course, we all think in pictures originally; we don’t have sufficient language until we’re two or three years old to do otherwise — and events from when we’re two or three are the earliest most people can recall. Many neuroscientists will tell you that that’s because no memories are laid down before then. But I think, rather, that when we start thinking linguistically that method supersedes thinking in pictures, locking out our ability to retrieve memories that had been stored in the old method; it’s an information-theory issue again. But since many autistics never start thinking linguistically, they have an unbroken chain of memories right back to birth — and maybe even prenatally.”
“That would be awesome,” she said. “But, no, I don’t remember my birth.” And then she smiled. “But my mother does — remember mine, that is. Every year on my birthday she says, ‘I know exactly where I was x-number of years ago…’“ She paused. “I wonder if apes remember their births?”
Kuroda’s face did something. “That’s an interesting thought. But, well, maybe they do; they obviously think in pictures rather than words, after all.”
“Have you seen Hobo?”
“A hobo? In this neighborhood?”
“No, no. Hobo, the chimp who can paint people. It’s all over the Web.”
“No. What do you mean, ‘paint people’?”
“He did a profile of this woman. Actually, I think he’s done it twice now. Here, let me show you the clip…”
“Maybe later. You know, I’m surprised you haven’t read Temple Grandin. Most people with autistics in their families find her books—” He suddenly looked mortified. “Oh, I’m sorry. Maybe they aren’t available for the blind.”
“They probably are,” Caitlin said. “Either as Braille, ebooks, or talking books, but…” She considered what she wanted to say next; she certainly didn’t want Kuroda to think she was a bad daughter. “I, um, only just found out my father is autistic.”
“You mean after you were able to see?”
“Yes.”
Kuroda clearly felt he should say something. “Ah.” And then: “Well, there are a lot of good books about autism you should read. Some good novels, too. Try The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. You’ll love it: the main character is a maths whiz.”
“Boy or girl?”
“Well, a boy, but…”
“Maybe,” she said. “Any others?”
“There’s Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood.” Caitlin lifted her eyebrows; the author she was going to be studying in English class. “One of them — Oryx or Crake, I can never remember which is which — is an autistic geneticist.”
“And the other?”
“Um, a teenage prostitute, actually.”
“You’d think it would be easy to tell them apart,” Caitlin said.
“You’d think,” Kuroda said with a nod. “Sorry, not much of an Atwood fan. I know I shouldn’t say that, this being Canada and all.”
“I’m not Canadian.”
He laughed. “Neither am I.”
“Hey, do you know how to find a Canadian in a crowded room…?”
Kuroda smiled and held up a hand. “Save your jokes for the press conference tomorrow,” he said. “You’ll need them then.”
After dinner, Caitlin went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. It was no surprise that she had acne — she’d been able to feel the pimples, of course. She remembered what that cruel Zack Starnes had said, back in Austin: “Why does a blind girl worry about acne?” But she’d known the spots were there, and, damn it all, she was entitled to the same vanity everybody else had; hell, even Helen Keller had been vain! Her left eye had looked blind, and she’d always insisted on being photographed from the right side; in middle age she’d had her useless biological eyes removed and replaced with more attractive glass ones.
Caitlin opened the medicine cabinet, took out the tube of benzoyl peroxide cream, and got to work.
I’d thought my universe crowded when there had been simply me and not me, but in this other realm there were hundreds — perhaps even thousands — of entities.
Now that I had learned to parse a head, I was better at recognizing specific entities, but it was still difficult. Part of that was because the entities periodically altered their appearance; I eventually surmised there was an outer covering, made of discrete sections, that could be changed. (However, the abnormal entity that I’d recently watched make a representation was unusual in that it either had no outer covering, or its outer covering consisted of components that all looked alike.)
Of course, the individual that interested me most was the one I’d encountered first; I decided to refer to it as Prime. I had caught glimpses of what I realized were projections that belonged to Prime, and, from the way in which I saw them, I concluded that the views I was seeing were being gathered by Prime’s head. But I still had not seen Prime’s face; indeed, I supposed I never would.
Still, now that I understood faces, I had come to recognize specific entities that Prime spent a lot of time with. Three, in particular, seemed to share a common environment with it. Two had faces that moved and changed constantly and whose mouths often opened; the third had a less mobile face, and its mouth was rarely open.
Just now, I could see that these others were sitting — supporting themselves with structural frames against the downward force I’d deduced was present. And they were eating — taking inanimate things into their mouths.
Prime was eating, too: I saw inanimate things growing large — no, no! — moving closer: the images Prime was sending to my realm were apparently being gathered by some part of its head above the mouth, possibly the nose.
While Prime ate, I kept linking randomly to other sites, looking for keys to decipher the data they offered up. So far, though, I’d made no progress. Oh, I could call forth data from any of them, but I could not interpret it.
Eventually Prime moved away from the others, and—
Oh!
It was…
Yes, yes, it had to be! The way the lighting changed, the way the perspective changed, the way…
I had a frisson of recognition — not of what I was seeing, but of having had a similar experience before, during the re-fusion, when I had seen myself as the other part of me had seen me.
This—
Yes!
This was Prime looking at itself!
It was in front of a rectangle. I was used to such things by now: some of these windows, as I had dubbed them, afforded views through otherwise opaque components; others, like Prime’s wondrous display, showed still or moving representations of other things. But this rectangle was special: it was reflecting back the object in front of it. I could see Prime’s face! And I could see the projections from Prime’s central core moving both in the rectangle and in front of it, observing them simultaneously from two sides, as Prime was … hard to say … putting a white substance in small dabs on its face?
And, while it did so, I was seeing Prime’s hair.
And Prime’s mouth.
And Prime’s nose.
And Prime’s eyes.
