Placebo (9 page)

Tuesday, October 27

I wake up, tense, my heart clenched tight in my chest.

The residue of my dreams still circles through me. Dark and restless and unnerving.

I check my watch.

5:02 a.m.

An hour earlier than I'd planned on getting up, but I know I won't be able to fall asleep again.

I stare at the ceiling, rub my eyes, try to forget the places my sleep took me, but the harder I try to put the images out of my mind, the clearer they become.

So I tell myself again that it was just a dream.

Only a dream.

I'm the one driving the minivan, Rachel sits beside me, and we're talking about something like the bills or getting the boys to their T-ball practice or something—it's not really clear, and of course that's the way dreams work—and then suddenly I'm not on the highway but veering off the road. Rachel gasps, “Where are you—”

I drive through the parking lot.

“Jev—”

Toward the pier.

“—Stop! You're going to—”

We fly off the pier, hit the water. The impact is jarring, and almost immediately Rachel is shouting and the boys are crying loudly, scared, terrified.

I'm the one at the wheel.

I'm the one killing my family.

We begin to sink rapidly, more rapidly than I would've thought.

It's a dream.

No it's not.

It's—

The twins are screaming and Rachel is climbing back to free them from their car seats, but I'm sitting motionless, watching the water rise inside the van. I realize that for some reason we're tilting backward and so the boys will drown first. I notice this in my dream—notice it, but do nothing.

The murky water outside the window swallows sunlight as we sink, but not enough to enshroud us completely in darkness. I can still see, I can still—

“Help me, Daddy!” It's Andrew, but I don't move, I just tell him it's going to be alright, that everything is going to be alright. Then Rachel is beside me again in the front—I don't know how, but she is; time and space have shifted and brought her here to my side because we are still in the dream.

The boys are strapped in the car seats, helpless and about to die.

Rachel doesn't threaten me or question me or accuse me but holds me close and tells me that she loves me. I say nothing, just turn around and watch the water rise over the terrified faces of our two sons.

Only then do I respond.

Only after it is too late do I scramble back, grab a breath, duck beneath the water that's pouring into the vehicle, and try to save them.

Only then.

When it is too late.

And that's when I awaken, at the same point I so often awaken when I have the dream—staring into the open, lifeless eyes of my sons with Rachel by my side. Sometimes, like tonight, she's holding my hand. Other times she's already dead, drifting motionless and bloated beside me.

Some days I wish I wouldn't wake up at all but would join my family in whatever realm of eternity they ended up in, good or bad, heaven or hell, as long as we could be together again.

But so far I haven't been that lucky.

I take a deep breath, sit up on the couch.

Exhale slowly.

The dream is fading away, but it leaves a dark thought-trail behind as it does, one that roots around inside of me and doesn't want to let me go.

Charlene, who'd studied religion in college, once told me that in Acts 14 Paul mentioned four things that serve as evidence of God's existence—rain, crops, food, and joy.

Joy as evidence of God. In a world as hurting and pain-filled as ours, where death always wins in the end . . . what else besides a divine gift of joy divvied out to the hurting could explain how people can laugh at all?

Unfortunately, God wasn't seeming all too real to me over the past thirteen months. Not if the evidence of his love was joy.

I hear something in the bedroom, the soft, comfortable sound of Charlene turning over in her sleep. I don't want to wake her, so as quietly as I can I find my shoes and jacket and slip out the door to the porch.

It's still dark, but in the porch light I can tell that the emerging day is drenched in early morning mist and a sad, drizzling rain.

From growing up in the area, I know it's a typical Pacific Northwest morning, the kind of weather people in the rest of the country might use as an excuse to stay indoors, settle down with a cup of tea and a good book. But in Oregon and Washington, rain is a way of life and
mist is welcome, and being damp means feeling at home. The sayings I grew up with:

“Oregonians don't tan, they rust.”

“Enjoy Oregon's favorite water sport. Running.”

“I saw an unidentified flying object today—the sun.”

In order to stretch my legs and clear my head, I start on a brisk walk along the three-mile trail that loops around the main part of the campus. The decorative streetlights beside the path glow languidly through the haze. It's as if I've stepped into a nineteenth-century London novel.

