MidReal Story
Whispers of the Mind
Scenario: A saga of brain molecules and brain waves
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For as long as I could remember, I had always been a scientist.
I was a neuroscientist now, and I was about to make some groundbreaking discoveries at the Quantum Minds Institute.
I had always wanted to be a scientist, because I wanted to understand how everything worked.
I had studied all the major branches of science, from astronomy to zoology.
I enjoyed them all, but it wasn’t until I discovered quantum mechanics that I felt truly excited.
I was working on my Ph.
D., and my area of research was in neuroscience.
When I met Alex Johnson, a physicist who specialized in quantum mechanics, I found an area that merged my two favorite fields of study: quantum neuroscience.
Alex’s research focused on how the brain worked from a purely physical perspective.
He was trying to explain how the brain’s functions could be understood in terms of the laws of physics.
Some people thought he was crazy, but his work had already made many important contributions to the field of biology.
I began studying quantum mechanics with Alex and over time became as much an expert in the field as he was.
In fact, a lot of people thought I was more of an expert than him.
Although I didn’t like to admit it, there might be some truth to that.
I had always been a little bit smarter than the other kids around me when I was growing up, but I never liked to brag about it.
I didn’t want people to think I was conceited or anything like that.
But sometimes it could be frustrating when other people just didn’t get things as quickly as I did.
Once I got into my research, I found that combining the fields of quantum mechanics and neuroscience made sense.
Neuroscience was a field that we hadn’t made much progress in recently, and it seemed that new ideas were needed if we were going to make some real headway.
Alex thought that combining neuroscience with quantum mechanics could bring us closer to understanding how the brain really worked.
He thought that it could help us bridge the gap between physics and biology, which has always been a difficult one for scientists.
Alex and I were working together to understand how quantum mechanics could be used to explain how the brain worked, but we never expected to make the discovery that we did.
We were able to show a connection between certain brain molecules and consciousness, which was something no one had ever done before.
We showed, mathematically, that these molecules could form entities that communicated with each other, even though they were separated by a large distance.
This could explain how different areas of the brain communicate with each other, even though they are not physically connected to each other in any way that we can see.
We presented our findings to James Thompson, a psychologist who also worked at our Institute, because we knew he would be able to help us make sense of what it all meant, since it had important implications for how we think about the mind and consciousness.
But now I’m getting ahead of myself.
Olivia Smith sat around a table with Alex Johnson and James Thompson, staring at them with an intensity so fierce it would have made the average person uncomfortable.
While Alex and she had been best friends for years, James was fairly new to their group, having joined them just a few months before.
But Olivia respected him as much as Alex did, even if she didn’t know him quite as well.
“What’s your problem, guys?”
she demanded, looking from one man to the other and back again.
Alex raised an eyebrow at her, and she could see his eyes darken with something she knew very well: a scientific challenge that would push them all far outside their comfort zones.
They had all known it was coming practically from the moment he arrived at Quantum Minds Institute, but none of them wanted to admit it out loud until they absolutely had to.
It seemed that time had come.
“I mean,” she said slowly, “we’ve got these molecules here.”
She waved one hand toward several pages of equations on the table in front of her.
“We know they can be conscious.”
She waved her other hand toward the equations.
“We know they can communicate with each other and maybe even with other entities.”
The men nodded at her.
“I’m not sure if we understand that part completely, but I agree,” Alex said.
“So we know this is happening,” Olivia said, spreading her hands out in front of her like she was trying to hold up her argument with both palms.
“The next step is to find out how it’s happening.
And I think the best way to do that is to encourage the molecules to be conscious around different kinds of stimuli, so that we can watch how they react, and then try to control those reactions mathematically.”
“Ah,” Alex said.
“I see what you’re getting at.”
Olivia nodded, looking from one man to the other.
Neither of them seemed to be getting what she was trying to say.
“We need to expose these molecules to stimuli from different realms and see if they communicate with their own kind, or if they communicate with entities from another realm who are exposed to the same stimuli.”
