My stomach tightens even more, and I realize it is not fear but excitement. He may be better than Tom. He will win, but I will learn. He moves sideways, and I follow. He makes several more attacks, all fast, and I manage to parry them all, though I do not attack. I want to see his pattern, and it is very different. Again, again. Low high high low low high low low low high high: anticipating the next, I launch my own attack as his comes low again, and this time he does not quite parry mine and I get a light glancing touch on his shoulder.
“Good,” he says, stepping back. “Excellent.” I glance at Tom, who nods and grins. Max clenches his hands together over his head; he is grinning, too. I feel a little sick. In the moment of contact, I saw Don’s face and felt the blow I gave and saw him fold over when I hit him. I shake my head.
“Are you all right?” Tom asks. I do not want to say anything. I do not know if I want to go on.
“I could use a break,” Simon says, though we have only fenced a couple of minutes. I feel stupid; I know he is doing it for me, and I should not be upset, but I am upset. Now it comes again and again, the feel in my hand, the smell of Don’s breath whooshing out, the sound and sight and feel all together. Part of my mind remembers the book, the discussion of memory and stress and trauma, but most of it is simply misery, a tight spiral of sadness and fear and anger all tied together.
I struggle, blinking, and a phrase of music ripples through my mind; the spiral opens out again and lifts away. “I… am… all… right…” I say. It is still hard to talk, but already I feel better. I lift my blade; Simon steps back and lifts his.
We salute again. This time his attack is just as fast but different; I cannot read his pattern at all and decide to attack anyway. His blade gets past my parry and hits low on the left abdomen. “Good,” I say.
“You are making me work entirely too hard,” Simon says. I can hear that he is breathing hard; I know I am. “You almost got me four times.”
“I missed that parry,” I say. “It wasn’t strong enough—”
“Let’s see if you make that mistake again,” he says. He salutes, and this time I am the one to attack first. I do not get a touch, and his attacks seem to be faster than mine; I must parry two or three times before I can see an opening. Before I get a touch, he has made one on my right shoulder.
“Definitely too hard,” he says. “Lou, you are quite a fencer. I thought so at the tournament; first-timers never win and you had some first-timer problems, but it was clear you knew what you were doing. Did you ever consider taking up classical fencing?”
“No,” I say. “I just know Tom and Lucia—”
“You should think about it. Tom and Lucia are better trainers than most backyard fencers—” Simon grins at Tom, who makes a face back at him. “But some classical technique would improve your footwork. What got you that last time wasn’t speed but the extra reach that came from my knowing exactly how to place my foot for the best extension with the least exposure.” Simon takes off his mask, hangs his épée on the outdoor rack, and holds out his hand to me. “Thanks, Lou, for a good round. When I catch my breath, maybe we can fight again.”
“Thank you,” I say, and shake his hand. Simon’s grasp is firmer than Tom’s. I am out of breath; I hang up my blade and put my mask under an empty chair and sit down. I wonder if Simon really likes me or if he will be like Don and hate me later. I wonder if Tom has told him I am autistic.
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
“Good,” he says, stepping back. “Excellent.” I glance at Tom, who nods and grins. Max clenches his hands together over his head; he is grinning, too. I feel a little sick. In the moment of contact, I saw Don’s face and felt the blow I gave and saw him fold over when I hit him. I shake my head.
“Are you all right?” Tom asks. I do not want to say anything. I do not know if I want to go on.
“I could use a break,” Simon says, though we have only fenced a couple of minutes. I feel stupid; I know he is doing it for me, and I should not be upset, but I am upset. Now it comes again and again, the feel in my hand, the smell of Don’s breath whooshing out, the sound and sight and feel all together. Part of my mind remembers the book, the discussion of memory and stress and trauma, but most of it is simply misery, a tight spiral of sadness and fear and anger all tied together.
I struggle, blinking, and a phrase of music ripples through my mind; the spiral opens out again and lifts away. “I… am… all… right…” I say. It is still hard to talk, but already I feel better. I lift my blade; Simon steps back and lifts his.
We salute again. This time his attack is just as fast but different; I cannot read his pattern at all and decide to attack anyway. His blade gets past my parry and hits low on the left abdomen. “Good,” I say.
“You are making me work entirely too hard,” Simon says. I can hear that he is breathing hard; I know I am. “You almost got me four times.”
“I missed that parry,” I say. “It wasn’t strong enough—”
“Let’s see if you make that mistake again,” he says. He salutes, and this time I am the one to attack first. I do not get a touch, and his attacks seem to be faster than mine; I must parry two or three times before I can see an opening. Before I get a touch, he has made one on my right shoulder.
“Definitely too hard,” he says. “Lou, you are quite a fencer. I thought so at the tournament; first-timers never win and you had some first-timer problems, but it was clear you knew what you were doing. Did you ever consider taking up classical fencing?”
“No,” I say. “I just know Tom and Lucia—”
“You should think about it. Tom and Lucia are better trainers than most backyard fencers—” Simon grins at Tom, who makes a face back at him. “But some classical technique would improve your footwork. What got you that last time wasn’t speed but the extra reach that came from my knowing exactly how to place my foot for the best extension with the least exposure.” Simon takes off his mask, hangs his épée on the outdoor rack, and holds out his hand to me. “Thanks, Lou, for a good round. When I catch my breath, maybe we can fight again.”
“Thank you,” I say, and shake his hand. Simon’s grasp is firmer than Tom’s. I am out of breath; I hang up my blade and put my mask under an empty chair and sit down. I wonder if Simon really likes me or if he will be like Don and hate me later. I wonder if Tom has told him I am autistic.
Chapter Sixteen
“I’m sorry,” Lucia says; she has come outside with her gear and sits beside me on my right. “I should not have blown up like that.”
“I am not upset,” I say. I am not, now that I know she knows what was wrong and is not doing it.
“Good. Look… I know that you like Marjory and she likes you. Don’t let this mess with Don ruin it for you, okay?”
“I do not know if Marjory likes me in a special way,” I say. “Don said she does, but she has not said she does.”
“I know. It’s difficult. Grownups are not as direct as preschoolers and make a lot of trouble for themselves that way.”
Marjory comes out of the house, zipping up her fencing jacket. She grins at me or at Lucia—I am not sure of the direction of her grin—as the zipper jams. “I have been eating too many doughnuts,” she says. “Or not walking enough or something.”
“Here—” Lucia holds out her hand, and Marjory comes over so that Lucia can unjam the zipper and help her. I did not know that holding out a hand was a signal for offering help. I thought holding out a hand was a signal for asking help. Maybe it only goes with “here.”
“Do you want to fence, Lou?” Marjory asks me.
“Yes,” I say. I can feel my face getting hot. I put my mask on and pick up my épée. “Do you want to use épée and dagger?”
“Sure,” Marjory says. She puts her mask on and I cannot see her face, only the gleam of her eyes and her teeth when she speaks. I can see the shape of her under the fencing jacket, though. I would like to touch that shape, but that is not appropriate. Only boyfriends with their girlfriends.
Marjory salutes. She has a simpler pattern than Tom’s and I could make a touch, but then it would be over. I parry, thrust short, parry again. When our blades touch, I can feel her hand through the connection; we are touching without touching. She circles, reverses, moves back and forth, and I move with her. It is like some kinds of dance, a pattern of movement, except for not having music. I sort through the music I remember, trying to find the right music for this dance. It gives me a strange feeling to match my pattern to hers, not to defeat her but just to feel that connection, that touch-and-touch of blades to hands and back.
Paganini. The First Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 6, the third movement. It is not exactly right, but it is closer than anything else I can think of. Stately but quick, with the little breaks where Marjory does not keep an exact rhythm changing directions. In my mind, I speed up or slow the music to stay with our movements.
I wonder what Marjory hears. I wonder if she can hear the music I hear. If we were both thinking of the same music, would we hear it the same way? Would we be in phase or out? I hear the sounds as color on dark; she might hear the sounds as dark lines on light, as music is printed.
If we put the two together, would they cancel out sight, dark on light and light on dark? Or…
Marjory’s touch breaks the chain of thought. “Good,” I say, and step back. She nods, and we salute again.
I read something once where thinking was described as light and not thinking as dark. I am thinking about other things while we fence, and Marjory was faster to make a touch than I was. So if she is not thinking about other things, did this not-thinking make her faster, and is that dark faster than the light of my not-thinking?
I do not know what the speed of thought is. I do not know if the speed of thought is the same for everyone. Is it thinking faster or thinking further that makes different thinking different?
