Dr. Brain

The archetype of Dr. Brain emerged in the mid-20th century, a product of the cybernetics boom and the early dawn of artificial intelligence. Where other scientists looked to the stars or the atom, Dr. Brain looked inward, at the three pounds of jelly inside the human skull. This character is defined by a singular, obsessive hypothesis:

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In the final scene of the Dr. Brain series, Sewon Koh sits in a quiet room. He has solved the mystery. He has avenged his family. But he is alone. Because in learning to read the code of everyone else's brain, he forgot to write his own heart.

The tragedy of the character is the same as the tragedy of Icarus. He flies closest to the sun of pure reason, only to find that the sun is cold. The brain, he discovers, is not a computer. It is a story. And stories cannot be downloaded. They must be lived.