The Terminal Experiment

by Robert J. Sawyer

  Victoria listened to Peter’s instructions, then nodded.

  “Thank you,” said Peter, as he left her to undress. “Thank you very much.”

  At the end of the day, he had the results. The sensor had had no trouble detecting the soulwave coming from Victoria’s fetus. Not too surprising: had the baby been removed at this late point in the pregnancy, it would probably have survived on its own. But how soon into a pregnancy did the soulwave first appear?

  Peter flipped through his computerized Rolodex until he found the number he wanted: Dinah Kawasaki, a woman he had taken some courses with at U of T who now had an obstetrics practice in Don Mills.

  He listened nervously to the electronic tones as the computer dialed the number. If Dinah could convince some of her patients to help him, he’d soon have his answer.

  And, Peter realized, he was afraid of what that answer might be.

  CHAPTER 14

  October 2011

  Thirty-two of Dinah Kawasaki’s expectant patients did agree to participate in testing Peter’s scanning equipment. That wasn’t surprising: Peter had offered a fee of $500 per patient simply for wearing the scanner for four hours. Each patient was one week further along in her pregnancy than the one before.

  Peter would eventually want to do studies throughout their individual terms on multiple women, but the initial results were clear. The soulwave arrived sometime between the ninth and the tenth week of pregnancy. Before that, it simply did not exist. He’d need much finer studies to show whether it arose from within the fetal brain, or—less likely, Peter thought—somehow arrived from outside.

  Peter knew that this would change the world, almost as much as the realization that some form of life after death actually existed. Some would still quibble with the interpretation, but Peter could now say categorically whether or not a given fetus was a person—whether or not its removal would be simply sucking out an unwanted growth or an act of murder.

  The implications would be profound. Why, if the Pope could be convinced that the soulwave really was the physical signature of the immortal being, and that the soul only appeared ten weeks into pregnancy, perhaps he’d remove his restriction on birth control and on early abortion. Peter remembered that back in 1993, the then-Pope had originally told women who had been raped by soldiers in Bosnia-Herzegovina that they would be damned unless they brought their babies to term. And the current Pope still refused to allow birth control in famine-torn areas, even when babies would starve to death once born.

  Of course, the women’s movement—of which Peter considered himself a supporter—would react, too.

  Peter had always had a hard time with abortion, especially in industrialized countries. Perfectly reliable, unobtrusive methods of birth control existed. Peter had always accepted intellectually that a woman had the right to an abortion on demand, but he’d found the whole issue distasteful. Surely unwanted conception was something best avoided in the first place? Surely birth control—by both partners in a relationship—wasn’t too much to ask? Why cheapen the wonder of reproduction?

  It had taken all of ten minutes on the net to dig up the statistic that one in five pregnancies in North America ended in abortion. And yet, of course, he and Cathy had conceived all those years ago without planning to. Him a Ph.D., her with a degree in chemistry—two people who should have known better.

  Nothing is ever as simple in the concrete as it is in the abstract.

  But now, perhaps, there was justification for after-conception birth control. The soul, whatever the soul might be, arrived only after sixty or more days of gestation.

  Peter was no futurist, but he could see where society would go: within a decade, laws would doubtless change to allowing abortion on demand up until the arrival of the soulwave. Once the soulwave was present in the fetus, the courts would rule that the unborn child was in fact a human being.

  Peter had wanted answers—cold, hard facts. And now he had them.

  He took a deep breath. He was a rationalist. He knew that there had always been only three possible answers to the moral question raised by abortion. One: a child is a human being from the moment of conception. That had always seemed silly to Peter; at conception a child is nothing but a single cell.

  Two: a child becomes a human being the moment it exits from the mother’s body. That had seemed equally silly. Although a fetus draws nutrition from the mother until the umbilical cord is severed, the fetus is developed enough to support itself, if need be, weeks before the normal end of a pregnancy. Clearly the cutting of the cord is as arbitrary as the cutting of the ribbon to open a new mall. The fetus is a human being with an independent heart and brain—and thoughts—prior to emerging into the world.