The violin rises up in a spiraling pattern and Marjory’s pattern falls apart and I sweep forward in the dance that is now a solo dance and make my touch on her.
“Good,” she says, and steps back. Her body is moving with the deep breaths she’s taking. “You wore me out, Lou; that was a long one.”
“How about me?” Simon says. I would like to be with Marjory more, but I liked fencing Simon before and want to do that, too.
This time the music starts when we do, different music. Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy … perfect for the feline prowl that is Simon circling me, looking for an opening, and for my intense concentration. I never thought I could dance before—it was a social thing, and I always got stiff and clumsy. Now—with a blade in hand—it feels right to move to the internal music.
Simon is better than I am, but it does not bother me. I am eager to see what he can do, what I can do. He gets a touch, another one, but then I get another one on him. “Best of five?” he asks. I nod, breathless. This time neither of us gets a touch right away; this time we fight on and on, until I finally make another touch, more by luck than skill. We are even now. The others are quiet, watching. I can feel their interest, a warm space on my back as I circle. Forward, sideways, around, back. Simon knows and counters every move I make; I am just able to counter his. Finally he does something I do not even see—his blade reappears just where I thought I had parried it away, and he gets the final touch of the match.
I am dripping with sweat even though it is a cool night. I am sure I smell bad, and I am surprised when Marjory comes up to me and touches my arm.
“That was gorgeous, Lou,” she says. I take off my mask. Her eyes are gleaming; the smile on her face goes all the way to her hair.
“I am sweaty,” I say.
“So you should be, after that,” she says. “Wow again. I didn’t know you could fence like that.”
“Neither did I,” I say.
“Now that we know,” Tom said, “we’ve got to get you to more tournaments. What do you think, Simon?”
“He’s more than ready. The top fencers in the state can take him, but once he gets over tournament nerves, they’ll have to work at it.”
“So, would you like to come with us to another tournament, Lou?” Tom asks.
I feel cold all the way through. I think they mean to do something nice for me, but Don got mad at me because of the tournament. What if someone gets mad at me every tournament and because of me one after another have to have a PDD chip?
“It is all day Saturday,” I say.
“Yes, and sometimes all day Sunday as well,” Lucia says. “Is that a problem?”
“It—I go to church on Sunday,” I say.
Marjory looks at me. “I didn’t know you went to church, Lou,” she says. “Well, you could just go on Saturday… What’s the problem with Saturdays, Lou?”
I have no answer ready. I do not think they will understand if I tell them about Don. They are all looking at me, and I feel myself folding together inside. I do not want them to be angry.
“The next tournament nearby is after Thanksgiving,” Simon says. “No need to decide tonight.” He is looking at me curiously. “Are you worried about someone not counting hits again, Lou?”
“No…” I feel my throat closing up. I close my eyes to steady myself. “It is Don,” I say. “He was angry at the tournament. I think that is why he… got so upset. I do not want that to happen to anyone else.”
“It is not your fault,” Lucia says. But she sounds angry. This is what happens, I think. People get angry about me even when they are not angry with me. It does not have to be my fault for me to cause it.
“I see your point,” Marjory says. “You don’t want to make trouble, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“And you cannot be sure that no one will be angry with you.”
“Yes.”
“But—Lou—people get mad at other people for no reason, too. Don was angry with Tom. Other people may have been angry with Simon; I know people have been angry with me. That just happens. As long as people aren’t doing anything wrong, they can’t stop and think all the time if it is making someone else angry.”
“Maybe it does not bother you as much,” I say.
She gives me a look that I can tell is supposed to mean something, but I cannot tell what. Would I know if I were normal? How do normal people learn what these looks mean?
“Maybe it doesn’t,” she says. “I used to think it was always my fault. I used to worry about it more. But that is—” She pauses and I can tell she is searching for a polite word. I know that because so often I am slow speaking when I am searching for a polite word. “It is hard to know how much to worry about it,” she says finally.
“Yes,” I say.
“People who want you to think everything is your fault are the problem,” Lucia says. “They always blame other people for their feelings, especially anger.”
“But some anger is justified,” Marjory says. “I don’t mean with Lou and Don; Lou didn’t do anything wrong. That was all Don’s jealousy getting the better of him. But I see what Lou means, that he doesn’t want to be the cause of someone else’s getting in trouble.”
“He won’t,” Lucia says. “He’s not the type.” She gives me a look, a different look than Marjory gave me. I am not sure what this look means, either.
“Lucia, why don’t you fight Simon,” Tom says. Everyone stops and looks at him.
Lucia’s mouth is a little open. Then she closes it with a little snap. “Fine,” she says. “It’s been a long time. Simon?”
“My pleasure,” he says, smiling.
I watch Lucia and Simon. He is better than she is, but he is not making as many points as he could. I can tell that he is fighting at the edge of her level, not using everything he could. That is very polite. I am aware of Marjory beside me, of the smell of the dry leaves that have drifted against the stone edging, of the chilly breeze on the back of my neck. It feels good.
By nine it is more than chilly; it is cold. We all go inside, and Lucia fixes a kettle of hot chocolate. It is the first time this year. The others are all talking; I sit with my back against the green leather hassock and try to listen while I watch Marjory. She uses her hands a lot when she talks. A couple of times, she flaps them in the way that I was told was a sign of autism. I have seen other people do that, too, and always wondered if they were autistic or partly autistic.
They are talking about tournaments now—ones they remember from the past, who won and who lost and who was the referee and how people behaved. Nobody mentions Don. I lose track of the names; I do not know the people. I cannot understand why “Bart is such a toad” from what they say about Bart, and I am sure they do not mean that Bart is actually an amphibian with warty skin, any more than Don was an actual heel. My gaze shifts from Marjory to Simon to Tom to Lucia to Max to Susan and back, trying to keep up with who is speaking when, but I cannot anticipate when one is going to stop and another is going to start, or which. Sometimes there is a break of two or three seconds between speakers, and sometimes one starts while another is still talking.
It is fascinating, in its way. It is like watching almost-patterns in a chaotic system. Like watching molecules break apart and re-form as a solutions balance shifts this way and that. I keep feeling that I almost understand it, and then something happens I did not anticipate. I do not know how they can participate and keep track of it at the same time.
Gradually I am able to notice that everyone pauses if Simon speaks and lets him into the conversation. He does not interrupt often, but no one interrupts him. One of my teachers said that the person who is speaking indicates who he expects to speak next by glancing at them. At that time I usually could not tell where someone was looking unless they looked there a long time. Now I can follow most glances. Simon glances at different people. Max and Susan always glance first at Simon, giving him priority. Tom glances at Simon about half the time. Lucia glances at Simon about a third of the time. Simon does not always speak again when someone glances at him; that person then glances at someone else.
But it is so fast: how can they see it all? And why does Tom glance at Simon some of the time and not the rest of the time? What tells him when to glance at Simon?
I realize that Marjory is watching me and feel my face and neck go hot. The voices of the others blur; my vision clouds. I want to hide in the shadows, but there are no shadows. I look down. I listen for her voice, but she is not talking much.
Then they start on equipment: steel blades versus composites, old steel versus new steel. Everyone seems to prefer steel, but Simon talks about a recent formal match he saw in which composite blades had a chip in the grip to emit a steel-like sound when the blades touched. It was weird, he says.
Then he says he has to go and stands up. Tom stands up, too, and Max. I stand up. Simon shakes Tom’s hand and says, “It was fun—thanks for the invitation.”
Tom says, “Anytime.”
Max puts out his hand and says, “Thanks for coming; it was an honor.”
Simon shakes his hand and says, “Anytime.”
I do not know whether to put out my hand or not, but Simon quickly offers his so I shake it even though I do not like to shake hands—it seems so pointless—and then he says, “Thanks, Lou; I enjoyed it.”
“Anytime,” I say. There is a moment’s tension in the room, and I am worried that I said something inappropriate—even though I was copying Tom and Max—and then Simon taps my arm with his finger.
“I hope you change your mind about tournaments,” he says. “It was a pleasure.”
“Thank you,” I say.
While Simon goes out the door, Max says, “I have to leave, too,” and Susan uncoils from the floor. It is time to leave. I look around; all the faces look friendly, but I thought Don’s face looked friendly. If one of them is angry with me, how would I know?
On Thursday we have the first of the medical briefings where we have been able to ask the doctors questions. There are two doctors, Dr. Ransome, with the curly gray hair, and Dr. Handsel, who has straight dark hair that looks as if it had been glued onto his head.
“It is reversible?” Linda asks.
“Well… no. Whatever it does, it does.”
“So if we don’t like it, we can’t go back to being our normal selves?”
