Mitch Gets Tested
Michael
When Mitch checks into the Palo Alto Medical Clinic in the late afternoon on Saturday, he's greeted by a crew in their sleep clinic headed by a Dr. Parsons. He proceeds to explain the tests that SRI have requested: before getting to the EEG and sleep study portions, there are a complete battery of eye and ear tests to complete. So we'll do those this afternoon, give you a break for dinner and a rest period to get you down to baseline, and then do some post-dinner EEGs while resting, while reading, and while on a treadmill. Then it's off to sleep. Dr. Parsons and the nurses warn Mitch it might be hard to sleep with all the electrodes on but just do your best. If we can get one complete sleep cycle tonight, we've got the data we need.
The ear and eye tests are a little more in-depth than, like, a normal physical or ophthalmologist appointment, so unless Mitch has stuff he wants to do while having his skull conducted through with sound waves, we can elide that set of tests. It's the EEG stuff that I want to make sure I take a moment with, especially while Mitch is conscious. I want to know if he's going to do anything special during the conscious EEG testing, which does consist of a) being asked to get into a restful state, b) being given a choice of books—mostly paperbacks of a type you might get at a hospital donation, a lot of high school reading list stuff like The Red Badge of Courage or The Good Earth—to read, and c) getting on the aforementioned treadmill.
Jeff
Well, there's probably something in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, if we're talking about that strata of paperback. Mitch will dig out a copy of The King of Elfland's Daughter, the 1969 reprint edited by Lin Carter, let's say.
W/r/t getting into a restful state, Mitch will ask if he should try to meditate or if he should try to fall asleep, or what, and carry out the instructions he's given to the best of his ability. Assuming the response is "meditate, sure, whatever" he'll do that.
I can't think of anything specific Mitch would try, as regards the treadmill.
Michael
The nurse attaching the electrodes says, "If meditation helps you relax, sure!" We'd prefer you stay conscious but relaxed but yes, as peaceful a state as you can manage."
Meditation roll, let's see if you impress the EEG machine
Jeff
>>>> SUCCESS by 3
Mitch meditates for the first phase of the EEG; the nurse makes note of Mitch's vitals and the young EEG technician makes regular notes/hash marks on the paper that spills out of the machine. Mitch is in meditative mode (with a success by 3) so he definitely is centering himself and not letting the lab environment or any of his other concerns enter into his mind. Just a perfect, balanced self at the center of everything. After about 20 minutes of this, the nurse—very gently—nudges Mitch out of his "restful" state. And I'd like Mitch to give me a Detect Lies-16 roll as he engages in some post-meditation small talk with nurse and technician.
Jeff
>>>> CRITICAL SUCCESS
Michael
oh that's a criiiiiiit
Jeff
No need for aura sight bonus I guess
Michael
The nurse and technician are trying to hide it, but they're both a little freaked out. Okay, not overtly so, and not in such a way that Mitch thinks they're afraid of him, or even suspicious. Mitch, with his mind extremely clear post-meditation, is able to get a handle on both their emotional states without even using his aura sight, which is that they have observed that Mitch was able to get into a (presumed) theta/(even possibly delta?) wave state pretty effortlessly and that this is not something they've seen a lot of, even in the testing of presumed psychics. If Mitch takes a quick glance over at the stream of paper, he doesn't just see routine marks on there; he sees a couple of exclamation points and big bold oval circles on some suspiciously long brainwaves. The nurse and tech move very quickly to the next phase of the testing, which is the "engage your mind with active reading"; basically the nurse says to spend the next 20 minutes reading the novel of your choice, and feel free to think about it, unpack the meaning of the book in your head. They don't want Mitch to speak aloud to either of them, but instead to keep any mental dialogue internal. (Jeff, I have a quote from early in Dunsany that I think is apposite, do you mind if I share it here as something Mitch reads?)
Jeff
Sure.
