THE HANDSTAND

JULY 2002

     The brain scans began the next day. One day I was calm and administrating as a controlling force a large region of agricultural development, and the next day a mere guinea pig in a research laboratory.

     I had not even volunteered to take part in such action.

     I had not even been consulted.

    My office, a room I had used for fifteen years with it's well-used manifestations of maps, pin-ups, jokes notated and the large filing cabinets, had been transformed.

     I afterwards realised that even the foyer, where I had first been taken by surprise, looked like a hospital consulting room. On my newly painted office walls there was now a magnificent array of medical profiles of the human brain and the skull. However, the medical personnel assembled in the room behaved more like the clerks and judiciary of a forensic trial.

     Immediately, on entry, two stepped forward to usher me with a soft grasp on my elbows to a seat, and without uttering a word lowered over the top of my cranium a machine from which electric leads were drawn like magnets to the forehead and different areas of my brain pan. Now that we all adapted to the latest fashion of a well shaven skull for both men and women these leads, unimpeded, in their equally soft descent and adherence to skin surfaces was like the ascent, from a pool of water to the naked limb, of a host of leeches.

My emotions began an assault on my nerves, and ideas rushed in a torrent through my mind like the phenomena of a dream. I looked at the calm faces surrounding me with startled and no doubt beseeching glances. Those faces were like the impartial, even indifferent doubles of my own face I had seen over the years reflected in the mirrors of the office washroom.

     The office door swung open repeatedly as others were brought in - by their subordinates it appeared - and guided to other seating and capsules of the same apparatus.  I realised that not only men and women I worked with in recent times, government officials and civil servants, but something extraordinary, our President and his Minister of Finance were among them. Infact the President was placed in a seat directly opposite mine, and I began to observe that all of us were assembled in a great ellipse, and seated exactly in place as though in the Cabinet Offices, where we used to assemble round the magnificent mahogany table there.

     Five hours later, with sweat pouring from our brows, glinting in its small patterned streams as it followed the different insignia of creases and swellings on individual features, we were each handed a sheaf of papers. Studying mine I found that I had single sheets each with coloured prints of photographs of the brain activity of each one of us.evidently supplied by the apparatus I wore, I could read not only the names of my fellow government officials but also the Cabinet and President at the head of individual reports. Preceding study of the coloured orifices, if one had the ability as yet denied me, were copies of a dialogue in which each of us had taken part during the past hours.The colour scans varied as one followed down the pages the responses to the dialogue.At the head of individual reports there was not only the brain scan but a photograph of each individual face, taken at the moment we first became seated and became aware of the electric contacts.  These photos were obviously of intrinsic value to our President - I could see, checking each page briefly, he looked up at different individuals as if to identify them. Yes, I could see why.... these portraits revealed the astonishing phenomena of fear, naked fear trapped on the features. Indeed the face of the Minister of Defence appeared to have swollen to twice the familiar size, the eyes diminished to slits, and was this fury, ranged in the muscles round his mouth, as if he had been attempting to shout out ?

My own photo: I looked around apprehensively, wondering how many had noticed it yet... a man I had never seen, as it were, looked out at me. Indeed, at first I had checked the name at the page heading.  Yes, this is my photograph, the striking pallor of my normally robust features seemed to have a green tinge as though I was dead - only my eyes belied this as the muscles, not contracted as if in rage, but released and abandoned as though fleeing the crime of sight, had left the orbs of my eyes fully extended, the pupils seemed to transmit a dull ochre flash that almost gave the appearance of cataracts. I could see damp hairs above my ears as though a sweat had already broken out, my nostrils were totally deflated as those of people who grovel before an interogator. Fear. Fear. Fear - yes, registering its mysterious qualities throughout all these well-known faces. What a revelation !

     The President, from whom the apparatus had been elevated and withdrawn, like an intricate hair dryer, was the first to stand up. Indeed he seemed to almost lose his balance. He shifted his arms uneasily as if to confirm that none had grasped them again. He tossed his head with a kind of youthful arrogance, put his hands in his trouser pockets and began to walk around this great gathering. He did not look at his Ministers, his Councillors or his Regional Officials, for his gaze was to the ground before him and he scuffed aside, with impatience,.any electric lead in his path. Finally, raising his head, he approached one of the medical personnel - he smiled, almost pleasantly, but in a voice much altered from his usual smooth tones, he harshly demanded to know why his orders had not been followed to the letter.  How was it that these "medical mercenaries"..... Yes, that is how he addressed them, as if an Army Officer. How had they "the effrontery to embroil him in this research - "research which, at best, had no roads and only many directions."

     "We build quietly," was the reply.

JOCELYN BRADDELL©2002 All rights reserved.