Quantum Night

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “Kind of,” I said, although I suspected her understanding of the term “socialism” was different from mine. I handed her the American five, got my Canadian bill back plus my change, and took my pop, or soda, or whatever it was here.

  This was my first time flying in the States since Quinton Carroway had been sworn in as president, and I was surprised to hear that the constant warnings about terrorist threats over the public-address system were back; they’d disappeared under Obama but had returned with a vengeance. The old wording had invariably been, “The Homeland Security threat level is orange”—which was only semi-effective propaganda because you had to have memorized the code to know that orange was the new black—the thing white folk were supposed to fear most—being one step shy of an imminent attack. The new message, which played every three minutes or so, was much more direct, and, unless I missed my guess, the voice was the president’s own distinctive baritone: “Be on guard! A terrorist attack can occur at any time.”

  And speaking of propaganda, despite Atlanta also being home to CNN, Fox News was on the big-screen TV hanging down like a steam-shovel scoop from the ceiling as I arrived at baggage claim. Orwell had been right that mind-controlling messages would be pumped twenty-four hours a day through telescreens, and he’d have recognized the ones in the airport with no way to turn them off. What would have astounded him is that many millions of people would voluntarily tune into them in their own homes, often for hours on end.

  I recognized Megyn Kelly although I usually only saw her in unflattering clips on The Daily Show. “Look,” she said, “it is a fact that this guy was in our country illegally.”

  “And for that he should have died?” said a man—clearly the day’s sacrificial liberal lamb.

  “I’m not saying that,” said Kelly. “Obviously, what these three men did was not the way to handle it.”

  “No?” said the man. “What they did was exactly what Governor McCharles intended, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, come on!” snapped the other woman on the panel. “The Texas governor simply meant—”

  “The whole point of the McCharles Act,” said the man, “was to provoke attacks like this. Redefining homicide as the killing of a legal resident! What is that, except a wink-and-a-nod to every yahoo out there that the cops will look the other way if an undocumented immigrant turns up dead?”

  “The point,” said the same woman, “was merely that these illegal aliens can’t flout the law and then expect to be protected by it.”

  “For God’s sake!” said the man, who was getting red in the face. “McCharles is setting things up for a pogrom!”

  I grabbed my bag, then headed off to find a taxi, grateful to be leaving the arguing panelists behind.

  —

  I beheld the monster.

  One of them, anyway. There were six according to the indictments; nine, if you believed the Huffington Post, which argued that three other corrections officers who should also have been charged had gotten off scot-free. But this one, everyone agreed, had been the ringleader: Devin Becker was the man who had incited the other guards—and he was the only one who had actually killed somebody.

  “Thirty minutes,” said a burly sergeant, as Becker folded his lanky form onto the metal seat. The irony wasn’t lost on me: Becker himself was now in the care of a prison guard. Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Who indeed watches the watchers?

  Becker had high cheekbones, and the weight he’d lost since the notorious video had been recorded made them even more prominent. That the skin pulled taut across them was bone white only added to the ghastly appearance; put a black hood over his head, and he could have played chess for a man’s soul. “Who are you?” he asked, a slight drawl protracting his words.

  “Jim Marchuk. I’m a psychologist at the University of Manitoba, in Winnipeg.”

  Becker curled his upper lip. “I don’t wanna be part of any damn experiment.”

  I thought about saying, “You already have been.” I thought about saying, “The experiment has been done time and again, and this is just another pointless replication.” I even thought about saying, “If only this were an experiment, we could pull the plug on it, just like Zimbardo finally did at Stanford.” But what I actually said was, “I’m not here to conduct an experiment. I’m going to be an expert witness at your trial.”

  “For the defense or the prosecution?”

  “The defense.”

  Becker relaxed somewhat, but his tone was suspicious. “I can’t afford fancy experts.”

  “Your father is paying, I’m told.”

  “My father.” He sneered the words.

  “What?”

  “If he really cared, it’d be him, not you, sitting there.”

  “He hasn’t come to see you?”

  Becker shook his head.

  “Has any of your family?”

  “My sis. Once.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “They’re ashamed.”

  Those words hung in the air for a moment. The New York Times front-page article about the Savannah Prison guards had been headlined “America’s Shame.”

  “Well,” I said gently, “perhaps we can convince them not to be.”

  “With psychological bullshit?” He made a “pffft!” sound through thin lips.

  “With the truth.”

  “The truth is my own lawyer says I’m a psychopath. Norman Fucking Bates.” He shook his head. “What the hell kind of defense is that, anyway? Y’all must be out of your minds.”

  I didn’t have much sympathy for this guy; what he’d done was horrific. But I am a teacher: ask me a question, and I’m compelled to answer—that’s my nature. “You killed someone in cold blood, and the court would normally call that first-degree murder, right? But suppose an MRI showed you had a brain tumor that affected your behavior. The jury might be inclined to say you couldn’t help yourself and let you off. You don’t have a tumor, but my research shows that psychopathy is just as much a clear-cut physical condition and should likewise mitigate responsibility.”

  “Huh,” he said. “And do you think I’m a psycho?”

