The Barrens (NaNoWriMo Day 5)
Onward and upward. I'm going to have to pick up the pace a little bit to catch back up. Enjoy!
You can find previous days here:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5 Word Count: 1348
Total Word Count: 7407
Goal: 50,000
Remaining: 42,925
"I don't know that I'll ever understand why you like to keep it so dark."
Ruth, the church’s subdeacon, was standing at the door to the church library. Leah was sitting at a table reading by the light of a small desk lamp. The light coming in from behind him in the hallway obscured the subdeacon, and she looked like a shadow framed by the doorway.
"Just turning into a habit, I guess," Leah said. Piles of books on phrenology and neurodynamics covered the table. Her head felt overstuffed with information. "I didn't realize what time it was."
"Everyone else is going home," Ruth said. "You should as well. The vicar wants to lock up.”
"I'll put these up and be on my way."
Leah looked at the books. Her eyes were dry. A stack of scribbled notes sat in front of her. She had spent the day in the library, refreshing her memory on the brain and its interaction with the four humors. Everything was starting to blur together, and she felt more confused now than before.
She tapped a key on the workstation and the monitor lit up, displaying records of past administration and ecclesiastical research projects. Most of the content was redacted or restricted from her. She had managed to dig up some information on the old research into external influences on a person’s behavior, but most of it was blanked out. Her mastery of neurodynamics was too rusty to fill in the gaps. She logged off and switched the monitor off.
“What are you reading about tonight?” Ruth asked. She walked over and sat next to Leah. She was about the same age as Leah, and the True Cross, emblem of Saint Helena, was stitched to her vestments. Her dark hair was tied back, and she wore a simple gold necklace around her neck, signifying her as among the ordained.
Subdeacons were as close to true ordination as women could get. Aside from acting as administrators of district churches, subdeacons assisted the vicars during masses and ceremonies. Leah had wanted to pursue that path, but the church allowed very few hopefuls into training for the subdeaconry. It was an exclusive vocation, and it hadn't proved to be her destiny.
“I think I’m just giving myself a headache more than anything else,” Leah said. She rubbed her eyes.
“Anything I can help with?” Ruth asked.
“No, it’s fine. I need to clean up and get out of here.”
“Let me help.”
Ruth picked up a book and closed it. She looked at the cover. A History of Neurography.
“You were serious about the headache,” she said. “This is how you spend your free time?”
“Unfortunately,” Leah said. She took the book from Ruth and stood, putting it back in its place on a nearby shelf. “Hey, you studied neurodynamics at the university, right?”
“Of course,” Ruth said. “Didn’t you?”
“One class. I mean, I know the basics, but I'm trying to understand the effects a signal might have on a person’s brain.”
“A signal?”
“Yeah, like an electromagnetic wave,” Leah said. “It’s that worker who came through yesterday. He had suffered a mild seizure. The initial scans at the hospital caught the church’s attention, and they had me examine him further. His neurodynamic patterns are almost the same as an external signal that he may have been exposed to. I can’t tell if it’s an exact match, but it’s pretty close.”
“The one intercepted from the Barrens?”
“Right. Would that cause seizures?”
Ruth picked up a few more books and stood. She walked through the rows, setting them in their proper places.
“It could,” she said. “If it's affecting the production of humors.”
“Could something like that be used to control a person's behavior?”
“What gave you the idea that it could?" Ruth asked. She had stopped fitting the books into the shelves and was giving Leah a curious look.
Leah walked over to the table and tapped the workstation. "I was reading some records on research into that sort of thing."
"Yeah, it's possible," Ruth said. "Its been theorized, at least, but it's pretty unethical. That research on it was decades ago, and it got shut down.”
“How would it work?”
“Well, it would be more like influencing a person’s actions than directly controlling him or her,” Ruth said. “Neurodynamics is essentially concerned with the interplay between the core of the brain and the different lobes. The core generates a frequency, or neural pattern, and the lobes react by generating humors that affect our moods.
“For this to happen, there has to be some kind of stimulus. It could be input through the senses or a memory. Some kind of trigger. The core takes in these triggers, modulates its frequency accordingly, and this stimulates the various lobes of the brain. The lobes then respond by releasing humors, affecting behavior. If you see something dangerous, the brain floods you with the right mix of humors, and you run or fight.”
“Right,” Leah said. “I just don’t understand how this could be done externally.”
“Everybody’s brain core has a unique ‘resting’ neural pattern, like a fingerprint, that’s modulated by the triggers. The idea was that an external signal could be designed to mimic a person’s resting pattern. If this was targeted at the brain core, the brain might be tricked into thinking the external frequency was its own. You could then modulate the external frequency, and the different lobes would react accordingly. Want somebody to act violently? Modulate the frequency to target the lobes associated with violence, and the person would become violent.”
“Has it been proven?”
“Not that I'm aware of,” Ruth said. “I'd think it would just confuse the brain and overload it. Seizures and fainting usually occur when the brain is overwhelmed with humors. The body shuts down to protect itself. It's a defense mechanism. Why are you so interested?”
“Professional curiosity, I guess,” Leah said.
What is the eighth commandment? You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. What is false witness? Anything said or done with the intent to mislead or deceive.
Sometimes Leah wished the catechism would stay out of her head.
“It’s more than that, though,” she continued. “It’s interesting, but it’s so strange too. There’s a lot of tension in the church right now with the Elysium situation. I can’t really explain, but I want to do what I can to help. I know I can be doing more than I am, though.”
“You’re a true believer, aren’t you?” Ruth asked.
“What does that mean? You aren’t?”
“No, I just mean, you’re very loyal. Very committed.”
“Ecclesia Vera is humanity’s salvation,” Leah said. She shrugged. “I want to do my part. If it weren’t for the church, we’d all be outside Avalon starving in the Barrens. We’d go extinct.”
Ruth smiled, and Leah felt that it was almost patronizing.
“Anyway,” she said. “If somebody from the Barrens is trying to manipulate people within Avalon, that could be incredibly dangerous.”
“I have full confidence that the vicars are doing everything they can to figure this all out and respond appropriately,” Ruth said. “Don’t worry yourself over it.”
Leah nodded. How was she supposed to advance if everybody kept telling her to keep to herself and keep her head down? What is patience? Patience is trust in providence.
“Books are put up," Ruth said as she walked Leah out of the library. "Go home and sleep off the headache.”
Outside, after Ruth had locked the church’s front door behind her, Leah decided to take the long way home. The Forges were quiet, and it was a crisp, autumn night. The cold air and the exercise might rejuvenate her mind a little bit and help her put all the pieces together. As she walked down by the reservoir, she watched the moon reflect on the water. Avalon’s moon was always bright and full, though she had been taught that the real moon showed itself in phases as it made its orbit. Leaning on a railing near the water, she shivered.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Photo from Max Pixel