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

only one real question in all of neuroscience: how does the continuous activity of twenty billion cortical neurons generate a stream of consciousness? That’s it. Everything else is just chump-change correlations. Or tracking the minute changes in a complex and endless competition that we cannot unravel with all the supercomputers in the world. Neither of these gives us a science of mind. In the end, nothing in the brain makes sense except in the light of consciousness.”

Max internally debates arguing but finally just sighs. “You’re only interested in revolution, but you don’t realize how rare that is. And in the meantime, someone has to get the grants and develop the techniques and teach the students and actually do some neuroscience research. No?”

But Kierk just nods vaguely, already moving away. He’s off to find Carmen, drawn to her in this crowded space of Promega tote bags, and although he doesn’t know where she is her presence is palpable, an electric charge in a substance beyond perception, like his own personal magnetic north. Like action at a distance. Now he feels the way needles feel, always.

Alex’s apartment is, if it were emptied of everything, identical to Kierk’s. The same shape and structure, the same eggshell white paint, the same crisscross of small bars across the windows to suicide-proof them, subsidized by NYU just like his. But Kierk, now being given a mini-tour of it by Alex, is struck by how incredibly different the two apartments are. Here there are art prints on the wall. A black-and-white minimalistic color scheme. The kitchen is well stocked with what looks like a full set of porcelain matching cookware, as well as stainless steel cutlery hanging on magnetic strips and an array of wineglasses and champagne flutes. The living room has a giant liquid television screen hung up on the wall, trailing cords behind it like a peripheral nervous system, with multiple of the latest console gaming systems hooked up at the bottom. In the middle is a large black leather couch that looks like the plastic was just taken off. Kierk doesn’t say anything but feels the casual parental wealth of it all, seeing the multiple Apple gadgets and how even this technological plenitude stays a kind of chic minimalism. The whole apartment feels like a user interface.

“How’s Carmen?” Alex asks from the kitchen counter. “That whole incident gives me the creeps.”

“She’s okay. Driving upstate to stay with her mom tonight.”

Kierk lingers over the bookshelf, looking at Alex’s collection, which is mostly left-wing political stuff and some history.

“I do a lot of my reading on the internet,” Alex says preemptively, as Kierk looks it over. He continues to pull out titles as Alex says—“I also have beer.”

“Thanks for inviting me over.”

“Hey, did I tell you I was switching to take over Atif’s old position?”

“You’re doing primate research now?”

“Yeah. I always wanted to get away from neurons in dishes. Real intact networks. Lowering the recording needle down into macaque brains is pretty crazy. And Melissa’s lab is cool, she’s super nice, and there’s obviously an opening for a postdoc due to Atif.”

“And how is it?”

“Actually I really like it. It’s fascinating. As you’re lowering down the needle into the brain you hook it up to speakers so you can hear aloud the pop-pop as it passes individual neurons. Like little firecrackers of sound. Sometimes we hear radio signals when we lower down the electrode. Classical music or pop songs. Sometimes I think I can hear phone conversations. Like voices from another room that you can’t quite make out. But that can’t be right. I mean, that’s not even physically possible.”

“Mmm,” Kierk says, taking a swig from the beer he’s just been handed.

“So I was presumptive and packed a bowl, if you’d like some.”

Kierk assents and soon the two stand in the kitchen and trade hits, Alex laughing at Kierk’s fit of coughing after his first big one.

“You know I was thinking that maybe I could even fill in for Atif in that project you cooked up with Carmen. The brain-to-brain stuff? I mean once I’m trained up enough.”

“Are you sure?”

“Definitely.” Exhalation.

They quickly exhaust the first bowl as Kierk matches him hit for hit, burning it down to the resin, until Alex has packed a total of four bowls. He doesn’t say anything but observes that Kierk’s pupils have completely dilated; yet Kierk hasn’t mentioned slowing down, and every time Alex has proffered the pipe another hit is taken. Eventually Alex decides to spare him from himself and puts an end to it.

A high Kierk notices a framed photograph on the refrigerator. It’s of a young man, short and lithe and with dark hair, wearing only boxers and a white T-shirt, not facing the camera but turned to the side and holding a confident arabesque with one leg far out behind him at a 90-degree angle, his back arched and his hands turned and held up over his head, posed in an apartment cluttered with flora and books, the light from a tall window with drawn-back curtains streaming in and Kierk thought that it must be California light as no other light looked so slow moving, so rich and heavy with itself, so like golden cream.

“Who’s this?”

“Oh . . . That’s just somebody that I used to know. Jason. His name is Jason.”

Kierk opens the refrigerator door, digs out a pair of beers, passes one to Alex, and the two stand together at the counter. Alex looks doubtfully at the beer he’s been handed. One eyebrow goes up as Kierk takes a deep swill.

“He was someone you knew in California?”

Alex nods. “Old boyfriend. How’d you know that picture is from—”

“The light,” Kierk says, walking over to explore Alex’s copious gaming shelf.

“Oh . . . Well, he’s actually in the city. He moved here across the country two years ago. That’s why we broke up.”

“But you were living together?”

“For a while actually.”

Kierk looks over from thumbing through titles. “You contacted him?”

“No . . . No, I unfriended