James nodded his understanding. “Do you really think your experiment can work?” he asked.
“I think it’s an interesting premise,” Dr. Pevnick admitted. “It’s never been done before; a group of savants working on a common project. It could give us much more insight into people like yourself. I’m excited about it. What do you think?”
“I think you have too much time on your hands.”
Pevnick chuckled.
“One hundred thirty-two, by the way.”
“Huh?”
“The jacket. That’s a nice piece of cloth with over one hundred thirty threads per inch. In each direction.”
Pevnick looked down at his jacket and absently fingered the material. “Yes,” he said, and after some pause, “my wife gave it to me.”
“I counted them, you know. The threads, I mean.”
Pevnick shook his head and smiled again. “James, I’d like to make you lead on the project.”
James pondered the statement for a moment. Then, “Because I’m the smartest?”
“That’s hard to say. But…”
“I know. I’m the most functional.”
“Well, there’s no arguing that. You are the only one who has a job, can live on your own, pay bills, do what…”
“What normal people do?”
“Yes. But, also with your language abilities, I’m hoping you can link the group, so to speak,” said Pevnick. “Etta speaks mostly Japanese, though she is learning English astonishingly quick. Jeremy is French. He speaks more English than I had imagined, but he is echolalic; that is, he repeats things, so he’s difficult to comprehend most of the time. Harvey speaks English, of course, but he’s so coprolalic, uh, you know, cussing all the time, that it’s difficult to follow his conversations as well.”
“Why do we have to speak English, doctor?”
“Well, that’s my weakness. My only other language is Latin. No help, there, I’m afraid.”
“Ita is est?”
Pevnick grinned at the translation. It was Latin, of course. “Yes, and so it is.”
“You should learn my language.”
“Hmm. The ‘Manti’ you wrote about?”
James nodded and finished his breakfast. After his last bite, he silently mouthed, “Twenty-Six.”
“I wish I had the time,” Pevnick continued, “but, by your own definition, your language was developed for savants. I’ve read your book and, frankly, it’s way over my head.”
James grinned, gloating. “Do you mean to say that I am smarter than you?”
Pevnick shook his head but couldn’t help but smile. He jotted down a quick note to himself: Savants do have egos. “The symbols you expressed stand for phrases, rather than individual words, and there are so many of them,” he said. “I only have the group for one month. I couldn’t learn your language in that short amount of time.”
“I understand.”
“So, will you take the lead?”
James looked down at his feet, trying to remember if he’d counted his shoes while doing his daily ritual. He leaned down to assure the loops of the laces of both shoes were uniform, then looked back to Pevnick’s face as if seeing him for the first time. “If it makes you happy, doctor.”
Pevnick frowned in wonderment. “It would please me, very much, yes. Thank you. It doesn’t have to be all work. I’d like to see how you and the others react to each other as well. Maybe we can drive out to the ocean…”
“The beach?” said James, as if Pevnick had suggested visiting a radioactive dump site.
“Yes. I understand Etta loves the ocean.”
“I can’t do that,” said James, his face stoic.
“Why? It’s beautiful this time of the year.”
“I’m sure it is. But, I would have to count all the pebbles on the beach. It’s really quite distracting. It hurts my head. Sometimes I have seizures from the overload.”
“Ah, yes. I’m sorry. I forgot.”
“You’ve spent your life studying persons like myself, Dr. Pevnick. I’ve read your books. It almost seems as though you admire savants.”
“Admire?” The doctor paused to consider the young man’s assertion. “Yes. I suppose I do.”
“Why, doctor? Why would you admire a group of people who commonly have some sort of brain damage?”
“I don’t know. We are all drawn to something in life, I guess. Maybe because you are all so unique…like works of art. Some people don’t understand art. Some people love every nuance of it. Yes, James, I do admire you.”
James pondered Pevnick’s words for a moment, then bluntly asked, “Would you have liked your son to be like me? If he had lived, I mean.”
Pevnick tried not to react to the clumsy question. An image flashed into his mind of a truck’s headlights jumping into the path of his own car, the sudden horrendous impact of light, broken glass, and crunching metal ripping apart his family and his life. Blood covering him, his wife, and his son. He blinked his eyes, suddenly moist, and gazed out the window for a moment before answering. “I…don’t know, James.”
“Do you think God took your family?”
“No, James…I know you are very devoted to your faith but…” he paused, trying to find the words.
“But, what?”
“I don’t believe in God,” said Pevnick, abruptly. Then, he got up, his legs weak beneath him, and left the room.
CHAPTER TWO
James Tramwell: Congenital Savant
England. Fifteen years ago.
In Liverpool, Mrs. Alice Tramwell dressed her “dolly” child in a suit she’d found for him in a consignment shop. James was small and silent—there was something wrong with him, they knew, but she loved him and pampered him as much as her patience would allow. Within a year of his birth, he exhibited signs of “something along the autism spectrum,” the doctors said, though an exact diagnosis was not forthcoming.
