God moves the player, as he the pieces.
But what god behind God plots the advent
Of dust and time and dreams and agonies?
THIRTY-EIGHT
“Perhaps we have all had enough celebrating for one evening,” said the provost. “And certainly more than enough science. We’re going to call each of you a private car to take you anywhere you wish to go. I expect most of you will head home to your loved ones. I hope you will apologize to them on my behalf for our innocent Haiti ruse.”
Chance, Tahoe, Wolfie and Kate said their goodbyes to Bigfoot/Josh and his friends, and the motorcycle gang left. Jenny emerged wordlessly from her private study room to escort them out. She exited the room without looking back.
“I trust that you’ll be comfortable waiting in here until the cars arrive,” the provost said. She turned to leave. “Oh, and I suspect this will make you happy, too: your cell phones. Of course, we had to take them from you before you started the escape room. Far too many of us look to these things for answers instead of figuring things out for ourselves. But we kept them safe, I assure you.”
One of the provost’s assistants approached them with a small box. One by one, Chance, Wolfie, Tahoe and Kate removed their phones from the box. Chance tapped at the screen, but nothing happened.
“Eight days is a long time, so your phones may not have much power left,” Levick said. “I apologize that we weren’t able to keep your phones charged for you.”
“Hey, I’m just glad I have mine back,” Tahoe said. “Felt naked without it.”
“It’s amazing how much we have all come to rely on technology, maybe even to our detriment,” Levick mused. “You already know that hospital and airplanes ban cell phones, but do you know why? It’s because they emit electromagnetic transmissions that disrupt sensitive computer equipment. But remember, our brains are basically the same thing, a biological computer, powered by neurons and complex neural circuits. We now know that cell phones disrupt the electrical signals that radiate out of our brain tissue. Studies show that signals from our cell phones are able to alter our states of consciousness, even when they are turned off.”
The provost stopped there, feigning embarrassment. “But look at me, reverting back to another lecture. You must forgive me; the old habits of a biology professor die slowly.”
Wolfie eyed his phone suspiciously, placing it on the table at a safe distance.
“I’m sure you and your brains have nothing to worry about,” Levick said. “Again, congratulations on completing the escape room. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have other business to attend to.”
As the provost turned to go, her own phone, clutched in her fist, chimed. She glanced down at an incoming text, and when she looked back up, her expression was one of genuine surprise.
“It seems that I have spoken too soon,” she said. “You all have clearly made an impression. We’re about to be joined by a very special guest.”
“Let me guess,” Wolfie said. “That little girl from the village in Colombia? The one with the yellow dress?”
“I’m afraid not,” the provost said. She showed her phone to one of her assistants, who scurried from the room. Levick ran a hand down her pant leg, straightening it, before slicking her hair back. Whoever it was, the provost clearly wanted to look her best.
A few minutes later, Levick’s assistant reappeared at the door and held it open. A man marched into the common area with long, purposeful strides. If the provost was a model of European chic, here was her male counterpart.
The man wore a dark gray suit, professionally tailored to his broad-shouldered frame. He wore a starched white shirt with a sharp, unbuttoned collar, silver cufflinks and freshly-polished black shoes. He had salt-and-pepper hair and dark eyes, outlined by frameless glasses. He looked expensive, like a man who inherited money and knew how to put it on display.
Levick shook the man’s hand, and said, “Sir, if we had known you were coming —”
The man dismissed the formalities with a wave of his hand. “I only decided to come less than an hour ago. When I saw the remarkable results from our little group here, I had to come and meet them personally.”
He turned from the provost and extended a firm handshake to Chance. “You must be Chance,” he said. “Remarkable. Proof that originality is not so easy to identify.” Before Chance had a chance to ask just what he meant, the man moved on to greet Tahoe, Wolfie and Kate.
“Permit me to introduce myself,” he said. “My name is Richard Kaiser.”
“I recognize that name,” Wolfie said immediately. “You … you’re one of the funders of the institute. I saw your signature in the provost’s office.”
