The Implant

“Jerry has a temper,” was how Michelle, Jerry’s long-time friend and former lover put it, “but he’s got a good heart.”

It has been argued, notably by one or two of Jerry’s former colleagues, that Jerry might have been a lot worse if he hadn’t been short and skinny. His stature, combined with his floppy hairstyle, prevented him from being perceived as intimidating, even when, as happened not infrequently, he would suddenly snap and begin uncontrollably ranting at whoever had incurred his wrath this time.

He was about to leave work and had already stood up in preparation when he remembered he’d promised his boss that he’d have the Gilman file ready by the end of the day, and he cursed under his breath, sat down again and began working on it. By the time he finally left, it was past 7 and it was dark.

Outside, rain was drizzling on and off, but Jerry didn’t mind. He enjoyed the walk home. He intended to stop off at the noodle place near his flat and get something to eat, since now he was too hungry to cook.

On Richmond Street three drunk youths were shouting and pushing each other. Jerry’s heart quickened but he refused to be intimidated. Never show fear. That was his policy. He was passing them on the pavement when one of them put an arm out and stopped him.

“Look at this dork.” said the youth.

Jerry didn’t like the look of him. He had a nasty scar trailing down from the corner of his eye to his cheek, and something about the indistinct quality of his speech suggested brain damage due to, probably, heavy drug use.

Jerry exploded at him, unleashing a string of expletives, anger overriding all instinct for self-preservation.

“You what, did you say, mate?” said another of the youths, snarling to reveal a gold tooth, and he swung something at Jerry. Jerry didn’t see what it was.

It was an iron bar.

When Jerry awoke he felt deeply confused. He wasn’t sure if it was morning or evening, or where he was. He conceived the vague idea that he was at work, and had fallen asleep. A woman was doing something at the side of the room.

He tried to sit up, and found his limbs didn’t obey his brain properly. Instead of sitting, he only writhed. Panicking, he tried to shout—“hey!”—but instead of a word, an indistinct moan emerged from his mouth.

The woman turned around and gasped. She was blurry. He couldn’t see her properly.

“You’re OK, Jerry.” she said. “I’ll get the doctor.”

She left the room.

Jerry tried again to rise to a sitting position, but his limbs only flailed helplessly. Again he tried to shout, and again only succeeded in making a distressed groaning sound that frightened him.

Wide-eyed, his heart beating wildly, he sank back into the bed and waited.

Soon the door opened and a bearded man appeared, wearing round spectacles and a white lab coat.

“Back in the land of the living, Jerry!” said the man jocularly. “I’m going to give you a mild sedative. Don’t worry. Everything’s OK.”

Jerry realised there was a line from an IV bag going into his arm. The doctor fiddled with it somehow—Jerry couldn’t make his eyes focus properly—and a sense of calm swept over him.

The doctor pulled up a chair and sat by Jerry’s bed.

“I’m Dr. Shipley.” he said. “Jerry, you’ve been in a coma for eight weeks. You were attacked. I’m afraid we don’t know who attacked you. You were found unconscious, in the street.”

Dr. Shipley paused, trying to gauge Jerry’s reaction.

“I know it’s a lot to take in.” he said. “Jerry, you suffered severe brain damage in the attack. A part of your brain that controls movement was damaged. Ordinarily, you would be paralysed for life, but we obtained authorisation to try an experimental treatment, while you were in a coma. We’ve fitted an implant next to your brain stem, at the back of your head.”

Jerry breathed heavily, and tried to say something, but only emitted a soft, interrogative moan.

“The implant will allow you to control your muscles.” said Shipley. “However, you will need to learn to use it. It’s going to take time, Jerry. A lot of time. We believe you will walk again. You’ll be able to live a normal life, but you’ll need a great deal of patience, and persistence. And courage.

“I’m going to let you rest now, Jerry. We’ll begin your therapy tomorrow.”

When Jerry had been found in the street, part of the back of his head had been smashed in. An inch higher and he would have been blind due to destruction of the occipital lobe. Instead, he had been left paralysed.

Shipley and his team had fitted a piece of innovative electronics into the damaged area. The implant had to be charged regularly by Jerry lying on an inductive charger, similar to the kind used for toothbrushes.

As Shipley explained to Jerry over the following days, the implant detected impulses in his brain associated with movement, and then activated nerves attached to his muscles by means of powerful electromagnetic pulses transmitted by a phased-array antenna.

This bypassed the damaged areas of his brainstem and spine, but it meant that Jerry had to learn to control his movement from absolute scratch, using completely new neural pathways.

