Encapsulated

by Julie Anne Parks

Fate has a dark sense of humor, but I shall have the last laugh because destiny has armed me with the greatest weapon of all -- knowledge.

The hardest part has been not being able to share the information my mind has gathered and extrapolated, the solutions I've worked out, or the epiphanies I've experienced. My God! How I've wanted to shout that the brightest among us use only a fraction of our brains. That there is no limit to what we can accomplish when our minds are forced to work. These are truths we know on an intellectual level. But we humans are a ridiculous species: we ignore such basic truths unless it grips our hearts and wrings the last drop of emotion from us.

So I haven't told a soul. I'm as trapped as a wolf in a snare, so frantic to escape he gnaws off his leg to attain his freedom. At least he can use his teeth to sever his flesh.

I can't. I'm encapsulated within a useless frame, with neither vision nor motor skills enough to speak or to move any part of my body. Trapped.

But it won't be long until I find my route to freedom. My mind won't stop puzzling over my escape until the answer is found.

* * *

Jim Rubens tucked the chart under his arm and entered the room of his most intriguing patient: Randy Crawford, thirty-four, male, Caucasian, medical miracle.

The rules of science said Randy should have expired two -- maybe three -- weeks after his arrival at the Trauma Center. Patients died whose burns were only half as extensive, yet life stubbornly persisted within the charred remains of his once healthy body.

Rubens, fascinated by the tenacity with which the life force gripped the seared man, walked to the end of the bed and checked the fluids that hydrated and nourished his body. The needles were inserted beneath his big toenails, the few places whole enough to sustain an IV.

Randy's vital signs bleeped as sluggishly as a muddy river in August, except for his brain activity. Therein lay the fascination.

Against all logic, Rubens was convinced Randy's brain was not only functioning normally, but that he was, as best he could, responding to his doctor's conversation. That response, hardly concrete evidence, drew Rubens to this bedside night after night, after rounds, when a more sensible man would head toward hearth and home.

Yet Rubens trusted his instincts, suspecting a good portion of being a successful physician was in heeding them. Among other things, his intuition told him that Randy's sense of hearing was unimpaired, and that the slight increase in brain wave activity whenever someone entered the room -- no matter how quietly -- reinforced that theory.

* * *

He's gauging my reactions, wondering if I know he's here. I'll give him a bleep or two, enough to keep him interested.

"Has your wife visited lately?" Dr. Rubens’ voice whispered from close range.

My wife. Hah! Melanie hasn't come in three months, not since you told her you couldn't pull the plug on someone who still had brain activity.

"You're answering me in your head, aren't you, Randy? There's a measurable increase in your brain waves." Dr. Rubens’ voice quivered with excitement.

In his mind's eye, Randy pictured a faceless doctor scrutinizing a monitor with green lines zigzagging frantically.

"You're the only survivor. Do you remember any of it?"

Bet those green lines are going crazy now. Yeah, I remember. Performing a routine audit, spot checking the number of barrels of lacquer. Suddenly, my tidy world of spread sheets and decimal points erupted into roaring tongues of searing, liquid flame, orange, blue and white-hot. The skin on my arms undulated like those colorful blurps blossoming inside a lava lamp, blistering, roiling, then bursting open and peeling back, black, withered ash--

"Calm down! Jesus Christ, you'll work yourself into a stroke and--"

The last vision I had through these sightless eyes were those chrysanthemums of dead skin unfurling their petals in the light of showering sparks, then a flash of brilliant white light, as if the sun had exploded in my face.

When it finished detonating, I was in a black hole of nothingness -- no sight, no pain, no movement, no sensation of cool night air on my skin, only a hollow ringing in my ears that lasted--

"Quiet now! Quiet. Think of calm things, soothing and peaceful --"

--several weeks, gradually dissipating and leaving my sense of hearing abnormally acute. I've heard that when one or more senses are damaged, other senses sharpen as if to compensate for the loss --

"Better. Much better. Had me worried for a second. I'll be back in a minute. I'm going to find my recorder. I want this documented."

