Week 7 Story: Taylor's Magical Brain Scanner

Taylor was a computer engineer and always described computers as magical because they compute data in milliseconds, spread knowledge and ideas, and perform seemingly impossible tasks. People would say, "Oh ya, I guess computers are like magic," but Taylor's belief went further than that.

When he became a father to a young boy, Ashten, through adoption. Taylor instilled this belief into his son by making up bed-time stories in which computers and technology performed magic. They were the heroes and sometimes the villains of every story. Taylor would often take inspiration from the Turkish myths and fairy tales his own parents told him when he grew up, passing along the oral tradition of the family but with a twist!

A few days after Ashten turned 19, his father became sick - he was nauseous regularly, had tremors in his hands, and seized frequently. They went to about 5 doctors including specialists, but no one could tell them why he was so sick. The only thing they knew was that it was a condition of the brain. Ashten turned to computers for a miracle, researching new diagnostic technology and treatments for the symptoms. They tried a few of these new techniques but nothing helped. Ashten was desperate to save his father, but he couldn't. Taylor died a few months later.

Ashten was angry - angry at his father for leaving him, angry at himself for failing his father, and most of all, angry at technology for betraying them both. Above all else he was sad and empty; he had lost his father and his best friend. One night when he was crying, he vowed to himself and his father that he would improve technology, creating something that would have helped his father. He went to college and double majored in computer science and computer engineering, following in his father's footsteps. 

After two years of college, Ashten went home to go through his childhood home before his mother sold their house. In his father's office, he found a set of drawings and notes that described instrument that linked one's mind to a computer. It seemed almost as if the tool would map out the brain, searching for malfunctioning synoptic connections, chemicals, and regions. It was an innovative, almost magical design, and Ashten thought to himself, "This is it!" For the next two years he worked tirelessly on a model of the design, tweaking it here and there. It became a product of himself and his father, merging the knowledge of the two minds. After patenting the design, he teamed up with a hospital laboratory to start testing its effectiveness in diagnosing diseases and conditions relating to the brain. Later, Taylor's Magical Brain Scanner became revolutionary in the field, making it easier to diagnose a multitude of conditions. It saved the lives of those suffering from similar conditions as Taylor.

Ashten turned his anger, frustration, love, and belief into something powerful, something that connected him to his father, something that would save lives by providing early diagnoses.

Author's Note: This retelling is based on a Turkish story called, The Fish-Peri, by Ignacz Kunos. In the original the father is a fisherman, who is embarrassed by his trade and makes his wife promise that his wife will not share his trade with their son. However, after the mother died, the son discovered his father's fishing net and began to fish for to sustain himself. One day, he caught a magical fish and kept it in his well. When the son left for the day, the fish would turn into a maiden and clean the house. The son eventually catches the maiden and throws her fish skin in the fire so she can no longer turn back into a fish. I wanted to expand more on the relationship between the father and the son, creating a shared love/belief in something. I also wanted to explore a different type of magic by incorporating magic into technology. This helps change the context of the story, placing it in more modern terms. I changed most of the story, only keeping the death of the father and the discovery of something magical.

Image information: Computer Magic by Sarah

Bibliography:

The Fish-Peri; story source: Forty-four Turkish Fairy Tales by Ignacz Kunos (1913)