Skinner's Box (Fang Mu (Eastern Crimes))

by Lei Mi

  "You..."

  "And so…" Yang Jincheng reached a hand into the air, five fingers spread wide, and slowly squeezed them into a fist. "The future lies not in the hands of the military or the politicians, but in our hands—the behavioral scientists."

  "But you have neglected to consider the most fundamental problem of all. People can only ever be an end, and can never be a means to an end!" Teacher Zhou fumed.

  "The value of scientific discovery lies in its practical application. Ever since humanity invented the idea of science, its sole use has been to construct society!"

  "But what gives you the right to decide the fate of others?" Teacher Zhou spat, on the verge of losing control. "Do you think you're God?"

  "Speaking of fate," Yang Jincheng said, smiling calmly, "in ancient Greece, Oedipus spent his entire life struggling against his. In the end he killed his father and wed his mother, but even so had still not thrown off the shackles of his fate. How many kings and emperors throughout history have searched tirelessly for an elixir of immortality, only to find themselves unable to escape the inevitable wheel of death? Since ancient times, humans have continued to worry over whether or not self-behavior can truly be controlled. If indeed the answer is 'yes,' then to what extent can it be controlled?"

  He paused, and suddenly spread his arms wide. "I can answer this question, so, in that sense, yes, I am a god."

  Dumbfounded, Teacher Zhou stared at Yang Jincheng for nearly a minute before murmuring, "You will be reviled and cursed by later generations for hundreds, thousands of years…"

  "Who cares?" Yang Jincheng leaned comfortably into the sofa. "Einstein's theories led to the invention of the world's most inhumane weapon—the atomic bomb. Even so, he remains the greatest and most-celebrated scientist in human history."

  "Enough." Teacher Zhou felt a wave of absolute despair pummel through him. He now knew there was no way he could change Yang Jincheng's mind. "As your former professor, as your mentor, I order you – no, I beseech you – stop the Indoctrination Field experiment, and destroy all your data and results!"

  "Impossible." Yang Jincheng refused bluntly. "We've already expended twenty years' worth of our blood, sweat, and tears on the Indoctrination Field Scheme; success is only one step away. I cannot possibly abandon it."

  "You have no idea, do you, that some people have already lost their lives over this...?"

  "Of course I know that!" Yang Jincheng stood abruptly. "Shen Xiang and that idiot boyfriend of hers, right? No scientific achievement comes without a price! Not to mention, their sacrifice is not one bit greater than the price I have paid and the risks I have taken!" His face twisted into an odd smile. "I might as well let you in on a little secret. The guy who raped Shen Xiang, all those years ago—it was me."

  Teacher Zhou was frozen with shock. When he finally came to his senses, he reached out and delivered a hard smack right across his former assistant's face. "Why would you do such a thing? Why?"

  Five bright red finger-shaped impressions came into prominence on Yang Jincheng's left cheek. He spat out some blood-specked saliva, then slowly but clearly said, "I wonder if you remember, in the early days of our experiment, when the majority of our test subjects did not respond with nearly the emotional intensity that we had hypothesized they would, you and I both were quite worried. The original plan was to have Wang Zengxiang pour some foul-smelling filth all over Shen Xiang's body, but it was obvious that that would come nowhere close to achieving the desired effect. So I dismissed Wang Zengxiang, and raped her..."

  Burning with rage, Teacher Zhou was raising his hand to smack him again when Yang Jincheng knocked him onto the sofa with his elbow.

  "Did you think I did it out of sexual desire?" Yang Jincheng yelled. "No! I did it for the good of the experiment! I was willing to risk going to jail, all so that the test subject would exhibit the response we had expected!"

  Suddenly he fell to the sofa and held his hands around his head. "Do you think what I did had no effect on me? I wasn't able to enjoy sex again until I was thirty-five-year-old! Even after my wife fell terminally ill, I remained committed to the experiment, putting in long hours day and night going over data at the office!"

  Without any warning, Yang Jincheng burst into tears. Several seconds later he stopped crying as abruptly as he had started. He wiped his eyes, and in a moment had regained his composure.

