Neuropath

by R. Scott Bakker

  Thomas laughed. Either Samantha Logan was real people or she was trying to present herself as such. Was this a tactic of some kind?

  'Are you always so open with your views, Agent Logan?'

  Pained smile. 'I figure it's useless to BS someone with a PhD in bullshit.'

  'That would be a philosopher,' Thomas said. 'Me? I'm a psychologist.'

  Thomas found himself laughing with her, struck by how quickly she had managed to turn his mood. There was something about her smile, a kind of open-mouthed honesty, that spoke of loving, irreverent parents and a childhood spent joking around the dinner table. He couldn't help but wonder how much they had in common. 'The boss thought I was your kind of people.'

  'Which is why,' Agent Logan said, ducking her head as she lingered on the word—an oddly endearing gesture, 'we could use your help on this case.'

  He snorted skeptically. 'What you guys need is a neurologist.'

  'A psychologist isn't close enough?'

  Thomas shrugged. 'Neurology is the science of the brain. Psychology is the science of the mind. Simple enough, I suppose, but things get very complicated very fast when it comes to understanding the relationship between the two.'

  'The relationship of the mind to the brain?'

  Thomas nodded into his beer. 'Some say the mind and the brain are actually the same thing, but at different levels of description. Others say they're entirely different things. And still others say only the brain is real—that the mind, and therefore psychology, is bunk.'

  'What do you say?'

  'I honestly don't know. The scary thing for me is that as the years pass and neuroscience matures, the relationship between the two disciplines starts to seem more and more like that between astronomy and astrology, or chemistry and alchemy.'

  'And why's that?'

  He paused, struck by the selfless candor of her expression. In his never-ending effort to engage his students, he had memorized innumerable little 'factoids' regarding this or that freshman preoccupation. As a result, he knew far too much about the myths and details of attraction. He knew, for instance, that Sam possessed all the features that men in Western cultures found appealing: large eyes, slender nose, high cheeks and delicate jaw. He knew that, no matter what the circumstances, simply looking at her would light up the reward centers of most men's brains.

  His own included.

  'Because neurology is a natural science,' he replied after a glutinous cough. 'It looks at human behavior and consciousness as natural processes like any other process in the natural world. It actually provides causal explanations for what we are.'

  'And psychology doesn't?'

  'Not really, no. Psychology also involves something called "intentional explanations", which are pretty tricky from a scientific point of view.' He found himself breathing deeply, as though steeling himself for some arduous task. 'For instance, why did you take a sip of your beer just now?'

  Samantha frowned, shrugged. 'Because I wanted to,' she said lamely.

  'There you go. That's an intentional explanation. A psychological explanation. This is largely how human beings explain and understand themselves: in terms of intentions, desires, purposes, hopes, and so on. We use intentional explanations.'

  'And they're not scientific?'

  Her foot brushed his leg and a jolt passed through him. She was just kicking off her shoes, he realized.

  'Not comfortably,' he replied, 'no. Before science, we largely understood the world in intentional terms. From the dawn of recorded history pretty much all of our explanations of the world were psychological. Then along comes science and bang: where storms were once understood in terms of angry gods and the like, they're understood in terms of high pressure cells and so on. Science has pretty much scrubbed psychology from the natural world.'

  The disenchantment of the world. In his classes Thomas was always at pains to convey just how extraordinary this transformation was—is. Homeric Greece, Vedic India, biblical Israel: in terms of structure, these worlds were cut from the same cloth as Tolkien's Middle-earth. Sanctioned by tradition, yes, anchored in the assent of masses, certainly, but projections of human conceit all the same. Magical. What fact could be more extraordinary? The entire human race had spent the bulk of its tenure living in various fantasy worlds, pleading, kneeling, murdering, avenging, all in the name of make-believe. The whole of humanity deluded. And if Neil was right, precious little had changed.

