“Yu,” Keith said. “What was that all about?”
“It’s all there.”
“What’s all there?”
“Fifteen thousand sixty-seven square feet.”
“That’s how many square feet there are in the building?”
“Yes.”
Yu never explained the importance of the square-foot computation to Keith, and the psychologists could only suggest that making the computations kept him from thinking about the loss of Suni.
After that Yu made the computations whenever stressed, and Keith came to accept the explanation of the experts. If they took Yu on a field trip to a museum, he could not relax unless he computed the square feet, even though he spent his time at the museum pacing in and out of rooms. If the furniture in the residence hall was rearranged, Yu would recompute the square footage of the entire building. Yu’s pacing and computing was annoying, but no behavior-modification program designed by the psychologists could eliminate the behavior, so the staff resigned themselves to living with it.
Keith was as fascinated with Yu’s uneven abilities as Suni had been and experimented with other games and puzzles, but found no new abilities. One day Keith wrote a paper about Yu’s abilities and gave it to one of the staff psychologists. The psychologist polished the paper and submitted it to a journal for publication. Shortly after Keith saw his name in print for the first time, a psychologist by the name of Dr. Martin showed up at the school to see Yu. He was refused, since Mr. Tran’s permission was needed. The next day Mr. Tran called and approved Dr. Martin’s visit and he spent the next few days testing Yu. They didn’t see Dr. Martin after that, but one day word came that Yu was being transferred to a new home run by Dr. Martin.
Keith remembered the difficult transition for Yu when he had replaced Suni, and worried about Yu. Suni had left detailed notes about her contact with Mr. Tran over the years, and Keith believed Suni when she wrote that contacting Mr. Tran was useless. Still, he decided the circumstances warranted the call. Mr. Tran was as cold as Suni had described him.
“Mr. Tran, I wanted to talk to you about Yu’s move. Disrupting his routine could be very detrimental. It could set him back years.”
Mr. Tran snorted derisively into the phone. “Set him back from the fourth grade to the third grade? What a loss.”
“It’s not just academic ability. There are self-esteem issues too.”
“I know you think it is important for him to feel good about being backward, but I do not. True self-esteem comes from doing well, not being told you are doing well. That is a lie.”
“It’s more than just that. Your son is happy here, well adjusted.”
“You will get him back. It is only temporary and then the checks to your institution will come again.”
“It’s not the money!” Keith was stung by the suggestion he was worried about his paycheck. “But if it’s only temporary then why do it at all? Dr. Martin isn’t trained to work with the kinds of disabilities Yu has.”
“I do it because it is Yu’s chance to pay the family back for all they have given him. Dr. Martin will pay us to use Yu in his experiments.”
“What?”
“It is done. When the experiments are over Yu will be returned.”
Mr. Tran hung up without saying goodbye, leaving Keith listening to a dead line. He tried to find out about the experiments Yu was to be a part of, but found little. When Elizabeth Foxworth showed up to assess Yu and his needs Keith was heartened a little. Ms. Foxworth was a caring, competent professional who listened when Keith described Yu’s habits, but Ms. Foxworth shared little about the experiments Yu would be a part of. When Yu left with Ms. Foxworth, Keith was the only one who said goodbye to him. Yu didn’t respond, he just climbed into the backseat of the car and sat rocking back and forth. He was still rocking when the car turned out of the drive onto the highway. Keith went back into the residence hall with a sick feeling. A feeling he would never see Yu again.
13
IMPULSE
This time the whispering started when Gil was only halfway through his relaxation routine. It was louder and he could pick out words. “Daddy” was the clearest, and Gil was sure the voice said “I’m sorry.” He was also sure that whoever it was was in pain.
Gil went down to the kitchen. He could hear Karon and Len out on the front porch laughing. Wes was bent over printouts at the kitchen table, lost in thought, a cup of coffee by his right hand. Gil wanted to get into the basement to see if the voice was louder but didn’t want to explain to Wes what he was doing, so he went past Wes, nodding hello, and out the backdoor.
Gil sat on the back porch staring into the darkness and working through his relaxation routine until he could hear the voice. He listened, but it was weaker than in the house and he couldn’t make out any words, only feel the emotion—but the emotion had changed. It felt angry now, and as he listened he felt himself getting angry. The voice was working on Gil, worming its way into his being, its emotions becoming his emotions. Gil broke the meditative state, feeling genuine anger over the loss of control he was feeling. Self-control kept his special gift a secret, and control kept him out of jail.
