A/N: I divided the story into four parts to make it easier to edit. Honestly, I had no idea how enormous this thing would be. It seems like it will be 6000 words. Anyway, here's more stuff I need to say:
Here my debt to Alter States is apparent. This (and the start of the next section) involve mind experiments with animals; toward the end of the next section Souta does something to a human being. Dr. Muso -- clearly an allusion to Naraku -- he's there to make you wonder: ultimately will this be a success or a tragedy? It seems he's enabled Souta's corruption. The nature of the story is such that certain aspects will not have an answer so you'll have to draw your own conclusions. I like it that way; it gives things an air of mystery.
Also, what is this papaver business? A long time ago I attempted a Thundercats/Inuyasha crossover and it actually bears certain parallels to this fic. In that failed crossover the main character discovers an alternate reality buried within his own mind. He used the extract of papaver to induce trances while in an isolation chamber. Papaver is a reference to poppies; in this story it's described as an extract related to opium that's sanctioned by the university for experiments. Opium, of course, has a long, infamous history in the horror genre.
It should be obvious now the source of my obsession. Parallel to the motivation was the acceptance of a certain, queer intuition. Embers of it had been stoked when Inuyasha and the well came into my life. It flared through all of the years since Kagome vanished. I said my family was supportive of my sister's endeavors. I said I wondered if demons existed in our modern times then I rejected the possibility offhand. Why were there things so? It was the sense that we, our whole entire family, we did not belong into the time we were born.
It was natural for my sister to travel across time and of course Inuyasha and his kin did not survive, they did not belong here any more than we belong here.
Can it be that I always knew of this destiny? To think that this could have happened already! Indeed, how ancient is my power?
The idea that history might have been circumvented since antiquity and the fact that I cannot remember anything beyond me freezes my blood because it hints of total and absolute failure. The point of the exercise is to preserve the pattern of my mind. But if my memory is destroyed then everything will be in vain.
There is evidence to show failure will be averted and to that fragment of hope I cling.
Yes, RD, evidence!
The urge to experiment was overwhelming. Only years of training induced the discipline required to investigate systematically. If it was a mental power then what part of the brain was responsible? How could it be focused, controlled? These things had to be dissected.
At the University of Tokyo I was a graduate student of Dr. Muso. The laboratory we shared became like another home. The man himself was mentor, guardian and father – there were times I looked at him like I looked at Inuyasha. It was a relief to be with him – no – I cannot describe it succinctly and unless you lived with a grandfather waiting for death and a mother retreating into another world you cannot understand the rock of stability that was my Dr. Muso.
With guidance, in time, the isolation tank and the mind-altering papaver became the focus of my research. Because of the trust between us I was given a wing of the laboratory: the first, smaller room was the control room, the second, larger room contained the tank. There, in the day, I worked on my thesis with the usual array of subjects. At night I was allowed to explore my other, personal interest but I could not be alone so either Dr. Muso or Dr. Hojo watched within the control room.
You have not seen the tank. From outside it is a very terrifying object. From inside the mood is magnified by the darkness and wetness.
With a suit full of sensors I lay upon the waters. An injection of papaver induced the trance. My aim was to gauge if the mind could be forced to perceive the past. To recreate the effect, if not the reality, of Kagome's well.
Let me add that the object of the experiment was not theoretically unfounded. As you yourself espoused, the passage of time is an illusion. And as I myself added, it is an illusion created by consciousness. Time does not have a direction; past, present and future exist simultaneously. The basis of my private thesis was that by altering the mind ultimate awareness of time could be reached.
Imagine it – to access realms of being more fundamental that the side effect of biology.
I realized that to access that other world my mind had to be dismantled. Only then, when I was free of the chains of the senses, was I pure enough to reach beyond outside of myself.
The prospect of that disintegration horrified me so I approached it with caution. Of course the trials had to be short due to the excessive physical toll suffered while isolated and influenced by papaver.
Progress was slow but after a year I gained such experience that I required fewer and lesser doses of the narcotic to induce the trance. Dr. Muso commented and I agreed that in time I would not need the extract any more. Which was remarkable because papaver, the extract of opium, ordinarily led into dependency.
Dr. Muso's remark made me wonder if papaver was not, in fact, a kind of placebo. So while I weaned off it I worked on a method to balance between letting go of myself and keeping enough of my consciousness intact that there could be a memory of the experience. I was in the middle of this pursuit when there occurred an event that shifted the focus of my research completely.