  "So please," he continued, "don't blame me for my rudeness. If you had the opportunity to decide the fate of others, you would do the same. And I will not, I can not, abandon the Indoctrination Field Scheme." At that he picked up another facial mask, pasted it onto his face, and stretched out on his back.

  Teacher Zhou stared at Yang Jincheng vacantly for a while and laughed bitterly. "What are you doing exactly? Is this a sort of self-indoctrination?"

  "This has nothing to do with indoctrination." Yang Jincheng gazed up at the ceiling and continued in a flat tone. "Soon I'm going to be heading overseas to participate in a major international symposium, and immediately afterward I'll be finalizing a deal to join a certain scientific research alliance. If all goes well, the alliance will be providing me with tens of millions of dollars in research funding."

  He suddenly sat up and leaned close to Teacher Zhou. A rigid grin broke through the white facial mask. "The future leader of humanity should have a perfect face, don't you think?"

  Teacher Zhou gritted his teeth as he stared at the stiff face. Slowly he said, "You should know that it's not just you and I who know about the Indoctrination Field Scheme. Some of the test subjects from back then have already killed their volunteers."

  A shadow darkened the triumph shining on Yang Jincheng's face. Teacher Zhou felt a glimmer of hope. "As quickly as you can, find whoever it was who leaked the information, and give all your data to the police." He thought for a moment and added, "This is your last chance to atone for what you've done."

  Then he got up, and without so much as a goodbye, walked out of the room.

  Roadside diner, second floor.

  "Done?" The overhead light is reflected in Mr. Z's dark pupils, making his eyes seem to glow.

  "Yeah." Luo Jiahai hangs his head. "It's done."

  "In accordance with the original plan?"

  "Yeah. I stabbed him to death in the sauna, and then cut his cock off and stuffed it in his mouth."

  Mr. Z exhales, looking suddenly relieved.

  "So, what about your issue?" Luo Jiahai asks.

  "We'll talk about it later. When the time comes I'll get J and Q to give me a hand." Smiling, he claps a hand on Luo Jiahai's shoulder. "Our first priority was to resolve your issue, so that you could leave this place carefree. I'm planning to..."

  He is interrupted by the sound of someone knocking on the door downstairs, followed by a loud voice with a heavy foreign accent. "Hello? Are you open for business?"

  Mr. Z looks meaningfully at Luo Jiahai, puts a finger to his lips, and gets up to go downstairs.

  No sooner than his figure disappears down the stairs than Luo Jiahai leaps to his feet, grabs the leather briefcase that Mr. Z always keeps by his side, and starts rifling through it. A moment later he pulls out a plastic binder, stuffs it hurriedly under a large cushion in the corner of the room, and carefully returns the briefcase to where it was.

  He can hear Mr. Z's voice coming from downstairs. "Sorry, we're closed."

  The dissatisfied customer blurts out a few curses, slams a car door, and rumbles off in his truck.

  When Mr. Z comes back upstairs and sees Luo Jiahai still sitting next to the table, unmoving, he chuckles. "Did that put butterflies in your stomach or what?"

  Luo Jiahai forces a smile and nods.

  "That's exactly what it was like for J and Q when they took care of their issues, too." Mr. Z laughs as he sits across from Luo Jiahai. "But you need to think positively. It's the beginning of a new life for you, after all." He retrieves a debit card from his inside pocket. "This is good for fifty thousand yuan. The pin is s
ix zeros. First thing in the morning, I'll drive you to Fuying City, and then you can go wherever you want from there."

  "Thank you." Luo Jiahai takes the proffered debit card. "And after that, I'm not to contact you ever again, right?"

  "Correct." Mr. Z's expression becomes serious. "All good things come to an end. For us, it's good enough just knowing that you'll be living happily ever after somewhere else."

  Wordlessly, Luo Jiahai places the bank card into his inside pocket.

  "Well, I'll be going now." Mr. Z stands and points at the plastic bag on the table. "There's water and some things to eat in there. Don't stay up too late; I'll be coming to get you first thing in the morning."

  A few minutes later Luo Jiahai watched Mr. Z's car disappear down the rural highway. He let the window curtain fall back in place, strode over to the corner of the room, and retrieved the plastic binder from underneath the cushion. He tore it open.

