Soulless

SOULLESS


      I faithfully set forth this record with one hand on the Professor’s family Bible and a pen in the other. I was sworn to secrecy in order to protect the Professor’s reputation and research; but now after all these years and- with the recent resurrection of unsavory rumors in the turbid waters of society- I feel it is time for me to speak out. Some will think this a belated attempt at redemption and a way to lighten my heavy conscience but others will see a simple narrative from the only reliable witness to those events; perhaps they will glean some closure from what I write.
      I cannot help smiling when I see that word closure; my first memory of the Professor is when she lectured at my college upon the enigma of the human soul. After all these years I can still see her standing on that prehistoric podium, serious faced, forceful of voice; preaching a subject that she longed to better understand. How she sought to answer those questions that come to us all when we lose a friend or relative in death, those questions that sometimes put closure out of reach for a long time.
      The Professor once brought up a curious thing she had noticed during her travels, as we drank our afternoon coffee, “When you ask a question relating to a subject that everyone thinks they know about, you will invariably be swamped by answers, monographs, and texts upon the subject. But, ask a legitimate question, such as: ‘what is a soul and what happens to it when we die?’ and you will experience a quick burst of naïve enthusiasm and while you wait the tide goes down and you are faced with uneasy faces and hasty excuses to leave the discussion.” I often had ample opportunity to observe this peculiarity of human nature; and I soon conceded that the Professor was never wrong when it came to the way people would react to any given situation.
      One evening I asked the Professor her favorite question just for the sake of a good old-fashioned conversation, “What is a soul, and if it exists, what happens to it when the body dies?” The Professor simply smiled and recruited me into her small following of students with her solid arguments, persuasive speech, and enticing ideas.
The Professor captured my curiosity from the first lecture; her innate ability to forge ahead despite the resistance and degradations that her unnaturally jealous colleagues subjected her to, inspired me. She took me from my social and economic poverty and nurtured my scientific discoverer side; no doubt for her own ends, but I was not averse to the opportunity. Together we forged on through impossibilities that would have subdued Napoleon and Alexander the Great had they been there with us.
At first I understood very little of the research that the Professor thought imperative to her studies yet, as time went on, I found that her studies always had a purpose; whether they were fruitful or not. Her theories were sieve-like at the start but as we worked they grew and filled in, becoming functional material.
   
      Eventually all of our hours of research and discussion (where we threw theories around without shame or embarrassment of their peculiarity) paid off. The day came when our reserves were exhausted and we must either concede failure or break the rules that bound us to this miserable pebble we call earth.
      Research into and theories about the human soul are as boundless and fantastic as the stars of the heavens. But, after all of our studies, we realized that the groundwork of belief was far too complex and was, in fact, over accommodating to an extreme when it came to the soul. I have spent most of my years studying this particular topic and it is undeniably proven to me that no person has ever come as close to the truth as the Professor and I.
      The most universally translated truth about the soul is that the body does not live or think without it. This is an amazingly simple, yet highly overlooked fact, which is hidden behind the grief and mystery of dying itself. The soul, what it is and where it goes, is overshadowed by either blind belief or staunch resistance to its existence.
What the Professor and I did was to go a step further and allow our minds to search the deeper and simpler ideas that freedom from religious and social bias brought to life. Being no longer restricted by these confounding drudgeries of human nature and gullible belief we traveled into the realm of conjecture. That place where only lack of intelligence and undeniable logic can restrict the imagination of the visitor.
      What we found and tried to prove was, at the time, so unfounded and so simplistic that we immediately realized the impossibility of its acceptance into society by the more confined minds around us. One evening over a glass of German bock I watched as the eyes of my mentor glazed in thought whilst she pursued a new line of reasoning. After about 15 minutes the Professor turned to me with tears in her normally abstracted eyes and whispered,
      “I have it…” the attitude in which she said this thrilled and unnerved me; I was hard put to keep up with her as she rushed from the pub in a flurry of gray hair and blue wool. When I finally caught up with her, she was running over formulae under her breath and glaring at the pavement in such a way that I should have said she was a little more than drunk if I hadn’t known better. She dismissed me with a wave and confined herself to her study for the better part of three days.
      Nearly one week later, when I had given the Professor up for the asylum she ushered me into her study and began to excitedly explain her ideas to me. She showed me drawings and diagrams and was so absorbed and so convinced that she had it, at last, that I had not the heart to voice my doubts. So I kept my reservations to myself and we went to work immediately; we toiled feverishly for eighteen months straight until my hair was prematurely gray and the Professor was hunched like a woman twice her age.
     