Michael
Mitch reads Lord Dunsany's elfin romance, and in Chapter II comes across this passage:
Now the Vale of Erl is very near to the border beyond which there is none of the fields we know. He climbed the hill and strode over the fields and passed through woods of hazel; and the blue sky shone on him merrily as he went by the way of the fields, and the blue was as bright by his feet when he came to the woods, for it was the time of the bluebells. He ate, and filled his water-bottle, and travelled all day eastwards, and at evening the mountains of faery came floating into view, the colour of pale forget-me-nots. As the sun set behind Alveric he looked at those pale-blue mountains to see with what colour their peaks would astonish the evening; but never a tint they took from the setting sun, whose splendour was gilding all the fields we know, never a wrinkle faded upon their precipices, never a shadow deepened, and Alveric learned that for nothing that happens here is any change in the enchanted lands. He turned his eyes from their serene pale beauty back to the fields we know. And there, with their gables lifting into the sunlight above deep hedgerows beautiful with Spring, he saw the cottages of earthly men. Past them he walked while the beauty of evening grew, with songs of birds, and scents wandering from flowers, and odours that deepened and deepened, and evening decked herself to receive the Evening Star.
As Mitch reads this bit, he can hear the needle of the EEG laying deep and rapid marks on the paper. The tech lets out a little involuntary gasp, while the nurse levels her eyes at Mitch's BP: absolutely straight-on 105 over 68, a calm steady 60 bpm heartbeat. Mitch feels fine physically and mentally, the book's okay, not sure why his brain would be laying down intense gamma waves like this for a book (or a passage) like this one. But the tech is now able to meet Mitch's gaze as he looks up from the book momentarily. He's looking for some kind of meaning in Mitch's eyes as to what in the world is going on in Mitch's head, but he tries his best to keep things professional, and goes back to making regular measured marks.
Jeff
"Everything cool?"
Michael
A cursory nod from the tech and a smiling admonishment from the nurse, "Everything is fine, Mr. Hearst. Please just concentrate on the reading."
Jeff
Mitch nods and goes back to the book.
Michael
And he'll continue thinking about the themes in the book as he does so? He'll probably be able to get through most of Chapter III, finishing up here:
As Alveric stood there with his sword in his hand, at the wood's edge, scarcely breathing, with his eyes looking over the lawns at the chiefest glory of Elfland; through one of the portals alone came the King of Elfland's daughter. She walked dazzling to the lawns without seeing Alveric. Her feet brushed through the dew and the heavy air and gently pressed for an instant the emerald grass, which bent and rose, as our harebells when blue butterflies light and leave them, roaming care-free along the hills of chalk.
And as she passed he neither breathed nor moved, nor could have moved if those pines had still pursued him, but they stayed in the forest not daring to touch those lawns.
She wore a crown that seemed to be carved of great pale sapphires; she shone on those lawns and gardens like a dawn coming unaware, out of long night, on some planet nearer than us to the sun. And as she passed near Alveric she suddenly turned her head; and her eyes opened in a little wonder. She had never before seen a man from the fields we know.
And Alveric gazed in her eyes all speechless and powerless still: it was indeed the Princess Lirazel in her beauty. And then he saw that her crown was not of sapphires but ice.
"Who are you?" she said. And her voice had the music that, of earthly things, was most like ice in thousands of broken pieces rocked by a wind of Spring upon lakes in some northern country. And he said: "I come from the fields that are mapped and known." And then she sighed for a moment for those fields, for she had heard how life beautifully passes there, and how there are always in those fields young generations, and she thought of the changing seasons and children and age, of which elfin minstrels had sung when they told of Earth.
And when he saw her sigh for the fields we know he told her somewhat of that land whence he had come. And she questioned him further, and soon he was telling her tales of his home and the Vale of Erl. And she wondered to hear of it and asked him many questions more; and then he told her all that he knew of Earth, not presuming to tell Earth's story from what his own eyes had seen in his bare score of years, but telling those tales and fables of the ways of beasts and men, that the folk of Erl had drawn out of the ages, and which their elders told by the fire at evening when children asked of what happened long ago. Thus on the edge of those lawns whose miraculous glory was framed by flowers we have never known, with the magical wood behind them, and that palace shining near which may only be told of in song, they spoke of the simple wisdom of old men and old women, telling of harvests and the blossoming of roses and may, of when to plant in gardens, of what wild animals knew; how to heal, how to sow, how to thatch, and of which of the winds in what seasons blow over the fields we know.
Hidden Lore (History B) roll, please.
