Future Ghosts • TWD

14. Explosion.

Rosie decided that she now liked T-Dog.

When everyone was done eating, the doctor led them back to the Big Room. Rosie hadn't quite finished her eggs yet, but she followed anyway because she wanted to see what all the fuss was about. She stood in the back of the room, next to Daryl. She didn't know why, but she felt better being next to him than she did being next to anyone else.

Dr. Jenner went up to the computer and clicked a few buttons before saying, "Give me a playback of TS-19."

"Playback of TS-19," the robotic voice that Rosie had attributed to Vi spoke.

A big screen in front of them lit up. "Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few," Jenner said as the shape of a head appeared on the screen. Rosie could see the brain inside of it, lit up in blue.

"Is that a brain?" Carl asked excitedly.

No shit, Rosie thought, but didn't say it out loud. Honestly, she was afraid to speak at all with Shane in the room. What if he thought that she was going to tell? Would he hurt her?

"An extraordinary one," Dr. Jenner replied. He smiled at the thought before his face fell again. "Not that it matters in the end. Take us in for E.I.V."

Rosie watched the screen intently, thinking back to a diagram she saw when she snuck into a psychology lecture at the local college. The screen started to zoom into the brain until they could see the individual neural pathways. Everyone watched closely, amazed by it all.

"What are those lights?" Shane asked the doctor.

"Neurons firing," Rosie muttered to herself from the back of the room, slightly proud that she knew something that Shane didn't know. She didn't think anyone could hear her, but Daryl did. He gave her a weird glance before looking back at the doctor.

"It's a person's life. Experiences, memories. It's everything," Dr. Jenner said.

Rosie scoffed quietly to herself. That's a very meaningful way of putting it, she thought. She had only thought of it as electrical impulses in the brain, having remembered the psychology professor calling it that. She never really thought about what exactly the electrical impulses did, or what information they held.

"Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light, is you," Dr. Jenner said, turning back to look at the group. "The thing that makes you unique. And human."

"You don't make sense? Ever?" Daryl suddenly spoke. He had his arms crossed in front of his chest, staring at the doctor. To him, it sounded like a load of philosophical bullshit.

Rosie thought that maybe the doctor should stop trying to sound like the main character in a cheesy movie giving an inspirational monologue and start saying what the actual parts of the brain were. Luckily, he did.

"Those are synapses," Dr. Jenner said, pointing to the screen. Rosie remembered hearing that word. Something about a gap or something. "Electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages."

Finally, Rosie thought, the actual definition of the lights in the brain.

As she thought about the lights in the brain, she remembered what the psychology professor had said when he talked about it. He said something about cocaine making the brain light up like a Christmas tree. Rosie wondered if that's what her dad's brain looked like sometimes.

"They determine everything a person says, does, or thinks from the moment of birth to the moment of death," Dr. Jenner continued.

"Death? That's what this is? A vigil?" Rick said, stepping closer to the doctor. Rosie wondered what a vigil was. She had heard the word before, but she didn't know what it meant.