by David Brin
In which case, are they any more qualified to pick a path for humanity, than I am?
Before Hamish could follow that mental track much further, something interrupted the chain of sullen thoughts. Wriggles, his little earring aissistant, spoke up.
“Hamish, something has happened.
“It has to do with Roger Betsby. You asked to be informed of any significant developments.”
Hamish blinked.
Betsby? Oh, right. The Strong Affair. That matter had seemed so pressing—to save the career of an absurd fool of a U.S. senator from his self-inflicted public relations fiasco. Now it struck Hamish as so … P.A.… or pre-Artifact. True, Senator Strong could still be helpful in formulating right policies for the new era. Yet, the first thing to cross his mind was that Hamish looked forward to seeing the senator’s nemesis again. To spar once more with the doctor’s agile mind.
What has Betsby done now? He caught himself smiling in anticipation, as if relishing the next clever move of a worthy chess opponent.
Fishing in his jacket pocket, Hamish brushed past the small contaict lens container, choosing instead a larger, rectangular shape that he swiftly unfolded into a pair of tru-vu goggles.
“Show me,” he commanded Wriggles.
But, even expecting something unexpected, what erupted before Hamish struck him numb with shock.
THE POSTHUMOUS CONFESSION OF A POISONER
If you are watching this, it means that I’m dead, or missing, or so mind-altered that I can no longer transmit the complicated daily stop-code on this, my final statement to the world.
My name is Roger Betsby. I am … or was … a physician serving one of the refugee communities in the Detroit Renewal District. Blink here, and my homunculus will take you on a tour of who I was and what I stood for. But I bet you are more likely interested in hearing my deathbed denunciation.
First a confession. On October the twelfth of last year, while pretending to be a waiter at a luncheon of the First Americans Club, I slipped a substance into the beverage consumed by Senator Crandall Strong. Among THESE links are vid recordings showing me in the act. There are also clips—redistributed by scores of newsnexers—of the senator’s subsequent speech, which started in his normal fashion, with a low, mild voice, but soon rising in tone and volume as he typically recited from a long list of complaints and grudges.
With increasing vigor, Strong condemned the current U.S. Congress, for refusing to fully fund the Second Reparations Act. He disdained the present administration, for ceding more environmental authority to UNEPA. The Canadians, he excoriated for limiting New Lands immigration, and the courts, for constraining the damage awards won by Victims of the Melt, in their lawsuit against the Denialist Cabal.
Soon, as usual, he moved on from enemies who were merely social, legal, or political. and laid into those he has long proclaimed the real villains—all the would-be “godmakers,” using technology and science to arrogate powers of the Almighty.
Millions have watched this particular speech, which—as usual—built toward a powerful, fuming rant. Only, this time, going well beyond a mere rant, it spiraled out of control! Instead of maintaining a high-but-controlled level of righteous anger, all the way to a thundering end, it became pyrotechnic, racist, scatological even for Crandall Strong.
You can see the transition, about eight minutes in—right here—as he starts looking perplexed, licking his lips and then pressing them together, hard. At this point, he begins gesturing more dramatically than usual, pounding on the lectern. Observe his voice growing incrementally louder, his complaints more florid and accusations more intense. But note, underneath it all, an expression of puzzlement, worry, and something else … a growing sense of frantic need.
His regular stump speech always starts with contemporary political complaints, but then moves on to condemnation of modernity and technological “progress,” culminating in calls for all such matters to be placed in better and wiser hands. Only this time, the smooth sequence, ramping up from low, reasonable tones to vehement indignation, seems off-beat.
See? Clearly, he knows that something has gone wrong. But his response is not to finish early and seek help. It is to push ahead. Raising the stakes. Upping the ante and doubling-down. Getting more vehement … then choleric … then apoplectic!
