I woke feeling a little groggy and rubbed my eyes, trying to clear the slight blur from my vision. Slowly, the world came into focus and I lay there for a while looking up at a rather sterile ceiling and listening to the beeping of the monitor they had put on me to make sure nothing unexpected happened during recovery. Part of me wanted to believe that the whole thing had been a weird dream, but the hospital-like room and beeping heart monitor seemed to argue against that. Just to check I brought my hand up to my face again. Nope, not a dream, the hand in front of me was tiny and a little chubby, in the way that's common for small children. I placed it against the bed railing and couldn't even come close to wrapping my fingers all the way around. There was no doubt about it, I was now in Brad’s tiny body.
What was really surprising though was that I didn't feel out of place. Even though I'd been a 16-year-old boy only a few hours ago, Brad’s childish body felt completely natural. Apparently what Dr. Thomas had said about the instinctive responses was correct. This whole process really was incredibly amazing.
I was so wrapped up in how weird it was that my new body didn't feel weird that I didn't even notice Dr. Thomas come in.
"Hello sleepy-head. Your brother's been up for a half-hour already he and I are all done." I yawned in response and he simply continued, "I know everyone's eager to go home, but you and I need to go through a few tests before that happens. The developmental gap between the two of you means I have an opportunity to gather some very interesting information and I'm not going to let it pass by."
That phrase kept coming up and it was starting to worry me. "Devewopmental gap?" It was really strange hearing Brad’s voice from his perspective, as was my slurring of the question.
I passed off my slurred question as a lingering effect of the anaesthesia as Dr. Thomas started to explain.
"As the human body develops, the brain goes through several stages. Bradley’s brain, being the brain of a four-year-old, is at a relatively early stage of neruological development, while your brain, being the brain of a 16-year-old, is at a much later stage. Thanks to the two of you swapping, I can gather data that we've never been able to gather before and see if I can find an indication as to whether the advancement through the brain's developmental stages is the result of the academic knowledge that a person acquires or if it's inherent in the brain's neurological structure. If it's the latter then even though we transferred your memories and knowledge into Bradley’s brain, you're going to end up a lot more like a four-year-old boy than you probably expected."
"I gonna fowget thtuff?!" That was definitely not the anaesthetic... "Wath wong wif my voith?"
"That's just a result of you now having Bradley’s motor skills and language processing; perfectly normal. And no, you're not going to forget anything. You'll still remember being David and your personality is still intact. Think of your brain as being like a computer. Your memories and knowledge are like data files on the hard drive. Your personality is like a program that retrieves and manipulates those data files. The non-conscious responses are like the operating system; those responses handle things like feeding additional information to your personality in the proper way and allow it to so things like compare stimuli to those memories. And the physical brain itself is like the hardware, the younger the brain, the less sophisticated the microprocessor and less efficient the memory interface. By swapping into Bradley’s body, even though you've kept your data files and the program that reads them, you've substantially downgraded your operating system and hardware. Does that make sense?"
"I gueth tho..." I was thankful that Dr. Thomas had gone slowly through his explanation; even though I understood everything he said, I knew that if he'd sped through it I wouldn't have been able to grasp it. Right now I felt like I was trying to understand things through a very laggy connection between my mental "hardware" and the sensory input I was receiving.
"Well that's good. Your big brother didn't understand the computer terms at all, so it looks like your knowledge and memories successfully transferred."
"Why you cawl Bwad my bwig brudder?" Talking as Brad was definitely going to take some getting used to. Everything was making sense in my head, but it kept coming out in a four-year-old's lisp.
"Because that's the way the world is going to address you two now, Brad, and your mother thought you should start getting used to it right away. Now, let's get started with some basic things. If someone arrived at a house at 9 am and left at 4 pm, how many hours were they at the house?"
"Theven."
"Good, good. Now, you got here at about eight this morning. Can you look at the clock on the wall over there and tell me how many hours you've been here?"
At first I thought he was just checking to make sure that I could see well enough to read the clock, but when I looked up at it I just couldn't make any sense of it. There was a red pointer going around slowly and two black pointers that didn't seem to be moving at all, and then a bunch of gibberish around the edge. None of it meant anything to me, but I didn't want to admit that and for some reason guessing seemed like a good idea.
"Eweven?"
"If you'd been here eleven hours it would be what time right now?"
"Theven pm."
"Well your math is fine, but you're clearly not able to read the clock. It's four thirty pm right now. Elizabeth told me that Brad hasn't learned how to tell time yet, so this is expected."
Dr. Thomas just made a note in the little journal pad he was carrying but I was shocked. I could remember how many hours were in a day and everything about how time was measured, but thanks to Brad’s brain I was now unable to read a clock. I was beginning to re-think my plans to be a famous child prodigy as Dr. Thomas continued.
"How many letters are there in the alphabet?"
"Twenty thix."
"Can you name the vowels?"
"A, E, I, O, U, an' thometimeth Y."
"Excellent," he pulled out the copy of Wired that I'd been reading in the lab room earlier, opened it to one of the articles, and handed it to me. "Can you tell me the title of this article?"
Just as with the clock, the page looked full of gibberish now. "No, I can't wead it... I gueth thath cuz Bwad couwdn't wead?"
"Exactly, Bradley’s 'operating system' isn't passing the right values to your 'personality program' so even though you understand how hours and minutes work and know the alphabet, you're not able to read or tell time anymore. OK, let's move on to some of the other tests."
Dr. Thomas brought over three beakers, two of them were identical short and fat beakers and both of these were about 3/4 full of water. The third was tall and skinny and was empty. He pointed to the two short beakers with water.
"Brad, can you tell me which of these two beakers has more water in it?"
"Dey bof da thame."
"Excellent." He took one of the short beakers and I watched him carefully pour its water into the tall thin beaker, then he put the empty short beaker away.
"OK Brad, same question," he gestured to the short, fat beaker and the tall, skinny beaker, "can you tell me which of these two beakers has more water in it?"
"Da taww one. Ith way highew."
Dr. Thomas made another note in his journal and then put the beakers away, coming back with a tray containing two rows of blocks, one row closely spaced and one row spaced farther apart so it appeared longer.
"How many blocks are in this row?" He pointed to the closely-spaced blocks.
"One, two, free, fouw, five. Five."
"Very good, and in this row?" He pointed to the blocks spaced far apart.
"One, two, free, fouw, five. Five."
"Excellent. Now, which row has more blocks in it?"
"Dat one." I pointed to the longer row of widely-spaced blocks.
He made another note and took the blocks away.
This when on for what seemed like ages (since I couldn't read the clock anymore I couldn't really know how long) with Dr. Thomas asking me more questions I didn't see how any of it was important, but I was happy when Dr. Thomas finally closed his notebook and put the pen away.
"Well Brad, it's very clear that you still have your memories and knowledge, as well as David's personality. But it's also very clear that your brain is processing things the way that a normal four-year-old's brain would process things. You seem to be right on the cusp between Piaget's symbolic function and intuitive thought stages indicating that cognitive development is largely a function of neurology. This is amazing data."
"Tho I thupid..." I moped.
"No, you're a perfectly normal 4-year-old," he reached down and tossled my hair, "only with access to all the facts a 16-year-old boy would know, as well as his memories and personality. It's really most interesting. But it's time to let you go home. I'll let you get dressed and when you're ready just knock on the door and I'll take you out to your mother and brother. I'll be waiting just outside the door."
With that, he lifted me gently off the bed and stood me up on the floor, then walked out of the room, leaving me alone to contemplate what had just happened.