Brain in a Jar
by Bryan Hurt
I’ve never known Nona when she wasn’t dying. Her cancer was like whack-a-moles; every time they got it, there it was popping up somewhere else. It was in her blood, her skin, her liver. “At least,” she says, “it’s not in my head. Brain cancer.” She screws up her eyes and sticks out her tongue like a zombie. “BRAINS.” She tells me her goal is to live until science figures out brains-in-jars technology. Then, at least, she’ll be hermitically safe. “But with whom, will I share an office?” I ask in the office that Nona and I have shared for the past six months. When they hired me here they told me that I’d get my own office, that the shared office was only temporary, but now I get the sense that it’s my only office, and that my bosses are just waiting for Nona to die. Our desks meet in the middle of the room, which is white and windowless. All day, every day, we sit staring at our monitors. Staring at our monitors and also staring at each other, face-to-face. “You’ll share it with the jar,” she says. Her brown eyes and her brain floating in a tank. She says that it will be just like it is now but better. “Better,” she says, “because no flesh bodies. Flesh bodies,” she says. “Yuck.” She says this and shivers because I know she’s thinking about her cancer, the fucker of her body. Betrayer of her flesh. She turns the little plant that she keeps on her desk. The plant is a gift from her sister, designed to thrive in windowless offices, but to me it looks sick and yellow, always almost dying in the artificial light. Flesh bodies aren’t all bad, though I don’t say this to Nona. Instead I open an email and pretend to read while I think about Nona’s flesh. Besides the rashes, the bruises, the skin that’s sometimes yellow like an unripe grape, there’s a lot to like about it. I like the brightly-colored wraps she wears around her head after chemo. I like her swift, strong fingers. Her perfect posture at the computer. Her broad jaw and slim shoulders. I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t grateful that the cancer hasn’t taken Nona’s tits. Which is not to say that I have a crush on Nona. At least I don’t think I do. To be honest, I’m not always good at knowing what I think. Like sometimes in a meeting when someone asks for my opinion, I’ll open my laptop, click on a spreadsheet, and say, “hmm,” like I’m having a thought and am looking for the words to express it. Most of the time people mistake this for a real idea. They call me the office intellectual and say that I’m deep. But in truth I’m the one who needs a brain in a jar. Some kind of hard and permanent shell to keep all of me together. It’s like I walk around all day with a gusher on the top of my head. Nona sneezes. I look up from my spreadsheet and see that Nona’s bleeding. A bright red line falls down her face. “Nona,” I say and scramble for our Kleenex. But she knows too and is leaving. I sit there holding a tissue for a pair of legs and skirt that swishes out the door. Nona doesn’t know it but some of us in the office have been making bets about her death. Alan across the hall says that she’s got two more months to live. Meg the secretary gives her a year. Whenever we talk about it at the bar across the street after work, Jason, the office asshole, just says “tick, tick, tick.” Everyone wants to know what I think but when they ask me I just lift the beer up to my lips and feel the cool, hard glass in my fingers. The wet condensation, the reassuring heft. I know one day I’m going to come into my office and Nona won’t be there. She’ll leave and won’t come back. I’ll put away my lunch, close the door, and sit across from her empty desk. Maybe I’ll go to the fountain and get some water for her plant. Maybe I’ll turn it so it can get some light. Maybe I’ll open Nona’s filing cabinet and take her brain out of the drawer, all chrome and glass and pink muscle floating in clear suspension. I’ll put her brain on my desk and tell her all the things I was scared to tell her. The things I’ve always been too scared to tell anyone else. “God, I’ve missed you,” I’ll say. “How was your weekend? My apartment was so empty. I finally killed my last plant.” I’ll ask her to tell me about dying. I was always so scared of her dying. I’m so scared of dying alone. I’ll ask her to tell me what it was like. “Why didn’t anyone tell us?” I’ll ask. “Why didn’t anyone tell us how hard it is to be alone?” Because at the end of the day that’s all everyone is. Brains in jars floating though the liquid of our own existence. The best we can do is bump up against someone else’s tempered dome. “I love you,” I’ll say for once in my life to someone. “I love you. I love you. I was just always too scared.” I’ll whisper these words into her insula, hoping that something penetrates the glass. I’ll keep saying it until Jason knocks on my door and tells me it’s time to leave the office. And then I’ll go across the street and drink another beer.
Bryan Hurt is the author of Everyone Wants to Be Ambassador to France, which won the Starcherone Prize for Innovative Fiction, and editor of Watchlist: 32 Stories by Persons of Interest (Catapult). His writing has appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Literature, and TriQuarterly, among many others, and has been translated into several languages. He is Editor in Chief of the Arkansas International and teaches in the MFA program at the University of Arkansas.
