Yunseo woke to the cry of a mammoth. The low, drawn-out call still hung inside his eardrums. He lay in bed and looked up at the ceiling. A white ceiling. His own room. The clock read 4:12 a.m. Yunseo let out a breath. His hands were trembling. He raised them and looked. The feel of soil lingered on his fingertips. He hadn't touched any actual dirt. It was dirt he'd touched in a dream. Cold, damp — the soil of a cave floor. That sensation hadn't faded even after waking.
Yunseo got up and went to the sink. He turned on the water. He washed his hands. He worked in the soap. The feel of the soil wouldn't go away. He looked in the mirror. His own face stared back. Shadows had settled beneath his eyes. His lips were cracked and dry. Yunseo looked into his own eyes in the glass. The pupils were larger than usual. Eyes adjusted to darkness. Eyes adjusted to the dark inside a cave. He shut off the water and dried his hands. The towel smelled of detergent. A smell that didn't exist 40,000 years ago. The thought made him pause. 40,000 years ago. Why that stretch of time had become the measure. Yunseo switched on the bathroom light. It stabbed at his eyes. He shut them. Only after turning the light off could he open them again.
The transplant surgery had been eight months ago. The trouble with Yunseo's mitochondria had begun two years before. Mitochondrial disease. His cells couldn't produce energy. His muscles weakened. His heart slowed. His liver function declined. The doctor told him: without the transplant, organ failure would set in within three years. The mitochondrial genes of a Neanderthal. Genes extracted from a species that went extinct 40,000 years ago. Cellular energy efficiency raised by 340 percent. It had passed Phase 3 trials. No side effects had been reported.
Yunseo signed the consent form the day before surgery. The form listed possible side effects. Headache, fever, muscle pain. Minor things. There was no entry for "sleep-related side effects." Yunseo signed and lay down in his hospital room. The surgery took four hours. General anesthesia. When he woke his throat was dry. A nurse gave him water. He was able to swallow. Yunseo was alive.
The effect was immediate. Two weeks after surgery he could climb stairs. A month later he could run. His heart rate returned to normal. His liver numbers stabilized. Yunseo went back to work for the first time in two years. He sat at his desk and turned on the monitor. His fingers moved over the keyboard. His body had come back. Yunseo was alive.
The dreams began in the sixth month after surgery. At first they were hazy. A wide plain. The smell of grass. The sound of wind. Yunseo thought of it as just a dream. Everyone dreams. But the dreams began to sharpen. At first they were forgotten the moment he woke. A week later, the afterimage lingered until morning. The sight of the plain's grass lying flat under the wind stayed overlaid on his ceiling even after his eyes opened. Yunseo rubbed his eyes. It vanished. The next day it took 3 seconds to vanish. The day after that, 5. Two weeks later, Yunseo was inside a cave in the dream. The floor was spread with soil. Light flickered on the walls. Torches. He could smell the smoke of the torches. The smell of burning wood. Greasy smoke. Yunseo's nose caught that smell. In the dream. Even after waking, the smell of smoke lingered at the tip of his nose.
Three weeks later, people appeared in the dreams. It was hard to call them people. Faces with low foreheads and heavy brow ridges. Broad noses. Short, thick fingers. They were doing something inside the cave. Chipping stone. Skinning hides. Yunseo stood among them. Stood as one of them. Yunseo's hand was gripping a stone. It wasn't Yunseo's hand. Short, thick fingers. Coarse hair on the back of the hand. With that hand Yunseo chipped the stone. It was flint. He struck one face against another stone. A sharp shard fell away. There was a sense of reading the grain of the stone. Where to strike, and into what shape it would split — this hand knew. He made a stone tool. There was skill in the hand. A skill Yunseo had never learned. When he woke, Yunseo looked at his own hands. Slim, long fingers. His own hands. And yet the feel of chipping stone remained in his palm.
Yunseo called his doctor. He described the symptoms. That he saw a cave in his dreams. That he heard the cry of a mammoth. That the sensations lingered even after he woke. The doctor was silent. Then he said: three other patients had reported the same symptoms. In all of them it had started sometime after the six-month mark following the transplant.
Yunseo held the phone to his ear and looked out the window. The apartment complex. The playground. Children were running and playing. In Yunseo's eyes, behind the children, the plain of the ice age lay overlaid. The children's laughter mingled with the cry of a mammoth. "...You mean memory? That there could be something like that, inside the genes?"
