She glanced away from him toward her desk. Her voice dropped. “Let’s just say that we’ve had our run-ins too.”
From the change in her tone he guessed that whatever had happened with the administrator wasn’t something she wanted to discuss. He could relate. He followed her gaze to the desk. Two items caught his attention: a dog-eared paperback by Walt Whitman and a chunk of quartz the size of a softball.
“A Whitman fan?”
“Adore him.” She enunciated each syllable. “His idea that an ineffable power enlivens nature speaks to me. Like the Native American view that everything has a consciousness—humans, eagles, mountains, rivers—and that consciousness is what links all of us together.”
The emptiness in his gut returned. Natalie had loved Whitman too, but for different reasons. She’d admired his use of language in describing nature. For the second time since he’d entered the office, he forced the memory of his deceased fiancée from his mind.
Chris snorted. “You’re telling me this rock has consciousness.” He picked up the translucent stone and held it up to the light.
“First off, it’s a crystal—quartz. Second, I don’t mean a consciousness like the awareness that we have, but a certain force—an energy of existence. And third, many wise people believe that the unique molecular structure of crystals can hold this energy and that it can even provide healing powers.”
Ethan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He put the whole New Age crystal theory, as well as Whitman’s pantheistic musings, on the same plane as Wiccan magic, ESP, and angels causing miracles. The human mind’s ability to imagine a pattern or an unseen force behind a series of unrelated but coincidental events was well documented. In his class, he demonstrated this principle by projecting a photograph of clouds in the sky. He would then ask the students to play the childhood game of what do you see? After they shouted out their divergent, and often hilarious, answers, he pointed out that each of their own proclivities influenced their interpretations of this random display of nature. The human brain doesn’t like ambiguity, he explained. Our minds have evolved to make assumptions about our surroundings and to draw conclusions from incomplete information. The same neural processes that allowed a hunter in the savannah to make a quick decision about which animal to pursue or to avoid also cause some people to see the Virgin Mary in a cloud or a corn field.
“Shall we get started?” he asked. He glanced at the evolutionary biologist in front of him and wondered how she reconciled her spiritual views with her studies. But he had more important work to attend to than engaging in a philosophical discussion with two grad students.
“Sure. Once your assistant stops touching my stuff.” Rachel took the quartz from Chris’s hand and replaced it in the desk.
She shot a sideways glance at both men before leading them through a metal door next to the large window. They entered another fluorescent-lit hallway whose vinyl tile floor and bare white walls were similar to the one that led to the office. At the end of the hall, they entered through another metal door into an anteroom with a bench along one side and hooks above it. The opposite wall held a row of lockers, and across from where they entered was yet another door. Rachel turned a lock on the door they had just entered.
Ethan glanced between the two doors. “You have an air-lock system here?”
She laughed. “It’s not quite a spaceship.” She nodded to the second door. “But that leads to the monkey room. We need the multiple layers of security because they’re smart. We’ve had some close calls with escape attempts.”
She opened a locker and from it pulled out two sets of blue surgical scrubs, shoe covers, masks, and eye shields, which she handed to the men. For herself, she pulled out a set of scrubs in tie-dye.
“Why the scrubs?” Chris asked. “The experiment is noninvasive.”
Ethan wondered the same thing. It was one of the conditions for conducting the tests at CapLab; this was a psychological research lab, not a medical one. When he first approached Dr. Sanchez about testing the Logos on the monkeys, he had to assure her that no surgical techniques or drugs would be used. The Logos would only send weak magnetic pulses aimed at the capuchins’ skulls.
“It’s to protect the monkeys from human diseases,” she said as she slipped her scrubs over her clothes, “but sometimes they bite and throw feces.”
Ethan pulled the strap of his surgical mask over his head. The last thing he wanted was a mouthful of monkey poop.
“They bite?” Chris asked.
“In the nineties”—she bent over to slip on her shoe covers—“a researcher at Yerkes was bitten by a macaque and died from encephalitis.”
She opened the last door into the monkey room. They were greeted by loud vocalizations from the capuchins and the distinctive smell of a zoo. The room was approximately thirty feet square. Two-thirds of it was enclosed by the chain-link fence. At the far end was the large window that opened onto the office, but from this side he could only see a reflection of the room they were in; the window was a one-way mirror. Sitting on a metal cart with wheels just outside the cage was the Logos.
The brains and the mechanics of the Logos were contained in a black metal box the size of a large stereo receiver. The box had several dials to adjust the power and frequency of the electromagnetic pulses it generated, but it also had a serial port into which Chris had loaded Ethan’s proprietary algorithm from his laptop that morning. His programming, rather than the dials, would determine the exact protocol by which the machine would generate its outputs. Extending off of the box was a metal articulated arm that telescoped out three feet. On the end of the arm were what appeared to be headphones—the kind that covered one’s ears—although these were wider and ended in three-inch plastic disks rather than plush cushions.