  So all Peter had done was prove what should have been intuitively obvious. Option three: somewhere between the two extremes—between conception and birth—a fetus becomes a human being in its own right, and with its own rights.

  That option three turned out to be correct should have been expected. Even many religions held that the arrival of the soul occurred sometime in the middle of pregnancy. Saint Thomas Aquinas had allowed abortion to the sixth week for male fetuses and the third month for females, those being the points at which he believed the soul entered the body. And in Muslim belief, according to Sarkar, the nafs enters the fetus on the fortieth day after conception.

  Granted, none of those coincided with Peter’s figure of nine or ten weeks. But the certain knowledge that there was a specific point at which the soul did arrive would—the thought occurred to him again—would change the world. And, of course, not everyone would think it a change for the better.

  Peter wondered what it would be like to see himself burned in effigy on TV.

  IT HAD BEEN just over nine weeks since Cathy had told Peter about her affair. Things had remained strained between them throughout that period. But now it was necessary that they have a serious talk—a talk about a different crisis, a crisis from their past.

  Today was Monday, October 10—Canadian Thanksgiving. Both of them had the day off. Peter came into the living room. Cathy was sitting on the love seat, doing The New York Times crossword. Peter came over and sat next to her.

  “Cathy,” he said, “there’s something I have to say.”

  Cathy’s enormous eyes met his, and suddenly Peter realized what she was thinking. He’d made his decision, she thought. He was leaving her. He saw in her face all the fear, all the sadness, all the courage. She was struggling for composure.

  “It’s about our baby,” said Peter.

  Cathy’s face changed abruptly. She was confused now. “What baby?”

  Peter swallowed hard. “The baby we, ah, aborted twelve years ago.”

  Cathy’s eyes were moving back and forth. She clearly didn’t understand.

  “Next week, my company will be making a public announcement about the soulwave,” he said. “At that time, some additional research will be revealed. But— but I wanted you to hear about it first.”

  Cathy was silent.

  “I know now when the soulwave arrives in a child.”

  She read his manner, read his hesitancy. She knew his every gesture, his whole body-language vocabulary. “Oh, God,” Cathy said, her eyes wide in horror. “It arrives early, doesn’t it? Prior to when we—when we—”

  Peter said nothing.

  “Oh, God,” she said again, shaking her head. “It was the Nineties,” she said, as if that summed it all up.

  The Nineties. Back then, the abortion issue, like most others, had been simplified to a ridiculous sloganeering level: “Pro-choice”—as if there were another faction that was anti-choice; “Pro-life”—as if there had been a group that was against life. No grays were allowed. In the circle the Hobsons had moved in— educated, well-off, liberal Eastern Canada—pro-choice had been the only stance to take.

  The Nineties.

  The politically correct Nineties.

  Peter shook his head. “It’s not clear,” he said.
“We did it right around the time the soulwave would have first appeared.” He paused, not knowing what to say. “It might have been okay.”

  “Or it might have been … might have been …”

  Peter nodded. “I’m so sorry, Cathy.”

  She chewed her lower lip, confused and sad. Peter reached out and touched her hand.

  CHAPTER 15

  Hobson Monitoring had a standard database of medical journalists worldwide to whom electronic press kits were routinely sent. A few members of Peter’s senior staff argued that this particular release should also go to religion editors, but Peter vetoed that. He was still uncomfortable with the moral aspects of the discovery. Besides, everyone from The National Enquirer on down would be clamoring for interviews soon enough. An invitation to the press conference went out by email and courier three days in advance of the actual event. Peter was uneasy about the wording of the invitation, but Joginder Singh, his PR person, was adamant that this was the correct approach:

  Hobson Monitoring Ltd. invites you to attend a press conference on Thursday, October 20, at 10:00 a.m. in room 104 of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. We will be unveiling a fundamental breakthrough in science. Sorry, folks— no hints until you get here. But we promise that this story will be front-page news around the globe. Video linkups are available for those unable to attend in person; contact Joginder at Hobson Monitoring for details.

