I wonder suddenly how it would be if Marjory and I lived together — how it would be to have her taking up space here in the living room, in the bathroom, in the bedroom. I did not like the group home I used to live in, when I first left home. The bathroom smelled of other people, even though we cleaned it every day. Five different toothpastes. Five different preferences in shampoo and soap and deodorant.
“Lou! Are you all right?” Bailey looks concerned.
“I was thinking about… something,” I say. I do not want to think about not liking Marjory in my apartment, that it might not be good, that it might feel crowded or noisy or smelly.
Cameron is not at work. Cameron is wherever they told him to go to start the procedure. Linda is not at work. I do not know where she is. I would rather wonder where Linda is than think about what is happening to Cameron. I know Cameron the way he is now — the way he was two diys ago. Will I know the person with Cameron’s face who comes out of this?
The more I think about it, the more it seems like those science fiction films where someone’s brain is transplanted into another person or another personality is inserted in the same brain. The same face, but not the same person. It is scary. Who would live behind my face? Would he like fencing? Would he like good music? Would he like Marjory? Would she like him?
Today they’re tellirg us more about the procedure.
“The baseline PET scans let us map your individual brain function,” the doctor says. “We’ll have tasks for you to do during the scans that identify how your brain processes information. When we compare that to the normal brain, then we’ll know how to modify yours—”
“Not all normal brains are exactly alike,” I say.
“Close enough,” he says. “The differences between yours and the average of several normal brains are what we want to modify.”
“What effect will this have on my basic intelligence?” I ask.
“Shouldn’t have any, really. That whole notion of a central IQ was pretty much exploded last century with the discovery of the modularity of processing — it’s what makes generalization so difficult — and it’s you people, autistic people, who sort of proved that it’s possible to be very intelligent in math, say, and way below the curve in expressive language.”
Shouldn’t have any is not the same thing as won’t have any. I do not really know what my intelligence is — they would not give us our own IQ scores, and I’ve never bothered to take any of the publicly available ones — but I know I am not stupid, and I do not want to be.
“If you’re concerned about your pattern-analysis skills,” he says, “that’s not the part of the brain that the treatment will affect. It’s more like giving that part of your brain access to new data — socially important data — without your having to struggle for it.”
“Like facial expressions,” I say.
“Yes, that sort of thing. Facial recognition, facial expressions, tonal nuance in language — a little tweak to the attention control area so it’s easier for you to notice them and it’s pleasurable to do so.”
“Pleasure — you’re tying this to the intrinsic endorphin releasers?”
He turns red suddenly. “If you mean are you going to get high on being around people, certainly not. But autistics do not find social interaction rewarding, and this will make it at least less threatening.” I am not good at interpreting tonal nuances, but I know he is not telling the whole truth.
If they can control the amount of pleasure we get from social interaction, then they could control the amount normal people get from it. I think of teachers in school, being able to control the pleasure students get from other students… making them all autistic to the extent that they would rather study than talk. I think of Mr. Crenshaw, with a section full of workers who ignore everything but work.
My stomach is knotted; a sour taste comes into my mouth. If I say that I see these possibilities, what will happen to me? Two months ago, I would have blurted out what I saw, what I worried about; now I am more cautious. Mr. Crenshaw and Don have given me that wisdom.
“You mustn’t get paranoid, Lou,” the doctor says. “It’s a constant temptation to anyone outside the social mainstream to think people are plotting something dire, but it’s not a healthy way to think.”
I say nothing. I am thinking about Dr. Fornum and Mr. Crenshaw and Don. These people do not like me or people like me. Sometimes people who do not like me or people like me may try to do me real harm. Would it have been paranoia if I had suspected from the first that Don slashed my tires? I do not think so. I would have correctly identified a danger. Correctly identifying danger is not paranoia.
“You must trust us, Lou, for this to work. I can give you something to calm you—”
“I am not upset,” I say. I am not upset. I am pleased with myself for thinking through what he is saying and finding the hidden meaning, but I am not upset, even though that hidden meaning is that he is manipulating me. If I know it, then it is not really manipulation. “I am trying to understand, but I am not upset.”
He relaxes. The muscles in his face release a little, especially around his eyes and in his forehead. “You know, Lou, this is a very complicated subject. You’re an intelligent man, but it’s not really your field. It takes years of study to really understand it all. Just a short lecture and maybe looking at a few sites on the ’net aren’t enough to bring you up to speed. You’ll only confuse and worry yourself if you try. Just as I wouldn’t be able to do what you do. Why not just let us do our work and you do yours:
Because it is my brain and my self that you are changing. Because you have not told the whole truth and I am not sure you have my best interest — or even my interest at all — in mind.
“Who I am is important to me,” I say.
“You mean you like being autistic?” Scorn edges his voice; he cannot imagine anyone wanting to be like me.
“I like being me,” I say. “Autism is part of who I am; it is not the whole thing.” I hope that is true, that I am more than my diagnosis.
“So — if we get rid of the autism, you’ll be the same person, only not autistic.”
He hopes this is true; he may think he thinks it is true; he does not believe absolutely that it is true. His fear that it is not true wafts from him like the sour stink of physical fear. His face crinkles into an expression that is supposed to convince me he believes it, but false sincerity is an expression I know from childhood. Every therapist, every teacher, every counselor has had that expression in their repertoire, the worried/ caring look.
What frightens me most is that they may — surely they will — tinker with memory, not just current connections. They must know as well as I do that my entire past experience is from this autistic perspective. Changing the connections will not change that, and that has made me who I am. Yet if I lose the memory of what this is like, who I am, then I will have lost everything I’ve worked on for thirty-five years. I do not want to lose that. I do not want to remember things only the way I remember what I read in books; I do not want Marjory to be like someone seen on a video screen. I want to keep the feelings that go with the memories.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On Sundays, the public transportation does not run on the usual workday schedule, even though Sunday is a holy day for only a minority of people. If I do not drive to church, then I get there either very early or a little late. It is rude to be late, and being rude to God is ruder than other kinds of rude.
It is very quiet when I arrive. The church I go to has a very early service, with no music, and a 10:30 service, with music. I like to come early and sit in the dim quiet, watching the light move through the colored glass of the windows. Now once more I sit in the dim quiet of the church and think about Don and Marjory.