"The Midgardians thought it was what they call catatonia, perhaps due to shock," Thor ventured as Queen Frigga and Lady Eir studied the data projecting from the healing stone that was currently resting on Loki's forehead. They had already concluded he was well-healed in body, therefore the injury must lie solely in the mind.
"Catatonia is just a term for a stupor stemming from disordered consciousness rather than from the microanatomical substrate," Eir snapped. "They were right in a way, but it's a symptom, not a diagnosis. What could have caused this?"
"Could not trauma do it? He would have been hit hard by my friend the Hulk."
"No. There are no signs that he sustained significant injury from the battle, and, well, that just does not cause this."
"I still don't understand what is wrong with him," Thor protested weakly. "He is empty, as if dead."
"I do not know what has happened either, Thor. You may well be right, but these readings suggest otherwise. It appears he should have the capability of consciousness, he just isn't, or not to any detectable degree. Essentially, he has lost the ability to respond to or even achieve awareness of external stimuli."
"He can't hear us then?" Odin finally spoke.
"No, but it's not just that, my king. According to this, he's also not generating any spontaneous internal stimulus, either. The absolute levels of all chemical neuromediators are very low, some almost undetectable. This goes beyond anything like battlefield shock which could look similar. Your friends were correct about that much, but you are more correct, Thor. His mind is not active and therefore for all intents and purposes appears dead. But it is not a biotic coma either, or I wouldn't be able to do this." She picked up his hand, and it stayed hovering about a foot off the bed. She gestured to Frigga and pointed to a crooked line of shimmering gold. "Look, there's the activity in the sensory and motor cortices needed to keep the arm there. But that's the only durable cortical activity going on. It's like each position we set him in is just another self-sustaining feedback loop. There's nothing plainly voluntary. Sounds, sights, sensations...the signals are all getting where they're supposed to go, but they don't travel any further. The only area with near-normal function is the most primitive part of the brain near the base, responsible for vital functions and reflexes, that sort of thing. Beyond that, the areas with somewhat regular activity are just the primary motor area, and to a lesser degree the sensory areas, and either are only active when we do something to cause it. Everything else, all the hierarchical processing and relay parts of the brain, everything that needs to function in order to produce consciousness... that is quiescent." She nudged his arm back down and bit her lip. "In all my years as a healer, I have never seen this before. I have never heard of this before. I have no idea what could do this. I am sorry, your majesties, but I don't know what to do for him."
They all stared at Loki for a few minutes. It was Thor who broke the silence. "I tried to get him to drink when we were still on Midgard. According to my friend Clint Bartonson, who was bewitched by the jewel Loki carried for a time, he did not take any sustenance the entire time he was with him either. If we don't do something, he will surely die, and quickly."
"I can easily sustain his bodily functions, Thor. That isn't the problem. I just have no way of restoring his mind."
"What jewel was this, Thor?" Frigga asked.
Thor shrugged. "I know not. It was a blue stone contained in the scepter that Loki carried. Apparently he had it when he first appeared on Midgard. It exerted a sinister emotional influence on anyone in proximity to it, and Loki was able to take control of people's minds with a bare touch of the thing, according to Clint, though Anthony stated the effect was negated by the engine embedded in his chest..."
Frigga glanced at Odin quizzically, and they both shrugged. "Mind magic can do some curious things, and it certainly sounds like the stone you saw was some sort of mind-based magical device, but... well, I've never heard of any magic that could do this either. Redirect a living mind yes. Strafe a mind to the point of dementia or so that nothing is left...yes...
"But not quite like this," Eir finished in a tone of utter frustration. "And there is certainly no spell remaining for me to break. That would be obvious. If this is the result of some obscure mind magic, I still don't know how to diagnose and reverse it."
"Perhaps Loki would know. It was his field of expertise," Odin said with bitter irony. He shook his head and looked to Eir. "Madame healer, if this was a usual catatonia or coma, understanding that it is not, but if it were... from one of the known causes, what might you do to treat it?"
Eir pursed her lips. "The treatment depends entirely on the cause, my king. There are a number of potions and spells I could try, but I doubt any of them will be effective except by happenstance, because they are all directed at the specific causes. And I am quite certain that I would know if something like bilgesnipe envenomation was at work, for instance. Any more generalized techniques, well, they tend to be dangerous. Healing is more specific and more sophisticated now than it used to be for a reason."
Odin smiled sadly. "He is my son. I have thought him dead for a year. I do not want to give up on him when he is so newly returned to us. Please, support his body and try whatever treatments you think of, no matter how useless you predict them to be." Frigga took his hand, and Thor's.
"As my lord commands."
Author's note: A chapter about the difficulty of producing consciousness as an emergent property of an inanimate gray blob inside a skull. "Emergence" is the philosophical term for a property of a whole not present in the parts (see Wikipedia).
From the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: "The How question focuses on explanation rather than description. It asks us to explain the basic status of consciousness and its place in nature. Is it a fundamental feature of reality in its own right, or does its existence depend upon other nonconscious items, be they physical, biological, neural or computational? And if the latter, can we explain or understand how the relevant nonconscious items could cause or realize consciousness? Put simply, can we explain how to make something conscious out of things that are not conscious?"
In the philosophy of consciousness, there is a certain hierarchy of sentience, wakefulness, and the more recursive consciousness states. Neuroscience has a similar hierarchy of brain function, ranging from brain-dead on one extreme to fully conscious on the other, with "coma," "vegetative state," "minimally conscious," as well as delirium somewhere in between, depending on how much of the brain is functioning. The confusing thing for Eir of course is that while Loki may at this point fit in to some part of the philosophical hierarchy of consciousness, the disorder in his brain does not easily fit into one of the old neuroscience buckets, even granted the elevation of science/magic on Asgard. In order to measure Loki's consciousness, she would have to have a measure of his subjective experience, which I am not giving her the power to do, even with Asgardian tech. If you refer back to the reference above, I am treating consciousness as a "fundamental feature" of my version of the Marvel Universe, because otherwise Loki's mind would not have survived my version of the Void.