Whatever the malady was, it was enough for George Tramwell, the father, to become uncomfortable with his son to the point of staying away from home as much as possible. He did this so much he had found another woman, one with normal children, and divorced Alice Tramwell so he could marry that normal woman and continue a normal life.
Dressing James was a challenge. He was constantly trying to rearrange the buttons on his shirts or untie his shoes and, though he could not talk, he seemed to be counting everything within eyesight and placing it into neat piles. This was fine when Alice did her laundry, but became a real challenge when she dressed him for special occasions, such as the one they were attending that day at church. The Tramwells were devout Catholics and went every Sunday, where Alice would pray to God to help fix James while he would sit next to her and stare at the floor. Alice would then stay after the service and talk to Father MacMillan who, eventually, agreed to allow James to go through communion, even though he had not been trained in the practice and had never gone through confession or even a catechism school to prepare him.
MacMillan and Alice agreed that whatever was wrong with James, it almost guaranteed he would not be able to lead a normal life, perhaps not even a very long life, and his young soul would at least be blessed and hold the body of Christ if he were to depart this physical world before too long.
James was used to being fed, though he was now four years old and should be feeding himself. So, communion would be easy. Father MacMillan would hold out a communion wafer and, God willing, little James would open his mouth like a hungry baby bird and swallow it up. The same with the wine.
James sat next to his mother as she stood, sat, kneeled, stood again, sang some songs, prayed some prayers. He felt like an overstuffed sausage (a banger, his mother called them) in his tightly buttoned vest and suit coat, his ironed trousers, swinging his small, tied and polished dress shoes and kicking the back of the pew in front of him. He held his hands over his ears because the noise was so loud in the church that it made him dizzy.
When the time came in the ceremony for the co
mmunion, a man came and stood by the end of the pew where James and his mother were sitting. He waved them out and James was confused—he thought they were leaving—but his mother pulled him by the hand and began to inch toward the front of the church.
James was frightened. He had never been to the front of the church where the altar, as his mother referred to it, was. That’s where the priest stood and did the strange things he did; waving his arms, bowing over golden goblets and ringing small bells from time to time. Where he sometimes spoke in a different language and looked down sternly on the people who came to see him every week, like a rock star, like The Beatles— a musical group that James was fond of listening to. He liked music, all types of music, and listened to old rock music, such as The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and an Irish band called U2. Lately, his musical interests had expanded and he’d found a station on the radio that they called “classical music.” It didn’t have words to the songs, just instruments, but James enjoyed the musicians they referred to as, Mozart, Bach, and Beethoven, a name he found to be very funny, though he was incapable of laughing out loud.
“Errr?” James groaned and his mother knew he was asking the unspoken question, “Where or what are we doing?”
Alice Tramwell smiled down at her son, and said, “It’s okay, James. We’re going to get something to eat.”
This made him feel better, but he was still intimidated by the sheer scale of the altar and the gigantic colored windows behind it. He began looking at the windows, even as they knelt down to receive the body of Christ. They seemed to be made up of tiny shards of colored glass and depicted scenes of Jesus, the man who his mother told him was “the Son of God.” For some reason, long ago, they had killed Jesus and because of that, it made people better. It took away their “eternal sin.” James didn’t understand all that beyond the words, but he wondered why people who were supposed to love Jesus allowed Him to be killed, and in such a gruesome way: nailed to a cross. As he knelt at the altar, he wondered if they would kill him, too, and his heart began to beat faster.
Father MacMillan continued along the row of worshipers, and James could see he was placing a round, flat piece of bread in everyone’s mouth. That would be okay, he supposed. He tilted his head back as he saw everyone else doing and waited his turn. But as he waited, he kept looking at the colored windows. They sparkled with the light that came through them and, after a while, it was all James could see…the light flashing: red, blue, yellow, green, flashing, flashing, flashing. James’s eyelids began to flutter and suddenly his head felt like it was going to explode. There was an intense pain like he’d never felt before, and as Father MacMillan stood in front of him and said, “The body of Christ,” the flashing colors in his head turned into a single bright light that ignited inside his brain. The bread went past his lips and James felt it stick to the roof of his mouth like a dry leech. He thought he would gag for a moment, but then everything went white, and his brain burned until he heard a popping sound, and then there was nothing else. There was not light, nor sounds, nor taste of bread in his mouth, and he felt himself falling, falling, then…nothing.
There was a sharp smell of something, it was like the liquid his mother cleaned the house with, the ammonia. It was a smell he did not like and he immediately opened his eyes. There was a man leaning over him, holding a white capsule-looking thing under his nose, and saying, “It’s okay son, I’m a doctor. Are you okay?” And his mother was standing behind the doctor and holding her hand to her mouth, her eyes were filled with tears, and some ran down her cheeks. The scent of the ammonia seemed to sear into his already burning brain and caused his own eyes to water.
The doctor said, “You’re okay James, you just had a little seizure.” James was not sure what that meant, but he sat up. The dizziness began to fade as the doctor kept his fingers on James’s wrist and looked at his watch. James remembered his own doctor telling him that was how they felt your heart beat.