  'Until science,' he continued, 'we humans really had no way of distinguishing good claims from bad claims outside of tradition and self-interest. So why not confabulate? Make stuff up? Why not elaborate belief systems that cater to our vanity, to our need to keep everyone in line? It's no accident we've cooked up thousands of different religions, each peculiar to some distinct culture.'

  Sam paused to take a drink, and to reorient herself, Thomas supposed. 'So then why have I always thought psychology was a science?'

  'Because it is, in a sense. It uses many of the same tools and standards. It proceeds by hypothesis. The problem lies primarily in its subject matter.'

  'The mind.'

  'Yep. To put it bluntly, the mind's, well, spooky. The ancient Greek roots of "psychology" are psūkē and logos, literally "the discourse of the soul". The roots of "neurology", on the other hand, are neuron and logos, or "the discourse of the sinew". This pretty much sums up the crucial difference: neurology deals with the mechanics of the meat, whereas psychology deals with the syntax of the ineffable. You tell me which is more scientific.'

  She laughed. 'You were wrong, professor.'

  'About what?'

  'You are a philosopher.'

  He found himself laughing a little too hard—an out-of-joint response to out-of-joint circumstances. At some level, it was simply too absurd to take seriously: Neil a madman, Nora screwing him, and this FBI agent plying Thomas with beer in an effort to track him down. Ha-ha, Neil is fucking Nora. Ha-ha, Neil is murdering innocents. Ha-ha-ha…

  Agent Logan's look told him that she understood this, if not explicitly, then at the level of obscure bodily cues. Suddenly he felt close to this stranger, even though he didn't know the first thing about her.

  Go slow, Goodbook. It's been a long day.

  Something about her had stirred that anxious, adolescent tickle—that almost desperate desire to be liked. It seemed he could hear Neil laughing in the background.

  'Have you an arm like God?'

  Samantha's eyes flashed as she took another drink. 'You really need to work with me on this, professor.'

  Thomas shook his head, his thoughts immersed in a fog of competing demands and confusions. Too much was happening too fast. 'Like I said, I'm not a neurologist. I'll tell you anything you want to know, but otherwise, I'm just a frumpy academic.'

  'Professor—'

  'Tom. Call me Tom.'

  'Tom, then. Look, with everything going on…' She hesitated. 'Did you know that since the North Atlantic Drift collapsed, the number of eco-terrorist attacks against American targets has tripled?'

  By coincidence, Thomas had glanced at the television over the bar as she said this: CNN images of the freak blizzard in northern France. A blizzard before September. Of course everyone was blaming America and her former love affair with SUVs.

  'The Bureau's resources,' Samantha continued, 'were already stretched to breaking point by the anti-terrorism campaign. And now the Chiropractor is loose in the city—worse even than the Son of Sam. How many agents do you think Washington has assigned to hunt down Neil Cassidy?'

  'I have no idea.'

  'Eighteen, most of them part time. There's only the three of us—Shelley, Danny, and myself—here in New York City, along with some loaners from the NYPD. Everyone else is working on the Chiropractor case. We need your help, Tom. Honestly.'

  So there it was, her motive for this friendly beer. She wanted him to profile his best friend, provide a framework they could use to explain, and perhaps even anticipate, his moves. Thomas studied her f
ace, this time trying to look past the hum of her beauty. She looked all of twenty-five, but something about her demeanor said she was at least thirty.

  'Look, Agent Logan, I—'

  'What about vengeance, professor?' she asked sharply. 'What about nailing the man who nailed your wife?'

  There it was. She had taken the shortcut.

  He should have been offended but… He seemed to have no room for more fury.

  'The Argument,' he said, his eyes drawn once again to the TV.

  She scowled and shook her head. 'I don't understand.'

  Images of snow plows were replaced by that of rioters in frozen Paris streets. Howling Gallic faces, collars up, their fear and anger condensed in their exhalations. The more pessimistic climatologists had been right: global warming had tipped the climatic equilibrium, flooding the oceans with fresh water from the ice-caps, and the North Atlantic Drift, which had warmed Europe from Lisbon to Moscow—or what was left of Moscow—had simply disappeared. Given its latitude, Europe was slowly turning into a version of the Canadian Arctic.

