Switched On by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2016-04-09T04:00:00+00:00

Science Fiction Becomes Real

WAY BACK IN EIGHTH GRADE I read the science fiction novel Flowers for Algernon.* If you’ve read that book or seen the movie, you probably remember how things begin so hopeful and end up so tragically for Charlie, the main character. He starts out as a cognitively crippled janitor in a bakery, and then some scientists change his brain and turn him into a supergenius. In a matter of months he goes from cleaning toilets to writing cutting-edge research papers. But then Charlie discovers a flaw in the science that made him smart, and he watches his intellect evaporate as fast as it arrived. I suddenly found myself haunted by the story, and wondering if I wasn’t a bit like Charlie. My own transition was nowhere near as dramatic as his, but the TMS study still marked a tipping point in my life.

I’d read a lot of science fiction, and I’d always been amazed by how prescient some of my favourite writers could be. Now I found myself playing a role in one of the stories, and I was chilled by the notion that it might predict my future. The parallels became more and more apparent as the study and its aftermath unfolded.

Before TMS I was a car mechanic in a small New England town. After TMS I emerged on an international stage, sought out for my thoughts on autism and neurodiversity. It felt like I’d learned more about autism and brain science in the last few months than I had learned about other things over the past fifty years. And I was soaking up new knowledge as fast as I could gather it, by reading books and articles and absorbing every bit of wisdom I could from the doctors and scientists around me. Some would say my first book had precipitated these changes, and indeed its publication opened many doors. But I believe the insights I gained from TMS—and some new abilities—were what allowed me to walk through the doors and seize the opportunities.

Friends and even acquaintances had started to say I seemed different, though they weren’t sure exactly how. They’d said that to Charlie too, when he’d started to change. But how long would it last? If Flowers for Algernon was any guide, it was time to start worrying. I’d seen TMS turn on latent abilities in me, only to watch them fade away hours or days later. I was never sure what essence remained, or what had been lost, and I wondered if I would end up like Charlie.

There were moments when I felt I’d gained so much . . . and that convinced me there had to be a price to pay. There were times I’d wish that I’d never started this TMS, because I’d been functional the way I was, even if my sense of other people was weak. Before I began, it had never occurred to me that I could lose what sensitivity I’d started with. Thinking of Flowers for Algernon

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