One night, due to a schedule conflict among the staff, Dr. Muso and Dr. Hojo were forced to keep a dog in the control room until its master returned. When the experiment began the dog was asleep but along the way it awoke, paced about the tank and barked. Yet within the chamber, under the trance, I did not hear the dog, I felt its mind.
I was part of the great beyond thus I felt it. I felt it just as you feel your arms and legs and sense your existence. So it was. A real, physical object and through will alone I found the power to manipulate it.
Without my knowing I had opened a portal not large enough to pass through into oblivion but just wide enough that it was possible to contact entities I perceived to be nearby.
Curious about the discovery I probed the mind. Though I sensed the working of the network of neurons I could not penetrate into the thoughts of that other being. Yet the dog must have noticed: when the experiment ended Dr. Hojo said the dog behaved oddly, sitting silent and still, looking at the tank until the moment I awoke.
Although tangential it was a breakthrough. I wanted to know how far it could be taken. I obtained two female rats. One I taught a simple trick: to arrange coins by size. The other I kept isolated in a cage in my lab.
Under the trance I probed the minds of the rats. At first I felt them only if I knew their locations. As time passed I became attuned and found a way to search for minds nearby. Bodies, anything physical yet not innately self-aware, proved to be a problem without a solution.
The caged rat was impregnated though artificial insemination. After a matter of days, when I probed it, I felt voids. No, I call them voids understand they were not voids. If a mind felt solid then voids, protominds, felt clay-like. They could be molded and I concluded it was so because the network of neurons were not complete.
Day by day, with rapidity, the networks formed but before the transformation was complete I preformed a very unusual experiment.
Now do not mistake me. Under the trance my perception of the world is inhuman. And because it cannot be translated into the five senses of the body it defies description. When I say I felt and sensed I mean what I knew, somehow, someway, I was aware. Thus, I felt the minds, I sensed the presence of the rats.
What I wanted to know was if a mind could be moved. If the mind had an existence, a reality, independent of the body. If it could be moved into another point in space or time or into another body.
The mind of the free rat by the tank – I willed it toward the mind of the caged rat. There was a sharp, insurmountable resistance I was not yet prepared for. So I focused upon the voids. I pushed the mind of the free rat into a void. There was a resistance as the fluid-like protomind parted and enveloped the fully formed mind.
Similarly, I willed a protomind free of the fetus that contained it. I attempted to place it into the body of the free rat by the tank. There I paused. The free rat – I could not find it anymore. I forgot I could not sense mindless objects. When I removed its mind, I lost track of its position and now, with that formless, undeveloped consciousness in the grip of my will I realized I could not find the fetus it came from.
I awoke screaming.
Out of the chamber, still dripping wet, I ran into the control room and checked the caged rat. It was as bloated as ever but not it appeared to be agitated. It was concerned with a part of its stomach that it would not let me touch. Still cold and naked I crawled back beside the isolation chamber. I could not bear to look at it but it had to be checked. I needed to know what became of the free rat.
It was dead, RD.
When I moved its mind and crammed it into the fetus, its body expired.
Dr. Hojo was confused; Dr. Muso merely nodded and disposed of the body. Meanwhile I thought about what happened.
What of the infusion? The fetus and adult minds. Did they merge into one, new consciousness? Did the incompleteness of the first mean the second replaced it entirely? What about the void I removed from the second fetus? What became of it? Could it persist like a ghost or would it diffuse out of existence?
The implications so upset me I could not return to the laboratory for weeks.
Thankfully, though my superiors knew nothing about my true intentions, Dr. Hojo and Dr. Muso coaxed me back into the routine of my research.
The caged rat gave birth. One of the offspring was dead. No doubt it was the cause of its agitation. But how to be sure if the experiment was a success? Of the remaining litter – which one?
The survivors were nurtured by its mother. Then, when they were adolescents, I tested them. One by one I presented the rats with the three coins. Exactly one of them understood it and preformed the trick as it had been taught.
My friend, can you believe it? I transferred a mind from one body to another. The rat that learned the trick, it did not die, it continued to live in another body. But there was an unforeseen difficulty. After a month in its new body it died. I needed to know if the stress of body switching was the culprit or if there was an aspect of transferring itself that was unstable.
TBC