Father MacMillan was explaining to the congregation that there had been a medical emergency and they were concluding a little early so they could attend to the matter. He blessed them all in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. People began to shuffle out, staring at the boy lying on the floor in front of the altar and making the sign of the cross, or kissing their rosaries on the way by. The organist began playing music as the parishioners ambled out. He was playing Pachelbel’s Canon.
As James listened to the music, the colors of the stained glass came back to his mind, but now they seemed like things he knew. They were organic, moving in patterns, and he could actually see the notes of the music and, with them, corresponding numbers. It all came to him in a rush that was both frightening and comforting, a confusing mesh that pushed a message from his brain down into his lungs and, finally, out of his mouth.
The doctor continued to fuss over him. But now, James became combative, and as the doctor tried to restrain him, he screamed out, “STOP!” The murmur from the departing crowd fell silent. Alice Tramwell and Father MacMillan genuflected.
Alice cried, “It’s a miracle!” and fell to her knees, sobbing. It was the first word that had come from her son’s mouth. MacMillan began to pray, looking up to the heavens. But they hadn’t seen anything yet. The organist looked over his shoulder, but haltingly began to play again.
“Stop,” said James again, this time calmer, quieter.
Now, the organist stopped playing and looked back at James, who was staring at him.
“Please,” said James. “It…you…are playing it wrong.” He walked forward, hesitantly at first, then with more conviction. He strode up the step of the altar and over to the alcove where the organ stood, now silent, and sat next to the organist. He placed his hands on the keys and, having never touched an instrument nor been trained in classical music, he began to play Pachelbel’s Canon in D Major, perfectly.
His mother, already on her knees, now slumped to her side and fainted. Father MacMillan approached James, his hands trembling, his mouth working, trying to find the words. Then, he knelt behind him as James continued to play, and said, “Bless you, child. This is a miracle from God, and we are blessed to have seen it here in our church.”
CHAPTER THREE
Present: Camp David
Camp David, formerly known as: the Naval Support Facility Thurmont, Catoctin Mountain Park, and, by at least one President, Shangri-La. Its exact location is not shown on any publicly available map. It has hosted every President since Franklin Roosevelt, as well as many foreign leaders, including Anwar Sadat, Menachem Begin, and Margaret Thatcher.
On this day, a group of the world’s top scientists and political leaders, including the President of the United States and his staff, gathered to discuss a very grave matter. Addressing the group seated at an impossibly huge semi-circular table was Dr. Makiko Hisamoto. He was in his mid-eighties, but blessed with a still surprisingly dexterous mind. He was a world-renowned geophysicist.
President Jackson T. (“Tree Hugger”) Cooper was listening intently to the discussion, his brow furrowed. A graduate of Harvard who studied philosophy before going to law school, Cooper had no scientific background. He was fifty-four years old and movie star handsome; a New England liberal in his third year in office. Formerly an attorney, he spent much of his professional time as an advocate who fought for ecological causes and organizations, such as the Nature Conservancy, Greenpeace, the National Wildlife Federation, and numerous other environmental protection agencies. When his opponent for the presidency called him a “tree hugger,” he proudly made the supposedly derogatory comment his nickname and campaign slogan.
At his side was Vice President Stanley Proger, fifty-six years old. His crew cut looked like metal fragments stuck into his head and mowed with a diamond cut blade. He was a western conservative and former Secretary of Defense. Once a high ranking military officer, his first political seat was Governor of Nevada. He went on to become a U.S. Senator and once ran for President as an independent c
andidate. He was thought to be too moderate by his former Republican party, and his stances on pro-life and the right to bear arms was thought to be too conservative for the Democrats. Still, he was enormously popular with independent and libertarian voters, and his military background helped President Cooper establish his administration as “well-rounded,” as well as bi-partisan. It was a brilliant pairing, but also a very radical idea for the President to construct, and one he hoped would finally unite the increasingly polarized parties for the first time since World War II.
“It is not accurate to say the nuclear detonation was not detected by the Vela project,” said Hisamoto, his neck still showing the burn marks he sustained while a small child in Nagasaki, Japan. “It was.” He looked around the room as if he were searching for someone to ease his burden of trying to explain the catastrophic event that was unfolding.
Gasps and whispered murmurings filled the room.
Hisamoto continued. “But, my understanding is that those who monitor the satellite images thought the characteristic footprint of the flashes could only have been a problem with the bhangmeters, as has been the case in the past.” He spoke in English, though everyone was listening through headphones that translated words for those that desired to hear what was being said in their own language.
Dr. Erich Heimel, an Austrian nuclear scientist, seventy-three years old and also world-renown, interjected dryly, “The Vela Project was believed to have been abandoned over twenty years ago. Typically, with today’s technology, we detect nuclear detonations using ARSA and RASA, the radioactive gas monitoring stations whose data collection center is located in Vienna. The problem is, unless it is surface detonation the gases may take weeks to be picked up by one of the sensors. The tell-tale signs of radioactive gases, such as xenon-133 or argon-37, may take from fifty to eighty days after detonation to seep into the atmosphere if the device was underground. If detonated at the bottom of the ocean, it could go undetected for months….”
The Savants Page 2