Stories of Your Life and Others

This story is told in the first-person from the perspective of a Boston freelance digital designer Leon. Leon survives drowning in ice-cold water thanks to the new drug, hormone K, which repairs his severe brain damage.

He regularly wakes up screaming from nightmares about his drowning, but the doctor believes his brain is just adjusting to the regenerated neurons. Leon’s checkup also shows an immense improvement in his ability to memorize data, so the doctor has him perform intelligence tests, which show a huge spike in his intellect. He is able to multitask like never before, and his reading speed and comprehension increase.

Head neurologist Dr. Shea invites Leon to participate in a study on how the hormone affects intelligence. Researching hormone K, Leon discovers that it replaces only damaged neurons and is used in treating stroke victims, Alzheimer patients, and people in persistent vegetative states, like Leon. He wonders, “is there a plateau, or will additional dosages of the hormone cause further increases?” (35).

As part of the study, Leon receives additional injections of the hormone, which incur new, bizarre nightmares. As his intelligence increases and he is able to understand things more intuitively, Leon slowly develops a sense of superiority. He hacks into the FDA’s private database to track the progress of the study, discovering that people with greater brain damage acquire more intelligence. He feels frustrated that the doctors “can’t shed their preconception of me as someone out of his depth, an ordinary man awarded gifts that he can’t appreciate” (37-38). Leon develops lightning-fast decisiveness because he is able to assess situations, probabilities and outcomes in seconds by understanding patterns.

A new doctor, Clausen, tests Leon, who realizes the man works for the CIA. He tries to downplay his achievements so he can avoid becoming one of their ‘resources.’ After Leon withdraws from the study altogether, Dr. Shea asks him to return under the pretense of newly discovered negative effects. Having realized he must leave Boston, Leon leaves a note for Dr. Shea in an effort to fool the CIA into underestimating his intelligence and new skills. His goal is to acquire one more ampule of hormone K, which he does by robbing the courier van that delivers the drug from hospitals back to the FDA.

As Leon’s intelligence develops further, so do his motor skills, and he becomes able to control his heart rate and blood pressure. He relocates to New York, foiling the CIA’s attempts to catch him. He gains vast amounts of new knowledge and understanding and begins writing a poem in ten languages. He eventually designs his own language, having reached the limits of existing languages in his progress: “This language will support a dialect coexpressive with all of mathematics, so that any equation I write will have a linguistic equivalent” (49).

The CIA attempts to bait Leon by falsely accusing his former girlfriend of aiding his escape. He responds by finding well-hidden compromising material on the director of CIA and blackmailing him.

Leon’s emotions become more multifaceted and complex, but he reaches a plateau that only his fourth and last ampule will overcome, although he is aware that there is risk of brain damage. When he injects himself, he experiences “Mental agony and orgasm. Terror and hysterical laughter” (52). Leon begins to understand himself through a new language, which he calls “meta-self-descriptive and self-editing” (52), and he grasps all the intricacies of how his mind and body operate. He can control hormones and muscle tension in others, and his entire subconscious becomes consciousness, causing hallucinations and torturous visions.

One day, another person like Leon sends him a message by manipulating his stocks; Leon wonders if this individual is a friend or an enemy. He learns from FDA files that the individual is a man named Reynolds who began the hormone treatment two weeks before Leon. He obviously wishes for Leon to find him. As opposed to Leon’s deeply self-regarding behavior, Reynolds wishes to save the world, which makes them enemies. Leon goes to Philadelphia to meet him.

To communicate, the men begin “exchanging fragments from the somatic language of the normals: a shorthand version of the vernacular” (61). They exchange information they have learned over the period of taking hormone K. Leon concludes that while he appreciates beauty, Reynolds loves humanity and wishes to enlighten it. For Leon, intelligence alone is sufficient, but for Reynolds it is only a means to achieve greater goals. Both having realized the futility of discussion, they begin their superhuman attacks. Leon raises Reynolds’s blood pressure, which Reynolds detects and lowers, masking his real attack on weakening Reynolds’s concentration. The man stops this as well, shocking Leon. Reynolds communicates to Leon the idea of self-destructing commands, thought to be a myth. He utters a single word: “Understand.” The word is unimportant, as the command is “a memory trigger: the command is made out of a string of perceptions, individually harmless, that he planted in my brain like time bombs” (68). As Leon understands the progression of subliminal triggers, his mind dissolves, and he dies.