short fiction · 2026-10-28

The Neuron's Lament

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

The neuron had fired thirteen times and counted each one like a prayer bead slipping through fingers. It waited for the twenty-fifth, the number the experimenter had whispered into the preparation notes, but the current never came again. Down the axon, the message arrived anyway — carried not by the expected pathway but by a shuffled wire, a connection that should not exist in any textbook. The neuron did not know it was part of an experiment. It only knew the taste of sugar on the right side, the hum of 50 Hz, the silence where a chorus should have been. Somewhere, a descending pathway stayed dark. Somewhere, a scientist wrote in a notebook: fell short of expectation. The neuron, if it could speak, would say: I fired when I could. I counted what I had. The rest is not mine to give.