Quantum Night

by Robert J. Sawyer

  “No. Is Heather in?”

  “Let me put you through.”

  I saw a husky man looking at me—probably a reporter hoping for a quote. I turned and walked briskly away.

  My sister and I talked a couple of times a month—the maximum Gustav would allow—but it was always in the evenings; she was clearly surprised to be getting a call from me during the workday. “Jim, is everything okay? Where are you?”

  I couldn’t answer the first question in a reassuring way, so I skipped to the second. “Atlanta.”

  Heather knew me too well. “Something is wrong. What?”

  “Do you know what Grandpa Kulyk did in World War II?”

  Silence for a moment. Off in the distance—here or there, I wasn’t sure which—a siren was wailing. “What the hell, Jim.”

  “Sorry?” A question, not an apology.

  “What the hell,” she said again.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Jim, if this is some kind of joke . . .”

  “I’m not joking.”

  “You know full well what he did in the war, at that camp.”

  “Well, I know now,” I said. “I found out today. I’m here giving expert testimony in that trial I told you about. The D.A. blindsided me with the news.”

  “It’s not news, for Christ’s sake,” said Heather. “It came out ages ago.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Are you nuts? We all knew about it.”

  My head was swimming. “I don’t remember that.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Seriously.”

  “Jim, look, I’ve got a client meeting in—well, damn, I should be doing it now. I don’t know what to say, but get some help, okay?”

  4

  I’D have been happy to go home after the morning’s evisceration, but when the judge had called the recess, Miss Dickerson indicated she wasn’t through with me. After failing to find a vegan entrée in the courthouse cafeteria, I’d settled for a packaged salad and a cup of black coffee.

  The fireworks began again as soon as court resumed. “Objection!” said Juan, rising in response to Dickerson asking me once more about my personal history. “This fishing expedition has no bearing on the sentencing of Devin Becker.”

  Dickerson spread her arms as she turned toward the brooding judge. “Your Honor, this is the first time Mr. Marchuk’s technique has been introduced in a court of law. With the court’s permission, it seems only appropriate to delve into any biases or prejudices—even ones that he himself might not be aware of—that might have tainted his results.”

  “Very well; objection overruled—but don’t wander too far afield.”

  “Of course not, Your Honor.” She turned back to me. “Mr. Marchuk, sir, what’s your stance on capital punishment?” I saw Juan clenching his wide jaw.

  “I’m against it.”

  Dickerson nodded, as if this was only to be expected. “Earlier you told us you were Canadian, and our friends to the north don’t have capital punishment. Is your objection simply something that goes with your citizenship, like a fondness for hockey and maple syrup?”

  “I object to capital punishment on a philosophical basis.”

  “Ah, yes. When Mr. Sanchez was introducing you, he made mention of the fact that in addition to your three degrees in psychology you also have a master’s degree in philosophy, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, then, given this sentencing trial is precisely about whether Mr. Becker will receive the death penalty, perhaps you could briefly enlighten us as to your philosophical objections to it?”

  I took a deep breath. I’d often debated the issue in classrooms, but the palpable disapproval of the jurors was throwing me off my game; the D.A. hadn’t allowed anyone who was morally opposed to capital punishment to be impanelled for this case. “They aren’t just my objections,” I said. “I’m a utilitarian philosopher. Utilitarians believe the greatest good is maximizing happiness for the greatest number. And one of utilitarianism’s founders, Jeremy Bentham, back in 1775, articulated several compelling arguments against the death penalty, arguments that still make sense.”

  I let my butterflies settle for a moment, then: “First, he said—and I agree—that it’s unprofitable. That is, it costs more to society to execute people than it does to keep them alive. That was true in Bentham’s day, and is even more true today: the extended legal proceedings, including this very one that we’re all part of right now, plus the inevitable appeals, make it far more expensive to execute a criminal than it is to imprison him or her for life.

  “And, just as important, Bentham said—and, again, I agree—the death penalty is irremissible. That is, there’s no way to undo an error. Of course, the unhappiness that results from a wrongful execution is huge for the death-row inmate. More than that, though, if a society executes an innocent man, and that fact is subsequently revealed when, for instance, the real killer is caught, then everyone in that society feels—or, at least, should feel—great remorse at the horrible thing done in the name of all of us. And then—”

  “Thank you, sir. We get the idea. Now, then, what about abortion? If your argument is that punishing the innocent with the ultimate sanction is debilitating for society, then I’m sure the men and women seated here, in the wake of our Supreme Court having recently overturned Roe v. Wade, will be gratified to hear that you’re pro-life.”

  “I’m not. I’m pro-choice.” I heard a hiss-like intake of breath from one of the jurors, and saw another one, the bearded white man, shake his head slowly back and forth.

  Belinda Dickerson returned to her desk, and her assistant took a book out of a briefcase and handed it to her—and, like every author, I have the ability to recognize one of my own books at just about any distance, even when it’s partially obscured. “Your Honor, I’d like to introduce this copy of Utilitarian Ethics of Everyday Life, by our current witness, James K. Marchuk.”