The doctor's voice grew careful. "Well. Mitochondria are passed down only through the maternal line, you understand. Over tens of thousands of years. So there had been a hypothesis that sensory patterns of a sort might be imprinted into the genes. It's never been proven, of course. It may be that you patients will be the first cases."
"Wait. So you're saying this dream is... an actual memory from 40,000 years ago?"
"I couldn't tell you exactly. What is certain is that the transplanted genes are affecting the sleep circuitry of the brain. When we analyze the brainwaves during sleep, we see abnormal activation in the cortex. Especially in the regions tied to smell and hearing."
Yunseo hung up the phone and sat on the bed. A memory from 40,000 years ago. The memory of a Neanderthal. The genes transplanted into Yunseo's body were showing it to the brain. Yunseo looked at the palm of one hand. This hand had chipped stone 40,000 years ago. This nose had smelled the breath of a mammoth. This ear had heard the echoes inside a cave. Within Yunseo's cells, an extinct species was waking.
The seventh month, and the dreams changed. No longer a cave. There was a glacier. An immense wall of ice rose all the way to the sky. Wind blew. Yunseo's skin ached as if it would tear open. Minus 30 degrees. Minus 40 degrees. Yunseo was among the band. 12 of them. 4 women, 5 men, 3 children. All of them wrapped in hides. The hides smelled of animal fat. Mammoth hide. Thick and coarse. The band was walking. Southward, along the glacier. There was nothing to eat. They had gone hungry for 3 days. Yunseo's stomach ached as though pressed in a vise. The stomach ached in the dream. And it still ached upon waking.
That night Yunseo opened the refrigerator. There was food. Bread, milk, fruit. Yunseo could eat none of it. The packaged food felt foreign. The hand reached to grasp the bread, but the fingers stopped. It was a hand that did not know what bread was. A hand from 40,000 years ago. Yunseo shut the refrigerator and sat on the floor. The stomach made a sound. The gut contracted. Hunger. Yunseo took a potato from under the sink. A raw potato. Brought it to the mouth, skin and all. Bit into it with the teeth. Hard, with the green smell of the raw. Yunseo chewed the potato. Swallowed. The stomach accepted it. The packaged bread could not be eaten, yet the raw potato could. Yunseo looked down at the potato. Teeth marks had been left in it. Looked down at the potato marked by teeth. Had this been my choice? Or the choice of someone, 40,000 years ago, who had gone hungry? There was hunger. But the sense that these foods were things one could eat did not come.
The eighth month. Yunseo began to smell things even while awake. On the subway to work, the body odors of people pressed in like a wall. Perfume, sweat, coffee, leather, plastic, metal. The smells separated into their strata and drove themselves into Yunseo's nose. Yunseo went to work wearing a mask 3 layers thick. Each time the subway doors opened, the air from outside came rushing in. Diesel, dust, rubber, concrete. Smells that had not existed 40,000 years ago. Yunseo's nose read them as danger signals. The heart quickened. The palms sweated. Yunseo gripped the handrail and held on. The person alongside smelled too close. What that person had eaten this morning, drunk last night, spread on their skin — all of it could be read as scent. Yunseo got off at the next stop. 3 stations short. At the office, Yunseo looked at the monitor. There were letters. They could be read. But something else intruded between the letters. While reading the letters, the patterns of a cave wall overlaid them. Lines someone had drawn on a cave wall by hand. Yunseo lifted the eyes from the monitor and looked at the office wall. It was a white wall. And yet lines showed on the wall. Lines drawn in red pigment. Yunseo closed the eyes, then opened them. The lines were gone. A white wall again. A coworker came over.
“Yunseo, are you all right? You don't look well.”
Yunseo nodded. Tried to speak. Korean came out of the mouth.
“I'm fine.”
But as those words were spoken, another sound tried to rise from Yunseo's throat. A low humming. The sound made inside a cave to tell the band that all was safe. Yunseo closed the mouth.
Yunseo went back to the doctor. Underwent an EEG. The results came in. In the brainwaves during sleep, a frequency band that does not appear in modern humans was observed. Even while awake, activation of the olfactory cortex was abnormally high. The doctor turned the monitor to show Yunseo. A brainwave graph. A normal person's sleep waves and Yunseo's sleep waves side by side. The normal one was a smooth curve. Yunseo's had sharp spikes repeating between the curves.
“These spikes are the intervals where the ancient sensory patterns replay,”
the doctor said.
“At first they appeared only during sleep, but the recent data show them beginning to appear while awake as well. The frequency is increasing.”
