by Steven James
He glared at Riah and, perhaps as a way of showing he didn’t buy into her reasoning, almost immediately joined the other fans around them in applauding when a girl from the other college missed a serve and put his team within one point of winning the game.
Riah had taken something away from that experience, something that might be an important insight into the way normal people think. Psychopathology is at least culturally pervasive enough to cause religious people to set aside some of their prophets’ and leaders’ most cherished values of selflessness, service, humility, and encouragement when they’re watching or participating in a sporting event.
Even though it didn’t make Riah sad exactly, it did confuse her. She could only imagine that if she were able to feel something as precious as compassion, she wouldn’t be willing to give it up so readily over something as inconsequential as watching a group of girls hit a ball back and forth over a net.
Honestly, when Riah saw things like that, she wondered if she wanted to be “normal” at all.
But of course, for her, all of this was not just an academic question or a cultural milieu. It went much deeper, because she knew that she was a true psychopath in every sense of the term.
Over the years she’d tried telling herself that she wasn’t like the psychopaths who kill, that she was different, that she could control her condition, master it even, and eventually learn to experience the emotional and experiential ups and downs that healthy, mentally well-adjusted people do.
She’d tried to convince herself that the difference between her and normal people was one merely of degree, not of kind, one that she could overcome with effort and understanding. But in the times when she was most honest with herself, she had to admit that the instinct to kill had burrowed inside her long ago.
The bird that she killed in front of her sister.
The other animals over the years when no one was looking.
The inexplicable curiosity she felt while watching things die.
And those nagging questions about what it would be like to take the life of another human being.
And so far all of her research into neurophysiology had failed to show her how she might change, how she might learn to control the urges she had.
Notwithstanding all she knew about the brain, its pleasure centers, the way it processed reality, and even taking into account direct brain-computer interfaces and ways to elicit muscle responses by exciting certain parts of the brain, she had not managed to find the answers she was looking for.
Riah walked into the kitchen and looked at the clock on the microwave.
Almost 8:30.
She was mostly in charge of her own schedule at RixoTray, as long as she checked in. Today she was supposed to be at work by ten and wasn’t sure now if she would be going in at all.
She had a lot to think about after the meeting with the twins last night.
Finally, Riah decided she needed to process that discussion in light of her thoughts about who she was, what she was capable of, and what the two men whom she assumed shared her condition were working with Cyrus Arlington to do.
After a few minutes of reflection, she texted her supervisor and told him she was taking the day off for personal leave.
Dawn.
Returning to the cabin, I find Charlene awake and finishing a cup of coffee. The air smells of dark-roasted java.
She looks up, gives me a slightly concerned smile. “Hey, I was looking for you. Where were you?”
“Went for a walk.” I decide not to tell her how long I’ve been up already.
I see that she has set out a mug for me by the coffeemaker in the kitchenette, and I angle across the room toward it. “How’s your arm?”
She holds it up and stares at it as if she hadn’t noticed before that it was injured. “Hurts some, but not as bad as I thought it would. I think it’s going to be alright. How was the couch?”
“Not too bad.”
She already knows that over the last year I’ve had trouble sleeping, and it probably goes without saying that my dreams had taken their toll on me last night as well. She doesn’t ask and I don’t elaborate.
“So then, dear”—she drains her coffee and goes for her purse, confirms that she has the RF jammer and the tiny, concealable heart rate monitor—“I believe we have breakfast and then a meeting with Dr. Tanbyrn.”
I take a long draught of my coffee, finish most of it. Set down the mug. I can feel my stomach rumble. Truthfully, breakfast sounds like just what I need. “Yes, dear. I think we do.”
On my walk I hadn’t come up with any specific plan on how to debunk this research—or how I might replicate it through illusions or the tricks of mentalism. But getting video footage of this morning’s test would be a good place to start.
I put on the small button camera that Xavier provided for me, and since I’ll be needing the lap function on my stopwatch when Charlene is in the chamber, I make sure that it’s working too.
It is.
Good.
To keep up the illusion that Charlene and I are in love, we walk to the dining hall hand in hand.
Riah stepped out of the shower.
Dressed.
And thought back to the events of last night.
In the end it was probably best that Cyrus hadn’t come over because this way it gave her some time to sort through what the twins had told her.
Daniel had explained that the research being done in Oregon was meant to complement her own work here in Pennsylvania. “Dr. Tanbyrn and his team are mostly interested in studying the physiological changes in one person while another person who is emotionally or genetically close—”
“Or in our case, both,” Darren cut in.
“Is attentively focused on him—”
“—in a positive, loving way.”
“Mind-to-mind communication,” she said dubiously.
“Yes,” Darren answered.
Riah considered that. Even though she knew RixoTray was financially supporting the research, Cyrus had kept most of it under wraps and she knew surprisingly little about the nature of the research in Oregon.
