Substitution Chapter 5
#5 of Substitution (TF Themes)
Substitution - Chapter 5
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"How do you feel today, Mister Kyle?"
Brantley looked at the female orca sitting on the armchair on the opposite side of the room. The wolf himself was sprawled on one of them, a somewhat disreputable-looking figure at this point. His clothes appeared as unkept as himself, his head furs astray and his eyes watery. His ears seemed to have a permanent backwards tilt to them, and he looked at the woman with distrust. The wolf's eyes seemed even more bleary than his drowsy demeanor.
"The same as when you asked me yesterday...Miss Lake," the wolf grumbled.
"Hmmm."
The orca looked at a tablet she had on her lap, as if it was a casual accessory and didn't contain her session notes. Brantley wanted to ask her in her face whether she considered him to be a patient as well, but held it back. It seemed like a battle that could only go one way, not another.
"Right," Brantley said.
The orca looked up from her notes and looked at the wolf again, across the distance that had been carefully set between them to create the kind of atmosphere she preferred in her consulting room. Cozy, but without overwhelming. Flowers and comfortable chairs, and a window with a great view of the city outside. They were somewhere above the 'visor' part of the cap-shaped building. Brantley could see airplane contrails through that window, adjusted to 84% transparency for the lighting level she preferred.
"How have you slept?"
"Uneton, 5 milligrams, right before bedtime," Brantley chortled.
The orca titled her head, slow and measured, composing her thoughts. Brantley waited.
"You have not mentioned before that you are taking a sleeping aid," Miss Lake noted.
"I need to sleep," Brantley said.
The orca tapped on her pad.
"How long have you been taking sleeping tablets?"
Brantley shrugged.
"A couple weeks. I guess."
"Who prescribed them to you?"
"My doctor," Brantley said, "a family physician."
More tapping.
"Do you take them every night to be able to sleep?"
The wolf flapped his tail against his calves.
"Most nights."
"Has your doctor talked to you about the risk of developing dependence?" Miss Lake asked.
Brantley huffed.
"Yup."
"I can understand that they make it easier to sleep during this difficult time - *
"I just want to go to bed, close my eyes, and sleep without having nightmares of my father burning to death," Brantley hoped that would silence the orca.
"I can't help but notice that you keep referring to your father as having passed," Miss Lake noted after a pause. "Despite his recombinant status."
Brantley clenched his teeth together.His entire body began to tense up.
"I've told you before," he said, "I don't know what you are doing here, because nobody is willing to tell me everything. I make questions, and I get that Mister Naylor telling me that everything is proceeding according to the plan, and because the technology is proprietary, I cannot be shown around the laboratory where even now something vaguely like my father is floating in a test tube. And until that...copy of my father comes out of that test tube, and says hello to me, I'm not going to be able to think about him as being alive."
Brantley drew a deep breath. He hadn't meant to rant, but the words has kept coming at an increasing pace until he ran out of air from his lungs and he didn't really have anything else to say. He still faced the orca, not about to give her any slack. She was smiling politely.
"I understand the legal concerns, Mister Kyle," Miss Lake said, "my own concerns are for the well being of the families of our patients. Recombination is a very traumatic experience, not only for the patient but for the family as well."
"Yeah, I saw the movie," Brantley said, "everyone did."
"Which movie are you referring to?" Miss Lake asked. "The recombinant science has inspired several creative works."
Brantley wondered where these people got these phrases from. Was there a guidebook for speaking bland non-descriptive shit?
"The one where the woman comes back with her boobs three sizes bigger and with a penchant for murder, "Brantley said. "Totall Rekill it's called I think."
"The Institute did not endorse that motion picture," the orca said.
Is she for fucking real? Brantley thought.
"I guess you think that it's too gruesome for me to see it, right?" Brantley said. "I've also seen the Youtube videos. The Chinese aren't so picky about what they let people to see and not see."
"It is very difficult for me to comment on that, not having seen those videos you speak of - "
"They showed what they call the tank," Brantley pressed on, "it's where they keep the...mind, when they wait for the new body. Or the recombination of the biological and the neuropsychological elements, as you call it, I believe. Kept in this tank...basically a brain in a jar, isn't it? "
"I am not free to discuss any technical details, Mister Kyle."
Brantley bared his teeth.
"Of course you're not," he said, "that's what you keep telling me."
"So would you say that you are worried for your father's..well being?" the orca pressed her hands together.
"What troubles me is that nobody is willing to answer the question," Brantley replied. "I know that the doctor told me, and you keep telling me that it's impossible for him - for dad - to feel anything, that he's unconscious, that...that whatever is in that...jar...that it's not...that it can't be aware of what is happening."
"The current consensus is that it is physiologically impossible for the patients to be aware of themselves or in any way conscious at this phase of the treatment," the orca said. "There are no testimonials from post-recombination patients that would indicate such experiences."
"I won't believe that before my dad is here telling me either way," Brantley said.
"It appears that you are preoccupied with it, however," the orca said.
"Of course I am," Brantley hissed. "My father might be stuck in that jar for months, after being stuck in his body for a week after the accident."
The orca glanced down at her pad.
"I understand that at the time of your father's admittance here, he had very little brain activity. None of the test results indicate that he was in any way self-aware or conscious at the time. And this certainly cannot be the case while he is in waiting for the recombination."
Brantley shrugged.
"The doctors at the hospital kept telling me that even if by some miracle my father ever woke up, they could not tell how much of him was left there," the wolf said. "Your people are telling me the same."
"So you are also concerned that your father's recombinant might not be...your father? Your perception of your father."
"My perception?" Brantley grimaced. "You're the ones who keep telling me that there are no guarantees. I'm the one who has to wait here to see if there's anything left of my father except that thing you are growing and a bit of a brain in a jar."
"I cannot offer you certainty, Mister Kyle," the orca said. "We can only offer hope."
"What is this kind of hope?"
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