Torchwood: Exodus Code

Synaesthesia operates on a spectrum, but unlike, say, depression or many other mental disorders, synaesthesia is not a mental illness. Far from it, in fact. Many synaesthetes are artists and creative types who believe it’s not an affliction but a gift from God, an incredible heightening of their senses that allows them to experience the world from multiple places in their brain at the same time.’
    ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jack.
    ‘Are you a synaesthete?’
    ‘I think I am,’ said Jack. ‘Or… I think I’ve become one. In the past few weeks, I’ve started perceiving days of the week and months of the year as colours and shapes, seen time in waves of coloured lines, sometimes even with music.’
    What he did not share was that in the past few days, this synaesthesia had been getting stronger, affecting all of his senses in disturbing ways.
    ‘Of course – it
is
the nature of your brain, but it’s not the way most people perceive the world. Yours, though, is one of the most common forms of synaesthesia – grapheme to colour.’ She stepped over to a set of tightly packed bookshelves and lifted a book from midway up. She handed it to Jack before returning to the couch.
    Jack read the title aloud: ‘
Wednesday Is Indigo Blue
.’ He smiled. ‘Mine’s golden brown.’
    Olivia nodded. ‘Most synaesthetes don’t know that they are special, that they are experiencing the world through multiple modes of perception. When someone like yourself, say, with a mild form, tastes or smells something he or she will experience the taste as a sound or a colour which heightens perception. Synaesthetes are experiencing all of their senses at the same time.’
    ‘Like our wires are crossed?’ asked Jack, thinking of the rush of desire he’d experienced minutes before from the trigger, the taste and smell of the whiskey.
    ‘That’s what we used to think, but scientists now believe, thanks to sophisticated brain imaging, that it’s not crossed wires, it’s more like multiple wires connecting all at once, senses cross-talking instantaneously instead of connecting one to one. I’m simplifying, of course, but in the synaesthetic brain, the connections among the senses are polymodal.’
    Jack sat forward in the chair, the smell of peat from the whiskey quickening his pulse again.
    ‘Years ago researchers had a difficult time separating true synaesthetic responses from a person’s metaphorical thinking or even separating a synaesthete’s response to a sense from a memory triggered by that sense. Olfactory senses in particular evoke memories incredibly powerfully.’
    Jack had to stand up, cool his desire, get away from his drink, the whiskey too strong a siren call to his senses. He stood in front of the fire. ‘What do you mean, “metaphorical thinking”?’
    She paused for a beat, before continuing. ‘An artist like Georgia O’Keefe, for example, painted while listening to music, transferring what she heard into her lush images. As far as we know, she was not a synaesthete. Wally Kandinsky, on the other hand, was a synaesthete, and he painted what he heard when he perceived sounds. He painted his perceptions not representations of them.’
    ‘Ah… But if my theory is correct,’ said Jack, ‘and all these women were mildly synaesthetic before the madness and now something is making it worse… that’ll be hard to prove, won’t it?’
    ‘Unfortunately, yes, but we can try, and it certainly puts us into a different area of research from what we have been pursuing. It may mean that we have to reduce their sedation in order to stimulate them when we run a brain scan, and, of course, we’ll need to talk to their families to be sure they are comfortable with the risks that that may involve. But, Jack – this is a step in the right direction towards healing. Finally.’ She finished the last of her drink. ‘Unfortunately, for many of these women, they’ve already damaged themselves beyond repair.’
    Jack looked at the Cassatt on the wall, wondering what she had seen when she painted it. ‘Synaesthesia is hereditary, isn’t it?’ he asked, thinking of Anwen and her mismatched fruits, her association of colour with a taste.
    ‘Yes it is,’ replied Olivia. ‘In my research, I discovered that there is a chromosome marked for synaesthesia, and, although I can’t prove it yet, I’ve always believed that as human beings evolve, a person’s synaesthesia evolves too.’
    Jack laughed. ‘So those of