The Diagnosis Read online

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  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: ACHALM at AOL.COM

  ==> Received: from RING.AOL.COM by AOL.COM with GOTP

  id AQ06498; Thur, 26 Jun 11:02:36 EDT

  for [email protected]; Thur, 26 Jun 11:02:49 –0400 MESSAGE LOCK OVERRIDE

  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Alexander at AOL.COM Do you know what the guy who mugged you looked like? They ahave artists who can do drawings and put them on the net, like wanted posters. Were you scared? Also, when will you fence with me? Ive learned a bunch of stuff.

  Love, Alex

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  To: Alexander Chalmers [email protected]

  From: Bill Chalmers [email protected]

  Subject: Re: Your message

  Just a few minutes, Alex. I’m in the middle of some things. I do want to fence with you.

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  Bill had just managed to link up through the Internet to the online Encyclopedia of Medicine of the American Medical Association. He looked at the clock on the vanity. He would allow himself ten minutes to research his symptoms. Tingling.

  Tingling. Alternative term: Pins and Needles. Symptom chart.

  Symptom chart. Numbness and Tingling. Did you notice the numbness AND/OR tingling after sitting in one position for a long time or after waking from a deep sleep? No.

  Are only your hands affected? No.

  Does the numbness AND/OR tingling affect only one side of your body? No.

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  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Jenkins at PLYM.COM

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  id AQ06498; Thur, 26 Jun 11:03:27 EDT

  for [email protected]; Thur, 26 Jun 11:03:38 –0400

  Press * for message

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  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Jenkins at PLYM.COM

  Dear Mr. Chalmers,

  Dolores is about to send over 100 megabytes from the Trag.dat1 file. She wants to know whwther it matters which 100 megs she sends. Also, I’ve reschehdueld the TEM meeting for 11:15 tomorrow morning, right afteryour teleconference with New York. Robert

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  Do your fingers or toes get numb and turn blue in cold weather, and then become red and painful as feeling returns? No.

  If you are unable to make a diagnosis from this chart, consult your physician. Thanks alot.

  Tingling. Alternative term: Pins and Needles. Symptom chart.

  Tingling: See pins and needles sensation.

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  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: ACHALM at AOL.COM

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  id AQ06498; Thur, 26 Jun 11:05:03 EDT

  for [email protected]; Thur, 26 Jun 11:05:07 –0400

  MESSAGE LOCK OVERRIDE

  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Alexander at AOL.COM Dad, there’s a really cool college course I want take on the Internet. Brad did it. It costs $90, but yotu don;t have tot pay for the whole thing if you don’t do the whole thing. Brad did $50 worth. Can I do it, please? Mom saidd to ask you. I don’t have anything else to do today.

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  To: Alexander Chalmers [email protected]

  From: Bill Chalmers [email protected]

  Subject: Re: The College Course

  What’s it on?

  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: ACHALM at AOL.COM

  ==> Received: from RING.AOL.COM by AOL.COM with GOTP

  id AQ06498; Thur, 26 Jun 11:06:13 EDT

  for [email protected]; Thur, 26 Jun 11:06:19 –0400

  MESSAGE LOCK OVERRIDE

  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Alexander at AOL.COM Plato. I know that sounds boring, but Brad said it was really cool, with lots of interactive stuff. Please.

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  To: Alexander Chalmers [email protected]

  From: Bill Chalmers [email protected]

  Subject: Re: The College Course

  OK. Try out $10 worth and see how you like it.

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  Pins and needles sensation: Persistent pins and needles sensation may be caused by neuropathy (a group of nerve disorders).

