Dark Designs by unknow
Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shadow Work Publishing
Published: 2017-03-25T04:00:00+00:00
THE BURDEN
Duncan Ralston
Amelia washed her father's trembling hands with a damp cloth, wrung it out into the bowl of cool water she'd set beside his wheelchair, and wiped sweat from his brow.
His sweat was not from exertion but from the heat in his upstairs bedroom. Her father never exerted himself anymore, and they had yet to begin their daily routine. Since Amelia had returned home to take care of him he existed in one of two states: sitting and resting. Sometimes she sat him in front of his bedroom window. Other times she sat him at the kitchen table or the back porch with a view of the bird feeders and the large maple her mother and father had planted when they'd bought the house several years before Amelia was born.
When she crouched beside him she could never tell if he saw exactly what she did. He could no longer communicate, except through simple eye movements, blinking once for yes and two for no. He couldn't feed himself, so he "ate" via an endoscopic tube. Couldn't bathe himself. Dress himself. Couldn't go to the bathroom without her help. She would often find she was already too late.
Not long ago her father had been strong, healthy, active. He'd eaten right. Hadn't smoked, never drank to excess. When her mother had been with them (God rest her, Amelia thought reflexively, though she no longer believed in God), her parents had hiked the nearby woods each morning after breakfast, and biked the dirt roads to and from the house at dusk. He'd exercised his mind as well as his body, completing puzzles, reading mystery novels, making woodworking projects by hand.
James Adam Corbel had done everything experts had suggested to stave off disease, dementia and the eventual wasting away of old age. And like a hijacked jet, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis had crashed into his body and demolished all of his progress. Medical experts called his current condition "locked-in," meaning her father was locked inside of his own mind.
Amelia placed the modified Brain-Computer Interface on her father's head and booted up her laptop. The software worked using subdural implants, converting electrical impulses from the limbic system to interact via transmitter with software on the computer. Researchers had already used the technology successfully to help ALS patients communicate with caregivers and loved ones but after months of daily attempts her father had yet to respond.
She'd known the process would take time. In the original study it had taken weeks for patients to type out a single letter using BCI technology, and those results had been far better than previous attempts with locked-in patients. As far back as 1995, a journalist had written an entire book by blinking it to a transcriber. It had taken ten months and two-hundred thousand blinks, at an average of one word every two minutes, to finish the book.
Amelia had taken a sabbatical from her duties at the Academy. She had all the time in the world to work with her father. What she couldn't count on was how much time her father had left to live.
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