Our selves are not normal to start with, but I do not say that aloud. Linda knows it as well as I do. She is making a joke.
“Er… no, you can’t. Probably. But I don’t see why—”
“I’d want to?” Cameron says. His face is tense. “I like who I am now. I do not know if I will like who I become.”
“It shouldn’t be that different,” Dr. Ransome says.
But every difference is a difference. I am not the same person as before Don began to stalk me. Not only what he did but meeting those police officers has changed me. I know about something I didn’t know before, and knowledge changes people. I raise my hand.
“Yes, Lou,” Dr. Ransome says.
“I do not understand how it can not change us,” I say. “If it normalizes our sensory processing, that will change the rate and kind of data input, and that will change our perceptions, and our processing—”
“Yes, but you—your personality—will be the same, or much the same. You will like the same things; you will react the same—”
“Then what’s the change for?” Linda asks. She sounds angry; I know she is more worried than angry. “They tell us they want us to change, to not need the supports we need—but if we do not need them, then that means our likes and dislikes have changed… doesn’t it?”
“I’ve spent so much time learning to tolerate overload,” Dale says. “What if that means I suddenly don’t pick up on things I should?” His left eye flickers, ticcing wildly.
“We don’t think any of that will happen,” the doctor says again. “The primatologists found only positive changes in social interaction—”
“I’m not a fucking chimp!” Dale slams his hand down on the table. For a moment his left eye stays open; then it starts ticcing again.
The doctor looks shocked. Why should he be surprised that Dale is upset? Would he like to have his behavior presumed on the basis of a primatologist’s studies of chimpanzees? Or is this something normals do? Do they see themselves as just like other primates? I can’t believe that.
“No one’s suggesting you are,” the doctor says, in a slightly disapproving voice. “It’s just that… they’re the best model we have. And they had recognizable personalities after treatment, with only the social deficits changed…”
All the chimps in the world now live in protected environments, zoos, or research establishments. Once they lived wild, in the forests of Africa. I wonder if the autistic-like chimpanzees would have been that way in the wild or if the stress of living as prisoners has changed them.
A slide lights up the screen. “This is the normal brain’s activity pattern when picking a known face from a photograph of several faces,” he says. There is a gray outline of a brain, with little glowing green spots. Thanks to my reading, I recognize some of the locations… no, I recognize the slide. It is illustration 16-43.d, from chapter 16 of Brain Functionality. “And here—” The slide changes. “This is the autistic brain’s activity pattern during the same task.” Another gray outline with little glowing green spots. Illustration 16-43.C from the same chapter.
I try to remember the captions in the book. I do not think that the text said the first was normal brain activity when picking a known face from a photographed group. I think it was normal brain activity when viewing a familiar face. A composite of… yes, I remember. Nine healthy male volunteers recruited from college students according to a protocol approved by the human ethics research committee…
Another slide is already showing. Another gray outline, another set of colored splotches, these blue. The doctor’s voice drones on. This is another slide I recognize. I struggle to remember what the book said and hear what he is saying, but I cannot. The words are tangling.
I raise my hand. He stops and says, “Yes, Lou?”
“Can we have a copy of this, to look at later? It is hard to take in all at once.”
He frowns. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lou. This is still proprietary—very confidential. If you want to know more, you can ask me or your counselor questions and you can look at the slides again, though”—he chuckles—“I don’t think they’ll mean much since you’re not a neurologist.”
“I’ve read some,” I say.
“Really…” His voice softens to a drawl. “What have you read, Lou?”
“Some books,” I say. Suddenly I do not want to tell him what book I have been reading, and I do not know why.
“About the brain?” he asks.
“Yes—I wanted to understand how it worked before you did anything with the treatment.”
“And… did you understand it?”
“It’s very complicated,” I say. “Like a parallel-processing computer, only more so.”
“You’re right; it’s very complicated,” he says. He sounds satisfied. I think he is glad I did not say I understood it. I wonder what he would say if I told him that I recognize those illustrations.
Cameron and Dale are looking at me. Even Bailey gives me a quick glance and looks away. They want to know what I know. I do not know if I should tell them, partly because I do not yet know what I know—what it means in this context.
I put aside thoughts of the book and just listen, meanwhile memorizing the slides as they come and go. I do not take in information as well this way—none of us do—but I think I can retain enough to compare it to the book later.
Eventually the slides change from gray outlines of brains with colored spots to molecules. I do not recognize them; they are not anything in the organic chemistry book. But I do recognize a hydroxy group here, an amino group there.
“This enzyme regulates gene expression of neural growth factor eleven,” the doctor says. “In normal brains, this is part of a feedback loop that interacts with attention control mechanisms to build in preferential processing of socially important signals—that’s one of the things you people have a problem with.”
He has given up any pretense that we are anything but cases.
“It’s also part of the treatment package for autistic newborns, those who weren’t identified and treated in utero, or for the children who suffer certain childhood infections that interfere with normal brain development. What our new treatment does is modify it—because it functions like this only in the first three years of development—so that it can affect the neural growth of the adult brain.“
“So—it makes us pay attention to other people?” Linda asks.
“No, no—we know you already do that. We’re not like those idiots back in the mid-twentieth century who thought autistics were just ignoring people. What it does is help you attend to social signals–facial expression, vocal tone, gesture, that kind of thing.”
Dale makes a rude gesture; the doctor does not attend to it. I wonder if he really did not see or he chose to ignore it.
“But don’t people have to be trained—like blind people were—to interpret new data?”
“Of course. That’s why there’s a training phase built into the treatment. Simulated social encounters, using computer-generated faces—” Another slide, this one of a chimpanzee with its upper lip curled and its lower lip pouted out. We all break into roars of laughter, uncontrollable. The doctor flushes angrily. “Sorry—that’s the wrong slide. Of course it’s the wrong slide. Human faces, I mean, and practice in human social interactions. We’ll do a baseline assessment and then you’ll have two to four months of post-treatment training—”
“Looking at monkey faces!” Linda says, laughing so hard she’s almost crying. We are all giggling.
“I said it was a mistake,” the doctor says. “We have trained psychotherapists to lead the intervention… It’s a serious matter.”
The chimpanzee’s face has been replaced by a picture of a group of people sitting in a circle; one is talking and the others are listening intently. Another slide, this time of someone in a clothing store talking to a salesperson. Another, of a busy office with someone on a phone. It all looks very normal and very boring. He does not show a picture of someone in a fencing tournament or someone talking to the police after a mugging in a parking lot. The only picture with a policeman in it could be titled Asking Directions. The policeman, with a stiff smile on his face, has one arm outstretched, pointing; the other person has a funny hat, a little backpack, and a book that says Tourist Guidebook on the cover.
It looks posed. All the pictures look posed, and the people may not even be real people. They could be—probably are—computer composites. We are supposed to become normal, real people, but they expect us to learn from these unreal, imaginary people in contrived, posed situations. The doctor and his associates assume they know the situations we deal with or will need to deal with and they will teach us how to deal with those. It reminds me of those therapists in the last century who thought they knew what words someone needed to know and taught an “essential” vocabulary. Some of them even told parents not to let children learn other words, lest it impede their learning of the essential vocabulary.
Such people do not know what they do not know. My mother used to recite a little verse that I did not understand until I was almost twelve, and one line of it went: “Those who know not, and know not they know not, are fools…” The doctor does not know that I needed to be able to deal with the man at the tournament who would not call hits and the jealous would-be lover in the fencing group and the various police officers who took reports on vandalism and threats.
Now the doctor is talking about the generalization of social skills. He says that after the treatment and training our social skills should generalize to all situations in everyday life. I wonder what he would have thought of Don’s social skills.
I glance at the clock. The seconds flick over, one after another; the two hours are nearly done. The doctor asks if there are any questions. I look down. The questions I want to ask are not appropriate in a meeting like this, and I do not think he will answer them anyway.
“When do you think you would start?” Cameron asks.
“We would like to start with the first subject—uh, patient—as soon as possible. We could have everything in place by next week.”
“How many at once?” asks Bailey.
“Two. We would like to do two at a time, three days apart—this ensures that the primary medical team can concentrate on those during the first few critical days.”
“What about waiting after the first two until they complete treatment to see if it works?” Bailey asks.
The doctor shakes his head. “No, it’s better to have the whole cohort close in time.”
“Makes it faster to publication,” I hear myself say.
“What?” the doctor asks.
The others are looking at me. I look at my lap.
“If we all do it fairly quickly and together, then you can write it up and get it published faster. Otherwise it would be a year or more.” I glance quickly at his face; his cheeks are red and shiny again.