Alex frowned at her.
James looked back and forth between them.
“Are you suggesting we do some kind of a live experiment here?”
“There are ethical implications here that you guys don’t seem to be taking into account,” James said.
Alex raised an eyebrow at him.
“I think we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves,” Olivia said.
“I’m just saying we need to figure out how this works and that’s what we need to do to figure it out.
It’s not like we’re going to start trying things out without a lot of further thought and planning.
But the fact is, we can’t really do anything until we have more information about how it’s working now.
And I think we all know that.”
The men nodded at her.
“But there are questions here that need answers,” Alex said.
“I think we should start trying to answer them.
Throwing your hands up in the air and saying you don’t know what to do isn’t going to get us anywhere.
What do you think?”
Olivia shook her head.
I don’t know what to do next and I don’t want to take any steps until I’m sure that what we’re doing is necessary and ethical.
But then she read the looks on their faces and she knew she was outvoted.
All right, then,” she said.
Alex Johnson switched on the camera he’d shown them earlier.
It was attached to a microscope in another room where they could observe the brain molecules in real time without disrupting them in any way.
A close-up view of one molecule appeared on the large screen on the wall in front of them.
And then another and another until there was a whole group of them in front of them.
They were beautiful, really, with their shimmering colors and their delicate structure, like little snowflakes made of crystal.
“I had no idea they were so complex,” Olivia said, unable to stop herself from reaching out toward them even though she knew that they were untouchable and unseeable by human eyes.
Alex switched on a light in their sealed chamber and one side of the screen brightened as a small beam was focused on the molecules in one corner of the chamber.
The molecules reacted immediately, moving around, changing color, coalescing into new shapes as soon as they were exposed to this new stimulus.
“It’s like they’re dancing,” James said, his voice hushed with excitement and awe.
Olivia nodded in agreement.
The molecules seemed to be moving in circles around each other, almost as if they were spinning in place, then pausing for a moment before starting all over again.
“What will happen when you turn it off?”
she asked Alex.
“It depends on how long they were exposed.”
He turned the light off again after a few moments and the molecules slowly stopped in their tracks.
They seemed to be looking around, almost like someone who wakes up in the middle of the night and looks around in the dark, trying to figure out where they are and what’s happening around them.
They were still beautiful, but without the light shining on them, they looked a little more fragile and ephemeral than before.
“Turn on the next one,” Olivia said after a few minutes had passed and the molecules had gone back to whatever they’d been doing before they were exposed to the light beam.
Alex switched on the next stimulus, which was a small electrical current.
It was so gentle that Olivia couldn’t see any reaction at first.
Then she saw that some of the molecules were reaching out as if they were trying to draw something toward them, or maybe as if they were trying to touch another entity who wasn’t there, but who could feel their touch if they just tried hard enough.
A shiver went down her spine at the thought of what they might be touching.
If nothing else, this experiment was proving once and for all that there were things out there that were beyond human perception and yet right in front of our faces.
The molecules stopped stretching out after a few minutes, but they didn’t go back to whatever they’d been doing before the electrical current was turned on.
“Do you think they’re still communicating?”
Olivia asked, turning to Alex.
“I think so,” he said.
“But not with each other.
I think they’re communicating with something else.
Something we can’t see.”
The hairs on the back of Olivia’s neck stood on end.
For some reason, it was far more terrifying to imagine these molecules reaching out to entities from another realm than it was to imagine them reaching out to each other.
Why are they doing that?”
I think they’re trying to find out what else is out there,” Alex said.
“Try the next one,” Olivia said, unable to look away from the screen even as she felt like she might be sick.
Alex switched on the final stimulus, a small dose of radiation this time, which he said would mimic the exposure that a brain would get during an MRI.
Once again, some of the molecules were reacting immediately, moving toward the radiation.
