The Ultimate Brainchild

RICHARD BINTANJA

THE ULTIMATE

BRAINCHILD

A novel

Translated from the Dutch

Copyright 2011: Richard Bintanja (MaRiSuDa)

Table of contents

Copyright information

Acknowledgements

Prologue

Epilogue

About Richard

Connect with Richard

Copyright information

THE ULTIMATE BRAINCHILD

Author: Richard Bintanja

Copyright © 2011 MaRiSuDa (www.marisuda.nl)

Originally published in the Netherlands as Gedachtenrijk by MaRiSuDa in 2011

Translation: Angelina Souren for Bintanja Books/MaRiSuDa

Copyright translation © 2017 Angelina Souren

Cover design: Dorrit Hanenburg-Ceulemans

Cover photo: www.fotolibero.nl

ISBN/EAN 978-90-818264-3-3

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in an automated data file, or made public in any form or in any manner, electronically, mechanically, by photocopying, recordings, or any other means without prior written permission from the publisher.

Acknowledgements

Marijke Visser

Martinus J. G. Veldman

Dorrit Hanenburg-Ceulemans

PROLOGUE

Ringgg!

I rub the sleep from my eyes and look outside through the window. The first stars are twinkling high over the neighbors’ roof. Dusk. It’s already October, the sweltering summer evenings slowly making place for cold nights. Why can’t it always be warm and sunny? Yawning, I grab the yellowed white remote from the small table beside me, adjust the room lights to level 6, close the net curtains and turn down the volume of Bach, sonorous as always. The tiny phone purrs for the fourth time and I answer, expecting nothing.

What follows is a conversation about which I have fantasized for a long time, but that takes me by surprise now.

Bye… A few minutes later, it’s over. All I did was listen. I want to put the phone on the table, but it slips off the edge and tumbles to the floor. I can’t hear it land on the deep-pile carpet. It doesn’t matter. I rub my eyes again. I don’t want to say a word, but then, I am not able to either as I am totally speechless. All previously considered and rehearsed sentences and responses have failed me. It doesn’t matter.

Because I finally have it. At only thirty-six, I am already getting the recognition only true champions receive. The air had been abuzz for a while, sure. Colleagues had been joking. Think you’ll get it this year, George? Everyone agreed that I was the best candidate in my field, just like they all had said in the preceding years. Back then, nobody had phoned, but this time, the call had finally come.

I gently rub the smooth scar on my forehead. Been getting into the habit of doing that, lately. Nerves? Worries that this time too, they’d...? Nah. It is a nice horizontal line, by the way. If I raise my eyebrows, it fits nicely into the wrinkles on my forehead and disappears.

A feeling of relief, of freedom, comes over me. I am not elated, though, strangely enough. Maybe because I really had to get the award this year, that they couldn’t possibly skip me again. A self-satisfied sprinter who finishes far ahead of his competitors. Arrogant? That may be. But what else can I do? Jump around like a chimpanzee? Stand on my head? Yell victoriously? No one sees me so I can act as crazy as I want, if I want.

Nope. Not the slightest urge to get up from my cozy chair. Why is that? Where is my happiness? Why am I not elated? This is recognition and it will bring me a huge amount of money along with a license to do at least thirty years of research without having to worry about a thing. Proud? Oh yeah! But I am nowhere near as proud as when my theory came into the world.

Have I accomplished anything? Have I given the world something useful, something valuable? This award speaks for itself, absolutely, but that’s merely in the eyes of the world. Even worse, it is the view of only a tiny part of the world. Academia. There, they only see the intellectual side of it, not the practical side. And well, in that respect things could have been different. If only everything could be reversed. If only I could go back, back to the beginning. Because the consequences may be unpleasant. Horrible even... and I know it. No, it’s not certain. Nothing ever is. But then, my idea initially was not a certainty either, not at all. Until it became one after all. An indisputable certainty. Now, in view of this prize, it’s official. So...

I fervently hope I am wrong. What have I offered the world? Can I undo it? No, that’s impossible. An idea cannot be undone, pushed into oblivion. Certainly not this idea, the notion of all notions. I notice that my tongue is making slow clicking sounds. Funny, a part of your body that just does whatever it wants to do. I am sure that other people find this an irritating nervous habit.

What shall I do next? This evening, I mean. Party? I have won something big so heck why not. Sure, I could have a celebratory drink, but having a drink is not out of the ordinary for me, so that wouldn’t be particularly celebratory. Two drinks, then? Neh. Never mind. Parties are meant to be fun, have lots of excited chatter, congratulations, looks of admiration, that kind of thing. Who can I still invite this late in the day? Who would find such an award interesting enough to come over? Okay, colleagues at the institute, yeah, sure, but do I really want to call them and ask them to make the journey to my place? I shrug. Why bother? Tomorrow is another day. Better to enjoy this peace and quiet while I still can.

