The top of a black tee-shirt was visible in the V-shaped opening at the throat of his lab coat. There was no writing on it.
‘I’m Betts,’ he said, letting go of my hand with evident relief. ‘I’m the technician. The lab technician, I mean. I’ll run you through what we’re about, then Dr Morrison will run through the experiment. It won’t take long. ‘I’ll give you some background first. If that’s alright?’
We said that it was.
He told us about some tricks you could do with mirrors.
I
At the time, the technique was new. One or two progressive European clinics were using it. Dr Morrison was a fan of progressive European techniques.
‘What’s it a technique for?’ I asked.
‘Whatever,’ said Betts. ‘It can relax the mind. Sometimes it can provoke reactions. It’s all to do with self-image.’
He went into a spiel about the Self while Tina and I sat at a desk. I didn’t want my Self getting any ideas so I looked out of the window until it was over. It was like being in a lecture, from what I could remember of them.
‘You can try this one,’ he said. ‘This one shows you what I mean. Here. Put your hand flat on the table. Palm down. Now, watch this.’
I had my hand palm down. He ran his index finger along each of my fingers.
‘There, you can see what I’m doing and you can feel it. That makes sense to you. Now, keep your hand flat but hold it under the table.’
I put my hand under the table. He continued to run his right index finger over my hand, but now he kept his left hand on the table, following his right hand. At first it didn’t seem to be doing anything. Someone was tickling my hand and a table. Then he got his hands synchronized. As he touched the back of my index finger – which was out of sight, under the table – with one hand, he touched the same place on the table with the other. Every time he touched me, he also touched the matching place on the table.
My eyes decided that they knew best, and overrode everything else.
I lost my hand.
All of a sudden it wasn’t there. I could see my arm going under the table, but the sensations weren’t coming from there. They were coming from the table. The table felt as though it was part of me.
‘Ah,’ said Betts, reclaiming his own hands. ‘There. You’ve remapped. Your hand is mapped to the table. See how easy that was? That’s how it works.’
‘Let’s have your hands where we can see them,’ said Tina. I pulled my hand back into view. It didn’t feel quite right. It was numb. I patted it with the other hand and it was normal again.
‘It’s sight that does it,’ said Betts. ‘If you mix the signals, give a visual stimulus that doesn’t match a physical stimulus, the body doesn’t know what to do. It can’t interpret the signals. You could see me copying what I was doing under the table with my other hand, and because you could only see that one you mapped the sensation of touch to match the vision. Dr Morrison uses mirrors.’
‘Nice,’ said Tina. ‘I could do with a mirror, the rain’s played havoc with my hair.’
‘How does this help?’ I asked.
‘It sets you apart from yourself,’ Betts explained. ‘It lets you see yourself in a different way, without the body getting in the way. I just went through all that. Weren’t you listening?’
‘No he wasn’t,’ said Tina. ‘He was looking out of the window and thinking about arcade games.’
She was right, as usual.
‘It’s better with mirrors,’ said Betts. He became less nervous as he expanded on his subject. ‘We block your view of yourself, and let you see parts of your body reflected. You move your left hand, and see your right hand move. That’s the sort of thing. It disassociates you from yourself.’
‘And that’s all I do for the afternoon? And I get paid?’
‘It may be distressing. Some people react to it badly. We’re paying you because you might not enjoy yourself.’
‘Bring the mirrors on,’ I said.
‘Dr Morrison is setting things up. We have to get the line of sight right for your height.’
‘How do you know how tall I am?’
‘You’re about my height. Maybe a little taller. A touch less than six feet. Your eyes are level with mine. This isn’t rocket science.’
It didn’t seem like any sort of science. We were going to stand and look at ourselves in strategically placed mirrors.
‘Isn’t there a control? You have control subjects in experiments.’
‘You’re both control subjects. You’re both going in there, and neither of you will know when you’re the control. It’ll switch between you.’
‘Fine.’
The three of us ran out of things to talk about. I don’t like to provoke conversations. I feel more comfortable joining them once they’re underway. Tina seemed preoccupied. Perhaps she had some buried traumas she was worrying about. Betts began to nibble at the skin around his fingernails. He winced and shook his finger as he caught a live bit. I looked back out of the window. The mountains were rendered faint by low clouds or thick sky. I wondered if the rooms across the corridor had a view of the sea.
‘I’ll see what he’s up to,’ said Betts, leaving Tina and I alone in the room.
‘How’s your hand?’ she asked.
‘It’s mine again. That was weird. I could feel it but it felt like the table was my hand. Or my hand was the table. It felt strange. It’s an illusion, though. It’s not as though my hand became part of the table.’
‘Illusions can be enough,’ she said. She seemed to be on her way to saying something else, and then stopped and looked out of the window. Between us, we were in danger of using the view up. There wasn’t much of it – grey sky, grey mountains, grey fields – and it wouldn’t stand up to much more attention.
‘What’s Dr Morrison like?’ I asked.
‘What do you think he’s like?’
‘Are you examining me?’
‘All the time. You need it. So, what do you think he’s like?’
‘Like a movie mad scientist. Mostly bald and with coloured stuff in test tubes. Getting ready to feed us a serum that’ll turn us into zombies.’
‘He’s about thirty, and he has hair. He doesn’t have test tubes.’
‘Just mirrors?’
‘You can be very negative. We’ll have to see about knocking that out of you.’
‘I’d be careful. Negativity is half of my personality. I don’t know if the rest would stand up without it.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Possibly not.’
She popped her elbows on the table, folded her hands together, and dropped her chin onto them. She looked at the desk.
Neither of us said anything else until