-- until my hearing became preternaturally keen. Soon I was listening to conversations next door. That's how I learned to speak Spanish, from Mrs. Muņoz with the kidney transplant, and her constant stream of visitors. I learned theology from listening to her priest. Every day my hearing sharpened further. Soon I was eavesdropping on the lawyer three rooms down whose paralegals briefed him everyday on their open cases. I listened to the doctors conferencing in their office, the nurses gossiping at the duty station, the visitors in the waiting room. I've written entire novels in my head based on those conversations. I've acquired a vast knowledge of things medical, legal, religious. I've absorbed enormous quantities of information from televisions, radios--

"I'm going to record my questions and your responses, as measured by the brain waves."

--I dredged up every memory I could, savoring the smell of Nana's coconut cake as it came from the oven when I was twelve; the feel of my son when I first held him; the tickle of polliwogs darting this way and that between my feet as I hunted crayfish in the shallows of Shadow Lake. I recaptured every moment of my life with Melanie, from our explosive first kiss through the annihilating second when I realized I was dead to her -- at least in her heart. She had to move on.

I've taken each fragment of information and turned them over and over in my head, as if they were puzzles.

"April 12, 1998, 9:12 PM, patient is Randall Crawford..."

I examined every new idea as if it were a Rubik's cube perched on the palm of my hand, twisting it this way and that, extrapolating it into other disciplines, science into theology, philosophy into science.

I listened to the music from various radios in various rooms, translated the chords into numbers, the numbers into equations, and the equations into theorems.

Undistracted by the minutiae of life -- making a living, meals, conversation -- my mind has acquired knowledge as if it were a snowball poised on the top of a hill. The explosion pushed it over the edge and it races downward, accumulating data here, a smidgen of data there, increasing. Picking up momentum. I try not to think about what might happen when it reaches the bottom of the slope.

"...brainwaves are in a high state of flux, peaking at..."

I mastered telekinesis. By focusing all of my mind and picturing an item that I hoped was within the room, I thought I could transport it. I'm not positive about movement, though. I've never seen this room, cannot picture the room itself or the items in it. A few weeks ago, I tried moving a pen and a paper clip with my mind, but I had no idea if they were here to be moved.

Soon after that experiment, I realized hospital rooms have permanently mounted televisions, even those rooms where human "vegetables" are stored to await either their death or resurrection. Even those rooms where no loving wives come to sit by their husband's bedside. I focused, I projected. I channeled my energies. Within moments, my ears picked up a metallic "click," followed by the voice of some simpering woman on a soap opera.

Success is sweet. Within minutes, I mastered volume control and changing channels, and started an ongoing war of accusation between nurses as to who kept leaving the TV on in room 386. And, of course, selective programming added to my ever-increasing knowledge. Anything to amuse myself during the long hours that stretched like a lonely highway through a barren desert.

"Shit."

Clatter. Plastic impacting the floor. He's dropped his hand-held tape recorder, and judging from the lively "hum" I hear, it fell on the fast forward button. It doesn't sound damaged.

The machine whirs softly as Rubens rewinds his tape recorder. The noise prompts me to try moving something again with my mind, something to make the good doctor stand up and notice. But what?

Suddenly, it comes to me. Most IV's are on wheels, aren't they? So they can easily be moved and transported? And with Rubens present, I won't have to worry about moving it too far, pulling out the needles and losing the life-sustaining fluids.

I channel. I focus. I'm rewarded by the soft rolling of wheels across tile, and a gentle "whumph" -- perhaps the plastic bag of fluid swaying against the metal pole.

"What the hell?"

Soft-soled shoes slap against the floor as Rubens, presumably distracted from his recorder by a moving IV cart, investigates.

"Hmmmph."

I picture him craning this way and that, trying to decide if the hospital floor is sloped, causing the cart to roll.

Wheels roll over tile again as the IV is returned to position. Rubens clears his throat, "clicks" the recorder on, and begins.

"I have prepared a list of questions to ask the patient, some of which are designed to elicit emotional responses, my theory being that the more emotionally loaded the question is, the more active the brain wave activity shall appear. My first question is..."

Your first question will be 'Randy, can you hear and understand me?'

"Randy, can you hear and understand me?"