Gil left the porch and cut across the yard, turning down the alley toward town, trying to walk off the invading emotion. The alley was unpaved and uneven with mud puddles sprinkled along its two ruts. The only light in the alley came from the porch lights of the old houses that lined either side of the block. As Gil passed he could hear the sounds of family life coming from the homes; TVs and radios blaring, and in one house the sound of a crying child. Gil picked his way through the dark carefully, but stumbled and stepped in the middle of a large puddle, the brown water splashing up his pant leg and then backwashing over his shoe. Angry, Gil kicked the puddle with his other foot, splashing the water up as high as his chest. Gil was about to attack the puddle again when he caught himself—it wasn’t like him to be this angry. This wasn’t his emotion—it wasn’t his anger. “It’s that voice,” Gil said in an angry whisper.
Gil continued his walk, determined to free himself of his anger. As he neared the end of the alley he heard laughter and voices ahead. Gil slowed, hiding in the shadows. There was a group of people opening the double doors of a garage. The garage belonged to the fraternity Gil had used against Ralph. He had been sorely disappointed the fraternity had only succeeded in getting Ralph lectured, not removed from the project.
The group at the corner disappeared into the open garage doors and came out with a long ladder, and then they started down the alley away from Gil. He followed, his mood darkening to match the shade of the alley shadows. The boys carrying the ladder stopped at the corner while two ran into the street and then signaled the coast was clear. The group with the ladder ran across the street, those in the back fishtailing the end of the ladder and laughing when those in the front cursed them. Gil waited, giving them a chance to get deeper in the alley, and then walked across the street, casually checking to see if anyone was on the sidewalks.
Following their whispered laughter, Gil found them crouched down, peeking through a picket fence at a large two-story house. From his vantage point Gil could see movement in the second-floor window—a sorority sister in a nightgown. Giggling spread along the line of hidden fraternity brothers. It was a fraternity prank, Gil realized. He only hoped they were more successful at this than they had been with Ralph. The thought of Ralph refreshed the anger he felt toward the fraternity brothers. Gil’s breath came more rapidly and he glared at the boys from his shadow.
Two more figures passed by the sorority windows; then the boys climbed the fence, lifting the ladder over. Soon the ladder was pressed flat against the house. The boys paused, making sure they weren’t discovered, and then they quietly tilted the aluminum ladder vertically and laid it gently against the side of the house. The second story of the house was smaller than the first by design, and there was a porch outside the back two bedroom windows. A lower roof ran along the side of the house just bel
ow the second-story windows. The ladder was leaning against this lower roof. One of the boys climbed the ladder while the others held it at the bottom. The boy climbed slowly and quietly and stepped onto the roof gingerly. He crept along the roof toward the back of the house, stopping at the first window. He peeked inside carefully and then more boldly, exposing his head to full view. Then he turned to his comrades and shrugged his shoulders. The peeping Tom continued to the porch in the back and climbed over the rail, flattening against the wall and creeping to the glass doors that accessed the porch. To Gil the curtains looked fully drawn, but the boy put his eye to the edge of the door and held motionless for thirty seconds. Then he stepped back to the rail and waved excitedly to his friends, making an obscene stroking motion with his hand and setting off waves of quiet laughter.
Feeling his anger grow again, Gil watched intently. Irrationally, he blamed them for not getting rid of Ralph. Even more, he was irritated by their sexual prank. Gil didn’t understand sexual motivation, since he had never experienced it, but he was jealous that others could experience something he couldn’t. Quietly he left his hiding place and crept closer.
The boys were taking turns going up the ladder now. Two were already up, creeping along the roof to join the voyeur. Two more were climbing up the ladder. Gil positioned himself at the corner of the picket fence, where he could get a clear line of sight on the boys; then he waited for the next one to reach the top. The boy stepped off the ladder and turned toward the porch. Gil stared hard at the boy as he walked carefully along the roof, and when he was halfway to the porch he thought “turn left” and pushed the idea into the boy’s head. Suddenly the boy turned and stepped off the roof. When his foot met nothing but air he yelled, pitching forward, his head dipping toward the ground. His arms came out to catch himself but clawed uselessly at the air. Arching his back, he kept himself from going into a dive but ended up in the belly-flop position. A sharp “aaaaaah” sound came from the boy as he hurtled toward the yard below. Wes was waiting for the belly flop but at the last second the boy tucked his head under and turned head over heels like a diver, crashing into the rosebushes flat on his back. A dull thud and the sound of splintering wood sounded the end of the boy’s fall.
Satisfied that he was dead, Gil turned away. Shouts of alarm from the others sent Gil hurrying up the alley, fearful a crowd would gather. He was only a short distance away when the screaming started. “Damn, the boy’s still alive,” Gil thought. First Dr. Birnbaum survived, then he had failed to get rid of Ralph, and now the college punk had survived. Gil listened to the screaming as he walked up the alley trying to judge the level of agony. His victims usually didn’t live long enough to scream, so Gil had too little experience to judge whether or not the boy would survive. He hoped not. He didn’t like to think he was losing his touch.
