“This is the main CAPS facility that we occupied during the four years. That’s me,” Jaycee says with a trace of humor, “the human one. Cindy, you can see, is wearing the gloves I discussed and has the keyboard we designed in her lap.”
On the monitor, Cindy watches intently as Jaycee signs to her, speaking at the same time. “Where is the milk, Cindy?” Jaycee asks. Cindy pauses for a brief moment on the screen and then pulls her lips back into what looks to be a smirk. She pushes several buttons on the keyboard and then signs. The words IN THE COW show up in large letters on Jaycee’s computer screen. There is some laughter in the courtroom and even Allerton smiles.
David pauses the playback. “Can you walk us through the process that we just saw?”
“It’s a typical communication-observation-response sequence. I sign the question to Cindy. Cindy observes the signing visually, thinks of an answer, and then, using the gloves and the keyboard, she responds. Cindy’s response is translated through the program I testified about earlier, and then it appears on my computer screen. You’ll note Cindy’s joke. We found that she actually had a sense of humor and, like her language skills, her sense of what was funny—at least compared with my experience with my niece—was about what you’d expect from a four-year-old girl.”
David pushes PLAY on the remote. Back in the movie, Jaycee signs and says, “Funny. Very funny. But what is the true answer?”
Cindy signs and the answer shows up on the screen as BOTTLE IN REFRIGERATOR.
Jaycee signs and says, “Good, Cindy. Where is the refrigerator?”
Cindy presses a button on the keyboard and the word KITCHEN appears in large letters on Jaycee’s computer monitor.
“What color is the refrigerator?” Jaycee signs and says.
Cindy makes the ASL sign for “forgetting,” which is taking your hand and pretending to pull something out of your head. Even before the words I FORGOT appear on Jaycee’s computer screen, the gesture on the film is unmistakable.
“Think again,” Jaycee says and signs.
Cindy makes a gesture and it appears on Jaycee’s screen as LIKE THE MOON.
“Very good, Cindy,” Jaycee says on the recording.
David pauses the playback. “What’s that about?”
“That’s Cindy’s way of saying ‘silver’—like the moon. Colors tend to be a more abstract concept than we realize.”
The recording jumps to another segment. Cindy signs and punches a button on the keyboard. WHERE IS FRANK? shows up on Jaycee’s computer.
Jaycee responds in sign and voice, “Frank is sick today.” Cindy’s head drops to her chest in response. “What is wrong, Cindy?” Jaycee asks and signs.
Cindy looks up at Jaycee, and her eyes express something I recognize all too well. Cindy puts a finger below each eye—the ASL sign for “crying”—and then signs something with both hands. Jaycee looks confused and then checks her computer monitor. The monitor shows that Cindy has asked: WILL FRANK DIE LIKE MICHAEL?
David pauses the recording again. “Who was Michael?”
“He was another NIS chimpanzee at CAPS that Cindy used to have social time with. He was infected with hepatitis B and a few months later died from it.”
“How did you explain that to Cindy?” David asks.
Jaycee shrugs. “I mean, assuming for the moment that Cindy is capable of rational thought, how do you explain it in a way that makes sense? I just told her that he got sick and went to sleep and could not wake up.” The tremor in Jaycee’s voice is a warning sign, so David quickly starts the recording again.
In the recording, Jaycee assures Cindy in sign and voice, “No, no. Frank is just a little sick. Frank is not dying.”
Cindy signs back to Jaycee, and Jaycee reads off the monitor. I AM GLAD FRANK IS NOT SICK LIKE MICHAEL. Cindy’s hand hesitates in midair, as if she is thinking about saying something else.
“What is it, Cindy?” Jaycee signs and asks.
After a pause that stretches for a few long seconds, Cindy signs and touches her keyboard. WILL I BECOME SICK LIKE MICHAEL?
In the courtroom, the recording goes blue and Jaycee covers her face with her hands. The courtroom is silent.
