Credit: Justin Randall

Dr. Morgan had mentioned the laser scalpels relatively late in his series of discussions with Bob. He had started with a box-and-arrow-diagram on a whiteboard.

The diagram had been simple. Three boxes formed a triangle. One box said action, another said effect, and a third one, at the apex of the triangle, said, “done?” Arrows pointed clockwise from one box to the other.

"Quite simple, really," Dr. Morgan said, pointing at the tip of the pyramid. "We do something. We decide whether we're happy with the outcome. If we are done, we stop. People with your condition are often programmed with unreasonable resolution criteria, unable to stop an action." He used air quotes when he said programmed.

"That sounds about right," Bob said. "And also... I don’t know." He looked at the sculpture on Dr. Morgan's desk, an abstract rendition of a rearing horse. He wanted to touch it, but didn’t dare, because he would have to polish it first, and one touch wouldn't do, either. "Sometimes I'm done with one... routine, and the next one is already waiting. It nags, won't let me go. I'm tired."

Bob stared at his hands and tried to remember a time when his life had been different, not an endless sequence of rituals that left him on the brink of exhaustion.

During the following sessions, Dr. Morgan revealed to him the culprit, the hard-to-please homunculus who was never done: A structure in the brain called the anterior cingulate, which, according to the brochures, was involved in "goal maintenance" and "success monitoring" during problem solving games such as chess or the Tower of Hanoi.

"Think of your own anterior cingulate as a dog that hasn't been trained properly," Dr. Morgan proposed, leaning back in his chair. "Our approach is to re-train it until it behaves normally. Unfortunately," he pursed his lips, "the procedure has been unsuccessful with organic tissue. However, the progress in neural prosthetics has been amazing in the past decades. Simply amazing."

Bob remembered one of the brochures. "You're going to insert a duplicate of my anterior cingulate into my brain. A… trainable duplicate."

Dr. Morgan smiled. "Exactly."

One evening, Bob and Sally had sat on the couch, surrounded by sheets of paper.

"Look here," Sally said, snuggling close to him. "This is the device we're going to use. They call it the done box. Isn't that funny?"

Bob's index finger flew over the crowded letters on the agreement's last page. "Well, who knows whether it works? Here it says experimental treatment. Or here: no guarantee." He put down the agreement. "You might end up with a vegetable, Sal."

Sally had looked up at him. Fine lines emanated from the corners of her eyes.

"That's not funny."

"No."

"You don't have to do it," she whispered.

"Sal, Sal, Sal." He inhaled the scent of her scalp and kissed her head. "I want to be what you are. Free."

Bob knew the nurses drew lines and crosses onto his skull only because their sleeves brushed his cheeks and he smelled the chemical markers. He didn’t feel his skull at all.

One of the nurses pointed at an array of pictures projected against the wall. "Can you name these objects, please?"

"Cat. Teapot. Squirrel," Bob said. He knew that this exercise was meant to keep the surgeons from damaging his language areas. Wouldn't it be too late when they noticed?