When Michelle visited him in hospital, she found him awake and responsive, but completely helpless.

“Jerry, it’s me.” she said, and his eyes rolled to look at her, and he made a low moaning sound. “Oh, Jerry.” she said, tearing up. “What have they done to you?”

All Jerry could do was groan.

After a month of intense work by Shipley and his team, and of course Jerry himself, Jerry could raise either of his limbs several inches, could make a fist with either hand, and could curl his toes. He could make sounds that sounded vaguely like “yes” or “no”.

From there Jerry’s recovery proceeded rapidly, propelled by his enormous determination.

After three months he was able to sit up and look at himself in a mirror. They had repeatedly shaved his hair off due to the necessity of dealing with his multiple head injuries, and his head was now covered in short, fuzzy hair.

When he saw himself, he smiled lopsidedly, and laughed.

“A sense of humour is important.” said Dr. Shipley, smiling along with him.

He was finally released from hospital a year later. Via a combination of Michelle’s efforts and government benefits, Jerry’s rent had been paid and his flat was still waiting for him. His job, also, was still available for him, but Jerry tired too easily to work. Eventually it was arranged that he would go into work for half an hour at a time, three days a week, and do whatever he was able to do, with a view to eventually resuming his career.

When he first walked back into the office, the entire team was waiting for him. They cheered heartily; even those of his colleagues who had been on the receiving end of Jerry’s temper a few too many times. They all admired his determination. A banner strung across the office said, “Welcome back, Jerry.”

Jerry continued to attend physiotherapy sessions as an outpatient. His recovery was far from complete, and he needed crutches to get around. He was able to drive a car with some minor adaptations.

Washing his hair presented considerable difficulties, and he decided to simply shave his hair off. The scars on his scalp, by then, were barely visible.

Often he went to sit in a nearby café, and sometimes Michelle or another of his friends joined him, particularly at weekends. However, he was sitting there alone one day when he made a very curious discovery.

He was in the habit of placing a coin on the back of his hand and trying to roll the coin from one finger to another, in order to try to regain flexibility and control in his fingers. This was a painful and slow process, and the coin frequently dropped onto the table. Picking it up off the table also wasn’t an easy job for Jerry, and he would often end up swearing at it, to the alarm of other customers.

On this particular day, Jerry repeatedly dropped the coin onto the table by mistake as usual, but he tried not to get annoyed. Over and over again, he patiently slid the coin to the edge of the table and dropped it into his palm.

Yet, try as he might to control his frustration, he felt anger building in him uncontrollably. Moving the coin across his fingers was very difficult, and at a certain point he dropped it three times in a row before even making it perform one roll.

He glared at the coin with barely-suppressed incandescent rage. It was all he could do to not start shouting at it. Then he saw something odd. The coin seemed to jump slightly on the table, moving a fraction of an inch suddenly to one side, and the coin’s movement seemed to coincide with an odd feeling in his head.

He searched his mind, directing his thoughts towards the coin, and somehow managed to make it jump again. And again. And again.

Jerry had discovered he had the power of telekinesis.

Back at the hospital, the next day, he tackled Dr. Shipley about it.

“Yes, this is something that came up during development of the implant.” he said, his cheeks reddening slightly, as if embarrassed by his own admission. “It is possible to make the antenna target objects outside of the subject’s own body.”

“The subject, in this case, being me.” said Jerry.

“Yes.” said Dr. Shipley. “But the effect is very small. Yes, you might move a coin a millimetre or two on a smooth surface, but that’s where it ends. You won’t be able to hurl rocks at people or break windows.”

He laughed at the mental images he’d conjured up.

“I can’t actually do anything useful with it?” Jerry asked.

“No.” said Dr. Shipley, smiling warmly.

Even if Jerry’s strange new power was useless, it fascinated him and everyone he told about it. It seemed he could only move small metallic objects, such as the tabs of zips. When a metal key was suspended from a key fob, he was able to make it swing slightly back and forth.

One day, more than eighteen months after the attack, Jerry decided to go into town by car and read a book in a café. There was a café he was particularly fond of for this purpose, with a view of the river. It was a Tuesday afternoon, and his friends were all at work, but Jerry enjoyed his own company.

He picked up his crutches and hobbled outside to his car. Then he drove into town. In town he parked his car and stepped out, without his crutches. Then he stood by his car, looking at the road. He wondered how far he could get without the crutches. Even two months earlier, going anywhere without crutches would have seemed an impossible task, but now he frequently hobbled around his flat without them, and it didn’t seem impossible that he might make it as far as the café unaided.