  Several reporters did call, trying to sniff out whether the story would really be worth pursuing, or if this was just going to be the release of a new piece of hospital gadgetry. But no advance information was given out. Everyone had to wait until Thursday morning. And then …

  ABOUT FORTY REPORTERS showed up for the press conference—Hobson Monitoring had only once before gotten more, back when it had announced its first public share offering. Peter knew half the reporters by name: Buck Piekarz, medical correspondent for The Toronto Star; Cory Tick, his counterpart from The Globe and Mail; Lianne Delaney from CBC Newsworld; a fat guy who covered Canadian stories for The Buffalo News; a stringer for USA Today; many more. The reporters helped themselves to fresh fruit and coffee while they chatted amongst themselves. They were surprised to not be receiving press kits up front, although Peter and Joginder assured them that full kits, including data disks and transcripts of Peter’s remarks, would be distributed as they exited. Several of the journalists present would videotape the conference, anyway.

  Cathy had taken a vacation day to be there with Peter. At a quarter after ten, he made his way up to the front of the room. Cathy beamed at him, and, despite the butterflies in his stomach, he drew strength from her presence. “Hello, everyone,” he said smiling at them all in turn, but holding a special, lingering smile on Cathy. “Thank you for coming out. Please forgive all the secrecy—I know it seems a tad melodramatic. But what we’re going to announce here today is something very special, and we wanted to be sure that responsible journalists heard about it first.” He smiled. “Joginder, if you’ll dim the lights please? Thanks. Now, everyone, please watch the wall monitor. You’ll all be getting copies of the recording I’m about to play when you leave. All set? Run the demo, please, Joginder.”

  The journalists watched intently as Peter narrated a slowed-down playback of the brain scans of Peggy Fennell’s death. Peter went into a fair bit of technical detail—these were, after all, medical correspondents. When the soulwave actually departed from Mrs. Fennell’s head a murmur moved through the audience.

  “Play that last bit back again,” called out Piekarz from The Star. Peter signaled Joginder to do so.

  “Exactly what is that?” asked another reporter.

  Peter looked at Cathy, sitting in the front row. Her eyes were twinkling. He affected a shrug. “It’s a cohesive electrical field that leaves the body through the temple at the moment of death.”

  “At the exact moment of death?” asked Delaney, the woman from Newsworld.

  “Yes. It’s the final bit of electrical activity in the brain.”

  “So—so it’s what?” said the woman. “Some kind of a soul?” She said the word offhandedly, as if a joke, giving her room to retreat in case she was making a fool of herself.

  But in the weeks since Sarkar had first uttered that term, Peter had grown more comfortable with it. “Yes,” he said. “That’s exactly what we think it is.” He raised his voice, speaking generally to the room. “There it is, ladies and gentleman: the first ever direct scientific recording of what may be a human soul leaving a body.”

  A buzz erupted, everyone talking at once. Peter spent the next two hours answering questions, although some of the print reporters with early deadlines grabbed the press kits and exited almost at once. He made clear that his studies had yet to reveal exactly what happened to the soulwave after departure—it seemed to remain coherent, but there was still no proof that it didn’t dissipate shortly after leaving the body. He also stressed that very little data was available yet about the content or structure of the soulwave, and, in particular, about what, if any, meaningful information it contained.

  But it made no difference. The idea of a soul was an archetype, universally grasped. People already were sure, in their hearts, of what the soulwave represented.

  That night, Cathy and Peter saw that the CBC TV story was picked up by CNN in the States and the BBC World Service. The announcement was all over the net within hours and made front-page news in the evening editions of The Toronto Star and several American papers, and was plastered across page one of newspapers around the world the next day. Within twenty-four hours, the entire developed world knew about the discovery.

  Suddenly Peter Hobson was a celebrity.

  “IS THE CALLER still there?” asked Donahue, back on daytime TV after his failed presidential bid.