Tomorrow will be really busy, no doubt. Oh yeah. So maybe I should read a bit and make it an early night. I don’t think I will still get around to any form of work this evening. I will turn off the phone, though. Ha! If anyone wants to talk with me, he or she can try again tomorrow. I will have a party inside myself, on my own. It’s already slowly starting up. My stomach grumbles. I guess it wants a drink.

I raise myself out of my chair and walk over to the dinner table, the bottle of gin and shot glass awaiting me. It has gone dark outside, I observe, while I knock back the shot glass. How come no one has ever considered abolishing nights? Anybody out there? Ha, the next-door neighbor.

Hello there, you.

A soft buzzing...

I study the net curtains. Somewhere out there, behind the hedge between our two homes, she is on the couch, reading. She is capable of it too, but she doesn’t know it yet. That goes for many people. Let’s keep it that way for a while. It will happen all by itself anyway.

What if she finds out? What if they all find out? It will surely get to that point. Certainly now. The award will create a lot of publicity. Will it all be reduced to a mere trick, an entertaining act? Circus Walder, with big George as the main attraction.

Modern applications, that’s what they are already calling it. I can see it coming, and I even feel it. They don’t, and they don’t see the danger. They only see what they call progress. The morons.

I turn around, cross my living room and its sumptuous carpet and amble into the large hall. A sudden lightness slips into my head. As if I am dizzy, but I know that it is actually excitement, as quiet as a mouse. Directed inward. To distract myself from my encapsulated euphoria, I listen to the sounds my feet make. They create an echo on the grayish-red granite floor. This floor often makes me feel cold, particularly when I am listening to my own footsteps. But not right now because I am burning brightly inside. Glowing.

I have been in this villa for a little over two years now. A restful oasis. People leave me alone here, allowing me to work in the evening, and sleep during the night. Away from the city’s cacophony, away from all the noise in my head. Other than the echo of my footsteps and the bowing of Bach’s violins, there is nothing but silence. I realize I have forgotten to turn down the music completely. Shall I walk back? Oh, what the heck. Let’s declare Bach party music for tonight. Like a lovesick gazelle I hop-skip up the stone staircase.

I suddenly shout it out. Wahoo!!! I have won the Nobel Prize! But there is still no one around to cheer along with me and applaud. Slightly embarrassed, I put a damper on my shouts of joy, my attempt to disturb the cherished yet also oppressing silence just this once. It is not to be. Playfully, the house mocks me. It toys with my cheers, draws them out and merely makes them fade. It takes a while before only Bach remains audible from below. My inner party quiets down as well. Why can’t I simply be happy?

I have figured out the human brain marvelously, but I understand less and less of myself. And soon, no one else will be able to understand themselves either. Not any longer.

1

He was perched on a low brick wall along a quiet street. The brick wall fenced off the enormous lawn that enveloped a large villa of just two or three stories high. His own house – his and his mother’s – was only a short distance away in the same street.

He had to think. Or, rather, pluck up courage. Away from his mother’s prying eyes, by himself. He rubbed his legs, a forest of rigid little hairs. Was he going to do it or not? In an attempt to refocus his thoughts, he studied the polygonal old-rose paving stones that formed a complicated pattern as far as the eye could see. It didn’t help. He could feel his heart pace wildly, much faster than usual...

He thought back to his attempt of that morning, with his friend Alistair. They had both wanted to try it, although they knew they weren’t supposed to until they were at least eighteen. People said it was too dangerous at their age. It could damage their brains, and whatnot. Pure scaremongering! If you weren’t of age yet, so many things were off-limits.

It hadn’t worked, though. Alistair and he had been unable to reach each other, regardless of how many times they tried. Of course, that could be due to many different things. Maybe he wasn’t capable of it. Maybe Alistair wasn’t. Or maybe they both weren't.

And yet... He had had a vague feeling – it really wasn’t much more than that – that something actually did happen every time he tried. See, experimenting, he’d already been doing it for a while. But this had been the first time that he’d focused on someone else.

He thought back to how it had all begun.

Out of nowhere, his mother had mentioned it at lunchtime. He had almost missed it. In all those years, she’d never said a word about their neighbor. In fact, it was as if she’d always denied his existence. He didn’t know whether she did that on purpose or simply out of lack of interest.

You should go over to the old guy next-door, she had said completely out of the blue. He does something with science. I bet you’ll like it. He had no idea what she meant by that. Did she think he was bored? Yes, of course he was interested in science, but... she? She had only completed primary school, followed by some obscure internal training program at the megamarket store, so he didn’t quite expect her to understand everything she read.