Whatever else my old friend might have done before, during, or since meeting Cindy, there could no longer be any serious question about the depths or genuineness of her feelings for this creature. Even the jury foreman seems disturbed by the scene unfolding before him.
David gives Jaycee a moment to compose herself before turning her over to Mace for cross-examination. In the process, he forgets to pause the video.
There is something else on this disk.
I suddenly come into view on the monitor.
I’d almost forgotten what I sounded and looked like in life. I think that’s the way it’s meant to be. How else am I supposed to withstand my present state of being if I must compare it with the deep, resonant colors that come only through breathing real air and touching anything that offers even the slightest resistance to my fingers? I so miss the feel of everything.
Nevertheless there I am on that screen, and I reel under the weight of the disconnect.
That day on the recording floods my memory. I’d just learned of my disease, but I was still optimistic that we would come through it without any lasting consequence. I also was thrilled to be with Jaycee and meet this remarkable animal called Cindy.
I still had hope and it showed.
“Will she come to me?” I say on the recording.
Jaycee appears next to me. “I think so. Give her the present.”
I offer Cindy the doll I’ve brought. “Cindy? Would you like this?” I ask and sign as I hold the doll out to her. She takes it gently from my hand. For just one moment our hands touch. Then Cindy signs something.
The words THANK YOU appear on the monitor in the lab, followed by, WHAT IS YOUR NAME?
“My name is Helena,” I say and sign.
Cindy signs again, and COME PLAY WITH ME immediately appears on the screen.
In the courtroom, David stands paralyzed before the monitor, the remote control raised but useless in his hand. I’m not the only one who has been jettisoned from the safe harbor of numbness by this video clip.
“I would love to,” I see myself say and sign to Cindy on the screen. I approach Cindy, and for the next few moments of film we can be seen huddled together on the floor near her Cube.
“Mr. Colden?” Allerton asks quietly in the courtroom. Through some silent but shared language predicated on the syntax of grief and loss, Allerton knows the identity of this woman in the video. For Allerton, the missing explanation for David’s involvement in this case has clicked into place. “Is there anything else you wanted us to see?” he inquires.
David doesn’t respond. He can’t. It’s not just seeing my moving image and hearing my voice after these long months, it also is the fact that I’ve suddenly popped up in the middle of his courtroom—a place I would never be—like some misplaced but determined jack-in-the-box. My connection to Jaycee and Cindy is no longer amorphous and indeterminate for David, but instead is forever recorded and preserved in pixels, bits, and binary code.
I have become evidence.
“Mr. Colden?” Allerton asks again, his voice evidencing a measure of personal concern thus far absent from his demeanor during the trial.
Finally, Chris steps behind David, takes the remote control out of his hand, and, mercifully, pushes the STOP button. The monitor goes blue. “You’re almost there,” Chris whispers to him and squeezes his shoulder. “Just hold on.”
“Do you need a moment, Mr. Colden?” Allerton asks.
At Chris’s touch, David slowly comes back into himself. “Thank you, Your Honor. I’m okay.”
“Do you have any more questions for Dr. Cassidy?”
“I think just one more,” David says. Turning back to Jaycee, he asks, “Why did you do it? Why did you try to take Cindy?”
When Jaycee speaks, her voice quivers. This is by far her hardest answ
er, because this is Jaycee’s truth. “How couldn’t I? I tried every other way to save her. I tried to buy her, I offered to work for free, I wrote to congressmen. Nothing worked. With the end of the project, Cindy was going to be transferred to the general primate population. Once there, she can be experimented on, infected with diseases—just like Michael. I’m not married. I’ve no kids. Cindy was my life for four years. I raised her as I would my own daughter. I changed her diapers, I toilet-trained her, taught her how to eat, to express herself in our language, to care about what happens to herself and those around her. I just couldn’t let them kill her. I needed to try something… anything to free her.”
