Operating Instructions

Leslie Vaughan has lost the manual for her brain.

At least, she thinks she must have lost it, but there’s a nagging feeling starting to creep up on her, that she might never have been given a manual in the first place, which would explain why she can’t find it, no matter how hard she tries. Certainly, if she did ever have one, she hasn’t got it now, which is a shame, because she’d really like to look a few things up.

Still, she’s here now, handbook-less, and she’s just going to have to make the best of it. She might not have any instructions for her brain, but she’s certainly got a decent amount of common sense and creativity, which she hopes will get her at least halfway.

She’s got the basics down, for sure. Rest it daily – 7 to 9 hours is preferable. Maintain the casing within which it operates, with frequent supplies of water and other nutrients; regular cleansing of the casing is also a good idea. The brain also requires conceptual fuel: books, films, and Buzzfeed articles seem to do the trick. So far, so good.

Leslie knows you can get upgrade chips for brains, and that seems like a good idea – upgrade is such a positive-sounding word, after all – so she invests in a couple: French, and Representations of Morality in Video Games. Upgrade chips are expensive, it turns out, so she sticks at two, but she’s glad she decided to get them. They add a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole matter of brain ownership.

At this point, Leslie’s done a fair bit of looking around at other brain owners, like sneaking a look at her neighbours’ paper in an exam and, much like looking at other people’s exams, it’s giving her cause for concern. It looks like everyone else has this whole set of chips that she can’t find any record of ever owning. (It doesn’t help that she hasn’t worked out how to list out installed components – where on earth is that manual?) To be honest, she’s struggling even to work out what those chips are meant for – they seem to cover such a wide range of commands. Never take hiking boots when kitten heels will do. Exfoliate, every day. Enthusiasm is only appropriate when talking about the six approved topics for acquaintances. Think about sex always, but talk about it never. Leslie starts to find her conversations filling up with awkward pauses, the exact cause of which she can never quite identify.

Unfortunately for Leslie, she’s not just missing the manual. She doesn’t know it yet, but her model of brain has an increased chance of particular operational failures, and one of them has occurred in her unit. Her worry circuits have blown their regulator, which means they are at high risk of getting into infinite loops. As it happens, they’ve received the signal with the recording of those awkward pauses, and run into overdrive, sweeping over and over and over every moment of space in the conversation. This, Leslie is discovering, makes brain operation considerably more difficult. She’d really like to check the manual, to see if this is intended functionality – but, of course, that’s her whole problem.

With an increasing percentage of processing power diverted to the faulty chips, Leslie starts to find the issue with the chips she seems to be missing much more of a challenge. Does everyone else have modules for how to phone plumbers? For how to wear dresses without feeling like a sore thumb? For how many times it’s okay to cancel social plans because of the tight worry loop in your head? She doesn’t know and, more to the point, she doesn’t know how to find out.

She ends up retreating, and taking solace in the few things she’s certain she can take care of: food, water, rest, and Representations of Morality in Video Games. It might not be the correct approach, but at this point, she’s just fed up with trying to guess what might be in the damn manual.