Frozen Heart

As she sat weeping on the floor, the young man stood, arms folded as he scowled at her. “This is illogical,” he said matter of factly.

This snapped the woman momentarily from her sorrow, “What are you?” she asked, the volume of her voice rising. “The tin man?”

The young man stared back at her blankly.

“Were you raised by Vulcans?”  

He said nothing.

The woman continued to stare at him. Jamie stared unseeingly back. His mind raced ahead, trying to process the input and analyse it all for possible meaning. Keeley had been crying. Then, when she had spoken to him, her voice had been louder. She could almost have been growling like a dog. Dogs were mad when they growled. Jamie knew that. So Keeley was mad. He’d told her that what she was doing was illogical. That was true. So why was she angry? All he’d done was tell her the truth….

Oh. Wait. That was it. Right there. He’d told her the truth. You weren’t always supposed to do that, he remembered now. He’d always found the pesky business of emotions tricky. That’s why he’d flipped the switch to turn them off.

“I wasn’t supposed to say that,” he said suddenly, his voice a dull monotone. He stopped himself from adding the question, was I? The question was illogical. There was no point asking when he already knew the answer.

Keeley gasped.

“I wasn’t supposed to say that,” he said again. It sounded exactly the same as the first time he’d said it, as if he was now playing back a recording.

Robbed of speech, Keeley simply nodded, mouth agape.

Jamie’s brows furrowed together as he studied her. Why did she leave her mouth hanging open like that? Was she trying to imitate a koi fish when it saw food? That was also illogical. She was a human being who could feed herself a lot more than tiny, multi coloured pellets.

Jamie turned his head sideways, as if this new perspective would somehow give him the answer. “Why is your mouth open like that?”

Immediately, Keeley shut her jaw, her face growing warm.

Now, her face is going red, thought Jamie to himself. Is she hot? Embarrassed? He paused. That possibility seemed likely. He’d pointed out a non-conventional behaviour. Was that unacceptable? He moved a hand to scratch his head, ruffling his dark brown hair as he did so. He wouldn’t have thought so. In any case, it wasn’t as unacceptable as his earlier action of pointing out that her crying was illogical. The phrase ‘there’s no use crying over spilled milk’ came to mind. Crying would not change the fact that the milk had been spilled. If one cried enough, it may even add to the danger already posed by the existing puddle. Before he knew what was happening, laughter had escaped his lips. His eyes widened as the sound reached his ears, slapping his hand over his mouth. Keeley, continuing to watch him, raised an eyebrow.

Oh no. The clinicians who’d performed the procedure had warned him about this. But he didn’t think it would ever actually happen. Not to him. He was stronger than that. Much more stubborn.

“No one does,” he remembered them saying now, shaking their heads. With what? Pity? Oh no. It was happening!

He felt the heat rising within him as the effect of the flipped switch on his heart started to take effect. He shook his head wildly, scrunching his eyes tightly shut. As if this would make it all stop. Or go away. Or both.

“No!” he wailed, falling to the ground. He reached out as if he could close his fingers around what he’d had a moment ago. But it was only a feeling. And now, there were too many of them. He started to cry as all the emotions he’d erased with the literal flip of a switch came flooding back to haunt him, all at once. Each breath was a shaky gasp as he forced air in and out of his lungs.

“Now who’s the illogical one?” Keeley asked.  Jamie opened his eyes to see her standing over him, hands on hips. Was this… unimpressed? Yes. Keeley was unimpressed. Oh no. It was really coming back.

The wave of pent up emotions hit him, knocking him far beneath the surface. He remembered what it was like to feel unimpressed, annoyed, angry, frustrated. He remembered the headaches that had been caused by stress and anxiety over the tiniest little details. He could almost feel the tension building in his head at the mere thought. He certainly felt the heat. It was all over now, and growing hotter by the minute. He fell down further on to his back on the ground.

“Is there a fire?” he choked out, looking at Keeley’s boots.

“No, I think it’s just you,” she squatted down, her green eyes meeting his. “Sorry.” Her face softened. Pity. Definitely pity.

He remembered feeling pity, and sadness too. The memories felt like someone squeezing his heart. Jamie clutched at his chest, squeezing his eyes shut tight and gritting his teeth hard at the agony. He would not scream. He would not cry. He would not release the emotion that seemed to be threatening to kill him. That would be letting it win.

It felt like he’d been dropped into a pit of molten lava. His flesh was surely burning off. He was on fire. He must be. What other explanation was there? Another jolt of pain coursed through him, pounding in time with his heart. His heart. That was it. He focused on the sensation of his hand on his chest, feeling the thumping rhythm of his heart as he closed his eyes. That was it. His heart. As he paid close attention, Jamie noted that the rhythmic beating seemed to be growing fainter. It was melting. Like an iceblock under the heat of the sweltering summer sun. 

Ice. Cold. He remembered that feeling too. When he’d had the procedure to flip his switch. He’d been so cold. Like he was encased in ice. His heart was encased in ice. That’s how they did it. They froze around the heart. It was a delicate procedure. They had to ensure it could still beat and function properly to sustain life, but shut off transmissions to the emotion’s centre. Flick off his feelings. So at first, he was freezing.

“You’ll get used to it,” they’d told him. “The numbness the cold brings with it will help.” They’d been right. The cold numbness had coated Jamie like a protective second skin, shielding him from sentience.

Jamie gasped. It was that second skin that was melting, he realised, and the frozen casing around his heart. Not his heart itself. Still, he felt he could evaporate into steam from the scorching temperature alone. He shut his eyes again, focusing on the passage of air in and out through his nose and mouth.

The emotions washed over him like a crashing wave hitting the shore. Sadness, anger, fear, frustration. He remembered them all. He squeezed his eyes shut tighter still and longed for the freezing cold numbness of peace.