Kaiser smiled. “Ah, yes, I have been made aware that you cleverly broke into Ms. Levick’s office. I believe it was Ms. Winter here who managed to access the locked exterior door. Ingenious.”
Kate eyed Kaiser suspiciously, but said nothing.
“Mr. Kaiser is the chief executive of the Lenore Foundation, one of the most prestigious private foundations in the world,” Levick said. “Mr. Kaiser supports programs all over the world in early childhood learning initiatives, arts programming…”
Once again, Kaiser waved off the provost. “Please, Ms. Levick, these people hardly need a lengthy profile. Have you already explained the purpose of our little experiment?”
Levick looked momentarily flustered, then said, “I explained that we were measuring brain function during decision-making, especially in high-stress environments.”
“Yes, yes,” Kaiser said impatiently. “But did you explain why? Why we went to such great pains, not to mention expense, to create such an elaborate experience? The why is so much more interesting.”
The provost composed herself. “No, I did not get into that level of detail.”
“Well, now you have my attention,” Chance said. “Are you going to actually give us some answers?”
“What I have to say may strike you as somewhat grand,” Kaiser said. “But I assure you that what I am about to tell you is no mere hyperbole or exaggeration.” He cast a furtive glance at the provost before he spoke again.
“Because, Mr. Matthews, we need you and your friends to save the world.”
THIRTY-NINE
“Save the world?” Tahoe repeated incredulously. “No pressure there.”
She tried to laugh at her own joke, but it caught in her throat when she saw the utterly solemn look on Kaiser’s face.
“You cannot be serious,” Chance pressed. “This was a game, an experiment. And our part is done. Cars are on their way to take us home.”
“And I am hopeful that I can convince you to turn those cars away, because this is no mere game,” Kaiser said. “The threat to humanity is very real. And the four of you may hold the key to solving perhaps the greatest existential threat of our time.”
“So we can either drive home in a few minutes, or save all of humanity,” Chance recapped. “Some choice.”
Kaiser said, “Ah, the question of choice. The million-dollar question at the heart of all that we do. All of the work of the institute, the escape room, this grand experiment — it is all part of an effort to answer a simple yet mystifying question: Do we have the freedom of choice? Do we have free will?”
“Save your breath,” Tahoe said. “We already got the lecture from the provost. Freud and the unconscious mind. It was rad.”
“So then, do you believe you have free will?” Kaiser asked.
“Of course. I’m choosing to believe that all of this is batshit crazy.”
Kaiser grinned, like a parent suffering a petulant child. “What if I told you that none of us, not you, nor any of your friends, not I or even our esteemed provost, have free will? What if I told you that free will — our ability to make decisions about our lives — is nothing more than delusion?”
“I’d say you were the one with the delusion.”
“I can assure you that that is decidedly not the case,” he said. �
��Science has proven what Freud hypothesized: Free will is an illusion. We are nothing more than a vessel for our selfish genes. Every decision we make is made for us by our genes in a never-ending quest to reproduce themselves. Our unconscious tells us when we are thirsty, when we are jealous, when we are in love.”
“If science has already decided all this,” Chance said, “then why the need for this experiment at all? If our brains are computers, just run a simulation in your labs. Heck of a lot easier to do it that way. You didn’t need the five of us at all.”
Four of us, Chance corrected himself. Jenny wasn’t one of them, not really. She had been a part of them, part of the experiment, watching, observing. Where was she, anyway? She seemed to disappear and reappear at odd times.
Kaiser curled his top lip under his bottom teeth. “Another astute question, Mr. Matthews. The four of you were all selected because you all exhibited something the researchers like to call ‘contrarian thinking.’ I prefer a more plainspoken term: You are all ‘originals.’”
“You’re going to have to explain yourself,” said Chance.
“Mr. Matthews here eschewed academic and personal consequences and brought a poem to a science fair. Mr. Wolfson demonstrated impressive originality in the blending of two disparate musical genres. Ms. Andrews turned to art to overcome her disabilities.”