What happened last night in the Faraday cage seems to have occurred in its own distant dreamworld somewhere. Time does that to memories—unfurls them at different speeds and in ways you wouldn't expect, putting more distance between events than the hours should allow.

Or sometimes it swallows the space between experiences and time becomes compacted, seems not to have passed at all.

But now it's as if last night's altercation happened so far in the past that the Lawson Research Center should've changed dramatically since then.

However, after a few minutes I see its exterior lights through the trees and it looks like it should: rustic and rugged, sedately awaiting our visit for the test later this morning.

I think of the attacker, of the blade swiping through the air toward Charlene, meeting her arm, slicing into her. I hope she'll let me take her to the hospital later today, or at least to a clinic in Pine Lake, but based on her response when I tried to do that last night, I'm not optimistic. In the meantime, we seemed to be on the same page as far as going on with the test.

The reason we came to the center in the first place.

A test so simple it might actually be hard to debunk.

First, find a couple who are in love with each other. That's a prerequisite, at least for this specific line of research. Isolate one of the
lovers in the Faraday cage, position the other in a room somewhere else on campus. Or, in this case, 120 feet down the hall.

The person in the chamber is the receiver, the other is the sender.

Next, set up equipment to record physiological changes in the receiver, and at random intervals show the sender the video of the person in the chamber, instructing him to think loving thoughts, give focused positive attention to her. If the receiver experiences physiological changes while he does that—and only while he does—it would be evidence of some type of nonlocal, unconscious psychic connection.

And that's exactly what Dr. Tanbyrn and his team claimed their tests showed.

According to them, in almost every instance, within seconds of the sender thinking focused, loving, positive thoughts, the receiver's heart rate, respiration rate, and galvanic skin response change—almost imperceptibly, yes, but enough to be measured. And when the sender stops focusing his thoughts and emotions on his partner, her physiological condition returns to a baseline state.

That was the claim.

But how was that even possible? How could that happen?

Entanglement on a quantum level? That seemed to be Tanbyrn's take on it. But even if that were the case, why would the person in the chamber be affected by only that one person's thoughts?

In other words, what about all the other people who care about her and might be thinking about her at the same time as the test's sender? After all, if the connection is truly nonlocal, it wouldn't matter where the other people were, how far away they might be.

So why would their positive (or maybe negative) thoughts fail to affect the person in the Faraday cage while just her lover's thoughts did? Couldn't other people love her just as much? What about a mother or a sister or a child? Couldn't their love be just as impactful? Just as resonant?

And how could you ever hope to design a test that would account for those other people's thoughts? Tell everyone who cares about the
woman not to think about her at all during the test? But even if that were possible, how could you rule out the possibility that they hadn't done so anyway?

After all, one of the best ways to get someone to think about something is to tell him not to.

And of course, how much of a connection, how much love, was needed for any of this to work? What measurements could you ever come up with to test the depths of true love?

Really, as inexplicable as the results were, there were so many variables and confounds that at best it would only be possible to identify a relationship that was highly correlational, not one that was causal.

But still, even that much would be hard to explain naturally.

And so, as I walk the trail toward the river on the east side of the campus, that's what I try to think of a way to do.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
8:16 a.m. Eastern Daylight Time

Riah lay awake, alone, in bed.

She had a lot to think about after her visit to the R&D facility last night.

When she and Cyrus left, he'd refused to come over to her apartment and had gone home instead to the arms of his wife.

Riah wondered what explanation he'd given Helen for his unexpected arrival—especially since there weren't any other flights that left for Atlanta last night after the one he'd told her he was going to take out of town—but Cyrus was an experienced liar and Riah was confident he'd found a way to be convincing.

Now as she repositioned her head on her pillow and stared at the wall, it occurred to her that she was disappointed—not that he hadn't come over to sleep with her, but because his absence hampered her study about secrets and intimacy and love.

Actually, it might tell you something about love after all.

She rose from bed, gathered the toys she'd purchased for her “sleepover” with him. Perhaps she would need them later, it was
hard to tell. After all, their relationship had reached a crossroads; she was aware of that, but she was still open to seeing what the future might bring, might teach her.

Carefully, she put everything away—the chocolate sauce in the cupboard, the handcuffs and other slightly more exotic, harder-to-obtain items in the closet.