  Judge Kawasaki nodded. “Mark as People’s one-four-seven.”

  “Thank you, Your Honor. Just to confirm, sir, you are the author of this book, correct?”

  “Yes, that’s right.”

  “As you can see, I’ve marked two pages with Post-it flags. Would you be so kind as to turn to the first one and read the highlighted passage?”

  Post-it flags come in many colors; I use them all the time myself. She’d no doubt deliberately chosen red ones; she wanted the jury to be thinking about blood.

  I flipped to the first indicated page, carefully took out my reading glasses, and said: “‘As in all utilitarian thinking, one cannot put one’s own desires or happiness ahead of another’s simply because they are one’s own, but in the case of a genetically defective fetus which, if brought to term, will live an unhappy, pain-filled life, terminating the fetus is clearly the path that will most increase the world’s net happiness, for, as we have observed, there are only two ways to add to the world’s total joy. The first, obviously, is to make the people who already exist happier. The second is to actually increase the number of people in the world through childbirth, provided they will likely live happy lives.’” Italics, as the saying goes, in the original.

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat then went on. “‘The corollary to this is that the world’s total happiness is decreased by either making existing people less happy—as raising a disabled child with its attendant emotional and financial costs would doubtless do for the parents—or by allowing more people to come into existence who will be unhappy, as a child born to a life of pain and suffering will be. In such a case, therefore, abortion is perhaps morally obligatory.’”

  The argument was more complex than that, and I dealt with all the objections one might raise in the subsequent paragraphs, but I stopped when the blue highlighting came to an end, closed the book, and looked up.

  You could hea
r a safety pin drop in that courtroom. The jurors were all staring at me, some with mouths agape, and the color had gone out of Juan’s face. Only Devin Becker looked unperturbed.

  Dickerson let the silence grow for as long as she felt she could get away with, then: “Thank you. Now, the next passage, please.”

  I nervously opened the book again and flipped to the second marked page. At the top of it was a double-indented quotation from utilitarianism’s other founder, John Stuart Mill; I knew it by heart:

  Few human creatures would consent to be changed into any of the lower animals, for a promise of the fullest allowance of a beast’s pleasures; no intelligent human being would consent to be a fool, no instructed person would be an ignoramus, no person of feeling and conscience would be selfish and base, even though they should be persuaded that the fool, the dunce, or the rascal is better satisfied with his lot than they are with theirs.

  It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, are of a different opinion, it is because they only know their own side of the question. The other party to the comparison knows both sides.

  But Dickerson hadn’t highlighted that. Instead, the blue marking began immediately afterward; I swallowed, then started reading aloud:

  “‘Mill’s key point is that we reasonably and correctly value the lives of a human more greatly than we do that of a chimpanzee, for the chimp, while perhaps enjoying the moment, cannot anticipate future happiness as well as we can—and that act of anticipation is in itself a pleasure.’

  “‘Likewise, we value a chimp—to the extent in many jurisdictions of outlawing their use in laboratory experiments—more than we value a mouse, a being of demonstrably lesser intellectual capacity. But to be fair, and to avoid a charge of speciesism, we must apply the same standards to our own kind.’

  “‘Yes, an embryo, from the moment of conception, is genetically fully Homo sapiens, but it has no complex cognition, no ability to plan or anticipate, and little if any joy. As it develops, these faculties will accrue gradually, but they clearly do not exist in anything approaching their full form until several years after birth. On the bases previously discussed, a utilitarian should support abortion when a prenatal diagnosis has been made that is strongly indicative of an unhappy, painful life; it is on this current basis—the lack of a fully developed mind for years to come—that a utilitarian can additionally embrace not just abortion but also a merciful release when a severe defect is not apparent until after parturition.’”

  “‘Parturition,’” said Dickerson. “A right fancy word, that.” She glanced at the jury. “For those of us more accustomed to plainer speaking, what is ‘parturition’?”

  “Childbirth.”

  “In other words, Mr. Marchuk, sir, you believe abortion is okay. You believe—and I find this almost impossible to say aloud, but it is what the indicated passage said, isn’t it? You even believe infanticide can be okay. But you don’t believe in capital punishment.”

  “Well, as Peter Singer would argue . . .”

  “Please, sir, it’s a yes-or-no question. Are you against capital punishment in all circumstances?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you in favor of abortion?”

  “I’m in favor of increasing utility, in maximizing happiness, so—”

  “Please, sir, again: yes or no? In the vast majority of circumstances in which a woman might desire an abortion, are you in favor of letting her have it?”

  “Yes.”

  “And are there even times when infanticide, when killing an already-born child, is, in your view, the right thing to do?”

  “On the basis that—”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Well, yes.”

  “And your goal here is to convince the good men and women of this jury that it would be morally wrong to execute the defendant?”

  I spread my arms. “I have no goal other than to explain the screening technique I developed, but—”

  “No, buts, sir. And no more questions. Your Honor, I’m very grateful to be through with this witness.”