“That’s not the reason,” he says, a little loudly. “It’s just that the data are more comparable if the subjects—if you—are all close in time. I mean, suppose something happened that changed things between the time the first two started and finished… something that affected the rest of you—”
“Like what, a bolt from the blue that makes us normal?” Dale asks. “You’re afraid we’ll get galloping normality and be unsuitable subjects?”
“No, no,” the doctor says. “More like something political that changes attitudes…”
I wonder what the government is thinking. Do governments think? The chapter in Brain Functionality on the politics of research protocols comes to mind. Is something about to happen, some regulation or change in policy, which would make this research impossible in a few months?
That is something I can find out when I get home. If I ask this man, I do not think he will give me an honest answer.
When we leave, we walk at angles, all out of rhythm with one another. We used to have a way of merging, accommodating one another’s peculiarities, so that we moved as a group. Now we move without harmony. I can sense the confusion, the anger. No one talks. I do not talk. I do not want to talk with them, who have been my closest associates for so long.
When we are back in our own building, we go quickly into our individual offices. I sit down and start to reach for the fan. I stop myself, and then I wonder why I stopped myself.
I do not want to work. I want to think about what it is they want to do to my brain and think about what it means. It means more than they say; everything they say means more than it says. Beyond the words is the tone; beyond the tone is the context; beyond the context is the unexplored territory of normal socialization, vast and dark as night, lit by the few pinpricks of similar experience, like stars.
Starlight, one writer said, perfuses the entire universe: the whole thing glows. The dark is an illusion, that writer said. If that is so, then Lucia was right and there is no speed of dark.
But there is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias. So I think there may be positive darkness, and I think dark can have a speed.
The books tell me that my brain works very well, even as it is, and that it is much easier to derange the functions of the brain than to repair them. If normal people really can do all the things that are claimed for them, it would be helpful to have that ability… but I am not sure they do.
They do not always understand why other people act as they do. That is obvious when they argue about their reasons, their motives. I have heard someone tell a child, “You are only doing that to annoy me,” when it is clear to me that the child was doing it because the child enjoyed the act itself… was oblivious to its effect on the adult. I have been oblivious like that, so I recognize it in others.
My phone buzzes. I pick it up. “Lou it is Cameron. Do you want to go to supper and have pizza?” His voice runs the words together, mechanically.
“It is Thursday,” I say. “Hi-I’m-Jean is there.”
“Chuy and Bailey and I are going anyway, so we can talk. And you, if you come. Linda is not coming. Dale is not coming.”
“I do not know if I want to come,” I say. “I will think about it. You will go when?”
“As soon as it is five,” he says.
“There are places it is not a good idea to talk about this,” I say.
“The pizza place is not one of those places,” Cameron says.
“Many people know we go there,” I say.
“Surveillance?” Cameron says.
“Yes. But it is a good thing to go there, because we go there. Then meet somewhere else.”
“The Center.”
“No,” I say, thinking of Emmy. “I do not want to go to the Center.”
“Emmy likes you,” Cameron says. “She is not very intelligent, but she likes you.”
“We are not talking about Emmy,” I say.
“We are talking about the treatment, after pizza,” Cameron says. “I do not know where to go except the Center.”
I think of places, but they are all public places. We should not talk about this in public places. Finally I say, “You could come to my apartment.” I have never invited Cameron to my apartment. I have never invited anyone to my apartment.
He is silent a long moment. He has never invited me to his home, either. Finally he says, “I will come. I do not know about the others.”
“I will come to eat supper with you,” I say.
I cannot get to work. I turn on the fan and the spin spirals and pin-wheels turn, but the dancing colored reflections do not soothe me. All I can think about is the project looming over us. It is like the picture of an ocean wave towering over someone on a surfboard. The skillful surfer can survive, but the one who is less skilled will be smashed. How can we ride this wave?
I write and print out my address and the directions from the pizza place to my apartment. I have to stop and look at the city map to be sure the directions are right. I am not used to giving directions to other drivers.
At five, I turn off the fan, get up, and leave my office. I have done nothing useful for hours. I feel dull and thick, the internal music like Mahler’s First Symphony, ponderous and heavy. Outside, it is cool, and I shiver. I get into my car, comforted by all four whole tires, a whole windshield, and an engine that starts when I turn the key. I have sent my insurance company a copy of the police report, as the police suggested.
At the pizza place, our usual table is empty; I am earlier than usual. I sit down. Hi-I’m-Jean glances at me and looks away. A moment later Cameron comes in, then Chuy and Bailey and Eric. The table feels unbalanced with only five of us. Chuy moves his chair to the end, and the rest of us shift a little: now it is symmetrical.
I can see the beer sign easily, with its blinking pattern. Tonight it annoys me; I turn a little away. Everyone is twitchy; I am having to bounce my fingers on my legs, and Chuy is twisting his neck back and forth, back and forth. Cameron’s arm moves; he is bouncing his plastic dice in his pocket. As soon as we have ordered, Eric takes out his multicolored pen and starts drawing his patterns.
I wish Dale and Linda were here, too. It feels odd to be without them. When our food comes we eat, almost in silence. Chuy is making a little rhythmic “hunh” between bites, and Bailey is clicking his tongue. When most of the food is gone, I clear my throat. Everyone looks at me quickly, then away.
“Sometimes people need a place to talk,” I say. “Sometimes it can be at someone’s place.”
“It could be at your place?” Chuy asks.
“It could,” I say.
“Not everyone knows where you live,” Cameron says. I know he does not know, either. It is strange how we have to talk about something.
“Here are directions,” I say. I take out the papers and put them on the table. One at a time, the others take the sheets. They do not look at them right away.
“Some people have to get up early,” Bailey says.
“It is not late now,” I say.
“Some people will have to leave before others if others are staying late.”
“I know that,” I say.
“I am not upset,” I say. I am not, now that I know she knows what was wrong and is not doing it.
“Good. Look… I know that you like Marjory and she likes you. Don’t let this mess with Don ruin it for you, okay?”
“I do not know if Marjory likes me in a special way,” I say. “Don said she does, but she has not said she does.”
“I know. It’s difficult. Grownups are not as direct as preschoolers and make a lot of trouble for themselves that way.”
Marjory comes out of the house, zipping up her fencing jacket. She grins at me or at Lucia—I am not sure of the direction of her grin—as the zipper jams. “I have been eating too many doughnuts,” she says. “Or not walking enough or something.”
“Here—” Lucia holds out her hand, and Marjory comes over so that Lucia can unjam the zipper and help her. I did not know that holding out a hand was a signal for offering help. I thought holding out a hand was a signal for asking help. Maybe it only goes with “here.”
“Do you want to fence, Lou?” Marjory asks me.
“Yes,” I say. I can feel my face getting hot. I put my mask on and pick up my épée. “Do you want to use épée and dagger?”
“Sure,” Marjory says. She puts her mask on and I cannot see her face, only the gleam of her eyes and her teeth when she speaks. I can see the shape of her under the fencing jacket, though. I would like to touch that shape, but that is not appropriate. Only boyfriends with their girlfriends.
Marjory salutes. She has a simpler pattern than Tom’s and I could make a touch, but then it would be over. I parry, thrust short, parry again. When our blades touch, I can feel her hand through the connection; we are touching without touching. She circles, reverses, moves back and forth, and I move with her. It is like some kinds of dance, a pattern of movement, except for not having music. I sort through the music I remember, trying to find the right music for this dance. It gives me a strange feeling to match my pattern to hers, not to defeat her but just to feel that connection, that touch-and-touch of blades to hands and back.
Paganini. The First Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 6, the third movement. It is not exactly right, but it is closer than anything else I can think of. Stately but quick, with the little breaks where Marjory does not keep an exact rhythm changing directions. In my mind, I speed up or slow the music to stay with our movements.
I wonder what Marjory hears. I wonder if she can hear the music I hear. If we were both thinking of the same music, would we hear it the same way? Would we be in phase or out? I hear the sounds as color on dark; she might hear the sounds as dark lines on light, as music is printed.
If we put the two together, would they cancel out sight, dark on light and light on dark? Or…
Marjory’s touch breaks the chain of thought. “Good,” I say, and step back. She nods, and we salute again.
I read something once where thinking was described as light and not thinking as dark. I am thinking about other things while we fence, and Marjory was faster to make a touch than I was. So if she is not thinking about other things, did this not-thinking make her faster, and is that dark faster than the light of my not-thinking?