  Neuropathy: Disease, inflammation, or damage to the peripheral nerves, which connect the central nervous system or CNS (brain and spinal cord) to the sense organs, muscles, glands, and internal organs. Most nerve cell axons are insulated within a sheath of fatty substance called myelin, but some are unmyelinated. Most neuropathies arise from damage or irritation either to the axons or to their myeline sheaths. Causes. In some cases of neuropathy there is no obvious cause. Among the many specific causes are diabetes mellitus, dietary deficiencies (particularly of B vitamins), persistent and excessive alcohol consumption, and metabolic upsets such as uremia. Other causes include leprosy, lead poisoning, or poisoning by drugs. Nerves may become acutely inflamed. This often occurs after a viral infection (for example, in Guillain-Barré syndrome). Neuropathies may result from autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, or periarteritis nodosa. Neuropathies may occur secondarily to malignant tumors.

  Bill began searching for a discussion of pain. Or, more precisely, its absence, since he did not feel the slightest pain in connection with the tingling and numbness that enveloped his hands and arms. Surely, the absence of pain must mean something?

  The experience of pain may be reduced by arousal (e.g., an injury sustained during competitive sport or on the battlefield may go unnoticed in the heat of the moment); strong emotion can also block pain.

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  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Loeser at TEM.COM

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  id AQ06498; Thur, 26 Jun 11:16:36 EDT

  for [email protected]; Thur, 26 Jun 11:16:42 –0400

  Press * for message

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  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Loeser at TEM.COM

  Dear Mr. Chalmers,

  In pe3pration for our rescheduled meeting tomorrow at 11:15, I’m sending you an attached file about our recent project with Stanford University (“Total Efficiency Mangemtnent and Stanford in the New Millenium”). Would it be possible for you to take a look atit and review it with me before 3 pm today? Thank you in advance.

  Fred Loeser

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  There was a knocking at the bedroom door. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Bill,” said Doris. “May I come in? I’ll just be a minute.” Doris eased open the door with the hose of her vacuum cleaner. “It’s so dusty in here. Doesn’t this dust bother you? It would bother me. You know what I mean?” Doris, in her late fifties, stood four feet eleven inches tall and had curly dyed red hair. Immediately, Jennifer and Todd burst into the bedroom, chasing Gerty.

  “I thought you weren’t coming in here until eleven-thirty,” said Bill.

  “Oh,” said Doris, looking perplexed, “isn’t it eleven-thirty now?” She stood just outside the door waiting for definite instructions. “That’s a cute poster of Elvis in Alex’s room,” she said. “I loved Elvis. I loved his gyrations.”

  “Jennifer and Todd, you come out of there,” shouted Virginia. “You’re disturbing Uncle Bill.” Virginia pushed into the bedroom holding a magazine she’d been reading. “You come out right now, or you’ll have no sweets after lunch.” Gerty barked from under the bed, then shot from the room with the children in pursuit.

  For a moment Virginia stood gazing at Bill at his desk, then she sat down on the bed. She began crying. “I’m nothing but a nuisance to everybody,” she said. “I’m a selfish nuisance. I
got all of my good qualities from Frank, and he took them with him when he left.”

  Bill stopped his typing and turned unhappily to his sister-in-law. “Oh, Virginia,” he sighed. A new e-mail message had just come in from David Hamilton and another one from Jasper Olswanger. He rose from his chair and walked to the canopied bed, where Virginia was buried in the cottony blue panels of her dress. “You have a good heart, Virginia. No one can take that away from you.” She looked up at him and rubbed her eyes and smiled weakly.

  “I think of all those dinners when Melissa was sick,” said Bill.

  “Oh, that was easy for me,” she mumbled, still dabbing at her eyes. “I like to cook.”

  “Stay with us another night.”

  At the other end of the hall, behind his closed door, Alexander’s fingers were jumping like minnows over his keyboard. His fingers moved even more rapidly since he had reprogrammed his keyboard to correspond to his study of the most optimal location of the keys. Just in the last month, Alex had created his own Internet links to the Federal Aviation Authority (to keep abreast of the latest investigations of plane crashes), to the summer tour schedule of Tuff Girls, to the personal web page of Alicia Silverstone (courtesy of International Artistic Management), to Virtual Master Tennis, and, yesterday, to Fencing on the Web. Today, Metropolitan College Online.