Of course I hear and understand you, dumb ass. Next you'll be asking me to blink once for yes and twice for no like they do in the movies. But I can't blink. Can't move. Thought you were smarter than that, Dr. Rubens.

"The patient's brain waves registered a slight increase in activity, up to..."

Jesus Christ! Did I really absorb his question verbatim before he asked it? Let me try again. Envisioning tentacles that reach, poking, probing into Dr. Rubens’ mind ...

"Oh, my head!" Rubens’ exclaims. "The congestion!"

I envision him wagging his head back and forth, clamped between his hands.

This is unbelievable. Everything is ... fuzzy ... gray ... but there are shadows -- it's true! I'm seeing through Dr. Rubens’ eyes! That's me, lying beneath a tent so nothing will touch the charred remnants of my --

No! I won't look at that! My God, no wonder Melanie couldn't bear to --

"Crawford's brain waves have gone berserk. They're at the top of the grid and show no sign of --"

There's the monitor. Green lines. Focus. Concentrate, reaching, poking, probing, forming, formin--

"Oh, my God! I'm hallucinating. The graph lines are -- Impossible! The brain wave continuum has broken into little fragments of line ben--

Harder! Focus harder!

"My ... God!"

Dr. Rubens’ whisper was so soft, I would have thought I imagined it had I not been seeing the same thing. And I couldn't decide which was sweeter -- the simple act of "seeing" again, albeit through strange eyes, or being able to communicate for the first time since the explosion. For there, scribed across the screen in the bending green lines of my brain wave measurements, was this message:

"My mind is still alive, but I'm leaving this useless body!"

I've done it.

Rubens is in shock, his gaze locked onto the monitor so hard that it's liable to burn its image on his retinas.

Can I do it again? Can I get the message to Melanie that she gave up on me too soon?

I gather my thoughts, compressing them into a laser-thin stream of concentration and feel myself lifting, rising like smoke from a chimney, out of Rubens’ mind, expanding to the farthest corners of this drab room, a room where I was deposited for death.

I'm free! Formless, I'm freer than I ever dreamed of being. I expand, contract, expand again, probing through the walls. The universe is mine!

An alarm sounds, its angry peal anguish to my sensitive ears. Monitors flash red alerts.

I look at the tented carcass on the bed. Back to the screen translating my vital signs. The monitor that moments ago held my message now renders a flat green line.

The brain is dead.

Oh, no, my dear Dr. Rubens, that is a misperception: This brain is not dead. Simply relocated.

The alarm has broken Rubens’ trance. He's checking dials on the life support that sustained my shell for so many months. He's breathing shallowly. Rapidly.

Let that body go, good doctor. It is beyond repair.

Yes! He feels my thoughts probing into his, what he described a bit ago as "congestion". If only he knew how apt his metaphor was: It was congested with both of us in there.

Now I must concentrate, focus my energies, and think how best to use my freedom. I need a vessel.

But wait! I can't bump someone else from their body. Nor could I stand the crowding of sharing a body with another mind, not for long.

What do I do?

Stop! Don't take my body away. Not yet. Give me time to think. Why is Rubens not interpreting my thoughts? Am I in too much turmoil to channel them?

Don't let them do that! I need a few minutes.

Don't panic.

Calm down. Think.

Can't think. Not when they're being so careless with my remains. And Rubens’ mind is too troubled, too confused, for me to force entry.

They've disconnected everything!

Jesus, I was too hasty. I should've thought this through better. What if ... what if I've stumbled into another kind of imprisonment? What if I'm now a brilliant mind trapped outside a corporeal body instead of a being trapped in a useless body?

No! I'm falling apart. Feel like my molecules are swarming, teeming like a cloud of gnats. Getting further apart.

Hold on! I'm too upset to channel ... can't think ... gotta think ... Where will I ... Don't do that...

Please ...

THE END

She turned to fiction after several years as a reporter in New
England.   Julie has now had eleven stories published in the mainstream
and genre press, and her first genre novel, STORYTELLER, will be
released this fall by Design Image Group.

She's a member of H.W.A. and the Writer's Group of the Triad.