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Multiple Person Disorder
Feb. 10th, 2011 11:25 amA while back, I read a really interesting short story about a guy that had the opposite of "Multiple Personality Disorder." I forget the name of the story, but the idea was that this guy didn't have a body, but every day woke up in someone else's body, like one person spread across multiple people, instead of multiple people being inside one person.
The backstory is that some sort of mad scientist slowly removed more and more brain tissue from his child to try to get to the core of "self" that this person was. Unfortunately, the child turned out to be more or less a vegetable, and the father was eventually arrested on abuse charges.
But the child's brain didn't die. Instead, it began to sort of... possess other people around him... borrowing a day of life at a time from the brains of people within a few miles of his real body. Every night, when he went to sleep, his consciousness would involuntarily slip from one body to another, and he would live inside that body for that day.
From his perspective... he grew up watching everything changing around him. At first, he thought this was just normal. People literally changed bodies every single day. His body changed every day. He delighted in the various ways his parents looked day after day, often changing their bodies to match his. Of course... He thought everyone else was changing because he thought himself the static point in the universe.
It took until school to start realizing that he was the one that was changing, and that the world around him was actually remaining static. He took it very hard when he realized that his parents weren't "his" parents, but rather, they were the parents of the host body that he was occupying.
For years, he struggled with depression and thoughts of suicide, but realized that trying to kill himself might well be better described as murder in his unique situation. Hell... it might not even work and he'd just slip into another host.
The short story deals with him in the midst of this depression coming to discover his original body and the story of his sick father and what his father did to him. By the end of the story, he finally knows that he has a real name and a real body and resolves to strike out into the world and create a life for himself.
I've always wondered what happened next. A man that has been jumping from body to body for his entire life, struggling with depression over his condition, finally discovered his real body and finds determination to build his own life as something more than just a psychic parasite onto his host bodies. He can't occupy his own body because the brain damage is too severe, but he finally recognizes that he has a *self.*
So... Consider this a writing prompt or contemplation prompt. A person in this situation... one person spread across many bodies... How might you imagine someone dealing with this sort of thing? Growing up in such a confusing world of constantly changing houses/parents/siblings/whatever... How might someone go on to create a life for themself? How would people react to a person like this if they were to discover their secret?
The backstory is that some sort of mad scientist slowly removed more and more brain tissue from his child to try to get to the core of "self" that this person was. Unfortunately, the child turned out to be more or less a vegetable, and the father was eventually arrested on abuse charges.
But the child's brain didn't die. Instead, it began to sort of... possess other people around him... borrowing a day of life at a time from the brains of people within a few miles of his real body. Every night, when he went to sleep, his consciousness would involuntarily slip from one body to another, and he would live inside that body for that day.
From his perspective... he grew up watching everything changing around him. At first, he thought this was just normal. People literally changed bodies every single day. His body changed every day. He delighted in the various ways his parents looked day after day, often changing their bodies to match his. Of course... He thought everyone else was changing because he thought himself the static point in the universe.
It took until school to start realizing that he was the one that was changing, and that the world around him was actually remaining static. He took it very hard when he realized that his parents weren't "his" parents, but rather, they were the parents of the host body that he was occupying.
For years, he struggled with depression and thoughts of suicide, but realized that trying to kill himself might well be better described as murder in his unique situation. Hell... it might not even work and he'd just slip into another host.
The short story deals with him in the midst of this depression coming to discover his original body and the story of his sick father and what his father did to him. By the end of the story, he finally knows that he has a real name and a real body and resolves to strike out into the world and create a life for himself.
I've always wondered what happened next. A man that has been jumping from body to body for his entire life, struggling with depression over his condition, finally discovered his real body and finds determination to build his own life as something more than just a psychic parasite onto his host bodies. He can't occupy his own body because the brain damage is too severe, but he finally recognizes that he has a *self.*
So... Consider this a writing prompt or contemplation prompt. A person in this situation... one person spread across many bodies... How might you imagine someone dealing with this sort of thing? Growing up in such a confusing world of constantly changing houses/parents/siblings/whatever... How might someone go on to create a life for themself? How would people react to a person like this if they were to discover their secret?