Chance felt Tahoe blanch at the word ‘disabilities.’ She shot a glance toward Wolfie, who was glaring at her. She whispered something to him that Chance couldn’t quite hear, but it didn’t seem to mollify Wolfie.
Kaiser hadn’t mentioned Kate at all, Chance noted.
“You are young members of a generation of creatives,” he said. “That’s what we wanted to test.”
“The Picasso Project,” said Chance. It was referenced in the file in the provost’s office.
Kaiser nodded. “Yes, the Picasso Project. Our name for the study of nonconformists. I trust you all know the story of Pablo Picasso?”
“Why do I feel another lecture coming on?” asked Tahoe.
“I will keep it brief,” Kaiser promised.
Up until the very end of the 19th century, he explained, the world of art was dominated by generations of artists who painted with a singular goal: Be true to life. A painter’s skill was judged almost entirely by how well he or she rendered the verisimilitude of a scene.
And then, in 1907 a penniless artist named Pablo painted a canvas that he called Le Bordel d’Avignon, one of the largest paintings he had ever done. It featured five women, all with skewed heads that jutted at impossible angles from elongated necks. He showed it to a group of artist friends, who were all immediately repulsed. His friend, Henri Matisse, thought Picasso was playing an awful prank on him. An art critic derided the painted figures as “hostilities against good sense.”
Upset with the reaction, Picasso hid away his canvas for nine years. When it was finally exhibited in 1916, it caused a furor. It was hailed as the most original painting in 700 years. “With one stroke,” one reviewer wrote, “it challenged the art of the past and inexorably changed the art of our time.”
“With that one painting,” Kaiser said, “Picasso broke all of the rules. His idea was to paint all five women from more than one angle all at the same time, resulting in the highly contorted faces. ‘I paint objects as I think them,’ Picasso said, ‘not as I see them.’
“With this singular change in perspective, Picasso changed not only the art world, but how we all see our own world.”
“I am not sure we belong in the same Zip code as Picasso,” said Tahoe.
“I disagree,” said Kaiser. “Our world is quickly becoming a bastion of conformity. Our work seeks to identify and cultivate the next generation of original thinkers.”
“Bastions of conformity,” Wolfie said. “Sounds like a name for an indie band.”
“Think about it,” Kaiser said. “We live inside increasingly smaller bubbles. Students who exhibit high levels of creativity are discriminated against throughout their school years, dismissed as troublemakers, disruptors. Surely, Ms. Andrews can attest to that.”
Tahoe stared vacantly, her mind, in that moment, far away.
“Researchers have found that from the ages of 2 to 10, children are urged by their parents to change their behavior once every six minutes. Just think about that for a moment. We are indoctrinating our children with conformity just when they are at their most creative stage of development.”
Chance felt himself nod. His father had never encouraged his writing, his poetry.
Kaiser pressed his case. “Social media has created infinite feedback loops. We surround ourselves online with people who think the way we do, who like what we like, who vote for who we vote for. Our online timelines are filled not with we wish to see, but what Facebook, Instagram and Twitter believe we want to see. We have alienated ourselves to the point where we can no longer see things from different perspectives. The divide is too great.
“We read books only if they have enough stars on Amazon from people we do not know. We eat at restaurants only if Yelp approves. We see movies based on a Rotten Tomatoes score. To an alarming degree, we think as a single amorphous group. Creative programs in art and dance and theater are being eliminated, victims of budget cuts and indifference. Student enrollment in any field of the humanities is dropping by percent every year. Everywhere we look, individuality is being systematically erased from our society.”
Kaiser paused there, studying the faces before him. Their expressions belied their thoughts. To a one, they recognized the truth in what he was saying. More than that, Chance realized, each of them had actually lived it.
