seriously, how can anyone live that way
I remember Aunt Vivian from before the accident. She was the type of person people would describe as ‘vibrant.’ Quick, curious, funny, always floating an eye in some obscure distant mountain village or dropping a few nodes in somebody’s discussion corner. I knew more about her than I knew her myself, but the memories I did have were exquisitely complementary garnish to the tales I had heard. When I was seven, she coordinated a laser display time-lapse of the evolution of Archaeopteryx, which my sister and I were really into at the time, using only a few loan-nodes and most of her own software.
When I was twelve, I remember her actually physically visiting, settling her body on one of our thought-divans and hooking us all up with the sensors she had in the Philippines, chattering and emitting vast intricate stories about what we were seeing, ranging from ancient mythology and linguistics to the recent history of the complex rain generating systems and related rituals they had set up there, the most advanced in the world (at least at that time). I got the impression she had been a part of either designing or implementing them, and remember being very impressed; but it’s possible in my youth and ignorance, easy to awe, I misunderstood and it was just that she delved as deeply into it as she did anything.
Of course Vivian was always available, if I had taken the time to sign up for her wavelength, but when you get to a certain age relatives are relatives, even if they’re Vivian, and you’d rather spend your time on other people and things. I couldn’t have even said what her projects had been for years, let alone where her body was centered, when it happened.
It was actually my sister I first heard about it from. She had relayed the message from our Aunt Joan, and even though I saw it, I was revising the processor stats for a big batch of sediment analysis data with most of my attention, and it was something that was hard to get back to if interrupted. Plus I already had a commitment for that night and the next day, and I guess I didn’t read the message carefully enough and didn’t realize how serious it was.
So it wasn’t until the following evening, when my mom cut into my signal, that I got the full story. Mom said she was going to Denver to visit Vivian, and recommended I come along. In person. One gets a little complacent, given what we do have, and forgets that there are still limits to what we know and understand and can do with the brain. It took years of failures and half-successes before we had reasonably functional sensor hookups, and it’s still not perfect. Moral of the story, there are some types of damage that we don’t know how to repair, and that was the type that Vivian sustained in some sort of foolish machinery mishap that I still have never learned all the details of. I was too incredulous and shocked at the whole situation to pursue it at the time, and it seems moot to ask after it now.
Except for the bandage around her head, and some circles under her eyes, Aunt Vivian seemed pretty normal at first. It was kind of sweet, the four of us - my mom, sister, Aunt Vivian and I - actually all standing in the same room. Things like that happen less and less as you get older. Aunt Vivian stood up - a little slowly and cautiously, not like her, but not all that alarming - and came over to hug us. She called us darling and asked how we had been and what we were up to - as though it were just a regular visit, and about us, instead of about her.
But I told her about my estuary reclamation project, and my sister had at least half a dozen new construction sites she was involved with in some capacity or other, and my mom had her usual newest theory to try and fail to summarize in under 10,000 words. But as we talked, the difference became more and more apparent. I first noticed it in her eyes - something about the way they skipped around, looking first at me, then my sister, then back to me, or maybe beyond us - whatever it was, she always seemed to be looking at something in the room with us. Never at nothing. And gradually I realized that she never did any double-tics, any staccato blinks, no searching signals at all, and the rhythm of her responses in the conversation seemed off, somehow.
So of course came the awkward moment, when my sister, forgetting in her excitement and absorption in talking about the work she loved, offered, “Oh, it’s just easier to do a walkthrough of the frame we have up already, you’ll see what I mean, I can just patch you over-“ and then either she realized, or maybe mom sent her a beep, but she stopped talking and there were just a few long, silent microseconds where none of us knew what to say.
Aunt Vivian herself was the first to recover, smoothly and sweetly shaking her head and saying, “Oh dearie, you paint such a vivid picture with your words, I don’t need a walkthrough to see what a brilliant design it is. Plus you know you’d have to explain so much to me it would take all day. You should just send me some specs and I’ll do my homework and take a look at it some other time.”
Of course now we all understood what she meant by ‘send’. Not directly to her. To some machine to display it for her. And if she wanted to see the building, she’d either have to use a secondhand recording, or just go there in person. No eyes of her own to send. My mom launched into some combination nostalgic anecdote/long-winded philosophical dissection of human behavior and society, the type that drives Aunt Vivian crazy. They love to toss memories and theories back and forth in a blur, but as they talked, I couldn’t help but feel that Aunt Vivian was reduced. Mom always admitted that Vivian ‘won’ these conversations, being so adept at pulling up just the perfect example or counterexample, somehow knowing just the right related historical event or theory to launch the conversation ever deeper. But now she couldn’t just pull up the references, she only had what was there, inside her own skull. And she was all right there in that room with us. She wasn’t looking or listening or in any way being anywhere but there. I feel guilty admitting this, but I found it very disturbing. My own aunt, and I found myself uncomfortable at the thought of her. It seemed hard to believe that there wasn’t some way to replace her damaged connections. Surely other parts of her brain could adapt and take on the hookups, surely she could be made whole again.
But the prognosis was that trying to reinstall anything would be both damage and unlikely to work. As what that meant finally sunk in, I was devastated. I had known, of course, that there were unconnected people out there, some even by choice, but it had never been very real to me. Certainly not anyone close to me. There were support groups for this type of thing, and subcultures devoted to ‘self-sufficient’ living. Aunt Vivian was still a bright and adaptable woman, and I knew she would make the best of it. People will say that when you lose aspects of yourself that you used to think were vital, you learn what’s really important in life. But I can’t help but feel that she’s somehow less, now that she’s so limited. Now that all she has is herself.
