Two neuroscientists – Graham (45); an overweight insomniac with hemorrhoids, and Isaac (27); a naïve and neurotic romanticizer of LOVE – are about to embark on groundbreaking research into near death experiences and maybe even proof of God; if, of course, their personal lives don’t explode by then.
All Graham really wants is to be some kind of hero to his children whereas Isaac is young and naïve, and hopelessly drunk on the idea of true love. The story follows the two scientists as their trial falls apart along with their personal lives. For Isaac, a string of strange and often hilarious sexual encounters will lead him towards the love of his life while Graham, on a quest to find courage, will find the only thing that ever really mattered – his family.
Faraday’s Cage explores the idiosyncrasies of marriage, casual sex, political correctness, consciousness, identity, and what it means to be happy being average.
“What happens when we die? Is there a somewhere else? Is there an after here? And on that note, who are we by the way? And while we’re at it, who am I? Or maybe the question I should be asking is, what is I? What is the self and where in the brain is it? Is a man inside his home just a man, or is he the house and everything in it? Am I my body or, like the man in the house, am I tucked away, somewhere inside? Am I hiding in the attic, peering out through half-drawn blinds at the world outside? The man inside the house is a resident while I, inside my body, am a person. Where does the man go if his house is demolished brick by brick? Does he cease to exist because his house no longer exists? Then where do I go when my body is demolished atom by atom? Do I cease to exist?”
His questions were met with blank stares.
“I think, therefore I am,” he continued. “But do I think, or do I have a brain and it thinks, and I merely experience a brain thinking. I have a voice inside my head yet I cannot hear it. It’s there, I know it is, but it doesn’t have a sound. I don’t listen to that voice, not like you’re listening to me – I experience it. It doesn’t have a sound and yet I hear it all day long; in fact, I’ve heard it my whole life. And it says, ‘I’ every time. So who is this infamous I person? Is it the voice, or is it me? Am I the voice or am I experiencing the voice? Is the voice merely a feature of the body I inhabit? Like a hungry belly, is the voice just a groaning mind? Would the man inside the house think that the creaking in the walls was his voice too? Would that be the proof that he was the house?"
