Fool's Experiments

by Edward M. Lerner

  But he did not for a moment believe it.

  Doug had made the appointment at Shady Acres Sanitarium, but it took Cheryl's charm to get them past the doctor to visit with Bob Cherner. Doug wasn't all that sure now the trip had been a good idea.

  At first, the sanitarium belied Doug's preconceptions. The grounds were immaculately groomed and, true to the name, dappled by the shade of old oak trees. The front lobby was bright and airy. Sunlight streamed through the windows into a marbled foyer. Cheery paintings decorated the walls and extended up the curved staircase.

  Cherner's room was a different story. The only furniture was a narrow bed bolted to the floor, devoid of head- or footboard. The single window was tiny, high, and barred. The door had no inside knob. And, oh yes, the walls and door were thickly padded.

  "Doug?" Cheryl began. Her trembling voice suggested all the misgivings that he felt. "Does he even see us?"

  Doug forced himself to study the man they were visiting. He had met Bob professionally, had sat on a few experts' panels with him at symposia. The Cherner he remembered was alert, witty, with humor dancing in his eyes. The man seated on the bed stared dully into a corner, indifferent to their presence. No trace of personality showed in his eyes.

  Swatches of bandages covered the ruin they had been told he had made of his face.

  Nor had Doug ever known Bob Cherner to wear a straitjacket.

  "No," Doug answered softly, "I don't think he does." Doug stepped close to his stricken colleague. "Bob? It's Doug Carey. We need to talk." A flicker of eye motion showed that Doug had been heard. Had he been understood? He had no way of telling. "Bob, what happened to you?"

  Nothing.

  "It's no use," Cheryl finally said. "You heard what they did to him."

  Repeated electroshock. But what choice had the doctors had when Bob struggled insanely whenever he came out of sedation? It was feared that even in the straitjacket, he would injure himself by fighting with such frenzy against his restraints.

  Now Cherner was mute, passive, inert.

  Doug tried again. "It must be awful. Terrible. But you're not alone, Bob, not any longer. We know something is happening to neural-interface researchers. Several have died. You must help us stop it from continuing." He couldn't say why he chose the impersonal pronoun.

  No response.

  Cheryl inched closer. She looked past the bandages, and deep into Cherner's eyes. They were blank and lifeless.

  Her face ashen, Cheryl backed away. Doug guessed what she was thinking. Would she wind up like that? Would he? The notion was far scarier than death. "I have to go," she said. "I have to."

  "In a moment." Doug took out a pen and his shopping list. A thought had come to him, probably stupid, but it was the only idea he had. He drew on the back of the list, then held up the simple sketch. "Bob, what does this mean to you?"

  Cherner's eyes bulged, and he screamed in primal rage. His frenzy strained the fabric of the straitjacket. Spittle flew from his lips.

  He surged from the bed, raving incoherently, head lowered like a battering ram. As Doug backpedaled, Cherner stumbled and fell, shrieking, to the carpeted floor. His eyes, so recently vacant, burned with rage. He struggled to regain his feet.

  The door crashed open. White-coated men brushed Doug roughly aside. It took three people to subdue the patient thrashing on the floor. "What did you do?" an orderly demanded, jabbing an air-spray hypo against Cherner's neck. Cherner arched his back at the sting of the injection, then fell still.

  Doug looked helplessly at the drawing he had made: a replica of the overlapping ovals from Ben Feinman's desk blotter. They must lie at the root of the problem. They obviously meant something.

  But what?

  CHAPTER 15

  Mowing on Halloween just seemed wrong, but no one had informed the weather. Lawns remained green, and half the leaves still clung to the trees. Sweat poured down Doug's back as he shoved the lawn mower about the small yard. This section was the hardest; with its ten-degree grade, it alone justified a self-propelled model.

  Alas, it would be years, if ever, before he used any powered mower. Motor vibrations drove his prosthesis nuts, unless he turned down the sensitivity to approximately the Captain Hook setting, with which he had so little control that he would probably lose his other hand. A truncated rosebush showed the folly of a prior experiment, when he had borrowed a gas mower.

  On the plus side, without the din of a power mower, he could hear the all-Elvis playlist from his iPod.