Some of them were spinning so fast that Olivia couldn’t see what color they were, while others seemed to be swallowing up all the light in the chamber, a black hole that Olivia could see but not really process or understand.
He turned the radiation off after a moment, but some of the molecules didn’t stop spinning right away, while others were still trying to reach out or draw something toward them.
It wasn’t until the light beam went back on that the few remaining molecules stopped what they were doing and went back to their original shape and color.
Olivia reached for her notebook and started writing furiously, but she couldn’t keep up with all the thoughts that were swirling around in her head.
This was something she’d never seen before, never imagined before, never even dared to imagine before.
But it was real, and now she had to figure out what to do about it.
It was obvious that they couldn’t just throw these little guys into a jar and put them in a box like they’d originally planned; they were much too special for that.
But then what?
What could they do?
What should they do?
“The molecules are reacting very differently than we expected,” Alex said, breaking into Olivia’s thoughts.
“Does this change things for you?”
“I think it changes everything,” she said, looking at James for confirmation before she continued.
“I don’t think we should be studying the brain anymore.”
“Are you sure?”
Alex asked, looking at her as if he’d never seen her before.
“Are you really sure?”
“I think so,” she said.
She wasn’t sure if it was the right thing to do, not exactly.
But she was sure it was the only thing she could do.
Alex and James exchanged one final look before they both nodded at her.
“Okay then,” Alex said.
Olivia and James spent the rest of the night and most of the next day working on their new theory, which was basically an entire reimagining of what they thought they knew about the human brain and consciousness.
It was different from anything they’d ever written before and they were excited about it, even though they had absolutely no way of knowing if it was right or wrong.
They called Alex into the lab a few hours before his shift was supposed to end so they could share their theory with him and get his feedback on it.
“The way we see it,” James said once Alex had settled in at the table across from them.
“We think these brain molecules might be the true source of human consciousness.”
“And maybe even the human spirit,” Olivia added.
It was a crazy idea and they all knew it, but Alex didn’t laugh at them or dismiss them out of hand like Olivia had been expecting.
He just sat there thoughtfully for a minute before he asked, “How would you prove something like this?”
“We’re not sure,” Olivia said, looking to James for confirmation.
They’d already talked about this and they both agreed; it was the weakest part of their theory right now.
“But I think that if we can figure out how to make contact with these entities, that will be our proof.”
“And do you have any idea how we might be able to do that?”
Alex asked, looking at her like he was half-afraid she’d say yes.
“I think we might have a way,” she said slowly.
“We were planning on using a mass spectrometer to replicate the conditions we used to discover the entities in the first place.”
She could see that Alex was starting to get excited by what she was saying and she hated to have to interrupt him like this, but she knew it was important.
It was too important not to mention.
“And we’ve never actually discovered what these entities are made of,” she said slowly.
She knew it was a crazy idea and she still wasn’t sure if she believed it herself, but it was worth considering.
“It’s possible that whatever these entities are made of is something we can use to make contact with them.”
It was impossible to tell what Alex was thinking now; he’d gone completely still and silent for the first time since they’d met him.
Olivia couldn’t see any excitement or disbelief on his face at all and it was starting to scare her how little she could tell what he was thinking.
James didn’t say anything for a long time either and Olivia could tell that he wanted to speak up, but that he didn’t know what to say or where to start.
“I know this is going to sound crazy,” she began, but James cut her off before she could say anything else.
“It doesn’t matter if it sounds crazy,” James said firmly.
They both turned to look at Alex, who was staring at them like they’d gone completely mad and Olivia could tell that he didn’t agree with James at all.
“But how do you expect anyone to believe us if we’re saying that there are entities out there that are capable of controlling things like life and death?”
“Maybe we should be thinking bigger,” Olivia said slowly, not sure if she really believed what she was saying herself.
“Maybe we’re looking at this whole thing wrong.”
“Wrong how?”
Alex asked as Olivia stopped speaking and looked at him with wide eyes, not sure how to put what she wanted to say into words.
