Neuroboros Story Outline as of 3/19/2025

A synopsis of Neuroboros, a twisted tale about identity and the nature of consciousness.

The story begins (in a hospital) from the perspective of Chelsea, the daughter of a man who has gone into coma with locked in syndrome. She discovers some of his writings as she’s learning to adjust to his physical needs as a locked in man (and her own—bipolar treatment). 

She discovers an enigmatic notebook and her father's writings about the notebook, which she believes belongs to someone named Alek, and the story then transitions into a memoir of her father she is of the impression was trying to finish (what Chelsea eventually refers to as the “Common Book of Hourglasses”) what he started writing and at some point before she actually recognizes her father’s own words in the notebook, Christian awakens from his coma, and she then begins the process of helping to nurture his memory back during which she  discovers he wishes to right a supposed wrong that he mistakenly accused Alek, the synesthete, of plagiarism (Alek we come to believe is the young man whose notebook Christian has and whose position at the university Christian took over). We are told that Alek turned upon someone (killed) years ago whom he thought was the person responsible for Alek’s ruined reputation.  Reader will eventually have to be unsure whether Alek exists—

climax!—which he did, but rather Christian has killed him. And thus Christian’s mental state unravels, an ironic condition having just gained consciousness! And the reader now must regain interest to identify the author of the “commonbook of hourglasses”

The forthcoming resolution (?) … for Chelsea, she must command the opposing terminal sides of her psyche. Presumably is bipolar. But what is her father’s interest really in finding Alek?

There is no closure as such. the title embedded in the story (common book of HOURGLASSES) hints at this problem of oscillation between impressions of truths, and all upending passages between the seen and the imagined come to the foreground. Who in fact designed the notebook? Who indeed was Alek. Why was Chelsea formerly compelled to finish her father’s story about this Alek? 

A passage extracted from the “commonbook of hourglasses”: 

"1)

Allometry itself is an evolving "law" taking shape like an expanding bubble of conscription... from numinous womb.

(cave's internal wall is consciousness, an invitro framed canvas which later in contemporary human history occupies then envelopes like a phage the museum...

2)...public gallery at once then occupies and fertilizes the ovulating earth's surface which in turn gives birth again a supreme display of forms, wherefrom each animate form scaling law resumes anew (ontogenically-phylogenically).”

***

Anyway, that passage is from Christian’s novel, Commonbook of Hourglasses”  (as Christian would have it and Chelsea endeavored to finish), being that he conceived of it before his coma, but upon “awakening” he has blocked out what really happened to Alek, who is no longer alive or even a fictional character diagnosed with synesthesia anymore. All was invented by Christian trying to solidify his reality via images, knowing words were abandoning him to dementia.

But regardless as a fictional device he thinks in shapes including animated concepts ... the "notebook" is crammed with schematic figures with occasional text like the one above, and so much else which appears as mixed metaphor that his acquaintances think he's merely schizophrenic—because he can't verbalize well for them what he can see and they cannot— 2nd climax! which in fact he was! And a killer.

Anyway, the novel is complex and about so much else... (by way of comparative event shapes—the hourglass in particular implied or otherwise utilized);

Christian in locked-in syndrome shares position of narration with his daughter who is the primary and the story's presumptive author writing a memoir of him.  Christian’s early narration comes from his locked-in state.

The invented synesthete and the locked in character as one occupy the two extremes of isolation as marginalized "others" with the daughter occupying a so-called center, being herself trapped between chaos and calm, trying to find a stable life witnessing an unstable father.

Two additional characters that augment the story:

Dhyey: Alek and Christian’s former university department head.

Doug: To ensure that Alek was real and that he must have been the original owner of the notebook.

• The original notebook was Alek's which Christian had obtained (by stealth before Alek disappeared). 
• Christian had written notes himself intending to write an intrigue about Alek based upon what he extrapolates from the notebook. Chelsea knew of her father's intentions but innitially had only Christian's (Alek’s?) notes, not a draft, rough or finished.

• Chelsea finds a US posted correspondence from Douglas (a university friend of both Alek and Christian) which illuminates the (suspected) reason for Alek’s disappearance(?)

• Dhyey as well talks to Christian while he’s locked-in—what is revealed(?)
• All the while her brothers interrogate her about her involvement, especially after Christian awakens and slowly recovers (?)