A Theory About Consciousness

After dinner.

Back in his room.

Baimu tried to help Zweilous understand that he had grown a second head. He also wanted to figure out whether this fellow was now "two" Deino or still "one" Deino.

The reason was simple.

The two heads moved far too perfectly in sync.

From lowering their heads to chewing, swallowing, and crying out for attention, even their burps came at the same time. It was hard not to wonder.

After all, even if the new head had formed when the old one split in two, they would not necessarily do the same things once they became separate individuals.

Unless a single consciousness was issuing the same command to different parts of the body at once.

From what Baimu had learned from Awu, no one had really agonized over it. One head or two, Zweilous was still Zweilous. That did not change.

As long as it caused him no harm, most residents of Dragon Village had no interest in digging too deeply into such abstruse questions.

Most, that was.

Awu had given him the number of a Dragon Village native who, instead of becoming a Trainer, had entered Celadon University and gone into Pokémon ecology research.

The two had talked at length about Zweilous.

Among the topics they discussed

was the research Pokémon scholars had done on multiheaded Pokémon.

The researchers, however, had several competing theories, and each held firmly to their own.

One scholar believed that when Deino evolved, his single consciousness split into two. Both inherited the same memories, so their habits and behavior remained similar, but they were fundamentally separate individuals.

The scholar cited Dugtrio as another example of a Pokémon that went from one to several.

A second scholar countered that if one of Zweilous's heads died, the other could not