Machine Man (serial)

I lay still while the fMRI machine thrummed around me. At first this was unsettling, because I had to lie back and poke my head into a small hole in a large machine. The issue is the hole looks like a mouth. Then there’s the noise, and it’s hard to forget the unit is generating enough magnetic force to pull a pin clean through your body. But after a while, the whoomp-whoomp-whoomp became comfortingly rhythmic. I felt I was in a womb.

“That’s good,” said a disembodied voice. Jason, my lab assistant. “Now regret. Something you wish you could change.”

I thought a moment. “An uncle of mine died from colon cancer. I was about twelve. I remember thinking how ridiculous it was, a failure in one small body part killing the whole thing.”

I had figured that as long as I was here, I might as well map the whole brain. That would come in handy later. Also, if things went like I planned, it would soon be difficult to MRI myself non-fatally.

“Sorry, Dr. Neumann, I’m not seeing it. Can you try again?”

“Uh, okay. One time in junior high, I didn’t go to a school dance because I thought nobody would want to go with me, then afterward, I heard this girl I liked really wished that I’d asked her.” Isabelle. She had been good at chess. Always under-developed her rooks, though.

“Still not definitive.”

I almost said: Let’s skip regret. Because, really, what good was it? It was like guilt; effective at promoting social behavior amongst tribe members, but not great for the individual. I mean, in an ideal world, everyone would feel guilty about treating you unfairly, but you’d be able to cheat your grandmother and get a solid night’s sleep. I’m not saying that’s a great set of values. I’m just saying, logically, that’s what would work best for you. It’s not coincidence that every well-paid person I’ve ever met seems to possess an abnormally low guilt-regret index, is my point. Not that I’m an expert on social behavior. But I have spent some time around Better Future managers, and I would like to plot that data set.

“There was a kid in the cafeteria the other day,” I said. “He told me he admired my work. And I didn’t know what to say. He was just excited, but I kind of brushed him off. I wanted to say something. Like, you know, thanks. I wish I’d known how to deal with that kid. Because he’s probably a lot like me.”

There was silence. “I think that’s as close as we’re going to get,” Jason said. “Let’s try happy.”

76.