Pure morbidity, when I had no way of checking on these matters. But I couldn’t help it. I sought after other things to occupy my mind. I thought about school, about the exams I would doubtless miss—had probably already missed. I ran through a typical day on campus, trying to recall everyone I knew there. I tried to remember the placement of everything in my room. I recalled some of the better lectures I had heard, books I had read…
I made up mental games and played them. I got so that I could visualize a chessboard pretty well, but it was no fun with no real opponent…
And whenever I paused, my ingenuity exhausted the sleep still far away, I eventually began wondering whether I might not be better off dead. If I lacked much in the way of bodily sensations I had probably suffered some damage to my brain or spinal cord. I knew that this was not good at all if I didn’t begin recovering some feelings soon. Those head pains had been fierce. I missed the don’t-give-a-damn feeling the narcotics had induced earlier. And there were times when I wondered whether I might be going crazy—or might not already have done so.
I tried speaking. Whether I could hear it or not was immaterial, if someone else could. I tried saying, “My head hurts” over and over again. It didn’t, really, anymore. But someone must have heard and given me a shot of something to take away my pain. I drifted again.
I tried it frequently after that, but it only worked a few more times. They must have caught on. But it gave me an idea.
The next time that I felt a hand on my forehead, I tried to say, “Wait. Am I in a hospital? Press once if I am, twice if I’m not.”
The fingertips pressed once.
“My parents,” I said. “Are they alive?”
There was a hesitation. I knew what that meant even before I felt the answer that finally came.
I went into some sort of withdrawal after that. Maybe I did go crazy for a while.
Later—days later, possibly—I came around. I tried again.
When I felt the hand, ignored so often now, I asked, “Is my spinal cord severed?”
Two touches.
“Is it damaged?”
One touch.
“Will I get better?”
Nothing. Wrong phrasing, I guessed.
“Is there a chance I’ll get better?”
Hesitation. One touch.
Not too promising.
“Are my eyes damaged?”
Two touches.
“Is it my brain?”
One touch.
“Can it be remedied?”
No touches.
“Would surgery help?”
No touches. Had my respondent left? Wait—
“Have I already had surgery?”
One touch.
“How soon till we know whether it was effective?”
No touches.
“Shit,” I said, and I withdrew again. I couldn’t think of anything else to ask. Those were all of the things that mattered to me. I felt the hand very many times again, but I just didn’t know what else to say.
There followed long intervals during which I must have been psychotic, times full of weird dream-like sequences that were not dreams, just mental wanderings. In between, there were some lucid spells. During one of the later ones I decided to try to preserve my sanity. Why, I am not certain. Maybe the decision was a mad act in itself. It could be that I’d be better off if I lost all touch with reason, abandoned any sense of self. Yet, I decided to try holding myself together against the chaos.
I began by telling myself my life story. Broad and sketchy at first, I began delving for more and more detail. I went back as far as I could. I worked my way slowly forward, many times. I conjured up the faces of my classmates in elementary school, searching for names for each of them. I remembered tablecloths and rugs and pictures on walls that I hadn’t thought of in years. Every relative, every friend… The clothing I had worn at different times… My first fight, my first crush… Every injury. I thought of Christmases and Thanksgivings and birthdays, seating arrangements at dinners, presents given and received, marriages, births, deaths… My parents’ business… It occupied me for a long while. I was surprised at all the things which lay just out of sight in memory…
My parents’ business?
I remembered the computers and the games that I used to play with them. I thought about each one that I had known, many of them personified, just as I had thought about my classmates.
I even remembered the time when I thought that I had somehow seen into the workings of that one…
I found myself wishing that I had a computer to talk with again.
And I thought once more about that strange feeling, forgotten all these years.
Click. Click. Click. Derick. Yes. Like that. And then…
… It was rows and rows of lights and spinning hoops of fire. I followed a bright spiral through a crackling, clicking wonderland…
It was like going back. This was the feeling. Only this was not the same machine, resurrected in memory. It was a real, nearby computer that I was looking into. I was certain. How, or exactly where, I could not for a moment tell. But I sensed the transactions of data about me, the messages coming clearer and clearer as I regarded the phenomenon…
I had somehow made contact with the hospital’s computer. I was into its workings, a silent partner, observing. Suddenly, I was no longer alone.
Every day then, upon awakening, I fled, coiled, into that wonderful machine. It became my friend. There were data, data and more data to hold my interest. I dismissed any shadowy desire to communicate further with those who fed, bathed and medicated me. I knew all their names now—who was on duty, who off—and something of their life-histories, from their personnel files. I read all of the menus in advance. I reviewed all of the other patients’ records—as well as my own. I was in bad shape, with a totally pessimistic prognosis. I discovered that anything I did not understand in the way of medical terminology could be learned via the linkage with the medical library computer. I knew where all of my bedsores were located, even though I could not feel them. I was depressed at my findings as to my own case. Still, I had this much which I had not had before, a window onto the world.
And as entries were dated, I became aware of the passage of time once again. Days and weeks fled, turned into months. My window grew in size, became a vast, panoramic screen…
The hospital computer was connected to a police computer, the medical library computer was connected to a university computer, the university computer was connected to a military computer, the military computer was connected to a meteorological computer—like the man said about bones. And along the way, there were bank computers, think tank computers, private computers, linkages to foreign computers…
I could range the world. I could keep posted on the news. I could read books, locate facts in an instant, spectate at all manner of games and real-life situations…
I learned to ride the flux. Clickaderick.
Of course it mattered that my body lay numb and useless. But at least I was a part of the world again. I had structures to cling to, fascinating things to observe. I could lose myself for days at a time following business or political or military manipulations of people and things and monies… I watched corporate takeovers, economic sanctions in tricky political situations, negotiations for a major league player trade, the restructuring of a university from a liberal arts to a technical institution. I predicted a suicide, I foresaw an oceanographic concern’s rise to prominence, I witnessed the recovery of a lost satellite. I was no longer lonely. I wanted my body back again, functioning properly, but at least I no longer felt the dissolving touch of madness…