The patient asked the question as participants in the operation were surrounded by unprecedented excitement.
Kraft could imagine the scene at that time, the celebrating crowd cooling down, like a school of fish noticing the ice shell on the water, not yet fully understanding the situation, but something as invisible and self-evident as the cold had changed in the environment.
.
The patient who recovered from a serious illness was in high spirits and even drank a glass of wine that day, but from time to time he would suddenly turn his head and look somewhere, which was the conditioned reflex when he heard his own name.
He was sure he heard voices, and those voices were directed at him, although they belonged to different voices and he couldn't make out what was said.
"It was like a group of uninvited guests had wandered into the scene." The owner of the note described it.
It is a good idea to interpret this as a humoral imbalance caused by intraoperative blood loss, such as a lack of hot red fluid that causes a relatively active cold white fluid, causing oversensitivity in mental perception.
But the patient's short-term subjective feedback did not support the diagnosis, and the direction of those voices became increasingly clear.
During the follow-up visit a few days later, they saw the patient holding an iron drill and trying to pry open the sewer slabs beside the courtyard wall. The scars on his strong arms had healed, and the new granulation almost covered the sutures that were to be removed in batches.
【They are below】
Something probably went wrong. The recorder was very sure about it. He recorded it in detail and completed the report. The reply he got was that there was no need to deal with it and he could just continue to observe.
This made him have some objections to his superior. After all, "that person" was known for his meticulousness in the past and never missed any small detail in the experiment. It was this attitude that created the fruitful results.
Or is this situation expected?
He still has a positive attitude towards the new surgical materials. With the results of the patient regaining the ability to work and live, the few controllable mental symptoms are almost negligible.
Compared with this, he is more concerned about where the surgical consumables come from and whether they will become a secret that refuses to be made public like the previous anesthesia drugs.
Before some kind of discordant sound appeared in this extremely closed circle, this had always been his biggest worry, because the supply of new materials seemed to be quite limited, and it took a long time to wait for the second use.
The observation of the first patient has continued for more than a month, and the mental symptoms that were originally thought to recover spontaneously along with the body fluid balance show no signs of improvement, and even tend to worsen.
Visible personality changes appear in the patient. He becomes easily agitated, loses interest in things around him, and suffers from indescribable psychological discomfort, like the consciousness of mosquito bites that cannot be driven away.
The familiar life in the past makes people feel painful, and they want to follow those sounds to find their source and the answer to relief.
Even colleagues who always talk about "restoring the ability to live independently" are shaken. The best guess at the moment is that these side effects are purely isolated cases, or caused by problems with the technique, and can be solved through improvements in techniques.
However, the leader of the small circle and two colleagues who had also raised doubts before maintained a strange silence.
【No opinion】
This is another way of saying "don't want to say".
The recorder left a full two pages of post-operative discussion, analyzing the pros and cons of the operation, and even involving the debate between body and consciousness. After thinking for a long time, he suddenly realized that the current disagreement was probably due to information asymmetry.
caused.
As for the vague split within the small group, the leader finally came up with a plan: Since there may be a problem, let's do another example to see.
"Huh?" Kraft read the sentence again to confirm that it was what he understood.
They initially plan to implant a small piece of special material to record the complete and exact feelings of the whole process to distinguish whether it is a physical disorder or a mental problem.
Since the patient is not a professional, the description of subjective symptoms is not accurate. How to fully and accurately understand this process becomes the second difficulty.
But this did not bother them for too long. They chose to use a simple and crude solution to skip the difficulty - do it themselves.
"ah?!"
The author offered to be the one to experience and record, and his proposal was approved.
Kraft realized what he had obtained, a true "first-hand information", an extremely rare intuitive conclusion drawn by professionals through personal practice.
Of course, he didn't leave any escape route. In his initial idea, he didn't need to go as deep as the first time. He only needed to bury a fingernail-sized piece superficially under the skin. He didn't even need general anesthesia during the process.
Method: Freeze until slightly numb, then drink two sips of wine before doing it.
If an accident occurs, it can be cut and taken out in a short time, reducing the risk to an acceptable level.
"What's wrong? You don't seem to look well."
"It feels like seeing an old acquaintance. Their styles are exactly the same. I wouldn't believe it if they weren't taught by the same person."
The operation was very successful, or in other words, there was no technical reason why it could not be successful. It was simply overkill for them to do it.
"This is the second time I have seen that thing. It looks like a piece of stone that has been knocked off. The color is some kind of white that I have never seen before." He recorded this, and the words were slightly erratic, as if one hand was missing after surgery.
Caused by being too convenient.
"When I touched it, I felt 'vitality'. It's hard to describe. It was like a fragment of bone that had not died long after it was removed. The cooled marrow fluid overflowed from it, with a clammy feeling that could even be felt by frozen arms.
"
The wound was completely healed on the next day, and after a few days, the skin was as smooth as before, and foreign bodies under the skin could only be found by touch.
The first thing that appeared was some dull pain, almost between a light needle prick and a burn, followed by complex feelings such as coldness and itching.
My energy is surprisingly good, and I often unknowingly go beyond my usual sleep time while writing.
The peaceful life continued until one night a week later, the work was interrupted by indistinct voices.
At first, he thought it was his family reminding him to go to bed as soon as possible, but when he went downstairs, he found that they had already turned off the lights and fell asleep. In the empty and dark house, there were only himself, the candle in his hand, and the sound of another sound.
It was a young man, as if he was just a few steps away, or on the street outside the house.
He stood there and silently counted more than two hundred breaths before the human voice sounded for the third time.
This time the voice was old and tired, coming from below. It was like a mumble coming from a throat clogged with secretions. It had no meaning, but he was sure it was calling him.
[Like hearing your own name on the street and looking back naturally]
There was no basement in the house, so he rummaged through the living room, kitchen, and storage room, searching every space where someone might be hiding. The inexplicable panic and some instinct to find the source of the sound drove him to do this, otherwise he would not be able to find peace.
His family was awakened, and with his wife's comfort, he realized that he had fallen into a state of almost uncontrollable anxiety, just like the patient.
"I have to know what that thing is, I have to know where the sound comes from." The jumpy notes showed that he had been captured by intense emotions, and the plan to remove the foreign object never appeared again.
The descriptions of the implant became more and more frequent, and he began to describe the sensations in detail, as well as the increasingly frequent voices, counting them in terms of age and suspected location.
When the rainy season in Dunling came, a strange pattern was discovered. His auditory hallucinations always became more serious on rainy days.
As long as abundant rainwater flows in the city's ancient waterways, countless voices will rise from the ground, mumbling all night long.
And at this moment, the leader of the small circle promised him an answer. The answer of the voice was also the answer to everything.