I do not know what the speed of thought is. I do not know if the speed of thought is the same for everyone. Is it thinking faster or thinking further that makes different thinking different?
The violin rises up in a spiraling pattern and Marjory’s pattern falls apart and I sweep forward in the dance that is now a solo dance and make my touch on her.
“Good,” she says, and steps back. Her body is moving with the deep breaths she’s taking. “You wore me out, Lou; that was a long one.”
“How about me?” Simon says. I would like to be with Marjory more, but I liked fencing Simon before and want to do that, too.
This time the music starts when we do, different music. Sarasate’s Carmen Fantasy … perfect for the feline prowl that is Simon circling me, looking for an opening, and for my intense concentration. I never thought I could dance before—it was a social thing, and I always got stiff and clumsy. Now—with a blade in hand—it feels right to move to the internal music.
Simon is better than I am, but it does not bother me. I am eager to see what he can do, what I can do. He gets a touch, another one, but then I get another one on him. “Best of five?” he asks. I nod, breathless. This time neither of us gets a touch right away; this time we fight on and on, until I finally make another touch, more by luck than skill. We are even now. The others are quiet, watching. I can feel their interest, a warm space on my back as I circle. Forward, sideways, around, back. Simon knows and counters every move I make; I am just able to counter his. Finally he does something I do not even see—his blade reappears just where I thought I had parried it away, and he gets the final touch of the match.
I am dripping with sweat even though it is a cool night. I am sure I smell bad, and I am surprised when Marjory comes up to me and touches my arm.
“That was gorgeous, Lou,” she says. I take off my mask. Her eyes are gleaming; the smile on her face goes all the way to her hair.
“I am sweaty,” I say.
“So you should be, after that,” she says. “Wow again. I didn’t know you could fence like that.”
“Neither did I,” I say.
“Now that we know,” Tom said, “we’ve got to get you to more tournaments. What do you think, Simon?”
“He’s more than ready. The top fencers in the state can take him, but once he gets over tournament nerves, they’ll have to work at it.”
“So, would you like to come with us to another tournament, Lou?” Tom asks.
I feel cold all the way through. I think they mean to do something nice for me, but Don got mad at me because of the tournament. What if someone gets mad at me every tournament and because of me one after another have to have a PDD chip?
“It is all day Saturday,” I say.
“Yes, and sometimes all day Sunday as well,” Lucia says. “Is that a problem?”
“It—I go to church on Sunday,” I say.
Marjory looks at me. “I didn’t know you went to church, Lou,” she says. “Well, you could just go on Saturday… What’s the problem with Saturdays, Lou?”
I have no answer ready. I do not think they will understand if I tell them about Don. They are all looking at me, and I feel myself folding together inside. I do not want them to be angry.
“The next tournament nearby is after Thanksgiving,” Simon says. “No need to decide tonight.” He is looking at me curiously. “Are you worried about someone not counting hits again, Lou?”
“No…” I feel my throat closing up. I close my eyes to steady myself. “It is Don,” I say. “He was angry at the tournament. I think that is why he… got so upset. I do not want that to happen to anyone else.”
“It is not your fault,” Lucia says. But she sounds angry. This is what happens, I think. People get angry about me even when they are not angry with me. It does not have to be my fault for me to cause it.
“I see your point,” Marjory says. “You don’t want to make trouble, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“And you cannot be sure that no one will be angry with you.”
“Yes.”
“But—Lou—people get mad at other people for no reason, too. Don was angry with Tom. Other people may have been angry with Simon; I know people have been angry with me. That just happens. As long as people aren’t doing anything wrong, they can’t stop and think all the time if it is making someone else angry.”
“Maybe it does not bother you as much,” I say.
She gives me a look that I can tell is supposed to mean something, but I cannot tell what. Would I know if I were normal? How do normal people learn what these looks mean?
“Maybe it doesn’t,” she says. “I used to think it was always my fault. I used to worry about it more. But that is—” She pauses and I can tell she is searching for a polite word. I know that because so often I am slow speaking when I am searching for a polite word. “It is hard to know how much to worry about it,” she says finally.
“Yes,” I say.
“People who want you to think everything is your fault are the problem,” Lucia says. “They always blame other people for their feelings, especially anger.”
“But some anger is justified,” Marjory says. “I don’t mean with Lou and Don; Lou didn’t do anything wrong. That was all Don’s jealousy getting the better of him. But I see what Lou means, that he doesn’t want to be the cause of someone else’s getting in trouble.”
“He won’t,” Lucia says. “He’s not the type.” She gives me a look, a different look than Marjory gave me. I am not sure what this look means, either.
“Lucia, why don’t you fight Simon,” Tom says. Everyone stops and looks at him.
Lucia’s mouth is a little open. Then she closes it with a little snap. “Fine,” she says. “It’s been a long time. Simon?”
“My pleasure,” he says, smiling.
I watch Lucia and Simon. He is better than she is, but he is not making as many points as he could. I can tell that he is fighting at the edge of her level, not using everything he could. That is very polite. I am aware of Marjory beside me, of the smell of the dry leaves that have drifted against the stone edging, of the chilly breeze on the back of my neck. It feels good.
By nine it is more than chilly; it is cold. We all go inside, and Lucia fixes a kettle of hot chocolate. It is the first time this year. The others are all talking; I sit with my back against the green leather hassock and try to listen while I watch Marjory. She uses her hands a lot when she talks. A couple of times, she flaps them in the way that I was told was a sign of autism. I have seen other people do that, too, and always wondered if they were autistic or partly autistic.
They are talking about tournaments now—ones they remember from the past, who won and who lost and who was the referee and how people behaved. Nobody mentions Don. I lose track of the names; I do not know the people. I cannot understand why “Bart is such a toad” from what they say about Bart, and I am sure they do not mean that Bart is actually an amphibian with warty skin, any more than Don was an actual heel. My gaze shifts from Marjory to Simon to Tom to Lucia to Max to Susan and back, trying to keep up with who is speaking when, but I cannot anticipate when one is going to stop and another is going to start, or which. Sometimes there is a break of two or three seconds between speakers, and sometimes one starts while another is still talking.
It is fascinating, in its way. It is like watching almost-patterns in a chaotic system. Like watching molecules break apart and re-form as a solutions balance shifts this way and that. I keep feeling that I almost understand it, and then something happens I did not anticipate. I do not know how they can participate and keep track of it at the same time.
Gradually I am able to notice that everyone pauses if Simon speaks and lets him into the conversation. He does not interrupt often, but no one interrupts him. One of my teachers said that the person who is speaking indicates who he expects to speak next by glancing at them. At that time I usually could not tell where someone was looking unless they looked there a long time. Now I can follow most glances. Simon glances at different people. Max and Susan always glance first at Simon, giving him priority. Tom glances at Simon about half the time. Lucia glances at Simon about a third of the time. Simon does not always speak again when someone glances at him; that person then glances at someone else.
But it is so fast: how can they see it all? And why does Tom glance at Simon some of the time and not the rest of the time? What tells him when to glance at Simon?
I realize that Marjory is watching me and feel my face and neck go hot. The voices of the others blur; my vision clouds. I want to hide in the shadows, but there are no shadows. I look down. I listen for her voice, but she is not talking much.
Then they start on equipment: steel blades versus composites, old steel versus new steel. Everyone seems to prefer steel, but Simon talks about a recent formal match he saw in which composite blades had a chip in the grip to emit a steel-like sound when the blades touched. It was weird, he says.
Then he says he has to go and stands up. Tom stands up, too, and Max. I stand up. Simon shakes Tom’s hand and says, “It was fun—thanks for the invitation.”
Tom says, “Anytime.”
Max puts out his hand and says, “Thanks for coming; it was an honor.”
Simon shakes his hand and says, “Anytime.”
I do not know whether to put out my hand or not, but Simon quickly offers his so I shake it even though I do not like to shake hands—it seems so pointless—and then he says, “Thanks, Lou; I enjoyed it.”
“Anytime,” I say. There is a moment’s tension in the room, and I am worried that I said something inappropriate—even though I was copying Tom and Max—and then Simon taps my arm with his finger.
“I hope you change your mind about tournaments,” he says. “It was a pleasure.”
“Thank you,” I say.
While Simon goes out the door, Max says, “I have to leave, too,” and Susan uncoils from the floor. It is time to leave. I look around; all the faces look friendly, but I thought Don’s face looked friendly. If one of them is angry with me, how would I know?
On Thursday we have the first of the medical briefings where we have been able to ask the doctors questions. There are two doctors, Dr. Ransome, with the curly gray hair, and Dr. Handsel, who has straight dark hair that looks as if it had been glued onto his head.
