Nervous

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Shale was an alien, a cephaloid. I have been working with him for the last five years as an anthropologist. At first, our relationship was purely academic. He wanted to learn about humans as much as I wanted to learn about cephaloids. Each day, we uncovered some new fundamental similarity or difference between our species. My notes from that time are broad and contradictory; we were still wrestling with syntactical errors in cephaloid language.

The fundamental differences between our species stems from the nervous system. Cephaloids, as our biologists learned, have distributed command and memory functions to the nerves throughout their bodies. The closest structure to a brain is a nest of nervous tissue within their torsos that acts as a memory bus for their limbs to comunicate with each other and delegate tasks. Imagine Dr. Cordon’s surprise when he cut into a cephaloid cadaver and found a first stomach where a brain should be. I wish I could have seen the look on his face.

Because of this distributed network of control, cephaloids have a different concept of “I” or “me.” They think of themselves as collectives, and their families and societies are made up of individual “we”s. Shale described each cephaloid is a ship whose crew members are different body parts. All have their own thoughts and opinions and actions and responsibilities, but their overall output appears unified and decisive. This model ripples out into cephaloid language with fascinating results. For example, the phrase for “idiot” in cephaloid also translates to “one whose arm attacks its legs.” The idea of right- or left-handedness exists, but only insofar as there are some tasks that one limb prefers to do over the others.

Shale seemed even more perplexed and enchanted by the human model of individuality. For one body part to control and take ownership of the entire body seemed self-righteous and dangerous to him. How did we do so many things at the same time, he wanted to know. If our brains controlled every function of our bodies, how did it manage speech, leg movement, digestion, finger position, breathing, heart rate, etc. all at the same time? He was impressed with our brain’s ability to multitask, but horrified at the thought that an injury to it would be devastating to our entire bodies.

The most exciting discovery to arise from our interactions with Shale and his companions is memory transplanting. Organ transplants in humans are limited to some internal organs and extremities such as fingers, toes, and, on rare occasions, larger body parts like hands. Cephaloids, whose body parts already function more independently from each other, have a much lower risk of immunorejection. As such, they can transplant entire limbs from cephaloid to cephaloid, and with those limbs come memories. It’s not common for cephaloids to transplant body parts so large as arms and legs, but entire professions, he told us, have arisen to maintain the memories of cephaloids who were alive hundreds of years ago. The implications of this discovery are astonishing, and we’ve just begun to pry into its effect on cephaloid culture.

Over the last five years, Shale and I have become close friends. We’ve spent hours learning each others’ language, relating stories, comparing notes. I am the person who understands him best, and understands his fascination with humans at an innate level. After a few years, we started meeting outside of our studies. We toured the world together, giving joint talks to universities and allowing Shale to investigate the multitude of human cultures. One day, I realized that I had a closer relationship with Shale than with any other human I’d ever befriended or dated or been married to.

The good times didn’t last long. The human and cephaloid biologists did their best to counter Earth-native diseases, but Shale got sick a year ago. “My right arm makes us ill,” was how he put it. Luckily, the cephaloids came up with a treatment.

I was nervous when I left him in the operating room. Hours passed, and I thought of all the stories we’d shared, the new ones we’d created.

When Shale awoke, he couldn’t remember me. The doctors had done their best, but they’d taken his right arm. He still remembered our work, his curiosity and passion for human culture, but whatever mental model he had for me and our relationship had been cut away with the nerves in his arm.

We still see each other from time to time, but our research has taken us to different places in life. When we meet, I always expect to see that spark of familiarity in Shale’s eyes, but it never appears. It’s like I’m trying to move on from something that never existed.