Donovan’s Brain Read online

  When Donovan’s brain is asleep I am undistracted. I use this precious time to continue this report of the case.

  Donovan’s thinking is still incoherent. Occasionally I seem to receive a logical reply to the questions I communicate in Morse through the glass vessel. Do the vibrations thus created transmit the message to the brain? It acts like a man in fever or in sleep. It always orders me to write down the same names, which seemingly have no connection with each other.

  Roger Hinds is one of the names. Anton Sternli another. Donovan’s son, Howard, too, is named, but no memory of his daughter seems to enter his mind. Katherine appears quite frequently. She was Donovan’s wife I found out by reading the stories in the magazines. Fuller was his lawyer.

  I am able to trace many of the names my hand writes to Donovan’s past.

  But there are a score of others as if his memory is swept by a whirlwind of faces.

  NOVEMBER 5

  To test whether it still has power over me at a distance, I tried leaving the brain by itself today while I drove toward Phoenix.

  After fifteen miles from the house I was summoned by the brain. I turned and drove back to my house at top speed.

  This incident proved a new fact. The brain is aware of what I am doing even at a great distance.

  It could not know where I had gone, but it was sure I was not in the room or in the house.

  I assume that the relative strength of the microvolts generated by my brain tells Donovan whether I am present.

  But this is a nebulous theory. Only one conclusion is to be relied on, the empiric proof, which itself is limited as the matter concerned is unknown.

  NOVEMBER 6

  The brain discharges approximately 3,500 microvolts.

  I do not know how much more new substance will attach itself to the brain; there must be a limit. Or is it theoretically boundless like a cancerous growth?

  NOVEMBER 10

  Schratt entered the laboratory today while the brain was ordering me to write. I heard him speak, but I did not turn my head to answer. I do not want to sever the fine thread which connects me with the brain.

  My left hand, like that of a child learning to write, slowly formed words.

  Schratt called my name again and, when I did not answer, stopped hesitantly, in the middle of the room. At first he thought he was interrupting some train of thought. Then, alarmed at my strange behavior, he stepped closer and looked over my shoulder.

  I continued to scrawl words on the paper. For the fifth time I wrote Hinds’s name. Then I began to spell: California Merchants Bank. Then the name Hinds appeared again.

  Schratt became alarmed. He bent forward to look into my face, which was hidden from him as I sat hunched over the table. A good doctor, he was careful not to touch me for fear of shocking me.

  He took the small mirror from the wall and, holding it in front of me, looked into my eyes. He saw I was in a trance. My eyeballs rolled, my mouth twitched. I seemed unaware of his presence.

  The brain discontinued its orders. I moved again. Schratt put down the mirror and asked, half fearfully: “Didn’t you hear me?”

  I nodded.

  “Why didn’t you answer?”

  I shoved toward him the paper covered with the childish scrawls of the brain’s dictation. He stared at it and his eyes shifted in fear to the glass vessel.

  “I have contacted it,” I explained. “Or rather it has contacted me.”

  I described everything I had experienced, glad to be able to talk to someone about it. He would understand, I thought, but Schratt grew more than alarmed. His bloated face became livid and he shook his head in despair.

  I made a last attempt to reason with him.

  “Why can’t you rid yourself of your inhibitions?” I asked. “Human emotions should have no part in scientific research. They obscure our observations. We cannot permit ourselves to be afraid. Reason, observation, and courage make the scientist, but you seem to lack at least two of these essentials.”

  “Don’t be facetious,” Schratt retorted laboredly. “We have debated too long about the right and wrong of this experiment. I beg you now to stop while it is still in your power to stop. Please, Patrick—turn off the pump and let the brain die!”

  Suddenly tears ran down his cheeks; his huge body shook with his uncontrollable emotion. It was a disgusting sight. He was growing more helpless and senile every day.

  I stepped over to the work table and busied myself with some instruments. I did not turn around when he left the laboratory.

  NOVEMBER 11

  I had fallen asleep exhausted, my strength and nervous energy drained by the double life I am leading.

  A wailing, muffled shout echoed in my dream and woke me. It came from the living-room. The cry rose to an insane shriek as if someone was losing his mind from fear. I had never heard the voice before.

  I jumped to the door. The bulb flickered as if the brain was shaken by the strange commotion too. As I ran past the vessel, I switched on the encephalograph to be able to study the brain’s reaction later.

  The insane scream was silenced as fast as it had risen. A scuffling noise replaced it, as if a big body was rolling across the floor, upsetting the furniture.

  I switched on the living-room light and saw Schratt’s heavy body on the carpet. His own thick fingers around his throat were strangling him. His rattled breathing, his red face, and his protruding eyes showed he was suffocating.

  I tried to loose his grip at his throat, but I could not unbend the fingers.

  Unexpectedly, while I was still working over Schratt’s body, a hand wheeled me about and I stared into Franklin’s frightened face. Surprised by his attack, I struck out to defend myself and Franklin stumbled, protecting his face with his arms.

  I turned back to Schratt, who had fainted. His hands had fallen limply to his sides. I ordered Franklin to help me lift him onto the couch.