  Three more swaths and he would pop into the house for a cold drink. Despite his grumbling, the mindlessness of the job at hand appealed to Doug. Rote tasks liberated his imagination, freed his mind for whatever problems were pressing. It worked better than parking himself in an easy chair and ordering himself to think.

  He reached the uphill end of a row and began a turn. As he pivoted the mower, his gaze swept across the Perlmans' cedar deck, on which Cindy Perlman, a pale grub of flesh bulging out of halter top and short shorts, lay draped across the chaise lounge. He continued the turn, carefully avoiding eye contact. She was a friend and good neighbor, but seeing her up close in that outfit could strike a man blind. The dark side of Indian summer...

  Doug continued his ruminations. He and Cheryl had been thrown for a loop by the incident at the sanitarium. What could it be about that sketch? Now Cheryl could dress. Not that he could imagine her going to pot like Cindy Perlman, but if Cheryl ever did gain an excess ounce, she would surely wear something tasteful and appropriate.

  Yesterday had been cooler, and Cheryl had worn a bulky blue sweater with that knee-length black skirt and black heels. All very professional, of course, but something about the fuzziness of the sweater was so, so ... cuddly. The other day she had worn slacks and a crisp white blouse to work. Then there were the jeans she had been wearing on Roosevelt Island. Now, that emerald blouse she wore with the beige linen suit. What was that slick material? Silk maybe, or satin, but he wasn't quite—

  He jerked to a halt in mid-swath. What are you thinking? Doug asked himself, although the answer was obvious. He couldn't visualize his own wardrobe in such detail. So rote tasks freed his mind for pressing matters? Liberated his mind? Hah!

  Maybe he would break for that cold drink now. In a bit, it seemed, he would need a very cold shower. She works for you, you australopithecine jerk.

  Any other topic was safer. Even Bob Cherner qualified. What did Cherner and Ben Feinman have in common? Doug went inside and looked once more at the sketch copied from

  Ben Feinman's blotter. The drawing that made Cherner go postal.

  Doug found scrap paper and a pencil, and began doodling. Oval followed oval; loop succeeded loop. The shapes overlapped at a common center, radiating from that spot.

  He popped open a can of Coke. Insight skittered behind his eyes as he sat and stupidly stared. What? The can clanked as he set it down.

  His hand stuck briefly when he next lifted the soda. He had crushed the can, sloshing Coke all over in the process. The plastiskin of the artificial limb lacked moisture and temperature sensors. Maybe in the next model.

  What was that errant thought?

  Scribbling had half-obliterated Ben's drawing. Obliterated? Would striking out the sketch have placated Bob Cherner? It wasn't an experiment Doug was eager to perform, even if he were allowed back.

  He waggled the squashed can; it wasn't quite empty, so he took another sip. The scribblings—what might they have covered? They might have covered anything, you idiot. Whatever was under the scribbles was covered. That was the point. Focus.

  Point. Focus. Hmm. Doug did a mental rewind. Spot. His subconscious was clearly trying to tell him something. He wiped the soda from the scrap of paper on which he had been jotting. At the center of the drawing, in the part of the figure that Ben Feinman had most heavily obliterated, Doug made a single, central dot. A spot.

  "Point," "spot," and "focus": They were all good words, useful words. Still, although they h
ad helped him find his way, Doug didn't think any of them was the key word. None was the word that had flitted across his mind.

  That word was "radiating."

  "Whadayya call a bunch of Apple computers at the University of Hawaii?" the disembodied voice demanded.

  Cheryl groaned. She'd barely stepped out of the shower when the lobby annunciator warbled. The steamy mirror confirmed her worst fears: Her terry-cloth robe was old and ratty, and the towel/turban around her sopping-wet hair was little better. In the kitchen, she hoped, battle continued with the dreaded arithmetic book. When Cheryl had peeked in before her shower, the textbook had been winning.

  "Come on up, Doug. Apartment four eleven." Who else would announce himself that way? She buzzed open the lobby security door. Moments later, someone rapped on her front door. She checked the peephole: her boss. Letting him in, she warned, "One word and you're dead meat." He was dressed for, and smelled fresh from, yard work. She figured that at present she smelled better but looked worse.