      The Professor’s theories were outlandish even to me, and I knew how the scientific community and general public would react to our work, so the night we finished we swore secrecy until the Professor was proven right. One thing that had haunted me through all our proceedings had been the lack of a test subject for the final stage of our work; since we tested the human soul we could not possibly substitute an animal for a human. When I brought this conundrum to the Professor’s attention she merely ignored the question.
      A short time after we finished preparing the lab I sat reading over the last of the Professor’s notes when she came into my study and beckoned me to follow her; I did so with trepidation welling up in my heart. The study-lab was humming with the life of the machines we had built; there were thermometers, and all manner of gauges and innumerable air density monitors. These instruments surrounded the surgical table in the center of the room and more lined the walls and ceiling at intervals.
      I knew the Professor’s theories and reasons but her recent ideas gave me pause. It was possible that we were both out of line mentally and morally but I will not discuss that here; and anyhow, I think not.
      The Professor began to explain, “Tonight we will test my theory and I shall be proven correct then… you shall begin the conversion of the populace,” she said with enthusiasm.
      I mercilessly pounced on her choice of wording, “Don’t you mean we?” I asked.
The Professor shook her head, “No, after tonight, you shall carry on our work alone,” she turned away and began to arrange her instruments. I knew at once what she was doing and I rushed to her side,
      “No, no! This is madness! Let me contact the hospital, I’m sure they would let us set up with a suitable subject…” the Professor stopped my outburst,
      “For this to work death must be instantaneous, there can be no slow leaking of the soul and the data must not be corrupted by any presence other than the subject. You cannot stop me, now go! The timer is set!” she cried as she laid herself down on the cold metal table.
      I did not go into a panic or call in reinforcements, I have never been hysterical and I knew that if I could not handle the Professor alone no one could. My heart was beating so hard that the monitors around the Professor were picking me up.
      “Good luck and thank you for believing,” those were the last words the Professor said to me. I confess I walked away; what else could I do? The Professor had lived her entire life for this moment; this was the final culmination of a monomania that had consumed her better judgment. This was her closure and her final contribution to the cause.
   
      I only jumped a little when the fatal shot was fired at the precise moment. I waited the required 24 hours before I opened the door to that horrible room. After all, the Professor had given her life for this, why waste it on petty moral considerations? I collected and cataloged the data and cleared up the equipment; I established an alibi to prevent any uncomfortable scenes and called in the police. Suicide was the accepted verdict, as the Professor’s eccentricity was well known, and I left town. I took our studies and notes and equipment and I finished the project three months later.
      The Professor had believed that the soul was essentially the breath that keeps all life going; the theory was that when the body dies the breath or soul escapes and becomes the atmosphere that the living inhale thus creating a fundamental cycle. I am sorry to declare that the Professor was wrong. Nothing was proven by her life, studies, or death. She was, I see now, merely an eccentric visionary; but through my experiences I have concluded the matter myself with the answer that she so long sought after.
      I set forth the only answer left to me now, the proposal is unproved but it is the only explanation that really makes any sense at all. It is said that the body cannot live without the soul, then how can the soul live without the body? They are truly inseparable by any and all means. The soul is the personality and spirit that make up the person; for those are truly the only distinctions we have from the other creatures of the earth. Therefore, the soul is not a thing and it does not go away from the body but dies just as does the body because they are indivisible; they are one.

      These are my conclusions and mine alone; I have studied and I have watched friends die in the pursuit of knowledge and conclusions that cannot be proven or rebuffed. I am old now, and through my life I have seen my beliefs proven and that is the only conclusion I shall ever need.

September 1, 1923