The Logos was designed to be placed on either side of a subject’s head without touching it. Instead of speakers, the disks contained solenoids, tightly wound loops of wire that would produce variable magnetic pulses when an electrical current was passed through them. Today, the solenoids were suspended above a rectangular wire tunnel that branched off of the main cage by a few feet. The tunnel was large enough for a single monkey to crawl through. At the end of the tunnel was a wire box with a small hole and a U-shaped foam attachment on top.
Ethan felt the anticipation building within him. The past five years working with Elijah, the scorn from their colleagues, their financial difficulties—once they made the Logos work, the long nights and early mornings would be worth it. If it works, he thought. The first dozen tests had failed, no matter how they’d tweaked the programming. Then he’d had the epiphany to base the algorithm on the EEG of epileptics who experienced hyperreligiosity. That was six months ago.
Elijah had leapt out of his desk chair when he’d made the suggestion. Receiving the approval of his mentor meant more to Ethan than all of the snide comments his friends in the department made. However, Elijah had insisted on the extra safety test on a non-human primate: “Just to make sure we don’t induce a full-fledged seizure.” Ethan didn’t think that was possible with the care he’d taken in programming the algorithm. He was anxious to get to the human phase, to get answers to his most pressing questions. They were scheduled to begin human testing next week, if the tests today proved the machine safe.
The screeching from the monkeys grew louder as Rachel walked to the fencing. A capuchin leaped from a branch to the cage by Rachel’s face. “Hey, Anakin,” she cooed.
The monkey—one of the younger ones, judging by its small size—pressed its back up to the wire. Rachel reached in two fingers and scratched it.
“You aren’t seeing this. Strictly against the rules.”
“The monkey’s name is Anakin?” Chris asked.
“That one”—she pointed to a larger one with graying hair—“is Obi Wan. Over there we have Luke, Lea, and the black one is Darth.”
“Star Wars?” Ethan asked. Although he rarely went to the movies anymore, he’d grown up on Star War
s. He’d seen all of the movies multiple times.
“Makes it easier to remember the names.”
Well, little Anakin, he thought, I hope you don’t have a grand mal on me here. This was their last chance. He and Elijah were out of ideas, and even with their new grant, Houston wouldn’t tolerate many more failures. But in his heart he knew the Logos would work. He hadn’t wasted the past five years chasing a phantom dream.
“Are we ready?” Chris asked from behind the Logos.
Rachel glanced from the two men to the black box by the cage. When she’d asked Chris about the machine earlier, he’d been evasive, and Professor Sanchez hadn’t given her much before hurrying to catch her flight to Atlanta. Professor Ethan Lightman might be brilliant, and attractive, she admitted to herself, but she was nervous about putting her babies at risk.
Ever since she was a young girl, she’d had a way with animals. She’d thought that she could feel what they were thinking. Plus, they were appreciative of being taken care of, unlike her two younger brothers. Rachel had been the one responsible for feeding and cleaning up after them. Her dad was rarely home. He worked late nights and weekends, and when he was physically present, he was emotionally distant. And Mom—She pushed away the memories. Rather than make their own meals, her brothers would complain if she made PB&Js or chicken fingers two nights in a row. On the other hand, Commander, her fluffy terrier mix, and Flotsam and Jetsam, her hamsters—and even Tiggie, her parakeet—were always happy to see her. After making sure her brothers had what they needed, she would shut herself in her room with her pets.
She put her hands on her hips and said, “We can begin once you tell me what this machine is going to do to my capuchins.”
“I can assure you there is no danger to the monkeys,” Ethan said.
That’s not an answer, she thought. Standing beside the wire tunnel that led from the cage to the Logos, she folded her arms like a sentry guarding the entrance of a castle.
“I’m sorry, but didn’t Professor Sanchez sign off on this?”
“Well, when she’s not here, they’re my responsibility.” Just because he was a professor, not to mention tall and sexy, didn’t mean she would be intimidated.
He sighed. “The Logos”—he pointed to the metal box on the stand—“generates a series of electrical pulses whose amplitude, wavelength, and frequency are determined by an algorithm I designed. The pulses travel along these wires”—he gestured to the black wires that coiled around the metal arm—“to the two solenoids here, which convert the electrical pulses into magnetic ones.” He pointed to the plastic discs. “We direct these magnetic pulses predominantly toward the left temporal lobe of the subject’s brain. It’s really just a modification of a Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation protocol.” He shrugged as if the procedure were no big deal.
“You’re going to microwave my monkeys’ brains?”
Chris jumped in. “Hospitals use TMS technology all the time. The FDA has approved it for the treatment of depression.”
She frowned. “I know that neurons are like tiny electrical circuits, firing small charges across their synapses, but you’re telling me that these circuits can be influenced by magnetic fields from outside the skull?
Ethan nodded. “Studies have shown that TMS can be more effective on depression than medication, with no side effects.”
“But my monkeys aren’t depressed.”
“Of course not.” Chris smiled. “We’ve just tweaked the programming of the machine for our experiment.”
“For what purpose?”
She caught the men exchanging a glance.
“Because you know the monkeys so well,” Ethan explained, “we want you to observe them to see if you notice any behavior changes during the test. Although we didn’t design the experiment as a double blind one, we didn’t want to tell you too much and risk coloring your report to us afterward.”