Jeff
>>>> SUCCESS by 4
Michael
Sure, maybe some of this is the residual memetic effects of Westercon now two weeks past, the way fantasy was leveraged there to both unmoor and re-moor us in History A. Maybe it's Mitch's own desire to find Histories C and deeper to stymie the boring, tedious Anunnaki and irruptors. Maybe it's the paranoia that's running rampant among URIEL right now (how much of that Mitch is sensitive to given how separated he's been from the group lately is a fair question). But this narrative, this meme of the mortal knight entering another world where time flows differently, of the beautiful elfin ice princess, entranced by descriptions of our world, of the fields we know, feels like a remnant of, well, the old over-narrative of the contact that humanity had with Them, both before and after the Ontoclysm. Is every fairy story simply a retelling of the interplay between History A and a forever-envious History B existing just outside of the way time flows for humanity? Well, that might be painting with a broad brush, might be a bit too wild of a theory... but Mitch guesses his weird and semi-scary gamma brain waves have something to do with a) the content of this book and b) Mitch's nature as Illuminated.
Jeff
(Now I kind of wish I had gone with the 1969 reprint of the Last Unicorn. But this is something to discuss with Archie or Roger, I think, and gets back to what Mitch's real question has evolved into most recently: do some things exist more than others, and assuming the answer is yes, why?)
Michael
I can move along to the overnight sleep study portion now if you like, Jeff. Just a few fragmentary dreams to convey.
Jeff
Sure.
Michael
Maybe it's the uncharacteristic exhaustion of doing some intense treadmill work in the evening before bed, but Mitch sleeps a treat on Saturday night. The electrodes don't even end up bothering him too much. But the Dunsany before bed seems to have put Mitch's dream life in a fantastical bent. Unlike his dream of the Hilton roof last weekend when he was in a much more comfortable and welcoming bed, Mitch doesn't have a need to deploy his wit in order to parry the Comte in these dreams. The rich, hallucinatory descriptions of the Fields We Know and the Elflands loom large in these dreams.
Mitch has a beard. And he's old. Barrel-chested, with legs like tree trunks. He's a wild man of the forest, but also an accomplished wizard. Druid? Druid-slash-wizard? Whatever the case, he's a half-blood. Neither one thing or the other. His mother was a demon? Or was it his father? He can't remember. In one or the other of these nested dreams, his father never came home from war. Anyway, in this dream Mitch-of-the-Forest has been charged by both the sidhe and the human warband leaders with keeping the peace. Making sure one side or the other doesn't win the eternal war. True neutrality, you could call it. Mitch-of-the-Forest thinks this is just another bullshit job in an endless string of bullshit jobs. He walks over to a tree to the time clock and checks into Livermore with his time card, nods to Archie who is apparently dressed like King Arthur with a beard, a golden coif and a golden sun on his tabard. "Mornin' Merl." Archie says just like the wolf in the Warner Brothers cartoon about the sheepdog and the wolf who have to punch in every morning. King Archie sips from a mug of Postum as a weird bird-like puppet perches in a tree above him, singing in Latin.
"My tutor," Archie says as he grasps Mitch-of-the-Forest's forearm. "My teacher. What news do you bring from your dreamlands?"
Jeff
"They're cancelling Bridget Loves Bernie," Merle says with a sigh. "No more Meredith Baxter. Not for a few years, anyway."
Michael
"This is... ill news, friend." King Archie walks through a glade with Mitch-of-the-Forest; the glade is populated with the '70s modernist furniture of the URIEL offices. Tiny faeries smaller than the Planck length flit in between layers of existence across the surface of the conference table; no sign of the any of the other members of the Round Table here. "We're going to meet my sister. Not that one, the other one. We need a ruling from the referee." King Archie points with his mug at Mitch-of-the-Forest in an amiable watercooler chat sort of way.
Jeff
"Is she still around?" Merle tries to remember. "I thought she was going somewhere."
Michael
"Still hanging in, still believing she has a claim to the deed to the fields we know. But this is an entirely more prosaic ruling we need from you today." King Archie takes a sip from his grail and leads Merle onwards. Morgause sits in a completely different glade than the URIEL one. It is in Elfland. Things aren't right here, they look different and wrong and infinitesimal. Merle Forest feels, well, at least half at home here. Morgan and Merle are related too, somehow. You can see it in the eyes. Morrigan has six black wings and six snake-like eyes. She sits in front of a fidchell board shaped like the Bay Area. Look, there's the Bay Bridge! And the Transamerica Pyramid! Like the little plastic buildings in the board Game of Life. A seismograph is attached to the board, and it is putting out smooth broad delta waves: no subduction, no temblors. Everything is cool.
