The Speed of Dark

Eventually the slides change from gray outlines of brains with colored spots to molecules. I do not recognize them; they are not anything in the organic chemistry book. But I do recognize a hydroxy group here, an amino group there.

“This enzyme regulates gene expression of neural growth factor eleven,” the doctor says. “In normal brains, this is part of a feedback loop that interacts with attention control mechanisms to build in preferential processing of socially important signals — that’s one of the things you people have a problem with.”

He has given up any pretense that we are anything but cases.

“It’s also part of the treatment package for autistic newborns, those who weren’t identified and treated in utero, or for the children who suffer certain childhood infections that interfere with normal brain development. What our new treatment does is modify it — because it functions like this only in the first three years of development — so that it can affect the neural growth of the adult brain.“

“So — it makes us pay attention to other people?” Linda asks.

“No, no — we know you already do that. We’re not like those idiots back in the mid-twentieth century who thought autistics were just ignoring people. What it does is help you attend to social signals — facial expression, vocal tone, gesture, that kind of thing.”

Dale makes a rude gesture; the doctor does not attend to it. I wonder if he really did not see or he chose to ignore it.

“But don’t people have to be trained — like blind people were — to interpret new data?”

“Of course. That’s why there’s a training phase built into the treatment. Simulated social encounters, using computer-generated faces—” Another slide, this one of a chimpanzee with its upper lip curled and its lower lip pouted out. We all break into roars of laughter, uncontrollable. The doctor flushes angrily. “Sorry — that’s the wrong slide. Of course it’s the wrong slide. Human faces, I mean, and practice in human social interactions. We’ll do a baseline assessment and then you’ll have two to four months of post-treatment training—”

“Looking at monkey faces!” Linda says, laughing so hard she’s almost crying. We are all giggling.

“I said it was a mistake,” the doctor says. “We have trained psychotherapists to lead the intervention… It’s a serious matter.”

The chimpanzee’s face has been replaced by a picture of a group of people sitting in a circle; one is talking and the others are listening intently. Another slide, this time of someone in a clothing store talking to a salesperson. Another, of a busy office with someone on a phone. It all looks very normal and very boring. He does not show a picture of someone in a fencing tournament or someone talking to the police after a mugging in a parking lot. The only picture with a policeman in it could be titled Asking Directions. The policeman, with a stiff smile on his face, has one arm outstretched, pointing; the other person has a funny hat, a little backpack, and a book that says Tourist Guidebook on the cover.

It looks posed. All the pictures look posed, and the people may not even be real people. They could be — probably are — computer composites. We are supposed to become normal, real people, but they expect us to learn from these unreal, imaginary people in contrived, posed situations. The doctor and his associates assume they know the situations we deal with or will need to deal with and they will teach us how to deal with those. It reminds me of those therapists in the last century who thought they knew what words someone needed to know and taught an “essential” vocabulary. Some of them even told parents not to let children learn other words, lest it impede their learning of the essential vocabulary.

Such people do not know what they do not know. My mother used to recite a little verse that I did not understand until I was almost twelve, and one line of it went: “Those who know not, and know not they know not, are fools…” The doctor does not know that I needed to be able to deal with the man at the tournament who would not call hits and the jealous would-be lover in the fencing group and the various police officers who took reports on vandalism and threats.

Now the doctor is talking about the generalization of social skills. He says that after the treatment and training our social skills should generalize to all situations in everyday life. I wonder what he would have thought of Don’s social skills.

I glance at the clock. The seconds flick over, one after another; the two hours are nearly done. The doctor asks if there are any questions. I look down. The questions I want to ask are not appropriate in a meeting like this, and I do not think he will answer them anyway.

“When do you think you would start?” Cameron asks.

“We would like to start with the first subject — uh, patient — as soon as possible. We could have everything in place by next week.”

“How many at once?” asks Bailey.