"The targeted ultrasonic breakdown of hippocampal beta-amyloid deposits… in theory it is possible. But the efficiency of the carrier crossing the blood–brain barrier is still too low. The side effects cannot be predicted."
Faustus rubbed his aching temples, but his eyes stayed locked on the holographic image—the twisted mass of nerve fibers tangled with abnormal protein plaques, spinning slowly in the air. The ghostly blue glow burned in his gaze, reflecting an obsession on the edge of collapse. Another bottleneck. Always another damn bottleneck! The shadow of his mother clung to his mind. Each fading memory of hers cut across his nerves like a blade.
"Drink some tea, my dear."
Sylvia's voice slipped softly into the heavy air. She walked in carrying a steaming cup of black coffee, careful not to disturb the scattered electrode designs and data boards on the desk. Her eyes held a faint worry as she placed the cup in a rare empty spot at his side. "You've been staring at it the whole night."
Faustus did not turn. He only made a low grunt in his throat as a response. Sylvia did not leave right away. She casually picked up a report about synaptic signal decay, her fingers running over the complex charts as if absentmindedly. After a few seconds of silence, she said lightly, as if it were nothing:
"What if… the bottleneck is not in the efficiency of clearing, but in the understanding of the target itself? What if… the real start should be from her consciousness?"
Consciousness?
The word struck Faustus like a cold flash of lightning, cutting through the fog in his mind. He turned suddenly, bloodshot eyes drilling into Sylvia, sharp enough to pierce her. She froze for a moment, then instinctively stepped back.
"Get out." Faustus's voice was hoarse, hurried, full of command.
Sylvia's lips moved as if she wanted to say more, but in the end she pressed them tightly together and quietly left the study, closing the door softly behind her.
The moment the door shut, it was as if new life had been poured into Faustus. He sprang up, grabbed his thick, worn laboratory notebook, and strode quickly toward the heavy alloy door deep in the lab.
Iris scan. A hiss of air. The door slid open, and a stench burst forth—so strong it was almost unbearable. A mixture of waste, disinfectant, and the rotten smell of decaying flesh. The smell of an abyss.
This was the observation room. Not a room, but a giant sterile glass cage. The walls were smeared with dried, blackened stains—nightmares painted by the "subject" inside with her only pigment: her own filth.
At the center sat an old woman, hair white and thin, body bound in a restraint suit. Her back was hunched as she gave meaningless laughs to a broken plastic rattle in her hands. She was Daphne, a severe Alzheimer's patient, and Faustus's most "precious" specimen.
Faustus ignored the hellish scene before him. His nose did not even flinch at the odor. All his senses, all his attention, were fixed on Daphne's wrinkled, vacant face. He stepped closer to the glass, nearly pressing his own face against it, eyes unblinking, like a scanner capturing her every twitch, every faint flicker in her gaze.
"Daphne… Daphne…" he murmured softly, with a kind of mad tenderness. "Don't you dare disappoint me."
Perhaps hearing him, Daphne's clouded eyes turned slowly toward him. The moment she recognized his outline, her childlike blankness twisted into desperate dependence. She crawled forward on hands and knees, pressing her dirty face against the cold glass, whimpering like an abandoned animal that had finally found its parent. She stretched her thin hand, trying to grab the hem of Faustus's white coat, leaving another sticky smear on the glass.
Faustus's brows tightened slightly, but he did not step back. He opened the transfer hatch at the side of the sealed chamber and said in a deep voice:
"Come, Daphne. It's time for your check."
At the word "check," Daphne screamed. A sharp, terrified sound. She pulled back, shaking her head wildly, saliva dripping down her chin. Her arms flailed in blind resistance.
But Faustus was faster, colder. With practiced hands he injected her with a small dose of sedative, then half-forced her into the next room, laying her on the cold examination chair covered in leather restraints. The buckles clicked, clear and merciless.
When the final strap tightened around her thin ankle, Daphne suddenly stopped struggling.
Her head lifted sharply. The eyes that had been filled with childish fear only seconds ago now cleared, as if a mist had been wiped away. They shone with intelligence and… a deep, exhausted weariness. In those eyes Faustus glimpsed the ghost of who she once was—the sharp, insightful professor of literature. The same dark-brown pupils, the same power of observation. But gone was the warmth and curiosity. What remained was only numbness, the cold despair of someone who had seen her fate too many times.
Her gaze slid over Faustus. Not angry, not surprised. Only the calm recognition of a scene she had already grown tired of.
A strange chill crept into Faustus's skin. Daphne now looked less like a mad patient and more like an old friend who saw too much, silently condemning his endless experiments.
He forced himself back into his notes:
"…Restraint stress triggered a sharp personality switch. Cognitive level rose quickly. Emotional response patterns completely different from baseline. Possibly touching deeper neural networks…"
But the clarity was brief. After about four minutes, the light in her eyes began to flicker and fade. Yet this time the decline was not a simple return to confusion.
Faustus leaned forward, eyes wide, recording every change. Her brows furrowed, as if some reason still struggled inside her mind. Then her face broke suddenly into a foolish grin. Her right hand tapped a quick rhythm on her thigh—a rhythm he knew, from a piano piece she used to practice in youth. But it lasted only two seconds before the motion dissolved into meaningless scratching.
This was not just clear or confused. It was like a cockpit where a pilot had seized the controls for a moment, only to be shoved aside by some brutal force. Two sets of commands fighting over the same ruined machine, producing broken and contradictory actions.
A wild thought, sharp as poison, slid into Faustus's mind:
What if… there was not just one of her in her brain?
Not the cliché of split personality. Something deeper, more terrifying. Perhaps the collapse of the disease was not pure destruction, but a kind of disconnection—letting hidden fragments of self appear, fragments that once worked together but now acted alone, even in conflict. That cold clarity, and the childish confusion now—were they truly the same mind in different states? Or… two different "operators" fighting over one broken control panel?
The idea was horrifying. It overturned the foundation of all theories of unified consciousness. A wave of cold excitement and fear rushed through Faustus. He needed more data, more precise observation. He must test this impossible idea.
The pen shook in his hand, leaving a blot of ink on the paper as he wrote quickly:
Emergency Hypothesis: The incoherent personality states may suggest that consciousness itself has multiple layers. Under extreme neural damage, these layers may lose coordination, and begin to act independently—or even compete. Must design experiments to test 'Consciousness Competition' hypothesis.
He closed the notebook, eyes fixed again on the old woman behind the glass, now toying with the straps like a child. His gaze grew deep, cold shadows carving harsh lines across his face.
If the collapse of consciousness was not death, but division and struggle… then was "normal" itself only another form of absolute, unseen control?