"I appeal to the Game Master," Morganna says. "I appeal to your neutrality to plead for my trusty servant to be returned to me from his vile prison," she fairly spits at King Archie.
"Come on now, you awful witch. You know we can't let him go. They've already put the electrodes in!" Archie replies. "Then for seven years. A traditional tithe, a teind. We exchange hostages, as we did of old," Morgaine says. "We send someone to you for seven years. A little changeling. And your prisoner will be back in time to vote in the 1980 election! Electrodes intact."
"What say you, old friend," King Archie says to Merle.
Jeff
"What's this really about?" Merle asks her. "You can't fool me into thinking you really give a shit about what's-his-name. Pelleas he ain't. You want an informant, is that it? I can get you copied on the memos, if that's what this is about."
Michael
"I only ask for what is fair," Morguein says, holding out her four hands in humble supplication. "The flow of information, however much a trickle, whatever the paucity, will give us more room to grow. I would gladly accede to receiving copies of the memos." King Archie sidles up to Merle and whispers in his ear. Merle doesn't hear what he says, though, because the seismograph attached to the fidchell table starts going OFF. From delta ALL the way up to gamma, like someone was trying to shake the board apart. "Not now!" Morgen shouts impertinently. Archie suddenly falls away from Merle, reaching out his hand impotently for help, and tumbles into a crevasse. And Mitch wakes up suddenly, a half-hour before dawn, and the night-technician is standing at the EEG noting the intense gamma waves on Mitch's chart. "Oh. Oh, good morning. How are you feeling? Are you all right?"
Jeff
"I mean, she's entitled."
"What?"
Michael
"Mr. Hearst, you were somehow in gamma state while in deep sleep! Were you dreaming or in a half-awake hypnopompic state?" The night-technician is more willing to banter with Mitch about the technical aspects of the exam than the nurses or doctors yesterday were.
Jeff
"Uh, 'hypnopompic' is an Increase Your Word Power word for me, man. I was having a dream, sure. It got weird at the end...how long was I, uh, gamma-ing?"
Michael
The night-technician checks the tape. "About 40, 45 seconds?" He checks Mitch's vitals quickly. Heartbeat and BP elevated but not dangerous, and coming down as we speak. "We've got all the data we need, sir. If you'd like to have a shower, get that electrode glue off you, feel free. Coffee and breakfast are being set up in the cafeteria right now."
Jeff
"Sure, sure... so what's the verdict? Gamma good, gamma bad...?" Mitch is casual about it but sincere in his interest.
Michael
"More like, 'Gamma shouldn't be possible in a sleeping mind'," the tech says. "The deepest sleep produces delta waves. Active dreaming will get you into theta. Lucid dreaming will maybe sometimes edge into alpha waves: orderly thinking. This... well, gamma waves peak when the human brain is doing advanced cognition: pattern recognition, cause-and-effect cognition, actual visual stimulation. This means... it's like you were awake and doing highly-ordered thinking with a sizable visual component... while asleep."
Gonna put some links to the psych tests for Mitch in this thread.
Jeff
I'm going to assume it's just the Voight-Kampff test over and over.
Michael
This one test was invented to test people being admitted to Ellis Island to keep out “mental defectives”:
Hey, you remember these from school I'm sure:
Jeff
This one baffles me
Michael
Yeah, it's impossible to find online because the company still sells it. As far as I can tell, you end up having to match objects/ideas to broad conceptual categories. And then you have to name the umbrella concept that links them all.
This one's pretty simple.
Hey, this one is kinda weird:
The guidance counselor test!
When you see the Rorschach test come up on a list like this, it's like when you go see a band you don't know very well but they play their one single and you suddenly are able to start grooving:
I believe this is the one from A Clockwork Orange when Alex gives all kinds of unsavory answers:
picture of a man trying to rope a bull
"What is the man in this picture doing, MJ?"
"He's trying to argue a demon out of existing, obviously"
So in looking all these tests up, it made me realize that the hieratic occult order of psychiatrists need to keep these tests and what their answers mean as secret as possible so civilians can't game the test.
It's kind of weird when you think about it.