Reassigning Mortimer
By Ron Wetherington
The office was unimpressive for all its audacious pretensions, tucked away as if hiding, at the end of a fourth-floor corridor carpeted in distressing pale green and gray. The sign on the door showed that Baxter Barrier, MD and Thelma Thornton, PA were specialists in Recoupling and Reassignment, which itself conveyed no meaningful information. Almost reluctantly, Mildred entered a small waiting room. Four chairs and a receptionist’s window, not even a table with magazines, greeted her. “I’m Mildred Goldfarb,” she told the young woman behind the glass. “I have an appointment.”
The receptionist consulted a computer screen, then smiled, “Have a seat. The doctor will see you shortly.” There were no others in the room, and before her second thoughts about being here overcame her, Mildred was led into another office. At the far wall was a double-pedestal desk with a matching bookcase behind it and a door on each side. Behind the desk sat a middle-aged man with greying hair and mustache, wearing an open-collar white shirt. He rose when she entered, extending his hand. “I’m Dr. Barrier, Mrs. Goldfarb, welcome.” They shook hands and she sat facing the desk. “I’m sorry to hear about your husband. I hope we can help you.”
“Mortimer has Covid-induced pneumonia,” Mildred said weakly. She cleared her throat. “He’s in ICU. This is his second infection, and the doctors don’t have much hope.” She gave him a wary look. “They suggested that I see you, but I’m still not convinced.”
“Completely understandable,” he smiled sympathetically, interlacing his fingers on the desktop. “Ours is a new service based on cutting-edge technology, fully licensed, but not widely known.” He reached for a folder on his desk. “Dr. Cranford sent over your husband’s file from the hospital. I see that he is sixty-six years old and a diabetic but was otherwise in good health before COVID-19 struck.” He lifted a page, skimming the medical report. “His CT scan indicates no cerebral issues, and his neurology is clean” He looked up at her. “He’s a good candidate for reassignment.”
“Yes?” she looked at him quizzically, “but I’m not sure exactly what that means. I’m not even sure what the procedure involves.” She nervously twisted her hands together. “What about his body?”
“The hospital will dispose of the body,” he smiled to ease her anxiety. “But not his mind—not his inner self. This is what we preserve and reassign.”
Reassign? Into what, an avatar? A fabricated creature? A stranger? Mildred’s imagination swirled with faceless images. She reached into her purse, grabbed a tissue, and began twisting it nervously. Yes, she thought, his body is diseased and dying and corrupted, and it’s not his body that she would miss. They had not been physically intimate in—how long? —she couldn’t remember. But, she wondered, how does his mind, his thoughts, his very personality not include the body that keeps them captive? She remained distressingly confused: a body without its mind can often be kept alive, she knew, but what manner of substance is a mind without its body?
Mildred looked to the doctor for encouragement. “How can Mort’s mind persist? How can it possibly survive as Mort when his body is gone?” She shuddered at the thought.
Dr. Barrier offered a reassuring smile. “This is what all our clients want to know, Mrs. Goldfarb.” He spread his hands as if to encompass them. “Indeed, it’s what everyone tries to understand. The mind-body debate probably goes back as far as reason itself.” He leaned forward earnestly. “To be perfectly honest, Mrs. Goldfarb, even those of us who specialize in reassignment and recoupling don’t fully understand.” He placed his palms together. “But what we do know is that the mind and the body are not the same thing, even though they appear to be inseparable. Mort’s mind has been conditioned by his body and its processes, true, but also shaped by his experiences—everything his senses have conveyed to him from the world outside his body, the world despite his body.” He steepled his fingers and paused to choose his next words. “It is this portion of who Mort is, who he has become and is still becoming, that we will carefully tease away and regenerate in a new location.”
They would take him apart, Mildred thought. Questions she didn’t know how to ask dripped into her consciousness like leftover raindrops running down a windowpane—leaving faint trails before disappearing. What would he be like, what kind of thoughts would he have, in a new body free of pain? What part of him would she lose? What part of her would he remember? “Can you tell me about his new body?” she asked, leaving the more painful subject of his emotional survival for later.
“Would you like to see?” asked Dr. Barrier, rising from his chair. Startled, she nodded hesitantly. Taking her arm, he led her through a door behind his desk. It was a bright windowless room, walls glistening white, fluorescent lights above, a white tiled floor below. Sterile looking. Along three sides ran a laboratory counter, with white glass-fronted cabinets on the wall. Various instruments were positioned on the counter, small appliances and glassware in the cabinets. In the room’s center was a black-topped table. A human form dressed in a light blue jumpsuit lay supine on it. Hovering over the form was a middle-aged woman in a white lab coat, the name T. Thornton embossed over a pocket.
“Mrs. Goldfarb, meet Dr. Thelma Thornton, my Physician’s Assistant,” he introduced them and they shook hands. “And this,” smiling broadly, and gesturing toward the reclining figure, “would be the future Mortimer Goldfarb.” As they drew closer, he quickly added, “Of course, the body’s face and composition will be molded to replicate your husband’s.”
Mildred was stunned. The face was so lifelike! The eyes were, blessedly, closed, but the hair, the eyebrows, even a slight stubble on the face, were so real she felt embarrassed to stare at it, as if she were rudely invading its privacy! Slight wrinkling on the forehead and around the eyes gave it the semblance of having a personality, feelings. She looked down at its hand, showing veins on the back and neatly trimmed fingernails. Thelma guided Mildred’s hand to touch it. The skin was soft, pliable, slightly warm. My God, she thought.
