12.19.2015
He widened his search to other medical forums, research sites, and publications. Not much had been compiled on this new technology. The information he did find out about hallucinations and “episodes” was centered around other mental disorders and chemical imbalances or genetic defects. Perhaps he had, he thought, a disorder that had not been identified during the pre-screens before his surgery. It might not be too hard for something to go unnoticed, but only reveal itself now.
There was also the potential for a brain tumor to cause this experience, but that would have certainly been noticed in one of his many scans, right? Perhaps the chemical therapy he’d gone through was a culprit in some rare way.
The searching he did lead him to many pages, each with their own links and branches further down the rabbit hole. By the end, he was thoroughly convinced that he had schizophrenia, a lobotomy of some sort, a brain tumor, and a chemical imbalance brought on by environmental stressors.
Tern sat back from his computer and grabbed his water, wondering as he swigged a couple times, what hidden toxins and pollutants within it were the source of his ails. He sighed, knowing none of this was likely, but feeling less comfortable by this thought than he should have been. With great knowledge comes great misinterpretation.
He tapped the metal disc a few times and the screen and keyboard darkened as the unit went to sleep. The clock on his night stand flipped to 3:28am just then, and he figured he would lie down in bed instead of searching for more and more data that would only scare him.
He went into the rest room and brushed his teeth and flossed them, staring off through the wall the entire time. Would those lights appear and twinkle again? he wondered. Was he able to control their appearance, or would it come to him unbidden and full-forced?
When he entered his room again and touched the light switch on the wall, the light array on the ceiling dimmed and finally blinked off as he pulled his covers up to his chin. Tomorrow he’d talk to professionals who knew his background, medical history, surgery, and could narrow the field of concerns instead of widening it ever onward.
For a while, he lay there in bed staring at the ceiling. He knew the lights sprinkled there were from the blinds and street lights outside. It was nice knowing their origin, and that he’d seen them for so many other nights, without even really noticing they were there. He sank his head and neck a little deeper into his down pillow, at least a decade old, and slowly drifted off to sleep. His subconscious did not rest, however, as his chip received another unit of work to compute.