Box One

By Paul Ford

It's the box, in your brain, that makes you feel these things.

This is the as-yet-unnamed organ, rarely discussed in anatomy textbooks, that attaches to your spine at the base of your neck. It meters and sometimes halts signals sent from your body to your brain, and vice-versa, managing the interactions between your emotions, intellect, and actions. Medical researchers have also implicated the internal structure as the stimulating agent for a variety of other human functions, including the need for spirituality and the desire to speak with the dead.

These same researchers have identified several discrete assemblies of cells; one controls sexual impulses, keeping the brain from encouraging the body in any action that feels too free or vulnerable; another controls language, managing the expression of affection and kindness. Still others (there are over 600) control the avaricious appetite, and the expression of trust, and the need for contact.

We'll discuss this more later.

Prisoners and lunatics have malfunctioning versions of the structure, sometimes with the top and bottom ganglionic extensions reversed. Those raised in strictly religious homes have an extremely well-defined limiter/resistor arrangement, and often the organ (one cm or less in average humans) extends and grows over the entire body. In extreme cases, the organ can take over the brain and muscle function, creating a contant conflict of intent, rendering the victim incapable of either action or thought without extreme effort. Such victims often give off visible electric charges. Still others show a reversal phenomenon, where desire and effort yield the exact opposite result; examples here include the woman who will just "be good" about sleeping with men, yet goes home with one that night, the perpetual dieter who eats compulsively, and the child who wants to be nice to his mother, but throws something at her anyway.

After reading the recent reports, I have been thinking about this strange organ for a week or more, and this is my first attempt to sketch it. More will follow, along more detail on its function.