She guessed that Cyrus had gone home rather than come to her place because the twins had pressed him to tell her about the research, and sleeping with his wife would've been his way of punishing his mistress for tagging along and putting him in that uncomfortable situation.

But fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on how you look at it—Riah didn't feel punished. As much as she wanted to, she didn't know how to feel heartbroken or thankful or excited or sad or any of those other emotions normal people have.

No.

No shame. No guilt. No anxiety about the consequences of her choices.

And of course all of this troubled her because she knew what it meant; what her lack of a conscience and lack of empathy and lack of concern for other people, in addition to her remorselessness for her actions—she knew what all of this was indicative of.

A condition that the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders described under the category “personality disorders.”

Admittedly, by themselves those traits might not have been enough to convince Riah of her condition, but when you took into account high intelligence and charismatic charm, the diagnosis was pretty clear.

Riah Colette was a psychopath.

Not a murderer, no.

But a psychopath nonetheless.

True, many people with her disorder were violent, but not all of them were. Some were lawyers, others were used car salesmen, businessmen, politicians, athletes. Usually psychopaths took up professions
in which narcissism, self-promotion, and deception served as assets. Often, of course, that meant careers with high levels of competition.

All competition requires putting aside a certain degree of empathy and understanding toward those you're trying to beat, so it made sense that people who lack a sense of moral accountability and compassion would be attracted to it. To compete is, essentially, to participate in an act of self-promotion. After all, how can you love, serve, and honor someone above yourself while you're wholeheartedly trying to defeat him?

Attempting to assure someone else's failure requires setting aside concern for his well-being, and to treat anyone that way requires a certain degree of psychopathology.

Once, Riah had been invited to a volleyball game between two Christian colleges. The fans on each side cheered when their team did well, but they also cheered when the girls on the other team made a mistake that put their own team ahead. Curious about this, Riah had asked the man who'd invited her, “Don't Christians believe in supporting each other?”

“Of course.”

“So that doesn't apply when a girl is wearing a different color jersey?”

She'd meant no offense by the question, but he'd studied her in a subtly judgmental way. “It's just a game.”

“Aren't you all part of God's family?”

“God is our Father, so all believers are brothers and sisters in Christ. Yes.”

“Then why would you cheer when your sister misses the ball or fails to make a successful hit? Doesn't she feel bad enough already after making a mistake in front of hundreds of people? Why would you celebrate her failure or add to her embarrassment or shame under
any
circumstance at all?”

He glared at Riah and, perhaps as a way of showing he didn't buy into her reasoning, almost immediately joined the other fans around
them in applauding when a girl from the other college missed a serve and put his team within one point of winning the game.

Riah had taken something away from that experience, something that might be an important insight into the way normal people think. Psychopathology is at least culturally pervasive enough to cause religious people to set aside some of their prophets' and leaders' most cherished values of selflessness, service, humility, and encouragement when they're watching or participating in a sporting event.

Even though it didn't make Riah sad exactly, it did confuse her. She could only imagine that if she were able to feel something as precious as compassion, she wouldn't be willing to give it up so readily over something as inconsequential as watching a group of girls hit a ball back and forth over a net.

Honestly, when Riah saw things like that, she wondered if she wanted to be “normal” at all.

But of course, for her, all of this was not just an academic question or a cultural milieu. It went much deeper, because she knew that she was a true psychopath in every sense of the term.

Over the years she'd tried telling herself that she wasn't like the psychopaths who kill, that she was different, that she could control her condition, master it even, and eventually learn to experience the emotional and experiential ups and downs that healthy, mentally well-adjusted people do.

She'd tried to convince herself that the difference between her and normal people was one merely of degree, not of kind, one that she could overcome with effort and understanding. But in the times when she was most honest with herself, she had to admit that the instinct to kill had burrowed inside her long ago.

The bird that she killed in front of her sister.

The other animals over the years when no one was looking.

The inexplicable curiosity she felt while watching things die.

And those nagging questions about what it would be like to take the life of another human being.

And so far all of her research into neurophysiology had failed to show her how she might change, how she might learn to control the urges she had.