“It is reversible?” Linda asks.
“Well… no. Whatever it does, it does.”
“So if we don’t like it, we can’t go back to being our normal selves?”
Our selves are not normal to start with, but I do not say that aloud. Linda knows it as well as I do. She is making a joke.
“Er… no, you can’t. Probably. But I don’t see why—”
“I’d want to?” Cameron says. His face is tense. “I like who I am now. I do not know if I will like who I become.”
“It shouldn’t be that different,” Dr. Ransome says.
But every difference is a difference. I am not the same person as before Don began to stalk me. Not only what he did but meeting those police officers has changed me. I know about something I didn’t know before, and knowledge changes people. I raise my hand.
“Yes, Lou,” Dr. Ransome says.
“I do not understand how it can not change us,” I say. “If it normalizes our sensory processing, that will change the rate and kind of data input, and that will change our perceptions, and our processing—”
“Yes, but you—your personality—will be the same, or much the same. You will like the same things; you will react the same—”
“Then what’s the change for?” Linda asks. She sounds angry; I know she is more worried than angry. “They tell us they want us to change, to not need the supports we need—but if we do not need them, then that means our likes and dislikes have changed… doesn’t it?”
“I’ve spent so much time learning to tolerate overload,” Dale says. “What if that means I suddenly don’t pick up on things I should?” His left eye flickers, ticcing wildly.
“We don’t think any of that will happen,” the doctor says again. “The primatologists found only positive changes in social interaction—”
“I’m not a fucking chimp!” Dale slams his hand down on the table. For a moment his left eye stays open; then it starts ticcing again.
The doctor looks shocked. Why should he be surprised that Dale is upset? Would he like to have his behavior presumed on the basis of a primatologist’s studies of chimpanzees? Or is this something normals do? Do they see themselves as just like other primates? I can’t believe that.
“No one’s suggesting you are,” the doctor says, in a slightly disapproving voice. “It’s just that… they’re the best model we have. And they had recognizable personalities after treatment, with only the social deficits changed…”
All the chimps in the world now live in protected environments, zoos, or research establishments. Once they lived wild, in the forests of Africa. I wonder if the autistic-like chimpanzees would have been that way in the wild or if the stress of living as prisoners has changed them.
A slide lights up the screen. “This is the normal brain’s activity pattern when picking a known face from a photograph of several faces,” he says. There is a gray outline of a brain, with little glowing green spots. Thanks to my reading, I recognize some of the locations… no, I recognize the slide. It is illustration 16-43.d, from chapter 16 of Brain Functionality. “And here—” The slide changes. “This is the autistic brain’s activity pattern during the same task.” Another gray outline with little glowing green spots. Illustration 16-43.C from the same chapter.
I try to remember the captions in the book. I do not think that the text said the first was normal brain activity when picking a known face from a photographed group. I think it was normal brain activity when viewing a familiar face. A composite of… yes, I remember. Nine healthy male volunteers recruited from college students according to a protocol approved by the human ethics research committee…
Another slide is already showing. Another gray outline, another set of colored splotches, these blue. The doctor’s voice drones on. This is another slide I recognize. I struggle to remember what the book said and hear what he is saying, but I cannot. The words are tangling.
I raise my hand. He stops and says, “Yes, Lou?”
“Can we have a copy of this, to look at later? It is hard to take in all at once.”
He frowns. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lou. This is still proprietary—very confidential. If you want to know more, you can ask me or your counselor questions and you can look at the slides again, though”—he chuckles—“I don’t think they’ll mean much since you’re not a neurologist.”
“I’ve read some,” I say.
“Really…” His voice softens to a drawl. “What have you read, Lou?”
“Some books,” I say. Suddenly I do not want to tell him what book I have been reading, and I do not know why.
“About the brain?” he asks.
“Yes—I wanted to understand how it worked before you did anything with the treatment.”
“And… did you understand it?”
“It’s very complicated,” I say. “Like a parallel-processing computer, only more so.”
“You’re right; it’s very complicated,” he says. He sounds satisfied. I think he is glad I did not say I understood it. I wonder what he would say if I told him that I recognize those illustrations.
Cameron and Dale are looking at me. Even Bailey gives me a quick glance and looks away. They want to know what I know. I do not know if I should tell them, partly because I do not yet know what I know—what it means in this context.
I put aside thoughts of the book and just listen, meanwhile memorizing the slides as they come and go. I do not take in information as well this way—none of us do—but I think I can retain enough to compare it to the book later.
Eventually the slides change from gray outlines of brains with colored spots to molecules. I do not recognize them; they are not anything in the organic chemistry book. But I do recognize a hydroxy group here, an amino group there.
“This enzyme regulates gene expression of neural growth factor eleven,” the doctor says. “In normal brains, this is part of a feedback loop that interacts with attention control mechanisms to build in preferential processing of socially important signals—that’s one of the things you people have a problem with.”
He has given up any pretense that we are anything but cases.
“It’s also part of the treatment package for autistic newborns, those who weren’t identified and treated in utero, or for the children who suffer certain childhood infections that interfere with normal brain development. What our new treatment does is modify it—because it functions like this only in the first three years of development—so that it can affect the neural growth of the adult brain.“
“So—it makes us pay attention to other people?” Linda asks.
“No, no—we know you already do that. We’re not like those idiots back in the mid-twentieth century who thought autistics were just ignoring people. What it does is help you attend to social signals–facial expression, vocal tone, gesture, that kind of thing.”
Dale makes a rude gesture; the doctor does not attend to it. I wonder if he really did not see or he chose to ignore it.
“But don’t people have to be trained—like blind people were—to interpret new data?”
“Of course. That’s why there’s a training phase built into the treatment. Simulated social encounters, using computer-generated faces—” Another slide, this one of a chimpanzee with its upper lip curled and its lower lip pouted out. We all break into roars of laughter, uncontrollable. The doctor flushes angrily. “Sorry—that’s the wrong slide. Of course it’s the wrong slide. Human faces, I mean, and practice in human social interactions. We’ll do a baseline assessment and then you’ll have two to four months of post-treatment training—”
“Looking at monkey faces!” Linda says, laughing so hard she’s almost crying. We are all giggling.
“I said it was a mistake,” the doctor says. “We have trained psychotherapists to lead the intervention… It’s a serious matter.”
The chimpanzee’s face has been replaced by a picture of a group of people sitting in a circle; one is talking and the others are listening intently. Another slide, this time of someone in a clothing store talking to a salesperson. Another, of a busy office with someone on a phone. It all looks very normal and very boring. He does not show a picture of someone in a fencing tournament or someone talking to the police after a mugging in a parking lot. The only picture with a policeman in it could be titled Asking Directions. The policeman, with a stiff smile on his face, has one arm outstretched, pointing; the other person has a funny hat, a little backpack, and a book that says Tourist Guidebook on the cover.
It looks posed. All the pictures look posed, and the people may not even be real people. They could be—probably are—computer composites. We are supposed to become normal, real people, but they expect us to learn from these unreal, imaginary people in contrived, posed situations. The doctor and his associates assume they know the situations we deal with or will need to deal with and they will teach us how to deal with those. It reminds me of those therapists in the last century who thought they knew what words someone needed to know and taught an “essential” vocabulary. Some of them even told parents not to let children learn other words, lest it impede their learning of the essential vocabulary.
Such people do not know what they do not know. My mother used to recite a little verse that I did not understand until I was almost twelve, and one line of it went: “Those who know not, and know not they know not, are fools…” The doctor does not know that I needed to be able to deal with the man at the tournament who would not call hits and the jealous would-be lover in the fencing group and the various police officers who took reports on vandalism and threats.
Now the doctor is talking about the generalization of social skills. He says that after the treatment and training our social skills should generalize to all situations in everyday life. I wonder what he would have thought of Don’s social skills.
I glance at the clock. The seconds flick over, one after another; the two hours are nearly done. The doctor asks if there are any questions. I look down. The questions I want to ask are not appropriate in a meeting like this, and I do not think he will answer them anyway.
“When do you think you would start?” Cameron asks.
“We would like to start with the first subject—uh, patient—as soon as possible. We could have everything in place by next week.”
“How many at once?” asks Bailey.
“Two. We would like to do two at a time, three days apart—this ensures that the primary medical team can concentrate on those during the first few critical days.”
“What about waiting after the first two until they complete treatment to see if it works?” Bailey asks.
The doctor shakes his head. “No, it’s better to have the whole cohort close in time.”
“Makes it faster to publication,” I hear myself say.