  "Does a particular word put me at risk, or any word at all?"

  "Next time, call ahead, damn it."

  He tried to look abashed. It came out as boyish charm, but that was close enough to mollify her. While she pondered this reaction, a trickle of water down her neck reminded her of her condition. "Will whatever brings you wait a few minutes? I'd like to dry my hair."

  "Not a problem "

  "Honey?" She raised her voice. "Come out here, please?" Boyish charm turned apprehensive, before fading into feigned indifference. Aha. Doug was interested in her love life. Cheryl never dated anyone from the office, let alone the boss—why did his reaction please her? She was not normally indecisive, and the confusion angered her. She turned that indignation outward: What business did Doug have appearing here unannounced and on a Saturday? He had never been here, for chrissake. She presumed he'd found her address on the net.

  Carla stepped from the kitchen. She was nine years old and tall for her age, with her father's red hair and blue eyes and her mother's delicate features. "What is it, Aunt Cheryl?"

  "Hon, this is Mr. Carey, my boss. Doug, this is Carla. I wanted you to both know the other was here while I get myself together."

  The hair dryer drowned out everything for a while: Thick hair dries slowly. She worried about Carla the entire time. How was Doug around children? How did he feel about children?

  What was her problem?

  When she turned off the dryer, there were giggles from the kitchen. Her immediate reaction was: Just let the kid do her homework. A happier thought displaced the first: When did I last hear Carla laugh?

  Cheryl loved her niece, but Carla was a daunting responsibility. It turned out that a little girl could shed a lot of tears in six months. Then again, losing your parents to a junkie gunman at the neighborhood 7-Eleven deserved an ocean of tears. Cheryl's own eyes misted. God, but she missed her sister.

  "Aren't you glad you did your math?" Giggle, giggle. "And why is that?" Giggle. "Because life is a word problem," man and child recited together. Chortle, chortle.

  Thanks, Doug.

  Cheryl threw on jeans and a blouse and joined them in the kitchen. "Okay, I admit it," she said. "The suspense is killing me. What do you call a bunch of Apple computers at the University of Hawaii?"

  "MacademiaNet," he deadpanned.

  Cheryl's lip curled at the awful pun—until she noticed Carla's priceless confusion. Then Cheryl laughed, and Carla, without a clue why, laughed with her. Thank you, Doug.

  Whatever had brought Doug here, the man had done good.

  After kidding around for a while, Cheryl sent her niece to her room to finish her homework. "Finish your assignments or no trick-or-treating tonight." It was the hollowest of threats. No way could Cheryl let Carla miss that.

  Cheryl busied herself putting up a pot of coffee, saying nothing. This was not a social occasion, and it was past time for Doug to explain himself—even if he did have a way with Carla. Cheryl kept her back to him so he couldn't see her smiling at the memory.

  With a sigh (what was on his mind? Cheryl wondered), Doug began. "She's a nice kid."

  "Uh-huh." The coffee started, Cheryl straightened odds and ends on the counter.

  Sighing again, he restarted. "I know what the ovals are. What set off Bob Cherner."

  "What!?" She spun to face him.

  He dug out his tattered shopping list and unfolded it to the overlapped ovals. "Does that mean anything to you?"

  "Nothing. Doug, we've been through this. You said you knew." She ignored the giggles and bouncing-on-the-bed noises from the other room.

  He unclipped a pen and placed a single dot in the center of the ovals. "Now?"

  Of course. "It's an atom." Her mind raced. "But why did Ben obliterate it? Why did it affect Cherner like that? What do atoms have to do with neural-interface research, anyway?"

  "I get at most one insight a day, and that's on a good day."

  He looked at her wistfully. "I had sort of hoped you would know."

  Ignoring their complaints, Sheila brushed past shoppers browsing at the electronics store. She rummaged through parts bins and crowded shelves, confused by how the aisles were organized, but unable to ask questions.

