Liberties There's nothing Artificial about our Intelligence

Memory care makes final introductions to residents whose names have slipped away at the slightest pressure, evanescent syllables for those who will not be here long, mere bubbles in a froth of foam, more transient than resident, some transitioning, not to another gender, but to another state of being altogether. Are you in the bathtub? my father greeted me, perhaps replacing past with present, room with tub, the week since I last visited with a momentary absence. He glimpsed the cascade of errors, winced, then shrugged and raised his palms in mock surrender. Nights are worst, when Mr. D don’t act right, but crawls around unplugging clocks and lamps and grunting like an animal, until the staff step in to strap him down with soft restraints. Dreams subject him to a long examination, turning over his childhood to find the source of sadness, testing each failure, each scene of humiliation, as he turns over the exam to find a list of questions in an ancient, unfamiliar script with blanks that spread like spilt milk. Tomorrow — tomorrow he won’t remember where he lives, much less these ghostly neural flickers; but tonight the dreams remember him.