She used diffusion tensor imaging, magnetoencephalography, fMRI, and EEG to measure the excitement patterns in the Wernicke’s area of the temporal lobe. By better understanding how the two men processed communication, her team had been hoping to—
Aha.
“So, are you saying that if we could learn to excite the section of the brain related to mind-to-mind communication, you could heighten the—what? The connection? Intensify it somehow?” She was thinking aloud, and by the looks on the twins’ faces, she was right on track. “Enhance the ability to . . . connect with each other?”
The twins exchanged glances and then nodded almost simultaneously. Cyrus’s gaze crawled toward the clock on the wall as if he were perhaps expecting someone, or maybe he was just biding his time until he could maneuver the twins out of this uncomfortable meeting.
Riah knew that the Department of Defense was funding her research in the hopes of eventually developing a brain-computer interface to help troops communicate in the field by creating a device that could detect, decode, and then transmit neural linguistic information to other troops.
It could be used to help soldiers communicate in field conditions that wouldn’t allow for normal speech, such as in the middle of a firefight when words couldn’t be heard, or when any sound would alert the enemy, such as sneaking into a terrorist compound.
Communication of neural linguistic information.
Now she wasn’t so sure that was all the study concerned.
Riah draped her necklace around her neck.
Began to brush her hair.
She might’ve felt used by Cyrus and the twins, might’ve felt that her research was part of a big picture that she’d never been told about, and that was essentially true, but to a certain degree that was true about all the research at the R&D facility.
After all, the financial implications of an information leak we
re so devastating that just like in any sensitive government or private-sector medical research project, nearly all the researchers at RixoTray did their work strictly on a need-to-know basis. Progress was more often than not about one person piggybacking on the work of another to answer a question neither of them fully understood.
After the discussion about the center in Oregon, the conversation had shifted away from the Lawson Center’s research, and Darren turned to Cyrus. “I was told you have the video.”
“Not yet. But I will. Tomorrow. A courier will be delivering it.”
Daniel addressed Riah: “When you see the video, you’ll know what we mean. What the research concerns.”
“Kabul?” she asked, referring back to what he’d mentioned earlier in the evening, when she and Cyrus first met up with them.
“Yes.” Darren sounded pleased that she’d made the connection.
After that they discussed her findings at length, and it was almost as if she was the one who’d been brought in to do the briefing, even though she was the only person there who hadn’t prepared for it at all.
Honestly, Riah didn’t understand why the twins’ conversation with Cyrus couldn’t have all happened over the phone, but apparently they were the ones who’d called for the meeting, and their motives were not always easy to decipher.
At last when Cyrus stood to go, Darren had asked him, “So tomorrow, the video. What time will it arrive?”
“In the afternoon. Sometime between five and six.”
“We’ll see you at six then. In your office. And we would like Riah to be present as well.”
A pause. “Alright.”
“Williamson will be there?”
“She won’t land in Philadelphia until six thirty. She’s coming in at seven.”
“Well, let’s come at seven then too, so we can watch it together, make sure we’re all on the same page. Everything happens when the president—”
“I know when it all happens.” Cyrus was looking at Riah, and she understood that he was cutting off Darren to keep something from her.
“Alright,” Daniel said. “So, seven?”
“Yes,” Cyrus said coolly. “Seven.”
So now, Riah decided to start an online search of journal articles concerning the findings of the center in Oregon. Even though she had until this evening to look into things, if the research was anywhere near as complex and detailed as hers, it might take at least that long to sift through it all.
She put on a pot of coffee, positioned herself in front of her computer. And began to type.
Dancing Pain
I’m anxious to get started with the study, anxious to get moving. But still, my early morning walk had left me famished, and I was glad there was a substantial breakfast laid out for us.
Now we’re almost done. Charlene is finishing her plate of fruit, and I slide my empty bowl of oatmeal aside, then polish off the last of my cheese-smothered hash browns. “Too bad Xavier isn’t here. I have to say, this food is amazing.”
“By the way, what’s the deal with him and cheese anyway?” She’s looking at the smear of melted cheddar cheese left on my plate.
I shake my head. “I have no idea. About a month ago he just started eating it in some form every couple hours.”
“That’s so random.”
“That’s so Xavier.”
“Good point.”
The dining hall has nearly a hundred people in it, but since there’ll only be ten or eleven couples in the study, the rest of the retreatants must be here for the yoga and centering conference that’s going on at the same time on the other side of campus.
I gaze around, curious if the man who attacked us last night might be here. I hadn’t seen his face well enough to identify him, so the only way I could hope to find him is by his limp, especially if he was limping and missing a watch.
From what I can see, there’s no one here who fits the bill.
After dropping off our trays at the cafeteria’s conveyor belt to the kitchen, Charlene and I cross the campus toward the Prana building.
The quiet fog hovers around us, and it reminds me again of my dreams, my family, of that day at the shore when I watched the divers bring up the bodies.