She held his gaze. He’s telling the truth, she thought, but he’s nervous. His hands were clasped behind his back. From the tension in his shoulders, she could tell that he was trying not to fidget. Well, Laura did authorize the tests. Professor Sanchez was the only one who cared about the monkeys more than she did.
She dropped her arms, walked over to a mini-fridge in the corner of the room, and removed a bowl with sliced green apples and oranges, a small vial of clear liquid, and a syringe.
“Ketamine,” she said, answering the men’s curious looks. “In case you’re wrong about your machine.” Ketamine was a tranquilizer that would immediately paralyze the monkey. The forms they had to fill out to get it were endless because the drug was often abused by ravers who referred to it as Special K.
She pulled a chunk of orange from the bowl. “We can only test one at a time. How many are we going to run?”
“Three, please.”
She held up the slice so that the monkeys could see it. Anakin, who was still the closest to her, began to chatter. She slid open a mesh door that closed off the wire tunnel from the main cage. Anakin leaped toward the tunnel, but just before he entered Obi Wan swung down from a higher branch and pushed him out of the way.
“Wow, aggressive,” Chris said.
“Not at all, just hierarchical.” She closed the tunnel door after Obi Wan entered and held the orange where he could see it as he scooted toward the wire box at the end. “Food, toys, and attention are divvied up according to the hierarchy of the group. Typically the older and larger males eat first and get the most.” She looked up at Ethan, who was at least a foot taller than her, and grinned. “Fortunately, some of us have evolved beyond those instincts.”
When the monkey poked his head up through the small hole in the top of the box, she gave him the orange while snapping the foam collar around his neck, securing him in the position. The first time she’d done this for other experiments, she and the monkeys were nervous, but now it was routine. Ethan nodded to Chris, who lowered the headset so that the two black solenoids were positioned on either side of Obi Wan’s head. Eating his orange, Obi Wan paid no attention. Chris then stepped behind the Logos. When the graduate student hit a switch, a low hum emerged from the metal box. Rachel felt her pulse increase in time with the vibration. She hoped she was making the right decision by allowing them to proceed with their tests.
Ethan’s heart pounded against his sternum as if it were knocking on a heavy door. He had to remind himself to breathe. All of our work, he thought. If a monkey had a seizure, their project was over. He pushed the thought from his head, but then another more disturbing one intruded: What if the machine didn’t work at all?
Elijah’s theory about the nature of mystical experiences was controversial, and their colleagues looked on them with skepticism at best. If the machine worked, they would be vindicated. But then, what if their peers were right?
Scientists had learned more about the brain in the past two decades than in all of prior history. They now had pills that could affect one’s emotions, and others that could stop schizophrenic hallucinations. Experiments demonstrated that electrodes planted deep in the brain could trigger memories of certain smells or tastes; other electrodes could induce orgasm. With all of these advances, the one area that had never been conquered was the control of one’s thoughts and beliefs. What better way to attempt this, Elijah had first theorized years ago, than through religion—one of the most powerful belief systems of the human mind?
Inevitably, Ethan’s thoughts drifted down a path he’d tried to repress for years—the secret that had plagued him since he was a child, the answers that he’d sought for two decades.
Suddenly, Obi Wan dropped the orange from his mouth. Ethan felt his breath catch. He waited for any sign that might suggest the monkey was about to begin convulsing from a generalized tonic-clonic seizure. Rachel, who stood beside him, stiffened.
“He’s okay,” Chris said.
Ethan wondered whether the grad student believed his comment or was expressing his hope. He bent forward to stare more closely. Th
e monkey’s eyes appeared to be tracking something that none of them could see. His arms hung by his sides inside the wire box, but his body didn’t slouch—he appeared relaxed. Ethan even imagined that Obi Wan looked thoughtful.
Rachel exhaled. “Yes, he is okay.”
A strange thought occurred to him. They’d come here to test that the magnetic pulses from the Logos didn’t cause a seizure in the animals. Could it be that something else was happening—something he wouldn’t have thought possible in a non-human primate?
He turned to Rachel, who stared at Obi Wan with her head cocked. “Monkeys, they don’t—” He struggled with how to phrase his question. “Do monkeys have mystical experiences?”
“I think all living organisms have the capacity to experience the deeper dimension that is the creative energy of existence.” Her eyes locked onto his. “Don’t you?”
CHAPTER 10
UNDISCLOSED PRISON FACILITY
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Where am I?
Mousa had asked the same question countless times—for how many days, he was no longer sure. The helicopter ride from the airport had taken an hour or two. Then he’d been shoved in a van and driven to a prison where he was strip-searched, given a blue cotton jumpsuit to wear, and tossed in a rancid cell. The brief hope he’d held at the airport for a quick resolution to whatever misunderstanding had brought him this trouble had vanished. He’d been neither asked nor told anything since he arrived. When he questioned the guard who probed his naked body, the only answer he received was a stinging slap across the head.
How was he supposed to clear his name if he didn’t know what he had to clear it from? They had his ID: his passport, credit cards, and hospital pass. Maybe they would realize their mistake on their own. The empty feeling in his gut indicated that this was unlikely.
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