The Neural Highway – A Short Story

Image source: Bhautik Patel on Unsplash

On most Monday mornings, the parking lots buzzed with a certain vigor. They chattered about all the messages they’d received. Some of them gathered to discuss the ones they had sent. I didn’t really know what to call their particular brand of energy, but my fellow neurons had it in spades.

But on one peculiar Monday, the neurons that filled at my floor couldn’t be spotted anywhere.

I shrugged it off and adhered to my usual routine, heading to my cubicle right at the back. In the hours that followed, I relayed pain from a stubbed toe, sorrow from a crumpling succulent, malodour from a rotting kiwi, and the strains of a hungry mongrel. When all my tasks were done, I realised that my colleagues hadn’t yet turned up.

Eventually they did, but I found them gathered by the water cooler. The muttering paused the second they caught sight of me. I raised a questioning brow, and they instantly embraced me in their fold and unleashed their gossip:

“No more happy messages are coming through.”

“Seri is out of commission.”

They were calling Sero Tonin by her nickname. That meant things were serious.

“Yeah, the Dopes are not showing up either.”

“Are they going to shut down?”

I stepped back. They were starting to suffocate me. “Hold on, what do you mean?”

“The highway is down.”

“Messages are not travelling.”

I tried to calm them down. “Okay let’s think as a team. What can we do about it?”

They shrugged. “Boss got to do something, not us.”

“Yeah, talk to top floor. They need to take action, and they need to do it now.”

“Not an easy job going straight to the top.”

I glanced out the window. “We’re just not receiving as well as we used to, is that right?”

Their shoulders slumped. I glimpsed defeat in their eyes. The bulletin boards stared mute at me. I’d never seen my fellow neurons so united. “We need something special. Boss needs to inject us with the good stuff, you know that.”

I didn’t know that for sure, but I was determined to find out. The informal route seemed best to me, to avoid the various levels of hierarchy and paperwork it might have otherwise required to obtain the information. And I was right. Multiple conversations over coffee relayed the same sentiment across all the departments. The Sensories said they didn’t want to be too touchy-feely about it, but they couldn’t deny being oversensitive – it was in their nature. The Motors longed to let the muscles relax, but for obvious reasons, their natural abilities failed them. And across campus, the Inters simply refused to cooperate with either the Motors or the Sensories, and decision-making completely broke down for a while. Only the Autonomics soldiered on, ushering in the breaths and the food, making sure the pumping of blood went on as normal. Overall, things seemed off compared to before.

I’d like to say I went straight to the top and got matters sorted out within the day. That’s how I imagined things would work – I’d stomp into the offices on the top floor, meet the boss or the seniormost decision-maker who would deign to speak to me, and convince them that problems haunted us minions on the ground.

But the truth is: it took months. Despite the agreement from most of the workers, they dumped a ton of paperwork on me alone that had to be filled out in order to visit the Big Boss. Her secretary, Ms. Thalamus, insisted she wasn’t taking visitors nowadays; the documentation needed to meet her had doubled since the good old days.

Even so, it seemed like eons before I got hold of the actual form. And when I finally did, it was five pages long, most of it asking to regurgitate my work history, special achievements, and the largest space reserved for ‘reason to meet’. The underlings of Ms. Thalamus demanded solid justification for it, their hostility and suspicions of my best intentions leaping off every page.

I put in all my efforts, refused to sleep (I never did so anyway), and it still got rejected.

That’s when I realised my best just wasn’t good enough. Luckily, the offices of the Big Boss, including Ms. Thalamus and her troops, granted me a second chance. They expected my undying gratitude, and I feigned it in my response to their note. But the actual application would need special attention. This time around, I consulted the offices of Mr. Wernicke and Mr. Broca. As the heads of language learning and language production respectively, they shared invaluable insights into the problem areas. They almost rewrote my application for me. I also called in the nervous cavalry for support. And they stepped up better than I expected.

This time my application went through.

It came back with the date and time stamped on it. The glial folks helped me clean up and prep for the meeting with the boss. On the big day, I shrugged into my purpliest tie and my least threadbare suit. Standing in Ms. Thalamus cabin, I felt equal to the occasion and my surroundings. The secretary, however, adjusted her pince-nez and informed me that if she had her way, this meeting would never have gotten through. In fact, she had held a meeting with the boss to disallow the meeting. But the boss had expressed an interest in hearing what I had to say, so she would begrudgingly honor the time she’d given me.

I met the boss in an office the size of our entire floor. She didn’t bat an eye at my tie or blink at the condition of my suit. I put forward my proposal in a detailed presentation that shared facts and figures, and indeed, even the shared sentiment from the departments.

I began. “The way forward is clear. We need to onboard SSRIs, and we need them now.”

She stared blankly at me.

For a brief moment, I panicked. Finding no other alternative, I launched into the informative speech I had prepared:

“SSRIs are Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors. They’re a type of medicine that helps people feel better when they are sad or worried for a long time. You know how Serotonin helps carry “happy” messages that make you feel good? SSRIs act like traffic managers and make sure more of the serotonin lives on, so those happy messages can keep moving around longer.

By letting more of these happy messages flow, SSRIs can make people feel more balanced and less sad or worried over time. They’re like little helpers that keep the "feel-good" signals moving, helping you feel more like yourself again. So, what do you think?”

To her credit she didn’t interrupt. She heard me out, occasionally glancing through the papers while I spoke, flipping a few pages here and there.

“Okay,” she said. “You may leave.”

It sounded so unceremonious that I didn’t really step out when she said it, so she had to grant me the wave of dismissal. And even then, Ms. Thalamus had to step in and haul me out of the room.

It could’ve been six weeks, or it could’ve been more, I don’t really remember, but the Susurrus (the nickname my colleagues and I gave the SSRIs) came on board. And eventually, the messages began seeping through. Sero Tonin began visiting more often, staying longer. The Dopes also followed.

My fellow neurons returned to their usual perky selves. Their dendrites and axons received and sent messages smoothly. My colleagues went back to riding their neurotransmitters with that type of energy – again, I forget what it’s called.

We all gradually fell back into our routine. The glial clan cleaned us up and massaged our spines every day. When the body rested, I returned to helping file memories, prune old connections, and reinforce new ones. I fancied myself the silent sculptor of learning.

Soon, the parking lot wasn’t empty anymore.