Fog.
And a chill.
And a cloud-covered sky.
And the terrible questions that have never gone away.
Why, Rachel? Why did you do it? Why did you kill my boys? Why did you kill yourself?
Perhaps the timing is coincidental, but Charlene reaches for my hand, and it seems like she’s reading my mind and trying to reassure me, but in this case I don’t hold on. It’s almost like I want to dwell in my pain for a while alone.
Yesterday Xavier told me that there’re always going to be holes in my heart in the shape of my wife, in the shape of my sons. Now his words come back to me: “Stop feeding your pain and it’ll dissipate.”
But maybe I don’t want it to dissipate. Maybe I want it to cling to me, to remind me that if only I’d been more astute and attentive—if only I’d noticed what was going on in Rachel’s heart or what was troubling her so much that death seemed like the only option, if only I’d been able to see her desperation—maybe I could’ve intervened and stopped things before they went as far as they did.
But I had not.
And it had happened.
And now she is dead and so are my sons.
Charlene doesn’t say anything, and even though she isn’t moving any farther away from me, I sense the distance between us grow slightly wider.
We enter the small retreat center that Serenity had told us was named after the Hindu word meaning “life-sustaining force.” The reception desk is empty, but I tap a set of chimes hanging beside it and hear a male voice call from the back room that he’ll be with us in just a moment.
As I think of a life-sustaining force, I have to admit that it sounds like something I could really use, but I also can’t help but think of the Star Wars movies: “May the Force be with you.” I’m not sure what I believe about unseen forces altering the universe, but gravity and magnetism seem to do alright, and even when you’re in the debunking business, you have to keep an open mind.
However, disappointingly, George Lucas killed the whole Force idea in Episode 1 when Qui-Gon Jinn referenced a connection with the Force depending on your midi-chlorian count. In the end even Lucas shied away from allowing the unexplainable to remain unexplained and came up with a scientific reason for why some people rather than others could live more in tune with the Force.
It was more scientific-sounding this way, of course, but from a storytelling perspective, a lot less satisfying.
Prana.
A life-sustaining force.
“Hope” would be a better name for it, for the force that really sustains us.
My thoughts cycle through my dreams and then land back in this moment.
The reception room is adorned with well-coordinated earth-tone furniture, a small conference table, and windows that offer a broad view of the fir and pine forest that stretches out of sight in the ethereal, otherworldly fog that has engulfed the campus.
When we were preparing for this assignment, I’d anticipated that Dr. Tanbyrn would do a general briefing this morning with all the couples who’d be taking the test today, but no one else is here. As I consider that, a man with thick 1970s sideburns emerges from the back and introduces himself as Philip, a grad student from Berkeley who was “honored to be one of the great Dr. Tanbyrn’s research assistants.”
“Brent Berlin,” I tell him, using the name I’d registered under here at the center. “And this is Jennie Reynolds.”
We shake hands, then he gestures toward three of the chairs.
“Have a seat. Let’s get started.”
Glenn Banner was high.
It helped with the pain, but it made his thoughts curl around each other in odd ways, as if they were made of elegant colors all dancing across the needles of discomfort that bristled up
his leg.
That’s what he thought of as he sat in his motel room and sharpened his knife: dancing pain.
Did he feel the stab wound in his quadriceps?
In the sense of pressure, of a tingling sensation, yes—but did he feel it as acutely as he should have for a deep-muscle puncture wound like that? Absolutely not.
Drugs can be wonderful things.
Still, he couldn’t help but think that he should’ve gone after that man and woman last night. Should have killed them both and then gotten photos of their bodies to remember the night. Act on his impulses.
But what’s done is done. You can’t change the past.
But you didn’t find what you were looking for either. You didn’t find the files.
No, he hadn’t.
Leaving right after he’d been stabbed had meant not having the opportunity to find the information he’d gone in there looking for, the data he’d planned to use against his employer to pick up a little extra cash.
The information he was interested in concerned the military’s involvement in the study. The connections were still fuzzy, but while researching his employer before taking this job, he’d come across evidence of meetings between him and Undersecretary of Defense Oriana Williamson, as well as mentions of Project Alpha, which included amorphous references to two men, “L” and “N,” whose existence—let alone identity—Glenn hadn’t been able to confirm.
Since early this morning, he’d been trying to reach the man who’d hired him, but so far had been unsuccessful.
The guy just wouldn’t answer his phone.
Glenn tried the number again.
Nothing.
It was supposed to’ve been an easy gig: take out an old man who didn’t have long to live anyway, pick up the payment, buy some little gift for his daughter, Mary Beth, in order to keep up the appearance that he loved her, then get back to Seattle and blackmail the guy who’d hired him.
But now everything had gotten more complicated.
Glenn had been wounded, had failed to dig up the dirt he wanted to find on his employer, and had ended up with two special people he wanted to pay a visit to.