Yunseo looked at the graph. The gaps between the spikes were growing shorter and shorter. A month ago they had been 20 minutes apart. 2 weeks ago, 12. Now, 7. At this rate, in a month the spikes would no longer break. A state in which the ancient senses replayed without rest. The doctor spoke.
“One of the other 3 patients has already reached that stage. That patient can barely use Korean now. Communication is possible only through humming and gestures.”
“There is a way to remove the transplanted genes. But.”
Yunseo waited.
“If we remove the genes, mitochondrial function returns to what it was before the transplant. Cellular energy efficiency drops back to its original level. And then the organ failure begins again. Starting with the liver.”
Yunseo looked at the doctor's face. Listened to the words coming from the doctor's mouth. It was Korean. A language Yunseo knew. And yet, after the doctor's words ended, another sound rang inside Yunseo's head. A low humming. The sound a band makes inside a cave. Not words. A sound from before language. It was resonance. A sound that confirmed being together. The meaning of that sound flowed in not through the head but through the body. A sense never learned, yet already known.
Yunseo left the hospital and walked the streets. It was night. The streetlamps were lit. People passed by. Yunseo heard the sound of their footsteps. Dress shoes, sneakers, boots. And beneath them, another sound came through. Bare feet pressing into earth. Leather soles brushing over stone. The sound of 40,000 years ago lay layered under the sound of now.
Yunseo passed through a park. There was a tree. Yunseo smelled it. It was an oak. Yunseo knew the name, oak. And at the same time, there was another knowing. The knowing that stripping this bark gave you medicine. The knowing that crushing the acorns could draw out their poison. Knowledge Yunseo had never learned. Knowledge the genes taught. Yunseo took a hand from the tree. The rough grain of the bark stayed in the palm. Yunseo sat on a bench. A pigeon was beside it. Yunseo looked at the pigeon. Looked at it as prey. The process of snapping the pigeon's neck, plucking its feathers, drawing out its innards played through Yunseo's head. A process Yunseo had never learned. Yunseo rose from the bench. The pigeon flew off.
Yunseo came home and tried not to fall asleep. If sleep came, the dream would come. In the dream Yunseo would become someone who was not Yunseo. Someone with a low brow and thick, heavy lids. Someone who knapped stone, flayed hide, listened for the cry of a mammoth. Yunseo drank coffee. Left the lights on. Sat. 2 a.m. The coffee went cold. Yunseo drank it. The bitterness stung the tongue. Coffee had not existed 40,000 years ago. Maybe that was why—drinking it pushed the dream back a moment. 3 a.m. The cup was empty. The eyes tried to close. Yunseo opened them. They tried to close. Opened them. The damp of the cave seemed to seep into the room. The shadow of a torch seemed to flicker on the wall. Yunseo turned the lights brighter. The shadow vanished. Did not vanish. It still lingered in the corner of the wall.
At 4 a.m., Yunseo fell asleep.
In the dream Yunseo was being driven out of the band. The leader of the band shoved Yunseo. It was not Yunseo. The owner of this body was being shoved. Out of the cave. It was night. The wind blew. It was the wind of the glacier. A cold that bored into the bone. The band blocked the mouth of the cave. The leader raised a stone in warning. There was no going back inside. Days ago the owner of this body had failed in the hunt. Had brought nothing back to the band to eat. And that was the end of one who had served out his use to the band. The dark outside the cave wrapped around this body. There were stars in the sky. Too many stars. Stars at a density no modern city could show. The river of the galaxy streamed across the sky. The owner of this body looked up. The stars were beautiful but they were not warm. The wind cut the skin. Every hair on the body stood up. Not from the cold. The feeling of a heart dropping to the feet. To be torn from the band, to be alone in a night 40,000 years ago—Yunseo felt the meaning of it in the bone.
Yunseo woke. Weeping. The pillow was wet. Not with tears. With mucus. The nose was running as if it had breathed the cold wind off the glacier. Yunseo blew it and looked at the hands. They were trembling. Not from cold. The room was 23 degrees. Yunseo's body remembered the temperature of the dream. Yunseo pulled the blanket up over the head. Inside the blanket was warm. But there were two kinds of warmth. The warmth of the blanket, and the warmth of lying beside the band and sharing body heat. The latter ran deeper. Yunseo curled up inside the blanket.
Yunseo went to the bathroom. Looked in the mirror. It was Yunseo's own face. Yunseo's face. And yet in the face in the mirror Yunseo saw another face. A face with a low brow. A face with thick, heavy lids. It lay layered over the face in the mirror. Yunseo wiped the mirror with a hand. The layered face did not go away. It was not the mirror's problem. It was the problem of Yunseo's eyes.