“I will leave you two ladies,” Dr. Barrier bowed slightly, “so that you may discuss any intimate details about the revitalized husband in your life.” He smiled and quietly left.
“If we can get a detailed voice recording,” Thelma said, initiating a casual demeanor, “I can replicate your husband’s inflections and intonation rather faithfully, even his pronunciation.” As if for clarification, she added, “My doctorate is in bioengineering, by the way, not in medicine.”
All of this overwhelmed Mildred. Thelma pulled two laboratory stools from under the table, and they sat next to the human form but facing each other. “Of course,” Thelma said in a softer voice, “there is only so much we can do in replication. This is still an android, after all.” She rested her hand on the figure’s thigh. “It will have a simulated heartbeat, simulated breathing, and lubricating fluids will actually circulate just as blood does in us.” A bit grim, she continued, “but it will not have any bodily functions—no digestion, no consumption of food or liquid, no excretion or elimination.”
“And no sex,” Mildred added, finishing the train of thought.
“It has no genitalia.”
They sat in silence for a few moments. Thelma reached for Mildred’s hand. “You must understand,” she almost whispered, “that this will not be your full husband. You will have most of his current mind to share. You will have his conversation, his thoughts, and perhaps his emotions, to share. But not his body.”
“I suppose that’s why it’s called ‘reassigning’,” Mildred said. “So, what is ‘recoupling’?”
“That’s totally different,” Thelma explained. “There are times when a patient requires extensive recovery, including induced coma. To protect the mind, the psyche, we retract it, store it, and then recouple it to the body when it’s healthier.”
Mildred felt herself spiraling in unfamiliar territory, unfamiliar words. She was in an alien world she had thought was just the stuff of science fiction. She shook her head in wonder. How had the world of science and technology expanded so dramatically and so quickly? How had she not been aware? How could her more ordinary world ever catch up? “When would this…this reassignment...happen?” she asked.
“We will coordinate with you and your doctor.” Thelma put her hand softly on Mildred’s arm. “We bring the extractor—I hate that word! —into the hospital room.” A brief pause. “It takes about two hours,” she said, “and your husband will feel nothing, no discomfort.”
Mildred choked back a sob. No, she thought, only I will feel that. “And then, will he die?” They were both silent, processing the word. Mildred had a chilling image of Thelma manipulating an arcade claw machine, reaching, reaching, struggling to grasp Mort’s mind. She shook her head, dismissing the image.
And with this, other thoughts came surging. What if Mort resents his android form? What if his conscience intervenes and seeks to decouple his mind from its involuntary custody? What if he finds himself improperly and even immorally imprisoned? She had not broached this matter with him after his doctor had suggested this innovative procedure. She must ask Mort, and what if he refuses? She, after all, was the selfish one here. She looked plaintively at Thelma. “And then,” she repeated the question, “will he die?”
“Then, his body dies,” Thelma replied, “and we begin the reassignment.” In a comforting voice, she added, “And after a few days your husband will return to you!”
But there was no guarantee that he would truly be Mortimer, was there, having lost the self-identity that his limbs and organs and sensations impose every day, every waking hour? And how would he feel, watching her dine and wine without the joy of sharing? How would she feel, recalling how the two of them lingered at the table, lights dim and candelabra flickering, in conversation thick with gratification, hours on end? Would her guilt and his resentment intervene to destroy their intimacy? What marital decoupling might result? This is a discussion she must have, but with Thelma?
Certainly with Mort!
She was being prodded and gently shaken. Groggy, she opened her eyes. She was staring into the face of Dr. Cranford. She sat up, looking around the waiting room. She had fallen into a fitful sleep. She had lost all sense of time.
Dr. Cranston sat beside her on the sofa. “I’m sorry to wake you, Mildred,” a hand on her shoulder, “but you should come with me to the ICU.”
“What?” She rubbed her eyes. “Is Mort okay?”
“He’s failing fast, but still conscious,” he answered. “I think you should be at his side.”
Oh, God, she thought. Where’s Thelma? Where’s…was I dreaming this? Dr. Cranford assisted her off the sofa and they hurried into the ICU.
Her husband lay raised slightly on the bed. A breathing mask was connected by hose to a ventilator. An IV stand with an infusion pump attached held two bags, and a line ran to his arm. His eyes were closed, and his breathing was shallow but sounded regular. A monitor beeped almost inaudibly with his heartbeat. Mildred leaned over, pulled down her facemask, and kissed him on the forehead. Doctor Cranston stood nearby, with a nurse on the other side of the bed.
“Mort, honey, can you hear me?” she whispered. He opened his eyes, moving his head to look at her. He squeezed her hand. Tears began to obscure her vision, and he squeezed tighter. “Please don’t go yet, sweetie,” she pleaded, “Thelma will come.” His lips parted as if he were trying to speak. She lifted his mask slightly, bending down to listen, but he made no sound.
Then the beeping stopped, suddenly, and Mort no longer squeezed her hand. She looked up at the nurse, then over to the doctor, both expressionless behind their masks. Everything seemed suspended as Mildred stood there silently, holding onto Mort’s hand, looking into his face, waiting.
She knew then that Thelma would not come.
Ron Wetherington is a retired professor of anthropology living in Dallas, Texas. He has published a novel, Kiva (Sunstone Press), and numerous short fiction pieces in this second career. He also enjoys writing creative non-fiction. Read some of his pubs at https://www.rwetheri.com/