  What have we done?

  'Yoo hoo, professor?'

  Thomas cleared his throat, drew a sweaty hand across his cheek and jaw. 'On that BD you guys showed me this morning. When the girl asked him what he was doing, the voice—Neil, I suppose—said he was making an argument.'

  'Yeah, so?'

  'Well, I think I know what that argument is. I think I know Neil's motive.'

  'You gotta understand: Neil and I were close in college. Real close.'

  'No offense, but I have to ask: were you lovers?'

  Thomas smiled. 'He punched me in the asshole once while playing "drunk WWE", but that's pretty much as romantic as it got.'

  Samantha laughed. 'I've had worse dates. Trust me.'

  'We weren't lovers,' he said, 'but only because the physical attraction wasn't there. We were like brothers, twin brothers, who just knew what the other was thinking, who just…' Thomas shook his head. 'Trusted.' Even then, Neil? Were you fucking me over even then? 'So what does this have to do with the argument?' He took a quick drink, more to organize his thoughts than anything else. 'Well, Neil and I weren't fascinated so much with each other as we were fascinated by the same things—the same topics. We used to debate stuff endlessly, from nuclear weapons to NAFTA. Then we took this philosophy class on eschatology—on all things apocalyptic—taught by this Vietnam-era burnout who was obsessed with the end of the world: Professor Skeat. Professor Walter J. Skeat.' He told her about the course, how it moved from the nuclear to the biblical to the environmental apocalypse, remembering as he did so all the youthful flares of insight that had made the class into a kind of religious experience. Everything became fraught with significance when the world was on its deathbed. Every word became a last word.

  'But what really caught our attention,' he said, his gaze lost between memories, 'and what old Skeat spent half the time talking about, was something he called the semantic apocalypse, the apocalypse of meaning.'

  'Why did it interest you so?'

  Thomas took refuge in another drink, suddenly conscious of her scrutiny. Did she find him anywhere near as attractive as he found her? Women were just as keyed to facial symmetry as men, but their preference for infantile versus masculine features tended to vary with their menstrual cycle—which was to say, fertility. Thomas supposed he had the symmetry nailed—he liked to think he was a handsome dog—but he was definitely on the juvenile end when it came to his features. A true blue baby face.

  Was that why Nora had betrayed him? Had Neil simply caught her ovulating?

  'Because,' he said, struggling to recover his previous train of thought, 'Skeat claimed the semantic apocalypse had already happened. That was how the Argument started.'

  Samantha frowned. 'The Argument?'

  'That's what we called it.'

  'So what was it?'

  'Remember how I said science had scrubbed the world of purpose? For some reason, wherever science encounters intention or purpose in the world, it snuffs it out. The world as described by science is arbitrary and random. There's innumerable causes for everything, but no reasons for anything.'

  'Sure,' Samantha said. 'Shit happens. There's no…' She paused and cocked her head, her look appreciative. 'There's no meaning to what happens. What happens just… happens.'

  Thomas smiled, impressed. Of course she was nowhere near agreeing with him—the Argument cut across the grain of too much hardwiring and socialization for that—but she had the versatility to at least entertain the idea. He could see why her superiors would grant her the latitude for something like this, sharing a beer with a possible material witness. A true professional, she was bent on understanding rather than forcing her own views. The truth of the Argument was irrelevant, here.

  Wasn't it?

  'Exactly,' he replied. 'The "will of God" or what have you is indistinguishable from dumb luck. That's why car insurance companies don't give a damn how much you pray—let alone to whom. It often seems otherwise, but once you factor in our penchant for self-serving interpretation and cherry-picking, it becomes painfully clear that we're deluding ourselves.'

  'You mean with religion?'