Now, you may have guessed that I have a low opinion of this politician. I consider him to be a mean-minded demagogue of the worst order. It happens that I also dislike his particular views on a wide range of matters. But my purpose in slipping him a mind-altering compound was not to undermine the Renunciation Movement. I think they are wrong, but they have a legitimate right to make their points and to argue rationally with the rest of us. Who knows? They might even be partly right about human destiny.
No, what I did on that day was perform a medical experiment. If Senator Strong did not suffer from a diagnosable mental illness, then the drug that I gave him—a completely legal substance—would have had no effect at all. He would have given his usual, overly dramatic and illogical polemic, without any ill effects.
So why did it have the effect of ultimately driving him into a pyrotechnic fury, screaming vicious epithets and a series of horrific racial slurs?
Let’s rewind to the first time Senator Strong got that baffled look on his face. See here? I’ll overlay a flush tone analysis. And now add a voice stress graph. Compare the overlays to these other frames, taken from very similar speeches, at almost the same point, where he’s peaking at his first big polemical crescendo. His first dramatic thump on the lectern.
In those other speeches, the stress and flush-tone data show that he’s derived a jolt of intense pleasure from the moment. And yes, that is common with dramatic extroverts. But note here on October the twelfth. The jolt—the sudden wash of enjoyment isn’t there. And hence the puzzled expression. Clearly, he had been counting on getting that usual bump, from indignantly denouncing his enemies.
When it did not come, what was his response? To just go on with giving his speech, performing the day’s task with professional skill and accomplishing his goal? Or to pull back, when something has gone wrong, and to reassess the situation?
No. He did neither thing.
Instead, watch as Senator Strong pounds harder. He bears down, grinding his teeth between the sentences, growling, even shouting the same words he had spoken, on other occasions, with mere, measured anger.
Can you see, yet, the effect of the drug I fed him? It did not cause his vehemence or loss of control, nor does it have any known effects upon cognition or judgment.
It simply quashed the chemical-hormonal pleasure jolt that he normally receives from righteous indignation! That and nothing more.
Go ahead and blink here to look up Anhedonium. It is a recent advance over naltrexone, which was long used to suppress the surge reinforcements of heroin and other addictive substances. Anhedonium acts with accumbenol to block dopamine receptors only in the nucleus accumbens and two other carefully targeted sites. It is increasingly used in drug abuse clinics like one I operate in Detroit. Its simple effect is to interrupt the reinforcement cycle of most addictions.
Now, almost any habit can be called an “addiction” if its repetition is reinforced in the human brain, by rhythmic release of pleasure-mediating chemicals. The core process is not, in itself, harmful. Indeed, it is deeply human and essential! Pleasure-based repetition reinforcement is partly responsible for our tight bonding to our children, our husbands and wives, or the tendency to keep returning our attention to music, or beauty, or the glorious exercise of skill. It contributes to the joy that some derive from prayer. These are some of the good and wholesome things that we are glad to be addicted to!
Lately, experts have come to view drug abuse as little more than a hijacking of this normal human process. Heroin and ecstasy and moondust all offer shortcuts into brain mechanisms that served a real, evolutionary function. Only, their crude, sledgehammer attack upon the pleasure-reinforcement proce
ss seldom helps to make lives better … more often it ruins them.
We now know there are other ways to hijack this system. In some people, a hedonic gratification pattern can be achieved simply by entering certain frames of mind. For example, the cyclical jolt from gambling can be a genuine addiction, requiring as much effort to break as cocaine or kicx. Habitual thrill seekers, video game potatoes, and Wall Street “wizards” have all been shown to follow similar patterns. Once aboard the roller-coaster, they cannot let go. One mild version can be seen in those riveted to spectator sports …
… and then there are the indignation junkies. People who regularly get high off self-righteousness and sanctimony. You know the kind—we all do. (Any normal person has seen the rush I’m referring to, playing across that face in the mirror!)
In fact, many will accuse me of proud sanctimony, in perpetrating what I did against Senator Strong! Be my guest. Study my life and see if my good works and strong opinions fit the pattern of addiction. Could be.
But I am not the topic here.
