Shufflebrain

But each card is an independent carrier of our hologramic code. What's to stop us from slipping in cards with new codes? Certainly not the codes per se. Cards are independent. Therefore, old and new codes can coexist in the same deck without distorting each other's meanings. And nothing in the information itself would prevent us from constructing a compound hologramic deck, or mind, if hologramic theory really does work. The big "if" is the readout: What happens in reconstruction? Which independent codes activate and drive an animal's behavior?

***

In the bleak Michigan January of 1969, in anticipation of tests of the independence principle, I began a series of preliminary experiments to find out how well a salamander larva would tolerate the brains of guppies. I had not yet begun worrying about the behavioral side of the study--which fishy traits to look for in the hosts, in other words. My major concern was tissue rejection. How long would I have postoperatively before the salamander's immunological defenders ruined my experiments?

Under the dissection microscope, a person can actually see through the transparent tissue of the larva's dorsal fin. I decided, therefore, to place the heart of a guppy into a tunnel in the gelatinous connective tissue of the fin. The guppy's heart would continue beating for a while I was pretty sure, and I could take its pulse, visually, until rejection caused it to stop. While I was at it, and for control purposes, I also transplanted guppy flank muscle or liver to other salamanders' fins or abdominal cavities. And during one operating session, I decided to see what would happen if I actually replaced a salamander's cerebrum with that of a guppy. I called the animal in this experiment Buster.

As I said, my attention focused on the operative side of the upcoming study. I had not yet done any really hard thinking about behavior. And what Buster was about to show me was the result not of my scientific prowess but of a series of lucky accidents.

In those days, I had a light-tight inner sanctum specially built within my main laboratory. Equipped with a heavy-duty air conditioner, double doors and insulated walls, it could serve as a temperature-regulated darkroom (where I sometimes coated radioactive slides with photographic emulsions). I designed the inner sanctum to provide a cool environment, 15-16 degrees centigrade, so as to approximate the temperature of the woods at the time the species of salamanders I usually work with are young feeding larvae. This procedure seems to prevent premature metamorphosis. In addition, cool temperatures retard the growth of a troublesome fungus; and the inner sanctum turned out to be an excellent post-operative recovery room. As the animals grow a little older, they seem to tolerate higher temperatures more readily. At any rate, I always maintained my stock animals in the inner sanctum. I conducted my operations there, and it was where my stereoscopic dissecting microscope was located. The inner sanctum was too small to accommodate all my animals, and I had gotten into the practice of keeping most experimental subjects out in the main lab, where the temperature was 20-21 degrees centigrade. Because the dissecting microscope was in the small room, I took animals there if I had to inspect them under magnification. This was necessary in order to monitor pulse of transplanted guppy hearts. The temperature changes had not affected the outcome of my experiments. But as a precaution, I brought all animals of a group--controls and experimentals--into the cool room together, whether or not they had to be examined. I also made it a practice to feed the animals immediately after my daily inspection of a group, before returning them to the main lab.

Since Buster was a member of a guppy-heart group, he went into the cool room daily. He had taken surgery well, had righted himself on the following day (usual with injury confined to the cerebrum, which his was), and had fed normally from the moment he could walk. One afternoon, three weeks after Buster's operation, I had just finished taking pulses and was rinsing off some juicy-looking tubifex worms in a jet of spring water when I was startled by the building fire alarm. Now the decibel level of that siren left only two choices: go mad or immediately cover your ears with both hands and flee outdoors! I put down the tubifex and fled.

When the drill was over, it was almost quitting time. The siren had interrupted my ritual, and I had completely forgotten Buster and company, unfed in the cool inner sanctum. As a matter of fact, it was not until the following day, when I took out my liverwurst sandwich, that I remembered my hungry little pals on the other side of the bulkhead opposite my desk. I stuffed the sandwich back into the bag and went in to make amends.