  “I honestly don’t know,” I replied, placing my briefcase on the wooden table and snapping the clasps open. “So let’s find out.”

  —

  “Professor Marchuk, were you present when my learned opponent, the District Attorney, introduced one of her expert witnesses, psychiatrist Samantha Goldsmith?”

  I tried to sound calm but, man, this was nerve-wracking. Oh, sure, I was used to the Socratic method in academic settings, but here, in this sweltering courtroom, a person’s life was on the line. I leaned forward. “Yes, I was.”

  Juan Garcia’s chin jutted like the cattle catcher on a locomotive. “Sitting there, in the third row, weren’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Do you recall Dr. Goldsmith giving a clinical opinion of the defendant, Devin Becker?”

  “I do.”

  “And what was her diagnosis?”

  “She contended that Mr. Becker is not a psychopath.”

  “And did Dr. Goldsmith explain the technique by which she arrived at that conclusion?”

  I nodded. “Yes, she did.”

  “Are you familiar with the technique she used?”

  “Intimately. I’m certified in administering it myself.”

  Juan had a way of moving his head that reminded me of a hawk, pivoting instantly from looking this way to that way; he was now regarding the jury. “Perhaps you can refresh the memories of these good men and women, then. What technique did Dr. Goldsmith employ?”

  “The Hare Psychopathy Checklist, Revised,” I said.

  “Commonly called ‘the Hare Checklist,’ or ‘the PCL-R,’ correct?”

  “That’s right.”

  A quick pivot back toward me. “And,
before we go further, again, just to remind us, a psychopath is . . . ?”

  “An individual devoid of empathy and conscience, a person who doesn’t feel for other people—someone who only cares about his or her own self-interest.”

  “And the Hare Checklist? Refresh the jury on that, please.”

  “Robert Hare identified twenty characteristics that define a psychopath—everything from glibness and superficial charm to promiscuity and lack of remorse.”

  “And, again, remind us: to be a psychopath, do you need to exhibit all twenty of the traits he identified?”

  I shook my head. “No. There’s a numerical scoring system.”

  “The subject fills out a form?”

  “No, no. A person specially trained in Professor Hare’s technique conducts an interview with the subject and also reviews police records, psychiatric reports, employment history, education, and so on. The expert then scores the subject on each of the twenty traits, assigning a zero if a given trait—pathological lying, say—is not present; a one if it matches to a certain extent—perhaps they lie all the time in personal relationships but never in business dealings, or vice versa; and a two if there’s a reasonably good match for the trait in most aspects of the person’s life.”

  “And the average total score on the twenty items is?”

  “For normal people? Very low: four out of a possible maximum of forty.”

  “And what score do you need to be a psychopath?”

  “Thirty or above.”

  “And do you recall the score Dr. Goldsmith assigned to the defendant Mr. Becker?”

  “I do. She gave him a seventeen.”

  “Professor Marchuk, were you also here in this courtroom when we—the defense—presented an expert witness, another psychologist, prior to bringing you to the stand?”

  I nodded again. “I was.”

  “That psychologist, Dr. Gabor Bagi, testified that he, too, administered the same psychopathy test to Devin Becker. Do you recall that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And did Dr. Bagi come up with the same score as Dr. Goldsmith?”

  “No. He gave Mr. Becker a score of thirty-one.”

  Juan did a good job of sounding astonished. “Thirty-one out of forty? Whereas Dr. Goldsmith came up with seventeen?”

  “Correct.”

  His head snapped toward the jury. “How do you account for the discrepancy?”

  “Well, although Professor Hare’s checklist is supposed to be as objective as possible, his test is prone to some inter-rater disagreement in non-research clinical settings. But a difference of fourteen points?” I shrugged my shoulders beneath my blue suit. “I can’t account for that.”

  Snapping back to me: “Still, our score of thirty-one puts Mr. Becker over the legal line into psychopathy with room to spare, while the score Dr. Goldsmith obtained leaves Mr. Becker far away from being a psychopath, correct?”

  “Correct.”

  “And, given that the State is seeking the death penalty, the question of whether or not Mr. Becker is a clinical psychopath—whether or not he had any volition in his behavior—is crucial in determining his sentence, which puts the good men and women of the jury in the unenviable, but regrettably common, position of having to choose between conflicting expert testimonies, isn’t that so?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I beg your pardon, Professor Marchuk?”

  My heart was pounding, but I managed to keep my tone absolutely level. “No. Dr. Goldsmith is dead wrong, and Dr. Bagi is right. Devin Becker is a psychopath, and I can prove it—prove it beyond a shadow of a doubt.”

  2

  “A simple yes-or-no test for psychopathy?” Heather said as she looked across the restaurant table at me. “Surely that’s not possible.”

  “Oh, but it is. And I’ve discovered it.”

  My sister was one of my favorite people, and I was one of hers; I think we’d have been friends even if we hadn’t been related. She was forty-two, almost exactly three years older than I, and worked as a corporate litigator in Calgary. Every now and then her work brought her here to Winnipeg, and whenever it did, we hung out together.