  Thomas paused over his beer. People were painfully credulous, capable of believing anything. And once they did believe, they had innumerable strategies for skewing and dismissing, all the while convinced they were the most open-minded and even-handed person they knew. They rewrote memories. They made up rationalizations, then believed them with religious conviction. When they didn't miss counter-evidence altogether, they warped it into further proof of their own cherished views. The brain was a spin doctor, plain and simple. The experimental evidence for this was out and out incontrovertible, but thanks to a culture bent on pseudo-empowerment, scarcely a peep could be heard above the self-congratulatory roar. Nobody, from truck drivers to cancer researchers, wanted to hear how self-absorbed and error-prone they were. Why bother with a scientific tongue-lashing when you could have a corporate hand-job?

  'Everyone thinks they've won the Magical Belief Lottery, Agent Logan.'

  'Which is?'

  He nodded at the parade of passers-by beyond the plate-glass window. 'Everyone thinks they more or less have a handle on things, that they, as opposed to the billions who disagree with them, have somehow lucked into the one true belief system.'

  Her face crooked into a rueful smile. 'I've seen my fair share of delusions, trust me. The people we hunt burn them for fuel.'

  'Not just the people you hunt, Agent Logan. All of us.'

  'All of us?' she repeated. Something about her tone told Thomas that the distinction between her and her quarry was important to her. No surprise there, given the things she must have witnessed over the years.

  He leaned back, holding her gaze. 'You do realize that every thought, every experience, every element of your consciousness is a product of various neural processes? We know this because of cases of brain damage. All I have to do is press a coat hanger past your eye, wriggle it around a little, and you'd be utterly changed.' This description never failed to provoke expressions of disgust in his classroom, but Agent Logan seemed unimpressed.

  'So?'

  'You're right. In a sense it's a trivial point. Every time you take an aspirin you're assuming you're a biomechanism, something that can be tweaked with chemicals. But think about what I said. Your every experience is a product of neural processes.'

  It seemed he could sense Neil leaning over his shoulder as he said this, a grinning aura, knowing full well the destination, but morbidly curious as to the path old Goodbook would take. Neil looked at heads the way ill-tempered children looked at toys—as things to be fucked with.

  'I'm not following you, professor.'

  Thomas hooked his shoulders and palms in a professorial you're-not-going-to-like-this gesture. 'Well, how about free will? That's a kind of experience, isn't it?'

  'Of course.'

  'Which means free will is a product
of neural processes.'

  A wary pause. 'It has to be, I guess.'

  'So then how is it free? I mean, if it's a product, and it is a product—I could show you case studies of brain damaged patients who think they will everything that happens, who think they command the clouds on the horizon, the birds in the trees. If the will is a product of neural functioning then how could it be free?'

  Frowning, Sam suddenly swigged her beer, head back, the way a truck driver might. Thomas watched her slender throat, as white as a barked sapling, flex as she swallowed.

  She gasped and said, 'I just chose to drink, didn't I?'

  'I don't know. Did you?'

  For the first time her face crinkled into a look that was openly incredulous. 'Of course. What else could it be?'

  'Well, as a matter of fact—fact, unfortunately, not speculation—your brain simply processed a chain of sensory inputs, me yapping, then generated a particular behavioral output, you drinking.'

  'But…' She trailed.

  'That's not the way it feels,' Thomas said, completing her sentence. 'It's pretty clear that our sense of willing things is… well, illusory. It started with a variety of experiments showing how easy it is to fool people into thinking that they're willing things they actually have no control over. That laid the groundwork. Then, when the costs of neuro-imaging began to plummet—remember all the hoopla about low-field MRIs several years back?—more and more researchers demonstrated they could actually determine their subject's choices before they were conscious of making them. Willing, it turns out, is an addon of some kind, something that comes to us after the fact.'

  Now she seemed genuinely troubled. Thomas had seen the same look on a thousand undergraduate faces, the look of a brain, Neil would have said, at odds with itself—one whose knowledge could not be reconciled with its experience.

  The brain, it turned out, could wrap itself around most everything but itself, which was why it invented minds… souls.

  'But that can't be…' Sam started. 'I mean, if we don't really make choices, then how could…'