“What?” the doctor asks.
The others are looking at me. I look at my lap.
“If we all do it fairly quickly and together, then you can write it up and get it published faster. Otherwise it would be a year or more.” I glance quickly at his face; his cheeks are red and shiny again.
“That’s not the reason,” he says, a little loudly. “It’s just that the data are more comparable if the subjects—if you—are all close in time. I mean, suppose something happened that changed things between the time the first two started and finished… something that affected the rest of you—”
“Like what, a bolt from the blue that makes us normal?” Dale asks. “You’re afraid we’ll get galloping normality and be unsuitable subjects?”
“No, no,” the doctor says. “More like something political that changes attitudes…”
I wonder what the government is thinking. Do governments think? The chapter in Brain Functionality on the politics of research protocols comes to mind. Is something about to happen, some regulation or change in policy, which would make this research impossible in a few months?
That is something I can find out when I get home. If I ask this man, I do not think he will give me an honest answer.
When we leave, we walk at angles, all out of rhythm with one another. We used to have a way of merging, accommodating one another’s peculiarities, so that we moved as a group. Now we move without harmony. I can sense the confusion, the anger. No one talks. I do not talk. I do not want to talk with them, who have been my closest associates for so long.
When we are back in our own building, we go quickly into our individual offices. I sit down and start to reach for the fan. I stop myself, and then I wonder why I stopped myself.
I do not want to work. I want to think about what it is they want to do to my brain and think about what it means. It means more than they say; everything they say means more than it says. Beyond the words is the tone; beyond the tone is the context; beyond the context is the unexplored territory of normal socialization, vast and dark as night, lit by the few pinpricks of similar experience, like stars.
Starlight, one writer said, perfuses the entire universe: the whole thing glows. The dark is an illusion, that writer said. If that is so, then Lucia was right and there is no speed of dark.
But there is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias. So I think there may be positive darkness, and I think dark can have a speed.
The books tell me that my brain works very well, even as it is, and that it is much easier to derange the functions of the brain than to repair them. If normal people really can do all the things that are claimed for them, it would be helpful to have that ability… but I am not sure they do.
They do not always understand why other people act as they do. That is obvious when they argue about their reasons, their motives. I have heard someone tell a child, “You are only doing that to annoy me,” when it is clear to me that the child was doing it because the child enjoyed the act itself… was oblivious to its effect on the adult. I have been oblivious like that, so I recognize it in others.
My phone buzzes. I pick it up. “Lou it is Cameron. Do you want to go to supper and have pizza?” His voice runs the words together, mechanically.
“It is Thursday,” I say. “Hi-I’m-Jean is there.”
“Chuy and Bailey and I are going anyway, so we can talk. And you, if you come. Linda is not coming. Dale is not coming.”
“I do not know if I want to come,” I say. “I will think about it. You will go when?”
“As soon as it is five,” he says.
“There are places it is not a good idea to talk about this,” I say.
“The pizza place is not one of those places,” Cameron says.
“Many people know we go there,” I say.
“Surveillance?” Cameron says.
“Yes. But it is a good thing to go there, because we go there. Then meet somewhere else.”
“The Center.”
“No,” I say, thinking of Emmy. “I do not want to go to the Center.”
“Emmy likes you,” Cameron says. “She is not very intelligent, but she likes you.”
“We are not talking about Emmy,” I say.
“We are talking about the treatment, after pizza,” Cameron says. “I do not know where to go except the Center.”
I think of places, but they are all public places. We should not talk about this in public places. Finally I say, “You could come to my apartment.” I have never invited Cameron to my apartment. I have never invited anyone to my apartment.
He is silent a long moment. He has never invited me to his home, either. Finally he says, “I will come. I do not know about the others.”
“I will come to eat supper with you,” I say.
I cannot get to work. I turn on the fan and the spin spirals and pin-wheels turn, but the dancing colored reflections do not soothe me. All I can think about is the project looming over us. It is like the picture of an ocean wave towering over someone on a surfboard. The skillful surfer can survive, but the one who is less skilled will be smashed. How can we ride this wave?
I write and print out my address and the directions from the pizza place to my apartment. I have to stop and look at the city map to be sure the directions are right. I am not used to giving directions to other drivers.
At five, I turn off the fan, get up, and leave my office. I have done nothing useful for hours. I feel dull and thick, the internal music like Mahler’s First Symphony, ponderous and heavy. Outside, it is cool, and I shiver. I get into my car, comforted by all four whole tires, a whole windshield, and an engine that starts when I turn the key. I have sent my insurance company a copy of the police report, as the police suggested.
At the pizza place, our usual table is empty; I am earlier than usual. I sit down. Hi-I’m-Jean glances at me and looks away. A moment later Cameron comes in, then Chuy and Bailey and Eric. The table feels unbalanced with only five of us. Chuy moves his chair to the end, and the rest of us shift a little: now it is symmetrical.
I can see the beer sign easily, with its blinking pattern. Tonight it annoys me; I turn a little away. Everyone is twitchy; I am having to bounce my fingers on my legs, and Chuy is twisting his neck back and forth, back and forth. Cameron’s arm moves; he is bouncing his plastic dice in his pocket. As soon as we have ordered, Eric takes out his multicolored pen and starts drawing his patterns.
I wish Dale and Linda were here, too. It feels odd to be without them. When our food comes we eat, almost in silence. Chuy is making a little rhythmic “hunh” between bites, and Bailey is clicking his tongue. When most of the food is gone, I clear my throat. Everyone looks at me quickly, then away.
“Sometimes people need a place to talk,” I say. “Sometimes it can be at someone’s place.”
“It could be at your place?” Chuy asks.
“It could,” I say.
“Not everyone knows where you live,” Cameron says. I know he does not know, either. It is strange how we have to talk about something.
“Here are directions,” I say. I take out the papers and put them on the table. One at a time, the others take the sheets. They do not look at them right away.
“Some people have to get up early,” Bailey says.
“It is not late now,” I say.
“Some people will have to leave before others if others are staying late.”
“I know that,” I say.
Chapter Seventeen
There are only two visitor slots in the parking lot, but I know there is room for my visitors’ cars; most of the residents do not keep cars. This apartment building was built back when everyone had at least one car.
I wait in the parking lot until the others have arrived. Then I lead them upstairs. All those feet sound loud on the stairs. I did not know it would be this loud. Danny opens his door.
“Oh—hi, Lou. I wondered what was happening.”
“It is my friends,” I say.
“Good, good,” Danny says. He does not close his door. I do not know what he wants. The others follow me to my door, and I unlock it and let them in.
It feels very strange to have other people in the apartment. Cameron walks around and finally disappears into the bathroom. I can hear him in there. It is like when I lived in a group residence. I did not like that much. Some things should be private; it is not nice to hear someone else in the bathroom. Cameron flushes the toilet, and I hear the water running in the basin, and then he comes out. Chuy looks at me, and I nod. He goes into the bathroom, too. Bailey is looking at my computer.
“I do not have a desk model at home,” he says. “I use my handheld to work through the computer at work.”
“I like having this one,” I say.
Chuy comes back to the living room. “So—what now?”
Cameron looks at me. “Lou, you have been reading about this, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” I get Brain Functionality off the shelf where I put it. “My—a friend loaned me this book. She said it was the best place to start.”
“Is it the woman Emmy talks about?”
“No, someone else. She is a doctor; she is married to a man I know.”
“Is she a brain doctor?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why did she give you the book? Did you ask her about the project?”
“I asked her for a book on brain function. I want to know what they are going to do to our brains.”
“People who have not studied do not know anything about how the brain works,” Bailey says.
“I did not know until I started reading,” I say. “Only what they taught us in school, and that was not a lot. I wanted to learn because of this.”
“Did you?” Cameron asks.
“It takes a long time to learn everything that is known about brains,” I say, “I know more than I did, but I do not know if I know enough. I want to know what they think it will do and what can go wrong.”
“It is complicated,” Chuy says.
“You know about brain function?” I ask.
“Not much. My older sister was a doctor, before she died. I tried to read some of her books when she was in medical school. That is when I lived at home with my family. I was only fifteen, though.”
“I want to know if you think they can do what they say they can do,” Cameron says.
“I do not know,” I say. “I wanted to see what the doctor was saying today. I am not sure he is right. Those pictures they showed are like ones in this book—” I pat the book. “He said they meant something different. This is not a new book, and things change. I need to find new pictures.”
“Show us the pictures,” Bailey says.