At this point a large angry-looking red-faced man shouted something at him, which Jerry didn’t quite catch. Jerry said, “What?” and the man said, “That’s a disabled space.”

“I know; I’m disabled.” said Jerry.

“No, you’re not.” said the man. “There’s nothing wrong with you.”

“Yes, I am.” said Jerry, feeling his anger rising.

Soon the two men were shouting at each other at close range.

Jerry had always had a temper, but now the stress of dealing with the aftermath of the accident seemed to give his anger wings, and he absolutely unleashed on the man. The man, for his part, began talking about fighting.

“I could floor you in a second.” the man screamed at him, point-blank in his face.

Jerry felt something twist in his mind, and the man’s facial expression abruptly changed. He clutched his chest, then swayed, then fell to the ground, wheezing.

“Hey, someone help!” Jerry shouted. “Call an ambulance!”

He rummaged around in his pocket and found his phone, and dialled emergency.

The police interviewed him about his altercation with the man, but it was clear that Jerry had done nothing wrong. The man had simply suffered a massive heart attack. Jerry soon found out that the man had been pronounced dead before even reaching the hospital.

Jerry felt troubled by what had happened, and a few days later, he discussed his fears with Dr. Shipley.

“You think you killed him?” Dr. Shipley asked, getting straight to the point that Jerry was skirting around.

Jerry looked at him in shock. That was what he had wanted to say, but it was hard to hear it said out loud, and put so bluntly.

“Yes.” he said, in a hoarse whisper.

Dr. Shipley shook his head.

“It’s not possible, Jerry. Yes, you can induce certain magnetic effects in small metal objects, but the human organism is just not that sensitive to electromagnetic fields.”

“What if he had a pacemaker?” said Jerry.

“Did he have a pacemaker?”

“No-one will bloody well tell me.”

“Even if he did, I really don’t think you were responsible for his death. Put it out of your mind. You need to concentrate on getting well.”

That night, as he lay with his head on a pillow, the inductive charger underneath, he couldn’t settle his mind.

What if he had killed that man somehow?

Certainly the guy hadn’t seemed like the nicest fellow on the planet, but he probably wasn’t the worst either. He didn’t deserve death.

Jerry knew very little about him. Did he have a wife? Children? He didn’t know.

If he was responsible for the man’s death, he told himself, it was a freak accident. It was as if the man had stepped in front of a car he was driving. No different to that.

Then the memory came to him of the odd feeling he’d had when he was arguing with the man. Something had twisted in his mind at the very moment that the man had clutched his chest in agony.

No; that wasn’t quite right. He, Jerry, had twisted something in his mind, deliberately. He was responsible for it. It had been a voluntary action, performed out of anger, and oddly similar to the sensation he felt when making small metal objects twitch.

But he hadn’t wanted the man to die. Or had he? In that moment, his anger had been such that he didn’t really know. Perhaps in that moment, had he known that he could kill the man and get away with it, he would have done it.

On sober reflection though … no, on sober reflection he wouldn’t have wanted to kill anyone, not even the most obnoxious idiot.

How could he be sure it wouldn’t happen again? That’s what really bothered him. What was done, was done; the man was dead, and there was no bringing him back, but who else might he kill, inadvertently?

What if an old woman or a child got in his way somewhere, and he killed them in a flash of rage?

He shuddered.

That mustn’t happen.

He considered taking anger management classes. Were there really such things? Probably. He made a mental note to talk to Dr. Shipley about it.

Jerry ended up taking a couple of classes, but he couldn’t really relate to the other people in the group, all of whom had committed physical acts of violence. In theory, although Jerry was prone to verbally abusing people when they incurred his wrath, he had never actually physically attacked anyone or anything. He also found the leader of the group quite annoying, and began to worry that he’d accidentally murder him, just as he still half-suspected he’d accidentally murdered the angry red-faced man who’d accused him of parking in the wrong space.

Dr. Shipley suggested he resume one-to-one counselling sessions. Jerry had undergone four months of these but had terminated them prematurely, finding they didn’t suit him. He rejected Dr. Shipley’s suggestion.

No, he himself would learn to control his temper. In the same way that he would never reach for a knife and stab someone, even in the worst of rages, he would learn never to reach out with his mind and interfere with people’s hearts. More than that, he would avoid getting into a rage in the first place. Other people could manage it; he, Jerry, would manage it.

The first real test of Jerry’s resolve came a few weeks later.

After parking his car one day, he walked through the town on crutches towards a bakery where he intended to buy something to eat. Halfway towards the bakery, he stopped, exhausted, and leaned against a wall. He laid the crutches carefully down at his feet. He barely still needed them, and soon he planned to discard them.