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  To: Brad Serano [email protected]

  From: Alexander Chalmers [email protected]

  Subject: Re: MCO

  Mr. Bradford. Are you awake yet? I’m doing the Plato thing. I’ll wait 60 for you, then I’m starting. A.

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  id AQ06498; Thur, 26 Jun 12:03:26 EDT

  for [email protected]; Thur, 26 Jun 12:03:29 –0400

  Press * for message

  >>> MAIL 50.02.04 <<< From: Brad at AOL.COM Whoa!!! Hold onto your nads, Mr. Big, that’s all I can say. You should DEFINITELY do Crito first. Cretin Crito. Wait, an urhgent message is beaming down from Jocko. Do you want to come over later? B.

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  To: Brad Serano

  From: Alexander Chalmers

  Subject: Re: Regarding

  Thanks, but my dad is home today. I think I’ll hang here. A.

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  Alexander pounded his chest, Tarzan-style, and did some warm-up exercises with his fingers. He felt cramped. For today’s bold exploration in cyberspace, he would need a major cube of clear air. With a sweep of his arm, he flung everything extraneous off his desk, including his fencing mask, a good spool of number 30 copper wire, some Snickers bars, and a framed photograph of his father at twenty years old. Launch.

  Welcome, Alexander Chalmers, to Metropolitan College Online.

  This session’s course is PLATO ONLINE™, at a cost of only $90, charged through your America Online account. PLATO ONLINE™ includes condensed forms of the original Dialogues of Plato, by special arrangement with Oxford University Press.

  “Alexander!” His mother was shouting to him through his closed door. “You have a fencing lesson today at three-thirty, and a Longine festival rehearsal after that. Remember? It’s a little after twelve now. Please be ready at three-fifteen. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay? I can’t hear you over that music. Three-fifteen. Look at your watch.”

  “Yes. Okay. I’ll glue my watch to the ceiling.”

  To begin, select a condensed Dialogue from the following menu: Protagoras/ Crito/ Meno/ Anytus/ Sophist/ Apology/ Euthyphro/ Parmenides/ Phaedo/ Gorgias/ Symposium/ Theaetetus.

  Anytus

  Time: Archonship of Laches = 399 BC

  15th day of Elaphebolion = early spring Dawn.

  There was screaming from outside Alex’s door. “I’m bleeding,” Todd bawled. “Oh, my God,” shouted Virginia. “Missy, I need your help.” “It’s only a scrape,” said Doris.

  “Can you guys be quiet out there?” yelled Alex. “I’m taking a college course in here. Show a little respect.” He turned up the volume of his amplifier.

  Press return for the first line of Anytus. Then press return for each successive paragraph. Questions follow at the conclusion of each section. Return

  Just after dawn on the fifteenth day of the month of Elaphebolion, in the archonship of Laches, two men sat silently in the little Portico of Artemis, a stone’s throw from the northeast edge of the city.…

  ANYTUS

  Just after dawn on the fifteenth day of the month of Elaphebolion, in the archonship of Laches, two men sat silently in the little Portico of Artemis, a stone’s throw from the northeast edge of the city. The first was Anytus, wealthy tanner of Athens. Anytus, wearing a white mantle with a fine vermilion border, slumped moodily beneath the roofed colonnade upon a white marble bench. He was no more than a shape in the faint early light. The second in the portico was Pyrrhias, favorite and most devoted of Anytus’s fifteen slaves. Pyrrhias squatted on the stone floor twenty feet from his master, quietly scratching the large mole on his neck. Every few moments, he would look up and study the slumped form on the bench, trying to read thoughts and desires from a crossing or uncrossing of legs, a slight shift in the shoulders, a sigh. For the last hour or more there had been little movement. Yet Pyrrhias understood that his master was troubled.

