The Revelations by Erik Hoel (e ink ebook reader txt) 📕

teacher to giggles).—“Okay, so just trust me then, that the cerebellum, alone, has as much capability as the rest of your whole brain. But here’s the most interesting thing about the cerebellum (eight sneakers follow Kierk’s down), and that’s that if you lost your cerebellum in a tragic accident, you’d still be you. You’d be the same person you are now except that you wouldn’t be able to balance on one foot. That’s all you’d lose. If you lost half your neurons! That’s different from the cerebrum, which is the main part of the brain—everybody now, cerebrum.”—“Cerebrum!” (Eight Italian accents again.)—“Mwah! Beautiful! Perfetto! The cerebrum is the other big part of the brain, and if it gets damaged, you lose everything about you that makes you you. We’re going to take a tour of the cortex now. Leon, will you start?”

—“Well, children . . . The cortex is all this outer layer of the brain. It’s got um, sulci and gyri. The peaks and valleys, I mean.”

Kierk immediately takes over—“So the cortex, the outer part of the cerebrum, is what houses most of your thoughts and feelings and memories. All the action is in this outer layer. It’s only about a tenth of an inch thick. Only this big! That outer surface is where all the neurons are. Everything else, all this white stuff, is just wiring that allows all the neurons to communicate. So really the cortex is just a big sheet, but all folded up. A big sheet of gray matter on the surface, and inside is just a giant mass of communication lines, like telephone lines. And that outer sheet is where your consciousness is.”

They settle into a rhythm of this for each group that passes by, Kierk and Leon play off each other to widespread amusement. Carmen keeps looking at Kierk, who always seems to be making a funny face or movement, always elastic and expansive—his is by far the loudest booth. Carmen’s strategy at her booth differed from Kierk’s by being based more on enchantment. She activates some deep-seated psychological response whereby the children fall immediately silent while she talks, pairs of reverent eyes following her movement as if she were a movie star. Their attentions keep darting back to her even when Karen is talking.

Eventually the pretense of organization falls apart and kids run about from booth to booth. A very small girl hovers about a teacher’s legs, and Carmen waves down at her, causing her to hide behind the teacher’s dress. “Oh, come out, darling. What’s your name?” The teacher reaches around and picks up the little girl, who is round-faced and wide-eyed and very pretty, and Carmen says as much, and the teacher lifts her into Carmen’s arms.

“Her name is Sarah.”

“Well hello there, Sarah.” Soon Carmen is making small talk with the little girl she’s holding, swaying a bit, almost dancing, jiggling, clearly delighting in this little girl, who is clearly delighting in Carmen back.

Kierk is sitting on his table lightly kicking the front of it with his heels. His station empty, he’s looking over some of the children milling about and at Carmen holding the little girl. Carmen spins her passenger, beautiful, both of them, like all the light has left the room except for this spotlight on Carmen holding the little girl and Kierk has paused mid-kick, realizing that something deep inside him has shifted—all in the time that it takes Carmen to look over at him, smile, and wave the little girl’s hand with her own.

Reeling, Kierk stands, and, looking for something to do, begins to put the supplies away like an automaton. Mike has wandered over and is asking Leon something. A small voice breaks Kierk’s pinwheeling analysis of his own state. A black boy with cornrows and a mild malocclusion is looking up at him, Leon, and Mike.

“Hello, what’s your name?” Mike asks.

“Hi, I’m Ari.”

“Ari, what can we do ya for?”

“So why do you need the other part, unlike the . . .”

“Cerebellum,” Kierk says.

“Yeah, why can you lose that cerebellum but you can’t lose the . . .”

“Cerebrum.”

“Yeah.”

Mike, smiling down, snaps on a glove and holds one of the brains out for the boy to see more clearly. “Because you are your cerebrum. But you’re not your cerebellum, you can lose that. Like you can lose an arm.”

Kierk leans over the table, takes the brain from Mike and submerges it back into its Tupperware container before turning back around, taking off his gloves as he answers.

“No. Listen, Ari, it’s like houses and garages. You live in your house, not your garage. The cerebrum is the house in which your consciousness lives. But you’re not your house. You just live there.”

Mike looks over at Kierk questioningly. “Well, not exactly. I mean, listen, Ari, you are your brain. That’s why when parts of it get damaged you get damaged as well. That’s what all these stations have been showing you today.”

Ari looks from Kierk to Mike, Mike to Kierk. After a second of silence Kierk leans forward until he is nearly sprawled across the table, trying to make eye contact, almost pleading. “You are at least your brain. That is what you have learned here today. Just like a painting is at least paint. You see, Ari? You are at least your brain.”

“Kierk,” Mike says curtly. “Let’s stick with what is established.” From the heated interaction a bubble has formed around them and some of the nearby tables are looking over. The schoolteacher is still talking to her but Carmen is no longer paying attention.

“Established? When, Mike? Tell me when.”

“Kierk . . .”

“Listen, Ari. Imagine . . . Imagine you are a square, a two-dimensional square, and you see a sphere. But because you’re a square you can’t see that it’s a sphere, you just see a circle. That’s how you have to interpret it, because that’s the only perspective you have. The brain is kind of like that. All we have is this one way to view