Yunseo picked up the phone. Found the doctor's number. Went to dial and stopped. Looked at the thumb resting over the call button. The nails were long. Yunseo always kept them clipped short. There was no knowing when they had grown. Under the nails was packed dirt. Real dirt. Yunseo had washed the hands last night before sleeping. Had touched no soil. Yunseo looked at the dirt beneath the nails. Black, damp dirt. The same color as the dirt of the cave floor. The same texture. Yunseo smelled it. A wet, ancient smell. Yunseo knew where this dirt had come from. Did not want to know, but knew. Yunseo's hand shook. Whether it had been carried back from the dream, or dug up in the night like a sleepwalker, there was no telling. Either way, it was something Yunseo could not control.
Yunseo made the call. The doctor answered. Yunseo said,
"Take it out, please. That gene."
A short silence passed down the line.
"…The organ failure will begin again. Are you sure you'll be all right with that?"
"I know."
Yunseo's voice trembled, but the next words were firm.
"I know that. Even so—"
Yunseo looked in the mirror. In the mirror two faces lay layered over each other.
"I'm… I'm becoming not myself. Even when I wake from the dream, those people don't go away. The smells, the sounds, that face—all of it. Yesterday there was cave dirt packed under my nails, doctor. I'm afraid that at this rate I really won't wake up… or that even if I do, it won't be me."
The doctor said nothing for a moment. Then he set down his pen. "…Before you decide, why not give yourself a little more time to think it over?"
"No. Just book it. The soonest date you have." Yunseo's voice cracked, but it didn't waver. The decision was already made. Organ failure comes slowly. The erasure of the self comes a little at a time, every night, with every dream.
After the call ended, Yunseo looked out the window. It was morning. The cityscape spread out below. Apartments, roads, cars, roadside trees. Yunseo looked at it. And at the same time, another landscape lay over it. A glacier. A plain. Land with no grass. A sky with no birds in it. Two views overlaid in the same eyes. Yunseo knew which one was real. For now. Still knew.
Yunseo opened the window. The wind came in. It was a May wind. Warm. But Yunseo's skin felt the wind off a glacier. Two winds blowing across the same skin. Yunseo didn't close the window. Yunseo stood there, taking the wind, trying to tell which wind it was. Trying to tell the warm wind from the cold one. The telling apart was getting harder and harder.
That night, before falling asleep, Yunseo looked around the room. The bookshelf. The wardrobe. The laptop on the desk. The mug. The photos on the wall. Things Yunseo had gathered over 20 years. These were what made Yunseo Yunseo. The cave in the dream had none of this. Stone and hide and fire and the band. That was all. And yet those simple things were beginning to feel more real. This room was growing stranger and stranger. Yunseo took a book down from the shelf. Looked at the cover. There were letters. They could be read. But the feel of the paper in hand was odd. The paper was foreign. Yunseo set the book down. The smooth touch of the paper lingered on the palm. There was no paper in the cave. They painted on hide with pigment. That felt more natural.
Yunseo scheduled the surgery. Next Tuesday. Gene excision. Once it was done, the cells' energy efficiency would return to what it had been. Organ failure would begin. The liver first. Then the kidneys. Then the heart. Yunseo knew this. Without the surgery, the dreams would go on. The dreams would eat away at the waking hours. Yunseo would vanish, and someone from 40,000 years ago would remain inside Yunseo's body. At the end of neither road was there a 'Yunseo.'
The last night before the surgery. Yunseo sat on the bed. The light left on. Five days to the surgery. Five nights. Five dreams. Yunseo closed both eyes. The instant they shut, the damp of the cave rushed in. The smell of torch smoke. The humming of the band. Yunseo opened them again. It was the room. The light was on. The ceiling was white.
Yunseo closed both eyes again. This time didn't open them. The cave folded around Yunseo. The cold of the earthen floor rose up through the back. A torch flickered. The band was asleep. The breathing of 12 people echoed inside the cave. Yunseo heard it. It was not strange. It was familiar. To be within the band. To not be alone. That feeling spread warm inside Yunseo's chest.
In sleep, the corners of Yunseo's mouth turned up. On the bed. In the cave. Lying in two places at once. The light in the room was on. The torch in the cave was burning. The air conditioner's wind blew. The glacier's wind blew. Yunseo felt the temperature of both places at once. 23 degrees and 30 below. Somewhere between the two, Yunseo was. Three days to Tuesday. Three nights. Yunseo counted. As long as the counting was possible, Yunseo was still Yunseo.