  5

  I said it didn’t bother me if people examined my résumé, and that’s true—with one exception. When other academics look at it, they shake their heads when they see I did my undergrad at the same institution I teach at now; that’s always considered fishy. Although I love the University of Toronto’s “Prof or Hobo?” web quiz, which asks you to identify by their photos whether a person is a vagrant or a faculty member, we tenure-track types are supposed to be more like male chimpanzees: once we reach maturity, and have proven ourselves intractably irascible, we’re expected to leave our native community, never to return. Welcome Back, Kotter was a bad-enough scenario for a high-school teacher; it was anathema to those of us in academe.

  But my own career had brought me from doing my bachelor’s degree here at the University of Manitoba—my flight had gotten in last night—back to being a tenured professor at the same institution. When asked why, I cite several reasons. “A fondness for bitter cold,” I’d quip, or “An abiding love of mosquitoes.” But the real reason was Menno Warkentin.

  When I started at U of M, in 1999, Menno was teaching the same first-year introductory-psych course that I myself taught now. Back then, I was eighteen, and Menno was fifty-five. He was now seventy-four and had emeritus status, which meant he was retired but, unlike some of the figurative if not literal bums who were eventually shown the door, was always welcome in his department, and, although drawing only a pension and not a salary, could still do research, supervise grad students, and so on. And, for all those years, he’d been my friend and mentor—I’d lost track of the hours we’d spent in his office or mine, shooting the breeze, talking about our work and our lives.

  More than just his age and professorial status had changed since I’d started being his student; he’d also lost his sight. Although he happened to be diabetic, and blindness was a common side effect of that condition, that wasn’t the reason. Rather, he’d been in a car accident in 2001, and while the airbag had kept him from being killed, its impact had shattered his beloved antique glasses, and shards had been thrust into his eyeballs. I’d once or twice seen him without the dark glasses he now wore. His artificial blue eyes were lifelike but didn’t track. They just stared blankly forward from beneath silver eyebrows.

  I found Menno sitting in his office with his headset on, listening to his screen reader. His guide dog, a German shepherd named Pax, was curled contentedly at his feet. Menno’s office had an L-shaped dark-brown shelving-and-counter unit against the back and side walls, but he had everything out of the way, up high or pushed to the back, so he couldn’t accidentally knock things over. And whereas I always had stacks of printouts and file folders on my own office floor, he had nothing that he might trip on. His office had a large window that looked not outside but into the corridor, and the white vertical blinds were closed, I guess on the principle that if he couldn’t see out, no one should be able to see in.

  Today, though, in the summer heat, his door was open, and as I entered, Pax stood and poked her muzzle into Menno’s thigh to alert him that someone had arrived. He took off the headset and swung around, my face reflecting back at me from his obsidian-dark lenses. “Hello?”

  “Menno, it’s Jim.”

  “Padawan!”—his nickname for me since my student days. “How was your trip?”

  I took a chair, and Pax settled in again at Menno’s feet. “The D.A. really worked at discrediting me.”

  “Well, that’s his job,” Menno said.

  “Her job. But yeah.”

  “Ah.”

  “And she brought up some stuff about my past.”

  Menno was sitting on a reddish-brown executive-style chair. He leaned back, his belly like a beach ball. “Oh?”

&nbs
p; “Stuff that I myself didn’t recall.”

  “Like what?”

  “Do you remember 2001?”

  “Sure. Saw it in a theater when it first came out.”

  “Not the movie,” I said. “The year.”

  “Oh.” He made a how-could-I-forget-it gesture at his face. “Yes.”

  “Jean Chrétien was prime minister then, right? And George W. Bush was sworn in as president.”

  “Umm, yeah. That’s right.”

  “And what were the biggest news stories of 2001?”

  “Well, 9/11, obviously. Beyond that, off the top of my head, I don’t remember.”

  “But you would,” I said.

  “What?”

  “You would remember others if you gave it some thought, right?”

  “I guess.”

  “I don’t,” I said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The D.A. surprised me with an article about my grandfather from the Winnipeg Free Press. I went to the DaFoe Library this morning, and they pulled the microfilm of that edition. I started looking at other headlines from that day, but none of them stirred any memories, and neither did the front pages of the Free Press from other days around then. So I went online and looked at the covers of Time and Maclean’s from 2001. I didn’t recognize any of the stories until the summer. Two thousand, no problem. The second half of 2001, yeah, it all came back to me. But the initial six months of 2001 are a blank. The first thing I can pin down from that year is the day after Canada Day. July first fell on a Sunday that year, so people got July second off work. I remembered being pissed that I’d tried to go to the post office on that Monday to pick up a parcel, only to find it closed for the holiday.” I spread my arms. “I’ve lost half a year of my life.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “As far as I can tell, yes. I mean, I remember being disgusted when the US Supreme Court handed down the decision in Bush v. Gore—but that was in December of 2000. I don’t remember Bush’s actual inauguration although there had to have been protests, right?”