Jaycee finishes her answer just before her tears come. She makes no attempt to brush them away.
David turns to Mace and his voice is tight and low. “Your witness.”
Mace, the confidence gone from his voice, says, “We’d like to take a few minutes, Your Honor.”
Allerton looks at the large clock at the rear of the courtroom. “Make it quick, please.”
“I messed up. I’m so sorry,” Chris tells David during the break. “I didn’t know Jaycee actually caught any of Helena on tape. I would never have…”
David still seems disoriented. It’s as if the combination of seeing my moving image, hearing my voice, and watching me interact with Cindy means more to him than the simple sum of those parts. I think the consequences of the trial have become more real for him, or maybe it is just that the reality of my absence has become inescapable.
I don’t know if any of this is a good or bad thing though, or even whether it matters anymore at all, and this is what frightens me. “Jaycee said that she didn’t have any,” David says finally.
“She must’ve forgotten about that one.”
“Well, now that we have it, I guess we’ve got to use it.”
“What do you mean?” Chris asks.
David shakes his head. “I need to think,” he says and walks away.
After the break, Mace began his cross-examination of Jaycee. Thus far, it has been difficult to sit through. In addition to the actual conduct for which Jaycee is being prosecuted (and which she freely admits), Mace also has established that: (i) Jaycee had formed a very strong maternal bond with Cindy that not only had the potential to cloud Jaycee’s objectivity, it in fact probably did so; (ii) Jaycee would do almost anything within her power to save Cindy from harm; and (iii) Jaycee’s work with Cindy was on the very far—and perhaps very, very far—edge of accepted anthropological theory.
And Mace isn’t quite finished yet. I know where he’s going. I think everyone in the courtroom can see it, including Jaycee. The entire cross-examination has been foreshadow; he will try to destroy any sympathy Jaycee has won among the jurors by discrediting the work that has consumed her for the last four years or by cracking Jaycee’s professional composure. And Allerton will allow Mace to try because David opened the door by putting the merits of Jaycee’s work at issue. I can tell by the way David begins grinding his teeth that we have come to a make-or-break moment, and the outcome all turns on whether Jaycee will be able to survive the coming attack.
“Now,” Mace says, “let me direct your attention to the technology through which you say Cindy communicates. You gave testimony about interstitial linguistic programming, you remember that?”
“Yes.”
“Can you explain to us the actual programming behind that concept?”
“Somewhat. Essentially, ILP, as I said earlier, involves comparing a normal physiology—or in this case, a human one—with an abnormal physiology, in this case that of a chimpanzee, and mapping the differences. Then you take the actions of the affected subject, again the chimpanzee, run it through that model, and the computer program will interpolate and predict the most likely intended action.”
“Interpolate and predict the most likely intended action?” Mace asks quizzically. “That’s the first time I heard you use the word interpolate in this proceeding. Can you tell us what it means?”
“Certainly. In general terms, it means to estimate between two known values.”
“I see. So ILP is a program that estimates; it makes predictions.”
“Yes, but with a high degree of accuracy.”
“And how do you know the level of accuracy?”
“Because ILP has been tested and validated in a number of studies.”
“Studies involving whom?”
“The vocally impaired.”
“Humans?”
“Yes. Humans.”
“Has any effort ever been made to validate it as against non-humans?”
“Not that I’m aware of. No.”
“And as I understand your testimony, you’re not using ILP in the manner for which it was originally created, correct?”
“I don’t understand the question.”
“Don’t you? Really?” Mace asks in disbelief. “ILP as I understand it—and please correct me if I’m wrong, Doctor—was created to take vocal utterances and sort of fill in the blanks when measured against the human speaker’s vocal impairment. Correct?”
“Yes.”
“But you’re not using it to fill in the words. You’re using it in your research to estimate and interpolate American Sign Language utterances—basically, hand gestures.”
“That’s not accurate, sir.” I can tell Jaycee is getting angry.