  Schratt’s pulse had nearly doubled its normal beat, his heart was pounding heavily, and I was afraid he might die of a stroke. I quickly opened his collar and shirt and ordered Franklin to bring some ice.

  When Franklin returned with the ice bag, I put it over Schratt’s heart. Soon the extreme palpitation slowed and the pulse came back to normal. Schratt sighed and opened his eyes. He stared at me in terror. I spoke soothingly and forced him to swallow some milk, but his teeth chattered so he spilled half of it.

  Schratt had been in the act of leaving. His luggage stood near the door and his coat lay on a chair. I was puzzled at his sneaking away by night. I could not figure out why he had come through the house at all when the nearest way from his room was by the garden.

  “What’s the idea?” I asked, pointing to the luggage.

  I stood up and Schratt’s features froze in terror. I could not make out what ailed him; it was no cataleptic fit. Then I followed his gaze and understood.

  The fuse box for the house and the laboratory had been pried open. Schratt’s hat lay on the floor near it.

  I suddenly understood and a cold murderous rage gripped me.

  “You wanted to kill the brain!” I shouted. I nearly lost control of myself.

  He stared at me. I had frightened him more.

  “You tried to strangle me,” he said, his mouth quivering. I had never seen him so out of control.

  I was shocked. He thought I had attacked him.

  Quietly and precisely I explained how I had found him. I actually had saved him from committing suicide!

  “Nobody can strangle himself,” Schratt said scornfully. “You know that is impossible, Patrick.”

  Schratt got up and stood on trembling legs.

  “I’ll see you in the morning,” he croaked.

  When I tried to help him, he refused my aid.

  I returned to the laboratory. The bulb was dark, the brain asleep. The encephalogram showed extremely irregular delta waves.

  I sat down to reconstruct the accident.

  That shout for help had wakened
me. I could clearly remember the sound of the voice, and it did not seem to have been Schratt’s. Still, it is very difficult to recognize a voice which is strangled with terror. It must have been Schratt’s. Whose else could I have heard?

  To dispel a suspicion—the consequences of which were too complex for me to follow up now—I went to Franklin’s room.

  He was throwing his few belongings into a battered old suitcase. My appearance seemed to frighten him.

  His sudden decision to leave me after so many years of service made me more doubtful of myself.

  “You leaving too, Franklin? In the middle of the night?” I asked.

  Franklin slowly sat down on the bed, watching me with the same helpless terror Schratt had displayed.

  To put Franklin at ease, I told him he was free to leave any time he liked, but I should regret it very much. He calmed down a little and I asked if he had heard Dr. Schratt calling for help.

  To my relief, he nodded. But when I asked why he had dragged me away from Schratt, he frightenedly confessed he had found me attacking him.

  “Dr. Schratt was having a cataleptic fit,” I answered curtly. “I was only helping him.”

  Franklin nodded, but I could see he did not believe me, and when I went back to the laboratory, I felt upset and uneasy.

  I tried to unravel the complications. Franklin too had heard Schratt’s cries for help. He had pulled me away so vigorously I still felt the pain of his grip on my shoulder. He would never have dared to touch me except in an emergency.

  A man cannot strangle himself.

  Schratt was right in stating the absurdity of what I had said. It seemed beyond doubt that I had attacked him.

  Has the brain reached such strength it can order me to kill? If it has, what is the limit of its power? As human energy in a moment of mortal danger rises to its highest peak, it is conceivable that the brain, spending all its resources, called me to its rescue.

  It was aware of Schratt’s decision to cut off the electricity. The machinery and the electric circuit are as vital to the brain’s existence as heart and lungs to a normal being. When Schratt approached the fuse box, the brain felt itself threatened.

  We understand scarcely any of the unpredictable phenomena of human brain-power. We only know that electric potentials travel through the billion cells which form the gray matter of the brain.

  Isolated cells have the faculty of producing new ones, whose functions are unknown. Their purpose cannot be explained by our present concepts.

  While I slept, my receptor neurons received a strong stimulus from Donovan’s nervous center. Its potential, increased by the new cells, was strong enough to influence the motor neurons and to compel me to come to its rescue. Only when Franklin pulled me back, I woke from my murderous dream.

  The brain could not influence Schratt, for he was not asleep as I was. This leads to the conclusion that the brain can command only persons who are asleep or willing to submit.

  The voice I heard in my dream was Donovan’s, inaudible except to the secret ear of my mind.

  NOVEMBER 12

  Schratt came into the laboratory at noon. He looked rested, had shaved carefully, and wore an expression of youthful determination that surprised me.

  To my further surprise, he greeted me with a smile.

  “Franklin has deserted. We’ll have to get used to each other’s cooking,” he said gaily.

  Deliberately I talked of last night and of my regret at having attacked him while under the influence of Donovan’s brain. I promised to prevent a repetition of such an occurrence.

  He nodded soberly, seemingly without misgiving, and excused himself for having tried to interfere with the experiment.

  Suddenly he enlarged on the unlimited possibilities of my researches. He congratulated me on their success as demonstrated last night and added jokingly that he saw me getting the Nobel Prize soon.