  “I’m here, Phil.”

  Donahue made his tortured face; precious seconds were being wasted. “Go ahead—I have very little time.”

  “What I’d like to know,” said the caller’s voice, “is what life after death is really like. I mean, we know now that it exists, but what’s it really like?”

  Donahue turned to Peter. “That’s a very good question, caller. Dr. Hobson—what is the afterlife like?”

  Peter shifted in his chair. “Well, that’s more a subject for philosophers, I’m afraid, and—”

  Donahue turned toward the studio audience. “Audience, are we prepared for these questions? Do we really want to know the answers? And what will America do if the afterlife turns out to be unpleasant?” He spoke into the air. “Show ’em, Bryan—number fourteen.”

  A chart appeared on the screen. “Sixty-seven percent of the people of this good country,” said Donahue, “believe that the soulwave proves the Judeo-Christian model of a heaven and a hell. Only eleven percent believes that your discovery, Dr. Hobson, disproves that model.”

  The chart disappeared. Donahue spied a raised hand in the back of the studio. Still spry at seventy-five, he bolted for the back row and shoved a microphone under a woman’s chin.

  “Yes, ma’am. You had a brief comment.”

  “That’s right, Phil. I’m from Memphis—we love your show down there.”

  First the little-boy face, patted on the head. “Thank you, ma’am.” Then the pained face, as if something was caught going down his gullet. “I have very little time.”

  “My question is for the doctor. Do you think your discovery is going to get you into heaven, or are you going to hell for interfering in God’s mysteries?”

  Close up on Peter. “I—I have no idea.”

  Donahue did his standard theatrical arm gesture that ended with his finger pointing directly into the camera. “And we’ll be back …”

  THE SILVER-HAIRED LATIN FOX turned to face the audience. According to the tabloids, he’d recently undergone the Life Unlimited process, so viewers had centuries of his particular brand of television to look forward to.

  “Life after life,” he said, portentously. “That’s our focus on
this edition of Geraldo. Our guests today include Peter Hobson, the Ottawa scientist who claims to have captured the immortal soul on film, and Monsignor Carlos Latina of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles.” Geraldo turned to the man wearing a black cassock. “Monsignor—where do you think the souls are today of those clergy members who molested boys in church-run orphanages?”

  (ROLL COMPUTER GRAPHIC of Capitol Building dome. Cue music.) Announcer: “From ABC News: This Week with George Stephanopoulis. Now from our Washington headquarters, here’s George Stephanopoulis.”

  Stephanopoulis, dour, facing into the camera: “The soulwave—fact or fantasy? Religious revelation or scientific truth? We’ll ask our guests: Peter Hobson, the engineer who first detected the soulwave; best-selling author Richard Dawkins; and Helen Johannes, Presidential Advisor on Religion in America. Some background on all this from our man Kyle Adair. And joining me in our Washington studio will be—

  (Medium shot of Donaldson, his features sharp despite his wrinkles; his shoe-polish brown toupee looking obviously fake.)

  “Sam Donaldson—”

  (Medium shot of silver-haired Will, wall-eyed and bow-tied, looking like a retired plantation owner.)

  “—and George Will. Later, we’ll be joined by commentator Sally Fernandez of The Washington Post ... all here on our Sunday program.”

  (Run commercials: Archer Daniels Midland’s new all-vegetable automobile. General Dynamics—“our work may be classified, but we’re a good corporate citizen.” Merrill Lynch—“because someday the economy will turn around.”)

  (Roll pre-recorded backgrounder.)

  (Fade up in studio.)

  Stephanopoulis: “Kyle, thank you.”

  (Recap guests and panelists.)

  (Insert Peter Hobson on wall monitor, with dateline display at top showing “Toronto.”)

  Sam Donaldson, leaning forward: “Professor Hobson, your discovery of the soulwave could be seen as a great liberator of oppressed people, final proof that all men and women are created equal. What effect do you think your discovery will have on totalitarian regimes?”