Different

DR. V. AKELL > It sounds as if you feel you are getting back to normal, in a way.

DR. N. TOIN  > No. I don’t believe that’s accurate.

DR. V. AKELL > Why not?

DR. N. TOIN  > To get back to normal would require me to have been normal at some prior time.

DR. V. AKELL > You don’t consider yourself to have ever been normal?

DR. N. TOIN  > No.

DR. V. AKELL > Why not?

DR. N. TOIN  >  I am a statistical outlier in a number of regards, Dr Akell. I am more intelligent than 97.8% of the population. I am a recognized expert in my field, and it is not a small one.  

DR. V. AKELL > You are not normal because you are exceptionally intelligent.

DR. N. TOIN  > Among other things, yes.

DR. V. AKELL > Are there ways in which you are normal?

DR. N. TOIN  > I don’t know how to apply that word to myself.

DR. V. AKELL > Why not?

DR. N. TOIN  >  I’ve never understood what it means.

It’s only when they start being streamed into vocational classes that her brothers and sisters discover there’s something wrong with her.

Nolikka’s ten.

There’s something (weirdo) wrong with her.     

Until now she has just been Noli, how she is is just Noli, like Tanyo is Tanyo and Yanis is Yanis. They were too few and too familiar with each other to make comparisons, to discover normal. Now they have classmates and even friends from other groups and so they have normal too.

And Noli is (mutant) apparently, not normal.  

Selected into science for a reason, she applies her intellect to the problem, realizes she needs to know what it is that’s wrong with her before she can design a remedy. Asking isn’t fruitful, although it does provide some new data: politely asking your crèche­-mates what it is that makes you a freak is creepy. Nolikka tries the same question on a supervisor, but all that gets is the lie that there’s nothing at all wrong with her, the advice not to worry about what the other kids say, and a general shunning for a few days when the supervisors assign extra scut duty to the two of her brothers and the sister who have been most forthcoming about Nolikka being retarded.

Nolikka continues to worry about what the other kids say, despite the supervisor, although not about being retarded: she is well aware her marks in every subject are well above expected norms for her age.  Eventually she badgers her closest sibling, Tanyo, into the reluctant revelation that Nolikka stares at people too much, when she talks to them, when they talk. 

Nolikka stops looking at people.  New data: not looking at people is also creepy. She spends several weeks timing the amount of eye contact her peers make with each other while conversing, and then trains herself to mimic their patterns. Someone comments that Toin musta taken a ‘normal’ pill or something.

Nolikka considers her initial efforts at behavior modification a success.

DR. V. AKELL > You adapted your behavior to meet the standards of those around you.

DR. N. TOIN  > Yes.

DR. V. AKELL > How did you feel about that?

DR. N. TOIN  > I don’t understand the question.

Don’t take that tone with me, you fucking Callie chatte –

pain unimaginable pain unendurable red jagged red pain redredred

Mend your fucking manners, bitch.

And she does, she mends everything about them, every intonation in every word, mended

      broken

                              to meet perfectly the expectations of those who hold the trigger to her collar.

DR. V. AKELL > It seems to me as if you’re saying that you believe that you’re better able to imitate accepted behaviors as a result of those experiences.

DR. N. TOIN  > Shock collars are excellent incentivization devices.

DR. V. AKELL > I understand you mean that sarcastically.

DR. N. TOIN  > Was that unclear?

DR. V. AKELL > Not at all. But I am aware you can’t read responses through someone’s expression, and I wanted to be clear in turn.

DR. N. TOIN  > I was aware that you understood my meaning.

DR. V. AKELL > Do you mind if I ask how?

DR. N. TOIN  > Your involuntary nasal exhalation.

DR. V. AKELL > My – I snorted?

DR. N. TOIN  > Yes.

DR. V. AKELL > I didn’t realize.

DR. N. TOIN  > It was not loud.

DR. V. AKELL > Are you always able to gauge other’s responses through those kind of clues?

DR. N. TOIN  > Not always. However, it has been my experience that others find my communication of meaning through intonation easily comprehensible.  

DR. V. AKELL > But not vice versa.

DR. N. TOIN  > No.

DR. V. AKELL > Does that frustrate you?

DR. N. TOIN  > I endeavor to be patient with the inadequacies of others.

DR. V. AKELL > I understand you mean that sarcast-

DR. N. TOIN  > I know.

DR. V. AKELL > Did I snort again?

DR. N. TOIN  > Yes.

Further streaming follows, narrower specialties, drawn from an even wider pool.  

Nolikka’s fifteen, and she’s learned to mimic normal, although she’s still not entirely certain what exactly that is.

Mimicry without comprehension is possible, but it takes a great deal of concentration, and as the work gets harder and the entrancing equations more all-encompassing, she forgets from time to time. Stares too hard, answers too precisely, or not at all.  Fortunately, though, it seems to matter less, now: the novelty of normal has worn off and being chosen for the Advanced Science Educational Facility is an explanation her brothers and sisters can accept.  She’s not a weirdo anymore, she’s Noli the nerd and it’s said with affection. Mostly affection, she believes, although interpreting the emotional register of remarks is not always easy for her.

And what does it matter how it’s said when she can spend all day puzzling out the rules that run the atoms that orbit each other at the heart of stars?

DR. V. AKELL > You’ve spoken of observing changes in your interactions with others in recent weeks. Is that one of them?

DR. N. TOIN  > Yes.

DR. V. AKELL > And it concerns you?

DR. N. TOIN  > The effect it may have on others concerns me.

DR. V. AKELL > Any specific others?

DR. N. TOIN  > Social interactions covers a broad spectrum.