I turn to the page with the pictures of brain activitation and lay the book on the low table. They all look. “It says here this shows brain activation when someone sees a human face,” I say. “I think it looks exactly like the picture the doctor said showed looking at a familiar face in a crowd.
“It is the same,” Bailey says, after a moment. “The ratio of line width to overall size is exactly the same. The colored spots are in the same place. If it is not the same illustration, it is a copy.”
“Maybe for normal brains the activation pattern is the same,” Chuy says.
I had not thought of that.
“He said the second picture was of an autistic brain looking at a familiar face,” Cameron says. “But the book says it is the activation pattern for looking at a composite unknown face.”
“I do not understand composite unknown,” Eric says.
“It is a computer-generated face using features of several real faces,” I say.
“If it is true that the activation pattern for autistic brains looking at a familiar face is the same as normal brains looking at an unfamiliar face, then what is the autistic pattern for looking at an unfamiliar face?” Bailey asks.
“I always had trouble recognizing people I was supposed to know,” Chuy says. “It still takes me longer to learn people’s faces.”
“Yes, but you do,” Bailey says. “You recognize all of us, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Chuy says. “But it took a long time, and I knew you first by your voices and size and things.”
“The thing is, you do now, and that’s what matters. If your brain is doing it a different way, at least it’s doing it.”
“They told me that the brain can make different pathways to do the same thing,” Cameron says. “Like if someone is injured, they give them that drug—I don’t remember what it is—and some training, and they can relearn how to do things but use a different part of the brain.”
“They told me that, too,” I say. “I asked them why they didn’t give me the drug and they said it wouldn’t work for me. They did not say why.”
“Does this book?” Cameron asks.
“I don’t know. I haven’t read that far,” I say.
“Is it hard?” Bailey asks.
“In some places, but not as hard as I thought it would be,” I say. “I started reading some other stuff first. That helped.”
“What other?” Eric asks.
“I read through some of the courses on the Internet,” I say. “Biology, anatomy, organic chemistry, biochemistry.” He is staring at me; I look down. “It is not as hard as it sounds.”
No one says anything for several minutes. I can hear them breathe; they can hear me breathe. We can all hear all the noises, smell all the smells. It is not like being with my friends at fencing, where I have to be careful what I notice.
“I’m going to do it,” Cameron says suddenly. “I want to.”
“Why?” Bailey asks.
“I want to be normal,” Cameron says. “I always did. I hate being different. It is too hard, and it is too hard to pretend to be like everyone else when I am not. I am tired of that.”
“But aren’t you proud of who you are?”, Bailey’s tone makes it clear he is quoting the slogan from the Center:
“No,” Cameron says. “I pretended to be. But really—what is there to be proud of? I know what you’re going to say, Lou—” He looks at me. He is wrong. I was not going to say anything. “You’ll say that normal people do what we do, only in smaller amounts. Lots of people self-stim, but they don’t even realize it. They tap their feet or twirl their hair or touch their faces. Yes, but they’re normal and no one makes them stop. Other people don’t make good eye contact, but they’re normal and no one nags them to make eye contact. They have something else to make up for the tiny bit of themselves that acts autistic. That’s what I want. I want—I want not to have to try so hard to look normal. I just want to be normal.”
I wait in the parking lot until the others have arrived. Then I lead them upstairs. All those feet sound loud on the stairs. I did not know it would be this loud. Danny opens his door.
“Oh—hi, Lou. I wondered what was happening.”
“It is my friends,” I say.
“Good, good,” Danny says. He does not close his door. I do not know what he wants. The others follow me to my door, and I unlock it and let them in.
It feels very strange to have other people in the apartment. Cameron walks around and finally disappears into the bathroom. I can hear him in there. It is like when I lived in a group residence. I did not like that much. Some things should be private; it is not nice to hear someone else in the bathroom. Cameron flushes the toilet, and I hear the water running in the basin, and then he comes out. Chuy looks at me, and I nod. He goes into the bathroom, too. Bailey is looking at my computer.
“I do not have a desk model at home,” he says. “I use my handheld to work through the computer at work.”
“I like having this one,” I say.
Chuy comes back to the living room. “So—what now?”
Cameron looks at me. “Lou, you have been reading about this, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” I get Brain Functionality off the shelf where I put it. “My—a friend loaned me this book. She said it was the best place to start.”
“Is it the woman Emmy talks about?”
“No, someone else. She is a doctor; she is married to a man I know.”
“Is she a brain doctor?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why did she give you the book? Did you ask her about the project?”
“I asked her for a book on brain function. I want to know what they are going to do to our brains.”
“People who have not studied do not know anything about how the brain works,” Bailey says.
“I did not know until I started reading,” I say. “Only what they taught us in school, and that was not a lot. I wanted to learn because of this.”
“Did you?” Cameron asks.
“It takes a long time to learn everything that is known about brains,” I say, “I know more than I did, but I do not know if I know enough. I want to know what they think it will do and what can go wrong.”
“It is complicated,” Chuy says.
“You know about brain function?” I ask.
“Not much. My older sister was a doctor, before she died. I tried to read some of her books when she was in medical school. That is when I lived at home with my family. I was only fifteen, though.”
“I want to know if you think they can do what they say they can do,” Cameron says.
“I do not know,” I say. “I wanted to see what the doctor was saying today. I am not sure he is right. Those pictures they showed are like ones in this book—” I pat the book. “He said they meant something different. This is not a new book, and things change. I need to find new pictures.”
“Show us the pictures,” Bailey says.
I turn to the page with the pictures of brain activitation and lay the book on the low table. They all look. “It says here this shows brain activation when someone sees a human face,” I say. “I think it looks exactly like the picture the doctor said showed looking at a familiar face in a crowd.
“It is the same,” Bailey says, after a moment. “The ratio of line width to overall size is exactly the same. The colored spots are in the same place. If it is not the same illustration, it is a copy.”
“Maybe for normal brains the activation pattern is the same,” Chuy says.
I had not thought of that.
“He said the second picture was of an autistic brain looking at a familiar face,” Cameron says. “But the book says it is the activation pattern for looking at a composite unknown face.”
“I do not understand composite unknown,” Eric says.
“It is a computer-generated face using features of several real faces,” I say.
“If it is true that the activation pattern for autistic brains looking at a familiar face is the same as normal brains looking at an unfamiliar face, then what is the autistic pattern for looking at an unfamiliar face?” Bailey asks.
“I always had trouble recognizing people I was supposed to know,” Chuy says. “It still takes me longer to learn people’s faces.”
“Yes, but you do,” Bailey says. “You recognize all of us, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Chuy says. “But it took a long time, and I knew you first by your voices and size and things.”
“The thing is, you do now, and that’s what matters. If your brain is doing it a different way, at least it’s doing it.”
“They told me that the brain can make different pathways to do the same thing,” Cameron says. “Like if someone is injured, they give them that drug—I don’t remember what it is—and some training, and they can relearn how to do things but use a different part of the brain.”
“They told me that, too,” I say. “I asked them why they didn’t give me the drug and they said it wouldn’t work for me. They did not say why.”
“Does this book?” Cameron asks.
“I don’t know. I haven’t read that far,” I say.
“Is it hard?” Bailey asks.
“In some places, but not as hard as I thought it would be,” I say. “I started reading some other stuff first. That helped.”
“What other?” Eric asks.
“I read through some of the courses on the Internet,” I say. “Biology, anatomy, organic chemistry, biochemistry.” He is staring at me; I look down. “It is not as hard as it sounds.”
No one says anything for several minutes. I can hear them breathe; they can hear me breathe. We can all hear all the noises, smell all the smells. It is not like being with my friends at fencing, where I have to be careful what I notice.
“I’m going to do it,” Cameron says suddenly. “I want to.”
“Why?” Bailey asks.
“I want to be normal,” Cameron says. “I always did. I hate being different. It is too hard, and it is too hard to pretend to be like everyone else when I am not. I am tired of that.”
“But aren’t you proud of who you are?”, Bailey’s tone makes it clear he is quoting the slogan from the Center:
We are proud of who we are
“No,” Cameron says. “I pretended to be. But really—what is there to be proud of? I know what you’re going to say, Lou—” He looks at me. He is wrong. I was not going to say anything. “You’ll say that normal people do what we do, only in smaller amounts. Lots of people self-stim, but they don’t even realize it. They tap their feet or twirl their hair or touch their faces. Yes, but they’re normal and no one makes them stop. Other people don’t make good eye contact, but they’re normal and no one nags them to make eye contact. They have something else to make up for the tiny bit of themselves that acts autistic. That’s what I want. I want—I want not to have to try so hard to look normal. I just want to be normal.”