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.