  I could not account for this sudden change of attitude.

  I explained the misadventure by elucidating my theory of the brain’s new powers. Pointing out the new cell formation which had twisted the brain out of shape, I stated my conviction that the telepathic power might have its source there.

  Schratt agreed with me and, rationalizing his sudden change of attitude, he said: “I had a bad night, Patrick, but I deserved it. I had no right to interfere with your researches. I’m getting old and wacky and resentful. You have your genius and you’d be a fool not to use it to capacity. Envy made me fight you. Forgive a jealous old man.”

  I still could not see the reason for his sudden change of attitude, but I took it at face value, glad to have him for a collaborator as I had always wished.

  Especially since Franklin had left for good.

  NOVEMBER 21

  I am at the Roosevelt Hotel in Los Angeles.

  Schratt has taken over the job of nursing the brain. He was so enthusiastic about his duties, he silenced my apprehensions.

  I can trust him to record the brain’s reactions minutely. I will talk to him every day by phone.

  Before I decided to leave Washington Junction I got in touch with the brain by Morse and signaled it my decision.

  I have trained myself to receive its reply at once. I can make my mind blank and completely receptive.

  The brain seemed eager for me to go. What the purpose of my journey is I do not know yet, but the command to go was clear.

  The same dream had haunted me for nights, and I am sure it contained the message Donovan wants me to communicate.

  Donovan never saw me, for he was in a coma when I found him. Consequently, the brain cannot picture me and I did not actually see myself in the dream. Since the brain is unable to receive new visual impressions, it must rely on its memory, and in its memory I do not exist.

  But Donovan knew the California Merchants Bank. In my dream I entered and walked over to the teller, a sallow-faced man with a small mustache. I asked for a blank check, stepped to a desk, filled out the form for a huge sum, and signed the check with the name of Roger Hinds, of whom I have never heard. Before I took the check to the cashier, I drew an ace of spades in the upper right-hand corner.

  The dream repeated itself without a single variation, like a story told for a child to remember.

  When I woke I always found on my desk a paper with a crudely drawn map of Los Angeles on which some of the streets and the Merchants Bank were plainly marked.

  The message was clear enough, but it did not make sense. I asked Schratt’s advice and he urged me to leave at once.

  I stood at a crossroad in my work. If I took orders from the brain, I, no longer the scientific observer, would be practically a tool.

  The brain could not force me to go. My free will was not impaired yet, and I was still strong enough to refuse this fragment of living tissue which I was cultivating in a glass respirator.

  Once Donovan had almost compelled me to murder, but an emption of force could not be produced at will. It was generated by most extraordinary circumstances.

  My money was running low. I found a few hundred dollars Janice had left for me and gave them to Schratt. I was acting for the brain according to a plan which had been conceived in its inert matter.

  Since its experience had stopped at the moment of the plane crash, it must be carrying out some plan it had nursed since before the accident.

  NOVEMBER 22

  This morning I had an annoying interference. I was ready to leave the hotel for the bank when the clerk informed me that a Mr. Yocum urgently wanted to see me. I did not know anybody by that name, but I said to have the man wait for me in the lobby.

  As soon as I came down in the elevator, I recognized Yocum. He was the shabby photographer who had taken my picture outside the Phoenix hospital. The man was pretending not to see me. He had an old leather briefcase under his arm. When the clerk pointed him out to me, he came over quickly and stood so close he almost touched me.

  “Dr. Cory?” he asked in a hoarse voice.

 
He stared at me as if he hoped to intimidate me, but when I stared back, his gaze dropped.

  I was sure he had planned this entrance carefully, but he lacked courage to carry the scene through. His whole appearance was that of a man unstable in his emotions, shaken by fear. I could tell he was up to something and his anxiety betrayed his desire to carry out the plan.

  I did not speak. I kept on staring at him. Neurotics soon lose courage. It was obvious that he needed money. He had been on my trail ever since the accident, taking photographs at the hospital, spying on me and my household. Suddenly I guessed what he was after. He had photographed Donovan in the morgue and examined the bandages.

  My concern must have shown in my face for he suddenly found his courage again and said: “Could I see you alone?”

  We walked into the cocktail bar and sat down.

  “I took a picture of you in Phoenix. Here it is,” he began nervously, opening his briefcase.

  His fingers, long, thin, and stained with tobacco, held the photo in front of me. I did not look at it. I waited silently. Again he lost his poise and for a minute nothing was said.

  “I don’t care to buy the picture.” I finally spoke and my words gave him a cue.

  He nodded and quickly drew another photo from the brief-case.

  This one was of Donovan in the morgue. I could not help looking at it. Donovan’s face had grown dim in my memory and, seeing it, I was intrigued to identify those features with the brain I had learned to know so intimately.

  Yocum watched my obvious interest with growing boldness.

  “I knew you’d like it,” he said with an expression which alarmed me. “And here is one which will really interest you.”

  He had photographed Donovan’s head without bandages. The skull was lifted up and the cotton wool I had stuffed into the cranium was visible. It was a good clear job of photography.