He took a packet of cigarettes from his pocket. Jerry largely agreed with those who say smoking is a filthy, self-destructive habit, but still he liked to smoke occasionally, having acquired the habit in his youth.

He was halfway through a cigarette when a middle-aged woman, passing by, turned to him and said, “Shouldn’t smoke. Bad for your health.”

Jerry felt a sudden spasm of anger and swore at her.

She stopped, and began to remonstrate angrily with him.

“Do you think the rest of us want to breathe in your disgusting fumes?” she asked him, rhetorically.

Instead of blowing up in the woman’s face, as would have been typical for Jerry, instead he tried to reason with himself, while arguing with the woman.

This woman wasn’t evil. She was just annoying. Perhaps she’d had a bad day. Perhaps her mother had just died, or her sister, or her best friend. Perhaps she had a severe allergy that cigarette smoke worsened.

Or, he thought, as she shouted in his face, perhaps she was just a busybody.

He could kill her.

He could murder her, probably, and no-one would ever blame him for it. It would look like a heart attack.

Perhaps this woman was a net negative for the world. Maybe she’d gone through life making people feel bad. Taking, not contributing.

He tried to get a grip on himself, as he traded insults with her.

After all, what she’d initially said wasn’t all that bad, was it? Only that he shouldn’t smoke. Fair point of view. He’d sworn at her; that’s what had really set her off.

Then the rage burst through incontinently.

Stupid hag.

He hated this woman. The world would be better off without her.

But finally she walked off, and Jerry had managed to contain himself.

As he continued on his way through the town, he thought of something he’d heard in one of the two anger management classes that he had actually managed to attend.

In reality, he knew nothing of this woman. He didn’t know whether she was a saint or a devil, or somewhere in between. Regardless, it was not for him to act as judge and jury. De-escalate; that’s what he should have done. Better for him, better for her.

In the café, he met Michelle, and she saw that something was bothering him.

“I think I nearly killed her.” he told her.

“No, Jerry.” she said. “It was just a stupid argument. That’s all. Nothing more.”

Michelle was right, he thought. He was blowing it all out of proportion.

By the time he drove home, shortly before the worst of the rush-hour traffic hit, he felt much calmer. In his car he played a playlist of soothing classical music via Bluetooth from his phone, and he felt truly calm, perhaps for the first time in weeks.

At a certain point the road split into two; a lane for turning left, which is the direction Jerry was taking, and a lane for going straight ahead. Jerry was about to turn when a car on his right, in the lane for going straight, cut across him into the left turning.

He hit the horn angrily, and the driver, a stupid-looking youngish man, made a rude gesture at him.

It was as if all the anger Jerry had been suppressing suddenly burst out. A flash of pure rage swept over him, but then he quickly got a handle on it.

“Just some idiot.” he thought to himself.

At the end, the road turned sharply to the right. Jerry was watching the car speed off, but something seemed to happen to it near the bend in the road. Instead of turning, the car ploughed straight into the wall of a building.

Jerry pulled over and walked as fast he could, which was still quite slowly and with a limp, over to the car, dialling emergency services on his phone as he walked.

The front of the car was smashed in, trapping the man inside, and the man was slumped over the dashboard. He appeared dead, or at least unconscious.

The police interviewed Jerry extensively, as a witness to the incident. Jerry told them honestly and frankly about the brief exchange between himself and the man. After all, he thought, there was no point denying it; probably other people had seen the car cut him off, or perhaps cameras had captured the incident.

It was a week before he was able to find out what had happened to the man, and even then he would have remained in the dark had it not been for Dr. Shipley’s help.

“I spoke to a colleague at the main hospital.” Dr. Shipley told him. “I don’t want you to blame yourself, Jerry. It wasn’t your fault, absolutely not.”

“He had a heart attack.” said Jerry, woodenly.

“You can’t cause heart attacks.” said Dr. Shipley.

Jerry exploded.

“Did he or did he not have a heart attack?”

“Yes.” said Dr. Shipley, shaking slightly in alarm. “He suffered heart failure. That’s what caused the accident. He was a heavy drinker. His blood alcohol was over—Jerry!”

Jerry had risen to his feet and was walking off, with the aid of a single crutch.

“It wasn’t your fault, Jerry!” Dr. Shipley shouted after him, but Jerry didn’t stop, and Dr. Shipley let him go.

In the weeks that followed, Jerry gradually sank into a deep depression, tortured by guilt.