When I was twelve, I remember her actually physically visiting, settling her body on one of our thought-divans and hooking us all up with the sensors she had in the Philippines, chattering and emitting vast intricate stories about what we were seeing, ranging from ancient mythology and linguistics to the recent history of the complex rain generating systems and related rituals they had set up there, the most advanced in the world (at least at that time). I got the impression she had been a part of either designing or implementing them, and remember being very impressed; but it’s possible in my youth and ignorance, easy to awe, I misunderstood and it was just that she delved as deeply into it as she did anything.
Of course Vivian was always available, if I had taken the time to sign up for her wavelength, but when you get to a certain age relatives are relatives, even if they’re Vivian, and you’d rather spend your time on other people and things. I couldn’t have even said what her projects had been for years, let alone where her body was centered, when it happened.
It was actually my sister I first heard about it from. She had relayed the message from our Aunt Joan, and even though I saw it, I was revising the processor stats for a big batch of sediment analysis data with most of my attention, and it was something that was hard to get back to if interrupted. Plus I already had a commitment for that night and the next day, and I guess I didn’t read the message carefully enough and didn’t realize how serious it was.
So it wasn’t until the following evening, when my mom cut into my signal, that I got the full story. Mom said she was going to Denver to visit Vivian, and recommended I come along. In person. One gets a little complacent, given what we do have, and forgets that there are still limits to what we know and understand and can do with the brain. It took years of failures and half-successes before we had reasonably functional sensor hookups, and it’s still not perfect. Moral of the story, there are some types of damage that we don’t know how to repair, and that was the type that Vivian sustained in some sort of foolish machinery mishap that I still have never learned all the details of. I was too incredulous and shocked at the whole situation to pursue it at the time, and it seems moot to ask after it now.
Except for the bandage around her head, and some circles under her eyes, Aunt Vivian seemed pretty normal at first. It was kind of sweet, the four of us - my mom, sister, Aunt Vivian and I - actually all standing in the same room. Things like that happen less and less as you get older. Aunt Vivian stood up - a little slowly and cautiously, not like her, but not all that alarming - and came over to hug us. She called us darling and asked how we had been and what we were up to - as though it were just a regular visit, and about us, instead of about her.
But I told her about my estuary reclamation project, and my sister had at least half a dozen new construction sites she was involved with in some capacity or other, and my mom had her usual newest theory to try and fail to summarize in under 10,000 words. But as we talked, the difference became more and more apparent. I first noticed it in her eyes - something about the way they skipped around, looking first at me, then my sister, then back to me, or maybe beyond us - whatever it was, she always seemed to be looking at something in the room with us. Never at nothing. And gradually I realized that she never did any double-tics, any staccato blinks, no searching signals at all, and the rhythm of her responses in the conversation seemed off, somehow.
So of course came the awkward moment, when my sister, forgetting in her excitement and absorption in talking about the work she loved, offered, “Oh, it’s just easier to do a walkthrough of the frame we have up already, you’ll see what I mean, I can just patch you over-“ and then either she realized, or maybe mom sent her a beep, but she stopped talking and there were just a few long, silent microseconds where none of us knew what to say.
Aunt Vivian herself was the first to recover, smoothly and sweetly shaking her head and saying, “Oh dearie, you paint such a vivid picture with your words, I don’t need a walkthrough to see what a brilliant design it is. Plus you know you’d have to explain so much to me it would take all day. You should just send me some specs and I’ll do my homework and take a look at it some other time.”
Of course now we all understood what she meant by ‘send’. Not directly to her. To some machine to display it for her. And if she wanted to see the building, she’d either have to use a secondhand recording, or just go there in person. No eyes of her own to send. My mom launched into some combination nostalgic anecdote/long-winded philosophical dissection of human behavior and society, the type that drives Aunt Vivian crazy. They love to toss memories and theories back and forth in a blur, but as they talked, I couldn’t help but feel that Aunt Vivian was reduced. Mom always admitted that Vivian ‘won’ these conversations, being so adept at pulling up just the perfect example or counterexample, somehow knowing just the right related historical event or theory to launch the conversation ever deeper. But now she couldn’t just pull up the references, she only had what was there, inside her own skull. And she was all right there in that room with us. She wasn’t looking or listening or in any way being anywhere but there. I feel guilty admitting this, but I found it very disturbing. My own aunt, and I found myself uncomfortable at the thought of her. It seemed hard to believe that there wasn’t some way to replace her damaged connections. Surely other parts of her brain could adapt and take on the hookups, surely she could be made whole again.
But the prognosis was that trying to reinstall anything would be both damage and unlikely to work. As what that meant finally sunk in, I was devastated. I had known, of course, that there were unconnected people out there, some even by choice, but it had never been very real to me. Certainly not anyone close to me. There were support groups for this type of thing, and subcultures devoted to ‘self-sufficient’ living. Aunt Vivian was still a bright and adaptable woman, and I knew she would make the best of it. People will say that when you lose aspects of yourself that you used to think were vital, you learn what’s really important in life. But I can’t help but feel that she’s somehow less, now that she’s so limited. Now that all she has is herself.