"Unknown to us, Adam has been becoming partly conscious during his
bath. Just conscious enough to be vaguely aware of certain sensations,
and to remember them afterward. Few, if any, of these half remembered
sensations are such that he can fit them into the pattern of his waking
reality.
"The one that has had the most pronounced influence on him is, to quote
him, 'Feel clean inside. Feel good.' Quite obviously this sensation is
caused by his bath.
"With it is a distinct feeling of disembodiment, of being--and these
are his own words--'outside my body'! This, of course, is an accurate
realization, because to him the robot is his body, and he knows nothing
of the existence of his actual, living, rat body.
"In addition to these two effects, there is a third one. A feeling of
walking, and sometimes of floating, of stumbling over things he can't
see, of talking, of being talked to by disembodied voices.
"The explanation of this is also obvious. When he is being bathed his
legs are moved about. Any movement of a leg is to him either a spoken
sound or a movement of some part of his robot body. Any movement of his
right front leg, for example, tells his mind that he is making a sound.
But, since his leg is not connected to the sound system of his robot
body, his ears bring no physical verification of the sound. The mental
anticipation of that verification then becomes a disembodied voice to
him.
"The end result of all this is that Adam is becoming convinced that
there is a hidden side of things (which there is), and that it is
supernatural (which it is, _in the framework of his orientation_).
"What we are going to have to do is make sure he is completely
unconscious before taking him out and bathing him. His mental health is
far more important than exploring the interesting avenues opened up by
this unforeseen development.
"I do intend, however, to make one simple test, while he is fully
awake, before dropping this avenue of investigation."
Dr. MacNare does not state in his notes what this test was to be: but
his wife says that it probably refers to the time when he pinched
Adam's tail and Adam complained of a sudden, violent headache. This
transference is the one well known to doctors. Unoriented pain in the
human body manifests itself as a "headache," when the source of the
pain is actually the stomach, or the liver, or any one of a hundred
spots in the body.
The last notes made by Dr. MacNare were those of June 11, 1957, and
are unimportant except for the date. We return, therefore, to actual
events, so far as they can be reconstructed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account