “Nah,” he said aloud. 

“Noooo,” Caroguay seemed to respond in droning tone. Dr. Magnet slightly cocked his head as if he were wondering whether Caroguay had heard his stream of consciousness thoughts. What Dr. Magnet could not have know or even imagined was that Caroguay had indeed tapped into Magnet’s line of thinking, including the near certainty that Dr. Magnet would dismiss the possibility that Caroguay was immune compromised, not in a latent fashion, not de novo, but only because of the combination of treatments Dr. Magnet had administered. Caroguay had deduced, while being nearly unconscious and near death, that the current treatments that Dr. Magnet was administering had already had maximum therapeutic effect, if any, and now were only killing him.