  Anytus, in fact, was contemplating his present political position. The sophist. While it was true that the precise words of the accusations against the old sophist had been formulated by Lycon, and that the case had been argued in front of the court by Meletus, reeking of one of his cheap fragrances, it was common knowledge that the conception and driving force of the charges gushed directly from himself, distinguished citizen of Athens, former general in the war against Sparta, leader of the new democracy returned out of exile—the same who now sat in the little portico, fingering his olive-oiled but still scraggly beard. He should be pleased. Had he not rid the city of a self-righteous worm, which was slowly digesting the foundations of the democracy? More importantly, he was at last to gain personal revenge.

  Anytus had been sitting on the marble bench now since before dawn, brooding in the dark silence, watching from the corner of his eye as the first rays of sunlight streamed through the east colonnade and cast long turquoise shadows across the floor and up the back wall onto the painted mural of the Battle of Marathon. A breakfast of fresh bread, figs, and wine lay uneaten on a tray at his feet. A roll of papyrus for the day’s instructions to the manager of his tannery lay untouched at his side. The only motion for the past hour had been the fragile wings of a ringdove, which flew into the little open-air portico, fluttered noiselessly between the white columns, and then perched on the dim marble statue of Artemis just outside the south façade. Most of the city still lay sleeping and silent. So silent that Anytus could hear the minute scratchings of a cicada crawling across the limestone floor, and another tiny murmur of air that may have been a breeze moving through the olive groves past the Northeast Gate. The air fluttered and ruffled and blended with his slow breathing, liquid and small.

  Anytus’s skull was beginning to pound. He gingerly massaged his temples, gazing absently at the patterns of shadow on the floor, then shrieked as a wave of pain surged through his head. At the cry, like cymbals crashing, Pyrrhias lumbered heavily to his feet, nearly tripping over his tunic. “Master, please,” he whispered. “Please let me help you. I know what you need.” Pyrrhias had a face as honest and vulnerable as a peeled fruit. He leaned over his master and began rubbing Anytus’s forehead.

  Anytus moaned softly and closed his eyes. “You do care about me, don’t you, Pyrrhias.”

  “Yes, Master.”

  The tanner leaned back o
n his elbows and tried to let his muscles go slack.

  “I am making you feel better, aren’t I?” said the slave.

  Anytus sat up and opened his eyes. “Thank you, Pyrrhias, that is sufficient.” He waved the slave back to his spot on the floor.

  “It is a quiet morning, Master,” said the wide, squatting man, “a good time for thinking.”

  “Thinking has given me a roaring headache,” said Anytus. He continued rubbing his temples, holding his head as motionless as possible. To make his suffering worse, the myrtles had started to bloom, the spring’s yearly curse. Somewhere he knew there were myrtles, not among the shrubs and lilies in the octagonal garden outside the portico, but somewhere, throwing up their nauseous white flowers and oily capsules. Anytus’s nose dripped like a fountain, his eyes had turned red-veined and swollen. I am being punished, he said to himself. So be it. So be it.

  Gloomily, he raised his head and peered out of the portico. The city was still drowsy, the narrow passageways of the Skambonidai almost empty. In the soft and utterly transparent Athenian air, every stone seemed an arm’s length away. Along the squalid, unpaved roads, barely wide enough for a cart, he could see weeds hanging from cracks in the stuccoed walls of the houses. In the middle of the Leather Makers’ Road, a slave emerged from one of the windowless, flat-roofed houses, dumped fish bones into the street, and went back inside. At a neighboring house, two slaves who had been guarding the front door during the night rolled over in the road, then sat up snorting and yawning from their deep slumber. In the distance, just inside the great wall of limestone and brick that circled the city, an old woman sat silently beside one of the rough shanty huts built hastily and in fear during the War.

  Bad omens everywhere, Anytus thought to himself. Three slaves spotted in the street at first light. Three times the ringdove had circled the portico before landing. The wealthy tanner groaned and began counting cracks in the wooden ceiling over his head, then counted again, trying to reconcile numbers.