  Inside were pages of notes from the Indoctrination Field Scheme. Not only were there data and tracking reports on the test subjects Shen Xiang, Jiang Dexian, Tan Ji, Qu Rui, and Huang Runhua; there was also information on the volunteers—Jiang Peiyao, Shen Baoqiang, Ma Chunpei, Nie Baoqing, and Zhou Zhenbang. Luo Jiahai looked through it all over and over, but did not find a single test record or piece of data on Mr. Z.

  Mr. Z always kept the binder with him in his briefcase, and had never shown its contents to anyone. Could it be that he had lied about also having been a test subject?

  The evening's target, Zhou Zhenbang, had obviously not been the man who had raped Shen Xiang. What reason could Mr. Z have in lying to him about that?

  Luo Jiahai's face twisted in anger. Cold sweat broke out on his forehead and began to drip down the bridge of his nose as he gradually realized he had been tricked into playing a role in an elaborate plot.

  Fang Mu sat at his parents' dinner table, eating absent-mindedly and glancing from time to time at his cell phone.

  "Child, you need to forget all that and concentrate on your meal," his mother chided. She picked up a sparerib with her chopsticks and plopped it into his bowl. "Eat up. You can worry about your work after dinner."

  Fang Mu grunted obediently and took another bite. But no matter how he tried, he could not bring himself to focus on the sumptuous family feast in front of him.

  The task force had discovered the last known whereabouts of Wang Zengxiang, the one who had raped Shen Xiang, but it turned out he had died five years ago from lung cancer. Thus, the plan to use him to bait Luo Jiahai was naturally abandoned. Now the only thing they had to go on was Teacher Zhou.

  Although the old man had not told him the name of his former assistant, Fang Mu felt certain it was Yang Jincheng. However, the mastermind behind the scenes, the one who had disappeared after being in that bar, could not possibly be the same man. If Yang Jincheng had leaked the experiment data to the test subjects, it would have meant an end to his career as an academic. Besides, he had no need to kill those volunteers.

  Fang Mu just hoped Teacher Zhou could persuade Yang Jincheng to hand over his notes and data from the experiment so that the police might find a lead on who was still running the Indoctrination Field Scheme. Teacher Zhou would have a better chance of success than the police would in confronting Yang Jincheng. If only they could prove that Jiang Dexian and Qu Rui had had motive, things would be much easier.

  When dinner was finished, Fang Mu's mother carried a massive armload of dishes and chopsticks into the kitchen and began to wash up. He offered to help, but she would not hear of it. So he lit a cigarette and leaned against the wall next to the kitchen window, blowing smoke and thinking. As he watched her work in front of the sink, he suddenly had an idea.

  He mulled it over awhile and then asked tentatively, "Mom? What would you think about me bringing a girl here to work for you?"

  "Huh?" His mother stopped what she was doing and turned to gape at him. "What ever do you mean?"

  "Oh, nothing." Fang Mu suddenly felt an irrational wave of guilt. He was turning to slip away when his mother grabbed his arm with a wet hand and forced him to look at her. There was a hint of a smile in her eyes.

  "You've got a girlfriend, don't you? Tell me all about her!"

  "No, Mom, I don't, I don't."

  "Tell me about her right this instant." His mother was still holding his arm, not letting go. "Or bring her home so your mother can see for herself."

  Fang Mu was still trying to break away from his mother's attentions when a ringing sounded from the living room, followed by his father's baritone cry over the television’s sound. "Little Mu, your phone's ringing."

  Fang Mu used the opportunity to extricate himself from his mother's grip and hurry into the living room. He picked up his cell phone and saw a number he did not recognize on the display screen.

  "Hello?" he said, answering it.

  At first he heard nothing but a faint static through the receiver. He said "Hello" a couple more time, but no one replied. Guessing that it was yet another automated telemarketing call, Fang Mu was about to end the call when he heard a familiar voice.

  "Officer Fang. It's Luo Jiahai."

  Mr. Z parked his car in the lot. As he picked up his briefcase to get out he noticed it felt lighter than usual. A chill shot down his spine. Quickly he opened the briefcase and glanced through it. Not finding what he was looking for, he upturned the briefcase and dumped its contents out on the passenger seat. A few seconds later his face went as white as a piece of paper.