Years ago, when the medical community announced that self-righteous indignation can be an addiction, as severe as any drug abuse, I expected the public to take notice. Surely (I thought) the vast majority of moderate, reasonable people will now stop listening to those vehement wrath-junkies—the essers—out there, constantly spewing hate from pulpits of the left or right, or religious or paranoiac mania? Now that the pattern is understood, won’t this tend to disempower the irate, who refuse to negotiate, and instead empower those who want to engage in reason? To listen to their neighbors and work out pragmatic solutions to problems?
Those who prefer positive-sum games.
Won’t this now-verified scientific fact undermine the frantic types, who have ruined argument and discourse in public life, by portraying their opponents in stark terms of pure evil, opposed by pharisaical good? By showing that their fury arises out of an addictive chemical high that they secrete within their own skulls?
To my disappointment, the major media pretty much ignored this revelation. After all, they draw nourishment from “them-versus-us” dichotomies and the polarization of pure-minded sides. They saw no benefit in any shift from conflict toward reasonable debate. (Boring!)
I realized; for people to understand the significance of this scientific breakthrough, there would have to be an event the media could not ignore.
There must be an example. So I provided one.
Why did Senator Strong go crazy, that day? And for several days thereafter? He was fed no mind-bending or soul-twisting poison. He ingested a medicine used only to deny addicts the feedback pleasure of their high. And so, when he did not get the accustomed jolt from sanctimonious rage, he upped the level of his rancor, in search of the buzz, the jizz, the zing.
And when that didn’t work, he upped it again, and again, as addicts do. Never pausing to think Maybe I had better stop now, he kept hurtling faster and faster toward the edge—as addicts do—ignoring reason or consequences, in search of satisfaction. To scratch an accustomed itch that was now beyond his ability to control.
That’s it. That was my scheme and my experiment.
That it worked, is inarguable.
It is also undeniable that I broke the law, along with the codes of my profession. I administered a legal medicine, for an appropriately diagnosed illness … but I did so in an unethical and illicit way, never consulting my patient or warning him of possible outcomes. And for that I should, by all rights, go to jail. Certainly, I am willing to take my punishment, according to the tradition of Gandhi, with a measure of cheerful acceptance.
Only, meanwhile, it is done. Senator Strong cannot escape blame for his outrageous behavior by claiming “It was the drug!” The opinions he expressed were entirely his own and no one forced him to express them. His behavior occurred because he is an addict—a term that the public rightfully disdains.
Above all, now millions will think about all this. They will view differently all the self-righteousness junkies in their midst—even ones they agree with! They will see how such people use their relentless passion and addict stamina to take over most advocacy groups, at all ends of the political and social spectrum, turning argument into jihad and negotiation into stark war between good and evil … or evil versus good.
You and your neighbors will never view the fervent ardor of ecstatic anger the same way. Now you’ll see it and recognize the symptoms of an illness—almost exactly the same as smoking crack or opium.
And, maybe then you’ll feel empowered to face down the vociferously indignant. You may even decide to join together with other mild-mannered, rational, and sensible folk, to reclaim the gracious gift of our ancestors. The power of calmly reasoning together. If that happens, I’ll take my punishment with serenity. A martyr for calm adulthood.
Unless that drive—for dramatic martyrdom—has been my own sanctimonious trip! I admit it’s a possibility. Any honest person ought to.
Oh, but then, if you are watching this right now, I am probably dead. So I matter even less than I ever did.
Anyway, this was never about me. Or even Senator Strong.
It’s about us.
51.
INSPIRATION
Hamish pulled off the tru-vus, which had gone blurry, somehow. Perhaps they were defective. He wiped his eyes with the back of a wrist.
What happened to Betsby? Did the senator arrange to have him killed? But that jerk Strong promised he would keep hands off, till I reported my results!
Hamish put the immersion glasses back on. Blits flurried around the periphery of vision, responding to his attention gaze, pupil dilation, and tooth-click or subvocal commands. Hamish was so out of practice that involuntary eye-flicks and grunts kept causing ripples, disrupting the feedback loops, like pebbles dropped into a pond.