DR. V. AKELL > It does, yes, which is why I asked.

Toin!

Every circuit of her brain is immediately fully occupied tried to parse the tone of that voice, angry? impatient? Spirits and Ancestors, let it be pleased or at least indifferent. Spirits and Ancestors, let it not bring pain.

Toin!

She learns to read that voice as clearly as algebra, and no matter how the exhaustion of sleepless nights on her cold, thin pallet shreds her concentration, she never, ever, lets herself slip.  

DR. V. AKELL > Let me put it this way. Your hypothesis seems to me to be that without constant reminders of your experiences, your acuity at understanding meaning will atrophy?

DR. N. TOIN  > Yes.

DR. V. AKELL > Were you less happy when your understanding was less acute?

DR. N. TOIN  > I was a different person. The question is meaningless.

DR. V. AKELL > Happiness is not meaningless.

DR. N. TOIN  > It is difficult to quantify.

DR. V. AKELL > I’m interested in your description of yourself as a different person, since you also seem to be describing these changes you see in yourself as a return to an earlier mode of being.

DR. N. TOIN  > Perhaps I have changed back into that person.

DR. V. AKELL > Or perhaps you did not so much become a different person as the same person with an overlay of your experiences.

DR. N. TOIN  > Does that make a difference to my decision?

DR. V. AKELL > Not if you assume that the overlay completely obscured what was beneath it.

DR. N. TOIN  > To assume is to make an ass -

DR. V. AKELL > Yes.

It’s harder and paradoxically easier to mimic normal after her accident.

Nolikka’s eighteen, and she’s blind.

It’s much, much harder to work out what responses people are expecting from her when she can’t gauge their expressions, but she does her best with what she can glean from voices, intonations, hesitations, and mistakes seem to matter less now, with a reason they can see right there on her face.

They can see it, although she can’t. It amuses her, although she keeps the joke to herself when she learns it is considered odd.  It is also odd, or even eccentric, that she refuses the reconstructive surgery.

The doctors can’t believe she doesn’t want to see as they see again.

Nolikka can’t explain to them the things she can see now.

She is confirmed odd and eccentric, but she is in graduate studies now and thus part of a community of the odd and eccentric. She has friends, even some close friends, although some of those relationships fracture and cool for no reason Nolikka can see.  These inexplicable occurrences bring equally inexplicable sequelae, an irritating inability to concentrate, chest and abdominal pain, the at-times-irrepressible urge to weep.  The wife of her senior supervisor, known to all the students as “Mrs Professor Ren”, gives Nolikka advice such as there’s plenty more fish in the sea.  Despite Mrs Professor’s nonsensical statements, Nolikka finds that her symptoms abate after these conversations. 

It’s normal to feel sad, Mrs Professor tells her, and the word unknots inside Nolikka in a dark, dull blue. Named, she can untie it, coil it around her hands and store it away while she works. 

Nolikka is grateful to Mrs Professor for teaching her about sad, although the meaning of normal still eludes her.

DR. V. AKELL > Your strong association of emotion to color and shape is unusual. Did you have the same association before your accident?

DR. N. TOIN  > No.

DR. V. AKELL > How did you perceive your emotions then?

DR. N. TOIN  > I didn’t experience them.

DR. V. AKELL > Not at all?

DR. N. TOIN  > I have no recollection of analogous feelings.

DR. V. AKELL > How did you feel when your crèche-mates, your siblings, teased you for being different?

DR. N. TOIN  > I endeavored to change my behavior.

DR. V. AKELL > That’s an action, not a feeling.

DR. N. TOIN  > I don’t know of another way to answer your question.

Grey, devouring, black-streaked grey, rolling over her, a suffocating wave that she cannot swim through, a wave that will kill her, will kill her, will –

Nolikka names loneliness, names it and folds it and puts it away.  Names the sickly yellow tint of fear so she can crush it into a ball like discarded flimprint and shove it out of sight, names the dull blue ache of grief.  The small white-hot disc lodged behind her solar plexus, though, that she is careful not to name.

She needs it, its energy, its focus, its strength.  It can fill her, leave no room for the enfeebling, terrifying colors of misery and despair.

The closest she allows herself to come is anger. But anger is dull crimson, and this is not. This is –

She will not say it.  Named, it will lose its power. 

And she will lose herself. 

DR. V. AKELL > Can you name it now?

DR. N. TOIN  > Yes.  Rage.

DR. V. AKELL > Was that the first time you felt it?

DR. N. TOIN  > Yes.

DR. V. AKELL > Do you still experience it, now you have named it?

DR. N. TOIN  > From time to time.

DR. V. AKELL > So identifying the emotions associated with these images is connected to managing them, not eliminating them.

DR. N. TOIN  > Yes. They become less intense.

DR. V. AKELL > Are there other emotions – images – you are reluctant to identify? Different ones?

DR. N. TOIN  > Yes.

DR. V. AKELL > Are you afraid of them?

DR. N. TOIN  > No.

DR. V. AKELL > Are you afraid of lessening their intensity?

DR. N. TOIN  > Yes.

DR. V. AKELL > Have you considered that it may be the result of your deliberate strategy to contain painful feelings, this lessening? You spoke of crushing, or folding them away.

DR. N. TOIN  > I don’t understand your question.

DR. V. AKELL > Perhaps if you named these other images, you could nurture them, strengthen them. They might grow in intensity, not shrink.

DR. N. TOIN  > I had not considered that, no.

DR. V. AKELL > Will you take time to consider it? Dr Toin? 

DR. N. TOIN  > I believe our time today is up.