  “Oh, come on,” she said. “Surely there’s a spectrum for psychopathy.”

  I shook my head. “Everyone wants everything to be on a spectrum these days. Autism is the classic example: ‘autism spectrum disorder.’ We have this desire for things to be analog, to have infinite gradations. But humans fundamentally aren’t analog; life isn’t analog. It’s digital. Granted, it’s not base-two binary; it’s base-four. Literally base-four: the four bases—adenine, cytosine, guanine, and thymine—that make up the genetic code. There’s nothing analog about that, and there’s nothing analog about most of the human condition: you’re either alive or dead; you either do or don’t have the genes for Alzheimer’s; and you either are or aren’t a psychopath.”

  “Okay, fine. So how do you know? What’s the binary test for psychopathy?”

  “You ever see The Silence of the Lambs?”

  She nodded, honey-colored hair touching her shoulders as she did so. “Sure. Read the book, too.”

  I was curious as to whether she’d picked it up after she’d started dating Gustav. “When?” I asked offhandedly.

  “The movie? When I was in law school. The book? Maybe ten years ago.”

  I resisted shaking my head. Gustav had only been on the scene for six months now, but I was sure he was a psychopath. Not the violent sort that Thomas Harris had depicted in his novel—psychopathy was indeed binary, but it manifested itself in different ways; in Gustav’s case, that meant narcissistic, manipulative, and selfish behavior. A self-styled actor—IMDb had no entry for him—he apparently lived off a succession of professional women; my ever-kindhearted sister, so sharp in legal matters, seemed utterly oblivious to this. Or maybe not: I’d attempted to broach the topic a couple of times before, but she’d always shut me down, saying she was happy, all right?, and I should let her be.

  “Well,” I said, “in the movie The Silence of the Lambs, remember the first interview between Clarice Starling and Hannibal Lecter? Anthony Hopkins absolutely nails one aspect of psychopaths—at least as much as someone who actually isn’t one can. He looks right at Clarice and says”—and here I did my best impersonation of Hopkins’s cultured hiss—“‘First principles, Clarice. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature?’ And then, the most memorable part, as his eyes drill into her and he says, ‘What does he do, this . . . man . . . you . . . seek?’ Remember that?”

  Heather shuddered a little. “Oh, yes.”

  “Jodie Foster’s response—‘He kills women’—is supposed to be the chilling part, but it isn’t. It’s Lecter’s stare, the way he looks right at Clarice, unblinking, unflinching. I’ve seen that stare in the flesh, from real psychopaths in jails. It’s the most unnerving thing about them.”

  “I bet,” said Heather. She’d ordered mozzarella sticks as an appetizer; I’d been out with her and Gustav and seen him veto her choices of anything fattening. She took one of the sticks now and dipped it in marinara sauce.

  “But, you know,” I said, “good as he is, Anthony Hopkins is only simulating the psychopathic stare. He can’t do it quite right.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “A real psychopath looks at you not just without blinking much—although that certainly adds to the reptilian effect—but also without performing microsaccades.”

  Heather had heard me talk about them before. Microsaccades are involuntary jerks as the eyeball rotates two degrees or less; they occur spontaneously whenever you stare at something for several seconds. Their purpose is debated although the most common theory is that they cause the neurons perceiving an object to refresh so that the image doesn’t fade.

  Heather’s eyebrows rose above her wire-frame gla
sses. “Really?”

  I nodded. “Yup. The paper’s coming up in Nature Neuroscience.”

  “Way to go!” But then she frowned. “Why would that be, though? What have microsaccades got to do with psychopathy?”

  “I’m not sure,” I admitted, “but I’ve demonstrated the lack in forty-eight out of fifty test subjects, all of whom had scored thirty-two or above on the PCL-R.”

  “What about the other two?”

  “Not psychopaths; I’m convinced of it. And that’s the problem with the PCL-R: it’s not definitive. Bob Hare got pissed several years ago when a pop-sci book called The Psychopath Test came out. It implied anyone could properly assess whether their neighbors or bosses or even casual acquaintances were psychopaths. As Hare said, it takes a week of intensive training to be able to score his twenty variables properly, and that’s on top of formal psychological or psychiatric education. But his test can have false positives if a clinician miscategorizes something, or assigns a score of two when only a one is really warranted—or if the psychopath is good at evading detection.”

  “Ah,” said Heather. “But, um, how do you know Anthony Hopkins isn’t a psychopath?” Her tone was light. “I mean, think of the parts he’s played—not just Hannibal Lecter but also Alfred Hitchcock, a guy who was obsessed with making a movie about a psycho and who had a lot of callous traits himself. Maybe it’s typecasting.”

  “I actually thought about that. Hopkins also played Nixon and Captain Bligh, after all—arguably a couple of other psychopaths.”

  “True.”

  “So I got the 4K Ultra disc of Silence of the Lambs. That film was shot in thirty-five millimeter, and 4K scanning is sufficient to capture all the resolution of the original film stock; it was sharp enough in the close-ups when he’s staring at Clarice to check. His eyes were indeed performing microsaccades.”

  Heather smiled. “So much for Method acting.”