“In what way am I incorrect?” Mace taunts her.
“In some instances, the way in which Cindy signs is completely discernible. The ILP is just belts and suspenders.”
“And in other cases?”
“As I indicated, in other cases the limitations of primate physiology require educated estimation.”
“In how many cases is it necessary to estimate?”
“I don’t know offhand.”
“In the movie that we just saw, how many times was it necessary to estimate what the primate was attempting to communicate because of a limitation in physiology?”
“I couldn’t say.”
“Half ?”
“I’m not certain.”
“More than half?”
“I said I wasn’t certain?”
“Every single time?”
“No, not every time.”
“So somewhere between more than half and every time?”
“Objection,” David calls out as he rises, “that mischaracterizes her testimony.”
Allerton turns to Jaycee. “Can you give us a reasonable estimate of how many times there was a direct match between what the chimpanzee was signing and, for example, what I would find in an ASL dictionary? I think that’s what Mr. Mace is getting at.”
“I don’t mean to argue with you, Your Honor,” Jaycee says.
“But I sense you’re about to anyway,” Allerton answers to some amused laughter.
“I just want to clarify something. The reason why that’s a very difficult question to answer is because very few people who sign do it exactly the way you would see it in an ASL dictionary. There are always small and subtle differences in the way someone makes a letter, for example. And just like humans, ASL signing chimps use facial expression and gaze direction to moderate the meanings of their signs. That’s one of the reasons we also use the keyboard.”
“So then,” Allerton says, “the question seems to be how many times you relied upon the ILP with respect to what we just saw to interpret what the chimpanzee was attempting to sign?”
“I would guess maybe half the time,” Jaycee says. I can hear David repeat in his head what he tells every witness—Never, ever guess.
Mace picks up on the thread before Allerton or David can say anything more. “So, you would guess—your word—fifty percent of the time?”
“Yes.”
“Can you read ASL, Dr. Cassidy?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Hmmm.” Mace pretends to ponder. “Then can you tell me why it is that in every instance you appear in that recording, you needed to check the c
omputer monitor to see what the specimen had said?”
Jaycee hesitates, trying to recall what the recording actually showed. “I always like to be sure, so I confirm my understanding.”
“And the way you confirm your understanding is through a computer program that has never been validated for primates and was never intended for ASL?”
“Objection,” David interjects. “Asked and answered.”
“Sustained,” Allerton rules.
“Dr. Cassidy,” Mace begins again, “are you familiar with something called Lloyd Morgan’s canon?”
“Yes.”
“It is a canon of deductive reasoning, is it not?”
“It’s supposed to be.”
“What is it?”
“Never believe that animals think as you do unless you must.”
“A derivation of the principle called Occam’s razor, isn’t it? All things being equal, one should prefer simpler explanations for behavior over more complicated ones.”
“I believe that’s what Occam’s razor involves, yes.”
“And you do know what anthropomorphism is?”
“Of course. It is the projection of human characteristics on non-human animals.”
“Isn’t anthropomorphism a serious risk in your business?”
“No more than speciesism is in yours. Do you know what speciesism is, Mr. Mace?” Jaycee snarls back.
Allerton leans over to Jaycee. “Please just answer the questions, Dr. Cassidy.”
“I apologize. The answer to your question is no, I do not believe that anthropomorphism is a serious risk in a well-controlled study that employs principles of the scientific method like the work we did with Cindy.”
“And the Cornell Language Institute study of Cindy,” Mace says as he grabs the document off his desk, “specifically says, and I quote, ‘the subject’s language capacity and cognitive age equivalent assumes both’ ”—Mace pauses for emphasis—“ ‘both that the interstitial linguistic programming is validated for primates generally and the subject primate specifically and that the modifications of the ILP to make it compatible for American Sign Language are valid and appropriate. We offer no opinion as to either assumption.’ ” Mace shows the document to Jaycee. “Do you see that in the report?”
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