"Paul Preuss - Rhea's Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Preuss Paul)

тАЬWhat do you see?тАЭ

тАЬThe land of me is all in front. The water of me is everywhere else. The molten stuff of me pours out in
seams, and the land of me has begun to split apart.тАЭ

The most extraordinary delusion! Did she believe this, or was she, as her use of the words тАЬhereтАЭ and
тАЬweтАЭ suggested, aware of her dreaming half, somehow aware that part of her was consciously creating a
fantastic global metaphor? The map of the body can be drawn and redrawn by many agents, of course,
and sophisticated self-knowledge is no defense against illusion. Even such a renowned neurologist as
Professor Sacks was capable of seeing his own nerve-damaged leg as a chalky white cylinder, now short
and fat, now тАЬa thousand feet long and two millimeters in diameter,тАЭ changing size and shape and position
many times each second, тАЬa thousandfold switch between successive тАШframes,тАЩ тАЭ as he put it in one of
those popular bestsellers of his.

тАЬDo you know what will happen to you next?тАЭ

тАЬNo. Here we know it, but I live there.тАЭ

Something in me recoiled then, and I said, rather sharply, тАЬRhea, wake up.тАЭ

But she did not wake up.

SAME DATE, 7:30 P.M., IN THE MEDICAL SCHOOL LIBRARY.
Timeseems to be one of those topics that once generated great philosophical enthusiasm among
physiologists but has withered for want of a means of extracting relevant human results from the
overwhelming experimental mass. The more recent the work, the less ambitious it isтАФviz.,
тАЬHypothalamic control of circadian rhythms in the hamster,тАЭ etc.

Going back a few years one finds Fischer, Cohen, et al. recording that hypnosis, some forms of
psychosis, hallucinogenic intoxication, paresis, all give rise to distorted time sense, i.e., scrambled
sequence, sense of simultaneity, or overestimate of chronological time. And Pieron, Arrhenius, Hoagland,
et al. correlated body temperature with the internal metabolic clock, e.g., elevated temperature
corresponds to faster oxidative metabolism, thus a faster internal clock, thus the sensation that (external)
time is slowing down; charts were given for increase in alpha wave frequency with increasing body
temperature. (But even at 104┬░F the increase, not much more than one Hertz, could hardly contribute to
the persistent chaos in RheaтАЩs right-brain pattern. If pattern is the word.)

(Perhaps pattern is the word.) There may be a possibility here that no one would have entertained as
worthy of investigation even if it had occurred to them. Even I. The notion is absurd on its face.

Back to the bibliographies, on a different tack. Goldberger, Rigney, and West, nonlinear dynamics in
physiology: heart rate exhibits self-similarity at different time scales. No such data on brain waves; given
specific input, howeverтАФRheaтАЩs chartтАФit is the sort of question even a precomputer-era fossil like me
can pose to an expert system.

Off to my shared office in Neurology to retrieve the disks from the drawer I call my own. I log on to the
local network and tap furiously. I get a cheerful display: тАЬWelcome toBIOMATH HELPER . This
software system is down until further notice.тАЭ

DECEMBER 19, 3:30 P.M.