  He sat stunned for a while. Then he thought of something, got out his cell phone, and dialed Luo Jiahai's number. It was busy.

  "Fuck!" He slammed the car door, started the engine, and took the car speeding out of the parking lot.

  Fang Mu's mind was a blank. He waved at his father to turn the television volume down and spoke in the calmest voice he could muster. "Where are you?"

  "I can't tell you that right now. I've called to tell you something." There was hesitation in Luo Jiahai's voice, as if he was not quite sure he had made the right choice by calling.

  "About the Skinner's Box?"

  "You know about that?" Luo Jiahai almost yelped. "How...how could you know about that?"

  "How I know is not important. First tell me everything you know about it."

  "All right, fine. There's no one else I can trust right now anyways." Luo Jiahai seemed to have made up his mind. "I guess you know about how I busted out of jail. Actually, it was my attorney Mr. Jiang who organized it. After I was free I hid out in a motel room for a while, and then a man named Mr. T got me to join his group."

  "Who is Mr. T?"

  "His name is Tan Ji, one of the group members. There are five of them besides me—Mr. Z, Mr. J, Mr. H, Miss Q, and Tan Ji."

  "What are their real names?" Fang Mu's heart was beating so hard he felt as if it would leap out of his chest. "Tell me, one by one."

  "I have a piece of paper in my hand, and from the notes on it, it looks like Mr. H's name is Huang Runhua, and Miss Q's name is Qu Rui. Oh, and Mr. J is Attorney Jiang."

  "And Mr. Z?" Fang Mu asked impatiently. "What's Mr. Z's real name?"

  "That's the reason I'm calling you." Luo Jiahai's tone was full of suspicion. "The folder I have contains no record of anything to do with Mr. Z."

  "Damn!" Fang Mu blurted in frustration. "Okay, go on."

  "Mr. Z is the one who created the group. According to him, he was one of the guinea pigs in the Indoctrination Field experiment, what he sometimes refers to as a Skinner's Box. He said he got his hands on the data and notes from the experiment by total accident, and after he read through it he got in touch with the other guinea pigs who had been made to suffer and recruited them to his group."

  "And then?"

  "These test subjects all had severe emotional disorders, just like Shen Xiang. It seems like Mr. Z is an expert in psychology, because he led us all in these rehearsals of a kind of stage play, only without the stage. And after we did it a few times everyone fel
t better."

  Psychodramas. The test subjects appeared to all be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. "What did your group do besides act out these plays?"

  "We... At the end of each play, we killed the volunteer who had hurt the particular group member in the past, when he or she was a test subject. The whole reason they busted me out of the detention center was to help me avenge Shen Xiang's death. After Mr. T killed his volunteer, he dumped the body in a labyrinth. We stuffed the volunteer who had hurt Miss Q into a giant teddy bear and hung him in a department store at the mall, but the one who did the actual killing that time was T as well. We left the body of the volunteer who had harmed Mr. J on his old school campus. As for Mr. H, our plan was to leave that volunteer's body in the hospital, but I suppose you know what happened after that." Luo Jiahai hesitated. "...And I took part in of some of those operations personally."

  "How do you get in touch with each other?" Fang Mu asked, scribbling notes down as fast as he could. "Where did you do the actual killing?"

  "We set up a special hotline to call each other on, and after each call we disposed of our phone's SIM card and got a new one. As for where we killed them, we did it in a little diner on a rural highway outside of the city, up on the second floor. It's a place Mr. H bought last year."

  "Luo Jiahai," Fang Mu said, trying to compose himself. "Why are you telling me all this?"

  The line went silent but for the faint static. After a long time, Luo Jiahai answered in a quiet voice. "I feel like it's… Something doesn't feel right. It's like Mr. Z used me and the others, maybe."

  "Yeah?"

  "Today he had me go kill the one who raped Shen Xiang, but when I saw the guy he said was her volunteer, I knew he couldn't possibly have been the one who raped her, because he was incapable of it. His, uh, he didn't have a penis. So when I got back I stole this binder from Mr. Z's briefcase, and it has all sorts of notes and data on all of us, but there's nothing on him. I thought to myself, he never was one of the test subjects after all; he's just been using us."