Notwithstanding all she knew about the brain, its pleasure centers, the way it processed reality, and even taking into account direct brain-computer interfaces and ways to elicit muscle responses by exciting certain parts of the brain, she had not managed to find the answers she was looking for.

Riah walked into the kitchen and looked at the clock on the microwave.

Almost 8:30.

She was mostly in charge of her own schedule at RixoTray, as long as she checked in. Today she was supposed to be at work by ten and wasn't sure now if she would be going in at all.

She had a lot to think about after the meeting with the twins last night.

Finally, Riah decided she needed to process that discussion in light of her thoughts about who she was, what she was capable of, and what the two men whom she assumed shared her condition were working with Cyrus Arlington to do.

After a few minutes of reflection, she texted her supervisor and told him she was taking the day off for personal leave.

Dawn.

Returning to the cabin, I find Charlene awake and finishing a cup of coffee. The air smells of dark-roasted java.

She looks up, gives me a slightly concerned smile. “Hey, I was looking for you. Where were you?”

“Went for a walk.” I decide not to tell her how long I've been up already.

I see that she has set out a mug for me by the coffeemaker in the kitchenette, and I angle across the room toward it. “How's your arm?”

She holds it up and stares at it as if she hadn't noticed before that it was injured. “Hurts some, but not as bad as I thought it would. I think it's going to be alright. How was the couch?”

“Not too bad.”

She already knows that over the last year I've had trouble sleeping, and it probably goes without saying that my dreams had taken their toll on me last night as well. She doesn't ask and I don't elaborate.

“So then, dear”—she drains her coffee and goes for her purse, confirms that she has the RF jammer and the tiny, concealable heart rate monitor—“I believe we have breakfast and then a meeting with Dr. Tanbyrn.”

I take a long draught of my coffee, finish most of it. Set down the mug. I can feel my stomach rumble. Truthfully, breakfast sounds like just what I need. “Yes, dear. I think we do.”

On my walk I hadn't come up with any specific plan on how to debunk this research—or how I might replicate it through illusions or the tricks of mentalism. But getting video footage of this morning's test would be a good place to start.

I put on the small button camera that Xavier provided for me, and since I'll be needing the lap function on my stopwatch when Charlene is in the chamber, I make sure that it's working too.

It is.

Good.

To keep up the illusion that Charlene and I are in love, we walk to the dining hall hand in hand.

Riah stepped out of the shower.

Dressed.

And thought back to the events of last night.

In the end it was probably best that Cyrus hadn't come over because this way it gave her some time to sort through what the twins had told her.

Daniel had explained that the research being done in Oregon was meant to complement her own work here in Pennsylvania. “Dr. Tanbyrn and his team are mostly interested in studying the physiological changes in one person while another person who is emotionally or genetically close—”

“Or in our case, both,” Darren cut in.

“Is attentively focused on him—”

“—in a positive, loving way.”

“Mind-to-mind communication,” she said dubiously.

“Yes,” Darren answered.

Riah considered that. Even though she knew RixoTray was financially supporting the research, Cyrus had kept most of it under wraps and she knew surprisingly little about the nature of the research in Oregon.

She used diffusion tensor imaging, magnetoencephalography, fMRI, and EEG to measure the excitement patterns in the Wernicke's area of the temporal lobe. By better understanding how the two men processed communication, her team had been hoping to—

Aha.

“So, are you saying that if we could learn to excite the section of the brain related to mind-to-mind communication, you could heighten the—what? The connection? Intensify it somehow?” She was thinking aloud, and by the looks on the twins' faces, she was right on track. “Enhance the ability to . . . connect with each other?”

The twins exchanged glances and then nodded almost simultaneously. Cyrus's gaze crawled toward the clock on the wall as if he were perhaps expecting someone, or maybe he was just biding his time until he could maneuver the twins out of this uncomfortable meeting.

Riah knew that the Department of Defense was funding her research in the hopes of eventually developing a brain-computer interface to help troops communicate in the field by creating a device that could detect, decode, and then transmit neural linguistic information to other troops.

It could be used to help soldiers communicate in field conditions that wouldn't allow for normal speech, such as in the middle of a firefight when words couldn't be heard, or when any sound would alert the enemy, such as sneaking into a terrorist compound.