Wriggles intervened. His little digaissistant swept away all the mere gossip and rumors, picking, distilling, and summarizing facts.
Apparently, Dr. Roger Betsby had fallen to his death from a second-level balcony of the Detroit-Pontiac domed stadium, pushed over (inadvertently, according to preliminary reports) by a convulsing patient. One who was under care for an addiction ailment—how ironic.
Of course, some apparent “accidents” weren’t. So, police officials promised to investigate any possibility of foul play, especially now that Betsby’s death-confession had begun climbing the charts, accompanied by a tide of conspiracy theories. Hamish made a mental note to send one of his favorite contract operatives to lend the authorities a hand. He felt a personal stake in getting to the bottom of this.
Damn. I’ve found so few minds I respect.
If Strong did this, instead of leaving me to handle Betsby, then our deal is off. A lot of deals are off.
Hamish closed his eyes.
Unbidden, a steady stream of fantasies had been bubbling through his mind, the last few days—as if his subconscious were trying to find a way around the dour conundrum offered by the Artifact aliens. As always, the ideas manifested as dramatic plots for a book, or movie, or interactive. Till now, each of them had seemed—well—untenable, even cheesy. Borrowed, blatantly, from earlier works of fictional paranoia. Disappointment with himself had darkened his mood.
Only now, he found himself mulling part of the posthumous confession of the man some were calling the Saint of the Silverdome. Hamish always prided himself in his memory for good dialogue.
It is undeniable that I broke the law … I administered a legal medicine for a real illness … but in an illegal way, never consulting my patient. For that I’ll go to jail … accepting punishment according to the traditions of Gandhi and the other great martyrs, with acceptance.
Oh, that was good stuff. Truly memorable. In a way, Hamish kind of envied Roger Betsby, whose real experiment had not been medical, but social. Perhaps all of this publicity, heightened by his death, would indeed turn the attention of a fickle public toward the lesson the Doctor sought to teach. A lesson about maturity
versus sanctimonious fury.
Maybe. Briefly.
But that outcome wasn’t what concerned Hamish. No, what struck him was a sudden, bolt-like realization. Awed by Betsby’s innovative technique for getting a point across.
A confession is always more credible than a denial.
Hamish felt a chasm in the pit of his stomach, a cavity made up of fear. The action that he suddenly found himself contemplating would change everything. There were terrible dangers, possibly as great as the ones that Roger Betsby faced. But also potential rewards. Plus a very real chance to alter the world, something that his genre fictions—despite all their dire-warning intensity—had never achieved.
Could I actually do this? Shall I study the idea first? Working out all the pros and cons and details?
Or would that only risk losing the moment, the sheer, impulsive genius!
In fact, there was only a very narrow window of time. Worldwide economies were teetering as thousands committed suicide, tens of thousands rioted, millions stayed home from work, and billions muttered angrily at their tru-vus and tellai-screens, driven into a contagious funk by the message of the artilens. And, while regular political institutions teetered, certain cabals of planetary power dealers were getting set to make their big move. One that Hamish had striven for years to assist—
—only now he felt a new certainty—that he did not want the “solution” being offered by Tenskwatawa, or the oligarchs, after all.
* * *
“Mr. Brookeman?”
His eyelids parted. Slightly startled, Hamish looked down to see the petite lab director, half his height, Dr. Nolan, standing just a meter away.
“Mr. Brookeman, I want to repeat our apology for having preempted your reserved time with Tarsus. I’m sure you understand that fast-breaking news events get priority.”
Fast-breaking news? Well, maybe. But the question you asked the octopus-oracle was both boring and dumb. Still, he maintained a calm and friendly smile.
“I’ll tell you what,” she continued. “Why don’t we offer you time with Patmos, our parrot-prognosticator? Her record is almost as good as Tarsus’ and we can give you a substantial discount.”