Regardless of what Dr. Shipley had told him, he knew that he had felt the same sensation in his mind after the dead man had gestured rudely at him, that he had felt after the other man, some months earlier, had accused him of wrongly parking in a disabled parking space. In both cases he had felt a curious twisting sensation in his mind, similar to the sensation he felt when making coins and zips jump or vibrate, and it really seemed to Jerry that he’d killed the second man; a man whose only real crime was being annoying. And, in addition, it was true: being drunk, while driving.

The thing that really bothered him wasn’t even any huge guilt over the deaths of these two men. Actually, Jerry surprised himself with how little compassion he felt for them. What really bothered him was the thought that he might easily kill an entirely innocent person; someone who absolutely definitely didn’t deserve to die.

As for these two men, Jerry could convince himself all too easily that they had probably gone through life causing only problems, and were better off out of the picture.

The problem was that he had murdered them without even really intending to murder them. That was what really bothered Jerry.

Secondarily, his own relative lack of concern over these two particular men made him wonder if he wasn’t some kind of psychopath.

What was the point in carrying on living, when he might murder someone at any moment without even meaning to?

One night, Jerry drove into town and walked towards a bridge on the edge of town that crossed a river, fifty metres below. He couldn’t see any point in being alive anymore. It seemed to him that the sensible thing to do was to jump off the bridge, before he caused any further problems.

The bridge lay over a mile from the car park in the town centre, and for a walk of that length, he needed both crutches. Eventually he reached his destination. The bridge had a high fence by the pedestrian walkway to deter jumpers, but Jerry thought he could manage to climb over it.

He peered down at the water below.

As he watched the dark water swirling past, he was gradually forced to admit to himself that he couldn’t do it. He didn’t have what it would take to hurl himself towards death, and he wasn’t sure if it was even a good idea.

What was the right thing to do in his situation? He couldn’t decide whether it was more cowardly to end his own life or to go on living.

Eventually he turned and limped back towards the town on the crutches.

On Richmond Street he stopped and leaned against a wall, exhausted. It was here that, nearly two years earlier, he had been viciously attacked. He closed his eyes, and memories of the attack flooded his mind.

For a long time he hadn’t been able to remember anything of it, but fragmented memories of his attackers had returned to him bit by bit. It hadn’t made any difference to actually catching them. They were still out there.

Then he heard a scream. He jumped and turned to see three men struggling with a woman. There was no-one else on the street. She saw him and shouted for help.

He began to hobble towards them.

“Oh look, here’s a good Samaritan.” said one of the youths.

He recognised the man. He had a scar curling down his cheek from his eye. Jerry’s heart began to pound.

“I’ll deal with him.” said another of the men; this time the one with the gold tooth.

The gold-toothed man marched up to Jerry and stabbed him, twice. The woman screamed, a piercing scream. Then the man held Jerry up by his hair.

“Hang on, I recognise ‘im.” he said.

Blood was pouring out of Jerry’s side. He couldn’t catch his breath.

“You should have stayed well away.” said the man with the scar. “This is our turf. Thought we’d taught you that.”

The men laughed, then the man holding Jerry’s hair let go of Jerry and grabbed his own chest and staggered backwards, leaving Jerry to fall to the ground.

“What you’ve done to him?” said the third man; the one who hadn’t yet spoken.

The man with the gold tooth fell to the ground, where he jerked spasmodically a few times, then remained still.

The man with the scar stood over the gold-toothed man’s body.

“I think he’s dead.” he said, in astonishment.

The third man had the woman’s arm twisted behind her back. Suddenly the woman managed to pull herself free and she began to run. The third man ran after her. Jerry followed him dully with his eyes. He was having trouble focusing and he could feel his life receding from him.

The third man suddenly stumbled and fell headlong onto the hard pavement. He got up and shouted “Help me!” at the scar-faced man, a look of pure terror on his face, then he fell down head first.

The scar-faced man looked down at Jerry, his eyes wide.

“You’re doing this!” he said. “What are you?”

Then he gripped his head in pain. A trickle of blood emerged from the corner of his eye and from his nose, and he fell to the ground in a heap.

The woman, who was still running, noticed what had happened and stopped. She began to walk back towards Jerry, who was lying on his back, wheezing.

As she got closer she began to run. She stopped, looking down at him with a tear-stained bruised face.

“How did you do that?” she asked him. “They’re all dead! Oh my God, they’re all dead!”

She was in shock.

Jerry wheezed quietly back at her.

“Are you all right?” she asked, kneeling down to help him. Then she noticed the blood seeping out onto Jerry’s clothing from his side, where he’d been stabbed.

Jerry smiled.

“I’ve been better.” he whispered.

And then, he closed his eyes and he died.