14
EXPECTATIONS
It was late but Wes felt wired. He was on his third cup of coffee, but it wasn’t the caffeine that had him on edge, it was his experiment. It had gone exactly as he had hoped. Frankie had emerged and answered questions using the abilities of the donor minds. It was a true independent consciousness; at least, it met Wes’s criteria. Wes suspected nothing would satisfy Elizabeth.
The printouts were spread in front of Wes and most of the data were close to the predicted parameters. The EEGs from the first and second experiments with Daphne and Gil did show subtle discrepancies, but they were most likely the result of normal variability. Now Wes wished he had used Ralph the second time just for the extra data. More surprising was the EEG run on Frankie. In Wes’s previous experiments the synthesized EEGs operated within the range established by the donor brain waves. In this case, however, there was electrical spiking beyond what he had ever seen in any of the donors, and some of the alpha waves were an unusually high frequency.
Elizabeth came in and poured herself a cup of coffee, then sat down at the table opposite Wes. He didn’t like her that close to his discrepant data until he had a chance to explain it, so he casually began folding up the printouts. Elizabeth watched him over the top of her coffee cup.
“Anything interesting?”
“What makes you ask?” Wes responded defensively.
“Don’t get hostile, I was just curious.”
“Sorry. Nothing unusual. Everything’s going as planned.”
“Let me ask you something, Wes. Let’s say you get your Frankie, and let’s say it is a fully independent consciousness. Then what? What will you do with it? What’s the whole point of this?”
“You didn’t read my proposal, did you?” Wes asked to needle her. “The point is to model consciousness. If we can produce it, we can understand it. If we can understand it maybe we can alter it.”
“Mind control.”
“Why is that the first thing critics always think of? It never occurred to me. I was thinking more of repairing consciousness.”
“I would have thought someone with your theory of mind would be a physiologist. Doesn’t consciousness depend on brain and therefore to repair consciousness you have to regenerate brain tissue?”
“What about your theory? You think mind depends on soul. If I’m correct then we might be able to transfer functions of mind to other parts of the brain. Neurons are basically electrochemical switches. If we can superimpose a function from a normal brain on an abnormal one, and get the switches to operate in the same way, then that part of the brain may learn the function.”
“Very creative.”
“You mean fanciful.”
“I mean what I say. Stop being so suspicious.”
Elizabeth said it seriously, and Wes realized she was sincere. He reminded himself how much his work depended on her and then forced a smile.
“Sorry, it’s just that my work is such a big part of my life. I really want this to work.”
“The mind repair seems a long way off. What are your short-term goals?”
Wes found himself in a dilemma. He wanted to share with her, but he wasn’t sure he trusted her. She had a sharp mind and a sharp tongue, but she could also be compassionate and friendly, not to mention pretty. On his side she would be a formidable ally.
“You’re going to think this is weird,” he said.
“I already think what you’re doing is weird.”
Elizabeth said it with a smile and Wes took it as a friendly tease.
“Did you learn about the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget in your sociology classes?”
“Yes, but everything I learned had a sociological spin on it.”
“You know the basic theory, though. Piaget looked at children in a way no one else had at that time. He didn’t see them as just short adults who knew little, he saw them as actually reasoning differently from adults.”
“I remember the water-jar experiment.”
“Right, if you take two short fat jars the same size and fill them to the same level with water, a four-year-old can tell you they have the same amount in them. Then if you take one of the jars and pour it into a tall thin jar and ask the child which has more they will invariably point to the tall thin one because the water level is higher. An older child won’t make this mistake.”
“I remember, they forget to take into account the diameter.”
“Not just forget, they aren’t capable. That’s an important difference. There’s several ways to explain why they make the error, but think of it this way. To compare the two identical short glasses the child only has to compare the height in order to get it correct. To compare the short fat glass with the tall thin glass the child must consider the height of the water as well as the diameter of the glass. To do that the child needs to have two tracks in his mind. More difficult problems require even more tracks. What if we have a child that has to sort blocks on the basis of size, color, and shape?”
“They would need three tracks, and a child has to be older to do that. About ten or so, as I remember,” Elizabeth said. “So as we age we have more tracks, as you call them, but
what’s the point.”
“The point is that we don’t keep adding tracks; we reach a maximum. There is a limit to the number of concepts we can juxtapose.”
Wes sat back, waiting for the implication to register with Elizabeth, but she only stared at him blankly.
“Wes, what are you getting at?”
“Each of our savants is a genius in one part of their mind. Not just genius, more than that. They do things no genius ever could do. Einstein couldn’t calendar-calculate or solve puzzles like Archie. It’s as if an intellect so great that we can’t fathom it was shattered and fragments of that genius sprinkled among the population. What if we could reconstruct that great mind—that superconsciousness—how many tracks would it have? A dozen? A hundred? A thousand? What problems could a mind like that solve if we could knit it together once more?”
Wes realized his voice had raised an octave and he was leaning across the table. She was staring at him in surprise, but when she spoke it was with respect, not mockery.
Fragments Page 14