Cameron’s and Bailey’s cars are there when I arrive; the others haven’t come yet. I find my way to the designated meeting room. It has walls paneled in fake wood, with a green carpet. There are two rows of chairs with metal legs and padded seats and backs covered with rose-colored fabric with little flecks of green in it facing one end of the room. Someone I don’t know, a young woman, stands by the door. She is holding a pasteboard box with name tags in it. She has a list with little photographs, and she looks at me, then says my name. “Here’s yours,” she says, handing me a name tag. It has a little metal clip on it. I hold it in my hand. “Put it on,” she says. I do not like this kind of clip; it makes my shirt pull. I clip it on anyway and go in.
The others are sitting in chairs; each empty chair has a folder with a name on it, one for each of us. I find my seat. I do not like it; I am in the front row on the right-hand side. It might not be polite to move. I glance along the row and see that we have been put in alphabetical order, from the point of view of a speaker facing us.
I am seven minutes early. If I had brought a printout of the text I have been reading, I could read now. Instead, I think about what I have read. So far everything makes sense.
When all of us are in the room, we sit in silence, waiting, for two minutes and forty seconds. Then I hear Mr. Aldrin’s voice. “Are they all here?” he asks the woman at the door. She says yes.
He comes in. He looks tired but otherwise normal. He is wearing a knit shirt and tan slacks and loafers. He smiles at us, but it is not a whole smile.
“I’m glad to see you all here,” he says. “In just a few minutes, Dr. Ransome will explain to prospective volunteers what this project is about. In your folders are questionnaires about your general health history; please fill those out while you’re waiting. And sign the nondisclosure agreement.”
The questionnaires are simple, multiple-choice rather than fill-in-the-blank. I am almost finished with mine (it takes little time to check the “no” box for heart disease, chest pain, shortness of breath, kidney disease, difficulty in urination…) when the door opens and a man in a white coat comes in. His coat has Dr. Ransome embroidered on the pocket. He has curly gray hair and bright blue eyes; his face looks too young to have gray hair. He, too, smiles at us, with eyes and mouth both.
“Welcome,” he says. “I’m glad to meet you. I understand you’re all interested in this clinical trial?” He does not wait for the answer we do not give. “This will be brief,” he says. “Today, anyway, is just a chance for you to hear what this is about, the projected schedule of preliminary tests and so on. First, let me give a little history.”
He talks very fast, reading from a notebook, rattling off a history of the research on autism, starting around the turn of the century with the discovery of two genes associated with autistic spectrum disorders. By the time he turns on a projector and shows us a picture of the brain, my mind is numb, overloaded. He points to different areas with a light pen, still talking fast. Finally he gets to the current project, again starting at the beginning, with the original researcher’s early work on primate social organization and communication, leading — in the end — to this possible treatment.
“That’s just some background,” he says. “It’s probably too much for you, but you’ll have to excuse my enthusiasm. There’s a simplified version in your folders, including diagrams. Essentially what we’re going to do is normalize the autistic brain, and then train it in an enhanced and faster version of infant sensory integration, so the new architecture works properly.” He pauses, sips from a glass of water, and goes on. “Now that’s about it for this meeting; you’ll be scheduled for tests — it’s all in your folders — and there will be more meetings with the medical teams, of course. Just hand in your questionnaires and other paperwork to the girl at the door, and you’ll be notified if you are accepted onto the protocol.” He turns away and is gone before I can think of anything to say. Neither does anyone else.
Mr. Aldrin stands up and turns to us. “Just hand me your finished questionnaires and the signed nondisclosure — and don’t worry; you will all be accepted onto the protocol.”
That is not what worries me. I finish my questionnaire, sign the statement, hand both to Mr. Aldrin, and leave without talking to the others. It has wasted almost my whole Saturday morning, and I want to go back to my reading.
I drive home as quickly as the speed limit allows and start reading as soon as I am back in my apartment. I do not stop to clean my apartment or my car. I do not go to church on Sunday. I take printouts of the chapter I am on, and the next, with me to work on Monday and Tuesday and read during my lunch break as well as late into the night. The information flows in, clear and organized, its patterns stacked neatly in paragraphs and chapters and sections. My mind has room for them all.
By the following Wednesday, I feel ready to ask Lucia what I should read to understand the way the brain works. I have taken the on-line assessment tests in biology level one, biology level two, biochemistry levels one and two, organic chemistry theory one. I glance at the neurology book, which now makes much more sense, but I am not sure it is the right one. I do not know how much time I have; I do not want to waste it on the wrong book.
I am surprised that I have not done this before. When I started fencing, I read all the books that Tom recommended and watched the videos he said would be helpful. When I play computer games, I read all about them.
Yet I have never before set out to learn all about the way my own brain works. I do not know why. I know that it felt very strange at first and I was almost sure I would not be able to figure out what the books said. But it is actually easy. I think I could have completed a college degree in this if I had tried. All my advisers and counselors told me to go into applied mathematics, so I did. They told me what I was capable of, and I believed them. They did not think I had the kind of brain that could do real scientific work. Maybe they were wrong.
I show Lucia the list I have printed out, of all the things I have read, and the scores I got on the assessment tests. “I need to know what to read next,” I say.
“Lou — I’m ashamed to say I’m amazed.” Lucia shakes her head. “Tom, come see this. Lou’s just about done the work for an undergraduate biology degree in one week.”
“Not really,” I say. “This is all aimed at one thing, and the undergraduate requirements would include a course in population biology, a course in botany—”
“I was thinking more of the depth and not the breadth,” Lucia says. “You’ve gone from lower-level to challenging upper-division courses… Lou, do you really understand organic synthesis?”
“I do not know,” I say. “I have not done any of the lab work. But the patterns of it are obvious, the way the chemicals fit together—”
“Lou, can you tell me why some groups attach to a carbon ring adjacent to one another and some have to skip a carbon or two?”
It is a silly question, I think. It is obvious that the place groups join is the result of their shape or the charge they carry. I can see them easily in my mind, the lumpy shapes with the positive or negative charge clouds around them. I do not want to tell Tom I think it is a silly question. I remember the paragraphs in the text that explain, but I think he wants it in my words, not parroted. So I say it as clearly as I can, not using any of the same phrases.
“And you got that just from reading the book — how many times?”
“Once,” I say. “Some paragraphs twice.”