Chance said, “I think we can all relate to what you’re saying. But I’m not ready to concede that we don’t have free will. Right at this moment, I can choose to walk out that door, or stay here and listen to you, or throw this cup across the room or eat another handful of pretzels.”
“I don’t want you to concede. I want you to fight. Challenging authority is a key characteristic of nonconformists. You are an original thinker, Chance. That’s why we want you to join the Picasso Project. And as for the premise of your comment, society already accepts that we do not have free will. You just don’t realize it yet.
“Consider this: There is a reason why minors are charged with crimes differently than adults. It’s because we already accept that boys and girls under the age of 18 do not have fully functioning brains.” Kaiser smiled. “Present company excepted, of course.”
On June 20, 2006, a pool cleaner was going about his business for a regular client. Through a back window, he saw a naked man, his body streaked with blood, wandering aimlessly through the house. Alarmed, the cleaner immediately called 911.
A few minutes later, police stormed the house to find a man, later identified as Carlos Hyde, armed with a bloodied knife. After a struggle, the police managed to overpower Hyde, who shouted, “You’re too late, anyway! You’re too late!”
They found three bodies in the upstairs bedroom. Beth Lawrence and two children were dead, stabbed a total of 58 times, including deep blows to their throats. The children, a girl age 8 and a boy age 5, had been tied to the bedpost and apparently forced to watch the murder of their mother. The husband and father returned home to find his entire family slain. Blood splattered family photos on the nightstand. He was inconsolable. Two days later, he attempted suicide.
“So what are we to make of this man, this murderer?” Kaiser asked when he had finished telling the story.
Tahoe rolled her eyes, annoyed. “Where are the cars already?” she asked no one in particular.
“Okay, I’ll play along,” said Chance. “This guy, Hyde, deserves life in prison, maybe even the death penalty.”
“I would agree,” said Kaiser. “And a jury of 13 men and women in the state of Florida agreed, too. They sentenced Carlos Hyde to death, and he was executed by lethal injection. Justice served.”
“Great story,” seethed Tahoe.
&nb
sp; “But what if I told you that when they conducted an autopsy on Carlos Hyde, they found a tumor the size of a softball pressing down into his frontal cortex? The malignant growth, the doctors found, had completely severed the cells in the brain’s frontal lobe, disrupting his ability to moderate impulse control. A team of neuroscientists studied the tumor and Hyde’s brain and reported that he had completely lost the capacity to control his impulses. He had no control over his actions.
“Does that change your opinion of what should happen to Mr. Hyde?” he asked. “Who, incidentally, was a husband and father to two young girls himself.”
“The legal system is based on actions,” Tahoe retorted. “Not brain waves.”
“Incorrect, Ms. Andrews. Surely, the insanity defense rings a bell?”
The issue leapt into popular culture in 1843, Kaiser explained, when a man named Daniel M’Naghten murdered British Prime Minister Robert Peel. M’Naghten had fired a pistol point-blank into Peel’s back. He was immediately overpowered by constables, and when the crush of bodies was finally peeled back, it was learned that M’Naghten had not actually shot the prime minister, but his private secretary, Edward Drummond. Drummond died five days later, due to complications from surgery and leeching.
During the trial, defense lawyers submitted evidence that M’Naghten was suffering from delusions that left him in a state where he had a breakdown, a complete loss of self-control. Medical witnesses attested to the fact that his visions left him deprived of “all restraint over his actions.” The prosecution offered not a single rebuttal witness. The jury did not even bother deliberating privately. They returned a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, the first such decision in history.
The British Supreme Court of Judicature codified the legal precedent in language that still holds today: “Jurors ought to be told in all cases that every man is presumed to be sane, and to possess a sufficient degree of reason to be responsible for his crimes, until the contrary be proved to their satisfaction; and that to establish a defense on the ground of insanity, it must be clearly proved that, at the time of the committing of the act, the party accused was laboring under such a defect of reason, from disease of the mind, as not to know the nature and quality of the act he was doing; or, if he did know it, that he did not know he was doing what was wrong.”
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