Astonishment and excitement had taken hold of him. Eh, eh… our neighbor? he had stammered. The few times he had seen the old man in all the years they’d been living side by side, the guy had come across as a grumpy, moody character who preferred to be left alone. A recluse who always seemed to be scanning his surroundings furtively, suspicion clouding his eyes. He still vividly remembered that time when his soccer ball flew over the hedge and landed in the neighbor’s garden. In his youthful innocence, he had rung the doorbell politely to ask permission to collect his ball from the garden. It had scared the crap out of him when the door opened and the neighbor suddenly stood in front of him.

How dare you bother me! Shoo! Go away! It had sounded raw and rasping, almost as if he was gnashing his teeth at the same time. The man’s two hawk eyes had looked right through him. Particularly those eyes, but also the man’s voice and his considerable hooknose he still remembered very well. Had they actually ever stopped haunting his dreams? He had shyly mumbled something about the ball and the hedge, but the door had slammed shut again.

He had slowly sauntered back to his own garden. Relieved on the one hand because he no longer was face to face with those piercing eyes but disappointed on the other because of the loss of his soccer ball. Maybe he could send his mother over, he was thinking – and then a mix of joy and surprise overcame him. The ball! It was right there! In his own garden. How could that be?

Yeah, the old guy next-door, his mother had clarified. He did some really complicated stuff at the university, to do with the brain and thoughts or something.

He had barely heard her. His attention was still on that distant memory, on the furtive look in the man’s eyes but also on the unexpected reappearance of his lost soccer ball, not to mention the problem of how to reconcile those two apparent extremes.

...and he even made it to full professor. He’s won important scientific awards, you know.

Ever since, he’d been very careful when he was playing soccer, wanting to avoid at all cost that the ball ended up near the hedge, let alone bounce over it. A second time would have been...

What!? What did she just say? Something about what she had just said took him back to the budding dilemma. Or was it the sudden spark of fire in her characteristic jolly voice that tore him away from the event that happened so many years ago?

...and I am sure he would be delighted to help you. With those words, she’d wrapped up her little speech. Delighted? The only thing the man with the hawk eyes liked was refusing to return soccer balls to little boys. Or worse. And help? What on earth did he suddenly need help with?

She had given him a look he knew all too well. No escape, no excuses, no nothing. This is what you need to do, so hurry up and get on with it. It would be useless to counter with a vague story about hawk eyes and a ball in a garden. Still, it was quite strange – to put it mildly – that his mother was suddenly recommending as the best conversation partner ever the same neighbor she’d completely ignored for so long. In order to help him, no less.

Well? she’d asked impatiently. She had looked at him pointedly. He knew there was no way out. Okay, he’d replied even before he was sure that he did indeed have the guts to ring the neighbor’s doorbell again. But I want to go play some more now, he’d instantly added. I’ll be back in a bit. Before she could respond, he had run outside through the backdoor, past the house and into the street.

The sun was shining. The red bricks felt pleasantly warm.

What next? There didn’t seem to be a way out of this, but maybe that wasn’t such a disaster. What was the worst that could happen? That the door would slam shut in his face again. Surely he’d be able to handle those piercing eyes now. For chrissake, he was no longer a little boy who was easily intimidated by an angry frown. All the more reason for simply ringing the bell. So why wasn’t he doing that? Like, right now? A shiver went through him, a drop of sweat was tickling its way downward in the vicinity of his left ear. His clammy hand wiped it away. Something vague and indefinable, a very quiet voice in his head, made him decide to stop procrastinating.

In spite of the man’s hawk eyes, he had gotten his soccer ball back after all.

* * *

Very slowly, his index finger floated upward, as if in slow motion, on its way to the round brass button, but it came to a halt just in front of it. His hand was suspended aimlessly. A good thing that the hedge was high enough so that his mother couldn’t see him. Those eyes, sheesh, and the man’s voice. Come on, that was years ago, he admonished himself. Don’t rehash all those thoughts and considerations over and over. You are either going to ring that doorbell or you aren’t.

He heard the muffled clanging sound of a bell, pealing somewhere deep inside the house. He looked at his right index finger and saw that it was pressing the doorbell. He withdrew his finger, pensively. The clanging stopped. A blissful peace descended upon him while he studied the door. The yellowish frosted glass made it impossible to distinguish more than blurry dark and light shapes. The villa’s shadow felt strangely familiar to him. The wind had disappeared and he felt encapsulated by silence. It was only interrupted by some faraway noise coming from the center of town and the sound of his own, remarkably relaxed breathing.

Nothing happened. The light and dark shapes in the hallway stayed where they were and his breathing was steady. He