  With a grunt, she dumped everything at the checkout station: switches, reels of wire, batteries, radio-controlled toys, aluminum utility boxes, magnetic latching relays, a soldering iron, and a spool of solder. She pulled a wad of twenty-dollar bills from a pocket. When had she last been to an ATM? She vaguely remembered the convenience of ATMs, but not her PIN.

  She must have made the teenaged cashier nervous—he ran the merchandise past the bar-code scanners as fast as humanly possible. He frowned at a prompt on his terminal. "I need your name and address, ma'am."

  She stared at him, helpless, before shaking her head. No.

  "It's a store policy. Don't worry, ma'am. We don't give out the information."

  She gaped at him, her upper lip quivering.

  He tried once more. "It's so we can mail you stuff. You know, like flyers for sales."

  With a roar of inarticulate fury, she flung a few bills onto the counter. He had not yet bagged her purchases, so—still shrieking—she swept them from the counter into a shopping bag already loaded with an assortment of household chemicals. Without waiting for change, or looking back, she stomped off.

  Directions for assembling bombs from such materials were available all over the Internet.

  Doug browsed the living-room bookshelves, looking past all the little ceramic pumpkins and black cats. In a bedroom, the womenfolk prepared for trick-or-treating. The books told him only what he already knew: Cheryl was a smart and interesting woman.

  "Mr. Carey is funny," Carla said. "Can he come back?"

  The whispered answer was unintelligible, but embarrassment was writ large over Cheryl's face when she rejoined him.

  Carla now wore a pale green dragon costume, with triangular spikes of dark green felt running down its neck, back, and tail. Doug gave her a grin and a double thumbs-up.

  "It's time for Carla and me to make the rounds," Cheryl said.

  "Right. I'll get going. I should be home answering my door." He'd had more on his mind than atoms when he'd come over. Doug resolved to act now, even if Carla had spoken before he did. "But... could I interest you in racquet-ball tomorrow?"

  Cheryl rolled her eyes. "You overheard the little imp's suggestion."

  "I heard Carla's question. Not your answer. What do you say?"

  "I'll have to see first if I can find a sitter, but yes. I would like that. I'll call you."

  He was halfway home before it occurred to him to wonder whether Cheryl thought tomorrow was two friends getting together or a date.

  Doug sat bolt upright in bed, a matter of enormous magnitude having finally penetrated his awareness. First, he had been too busy being disgusted with himself for lusting after Cheryl. After that, he'd obsessed on the newfound meaning of the sketch. And then, just maybe, he ha
d asked out Cheryl.

  For all his obvious attraction to Cheryl, Doug had not thought guiltily about Holly even once today.

  He wasn't sure if he felt guilty about not feeling guilty.

  NOVEMBER

  CHAPTER 16

  Doug hunched over, waiting for the pseudoball. His first surprise came when Cheryl won the pregame volley for serve. Another surprise followed on its heels.

  "Let 'er rip."

  Not only had she been practicing; she'd also personalized her game prompts. The serve flashed through a green region and doubled its speed. He pivoted to his left to return it with a backhanded stroke. Passing center court, the ball kissed purple and went hypersonic.

  With a grin she slammed the red missile right back at him. He got the racquet up to his face just barely in time to protect himself. Idiot, the ball isn't physical. It can't hurt you. The badly timed ricochet from his racquet was a pathetic lob she smashed back at him through purple again. He didn't even try to touch the resulting blur.

  "Exactly why did you presume to call out a novice's handicap for me?"

  He saluted with his racquet. "I am suitably chastised. Who have you been playing with?" He guessed Jim.

  "Never mind. Just keep your wits about you." She served under cover of her answer. As the pseudoball zipped through a brown drop-dead zone, she called, "Reset my handicap to level three."

  Doug dived for the plummeting orb, reaching it just in time to give it a flip. With an opponent his height, the maneuver would have been suicidal, but it sailed over Cheryl's, petite Cheryl's, lovely head. "Hah."

  His game came back into balance as he claimed the serve. Two points later, he was past the shock of her unexpected skill at the game. "Wow, I thought someone had sent in a ringer." Squinting at her in shorts and T-shirt, he added, "Although I can't imagine where she would hide." Cheryl repaid the crack with a floor-skimming return that cost him a volley and the serve.