Gray Matter

How you end up number one.”

“I’m where I’m at because I’ve got a brain and know how to use it.”

“But you don’t feel anything.”

“Get out of here.”

“You weren’t even breathing hard. You weren’t even excited.”

“Because you don’t turn me on. Because you’re a fat ugly shit.”

“M-m-maybe so, but I think you’re a f-f-fake. I think you’re like me—impotent. Dead. That you j-j-just go through the motions like a robot, pretending, experimenting with other people’s emotions because you’ve got none of your own.”

“I have emotions,” she said. But her voice was void of protest. Dead.

She started to leave, but he took her arm. “Nicole, somebody messed with our heads. I don’t know who or why, but we’re different. I’ve got a brain that won’t let me forget anything. I can quote you a hundred poems from start to finish but I can’t feel them, Nicole. I CAN’T FEEL THEM! I can’t feel anything. Like I’m emotionally dead. Like I’m another species.” He fought down the urge to confess how he actually contemplated killing Richard just to see if he’d feel remorse.

“That’s your problem.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about.” He slid back the mirrored panel on the side wall and pulled out a bag full of prescription vials—all serotonin-reuptake inhibiting (SRI) drugs : Luvox, Zoloft, Paxil, Prozac, Anafranil— drugs for depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, seizures, for “bad thoughts”—all with her name on them, all old friends to Brendan. “It’s why we’re taking all this crap: We’re damaged goods, Nicole. We’re freaks. We’re freaks.”

She swiped the bag from his hand and tossed it on the shelf. “Get out of here!” Her eyes clouded over but not with tears, because she was incapable of them—something else.

He stepped out onto the landing at the top of the stairs. “They did something to our heads and left us dead inside.”

She did not respond—as if someone had pulled her plug out of the wall.

He stepped back from her, and for a long moment before he started down the stairs, she glared wordlessly at him through unmoving orbs of ice.

“One must have a mind of winter to behold the nothing that is not there and the nothing that is …”

42

“Middlesex University English professor Vanessa Rizzo Watts and her son Julian, fourteen, were found dead in their Hawthorne home in what police say appears to be a murder-suicide initiated by Professor Watts …”

Lucius Malenko muted the radio as he rolled down the window to pay the toll. It was the middle of the next morning, and he was at the New Hampshire border on northbound 1-95. In seconds, he had the Porsche purring at eighty-five in the fast lane again. He unmuted the radio as a country club official claimed that the Blake excerpt was not part of the original sent by the university. “My only guess is that somebody swapped videos with the intention of embarrassing Professor Watts. We don’t know who or why, but we’re looking into it.”

“You do that,” Malenko said and changed stations.

The world was abuzz with the story—headline news in The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald, the radio-news lead. Throughout the day experts on criminology and psychology would try to make sense of “the terrible family tragedy” that had hit affluent Hawthorne where such things just don’t happen. Fuzzy-haired pundits would speculate about the severe competition to publish within institutions of higher learning; others would hold forth on the evils of the patriarchal academic establishment whose excessive pressure on women invariably led to such disasters. Others still would wonder why so bright and talented a woman as Professor Watts would need to plagiarize.

Malenko had expected a resolution, but not a double death—convenient as it was. The intention was to send her a definitive statement that her actions must desist immediately. He knew that the woman was fragile, at the edge with misgivings about her son. Clearly the public humiliation had pushed her over—more than he had hoped for. And it took the proverbial two birds with one stone.

Eighteen months ago, she had complained that Julian was not right, that he could not free himself of his obsessions—how he would slice his food into neat little cubes before eating them; how he had to do things just so, according to his little odd rituals; how he counted everything—cars on the street, birds, houses, telephone poles, dots. The worst of his obsessions was his pointillist paintings. She complained that he’d work hours on end, sometimes skipping sleep. That he wore his teeth to stumps.

Malenko could not be certain that such obsessions were the consequence of enhancement. In spite of his suspicions, he claimed that Julian’s OC behavior was genetic.

Yes, they had had their failures—mostly from the early vintage of clients, before Malenko had perfected multiple stereotaxic insertions. Although they had been rendered brilliant, some developed unfortunate behavior problems. Three years ago, the son of an airline executive committed suicide, apparently having developed temporal lobe epilepsy. Another, a female, died of an embolism. Another still was convicted of murdering his parents, claiming that beetles were eating his brain.

But those were sad exceptions. Most enhanced children developed into highly intelligent and socially adjusted people—the summum bonum of the species. In his office, Malenko had a private photo album of “his children” who were scattered across the continent and beyond. Only a few lived in the area, and they were doing well. One was still at Bloomfield—Nicole DaFoe, whose high cerebral wattage was matched by genuine beauty. She wanted to be a physician when she grew up, possibly even a neurosurgeon. There was also young Lucinda MacPhearson—another prodigy, skilled in computers.

Because the brain is a black box of wonders, something went wrong with Julian Watts—perhaps some collateral damage from probes into the right frontal lobe. Nonetheless, the symptoms were treatable with medication, and Malenko had prescribed a variety. But the boy had refused, complaining that they just dulled his senses and diffused his focus. Then his mother threatened to take him to other neurophysicians to see what could be done. Although enhancement was too subtle to detect by any scans, he feared she would tell all. That could not be, and Malenko had reminded her of their contractual agreement, her escrow bond, and her willingness to accept any risks to enhance her son. “I don’t care about that!” she had declared. “I want my son back!” That was when they sent the anonymous package to Professor Joshua Blake containing side-by-side photocopies of his book and hers.

Experience had taught him the hard way to protect his security against bigmouthed parents. Some years ago, after a difficult couple made noise about going to the authorities because their little darling was acting oddly, Malenko resorted to Oliver’s “wet work” skills. They were eliminated in a car accident one icy Christmas Eve. From that moment on, there were no more mistakes.

Now in screening candidates, they investigated strengths—ideological and financial—as well as useful weaknesses—legal, financial, marital, psychological, even medical—as backup insurance against sudden impulses to blow the whistle. Dirty little secrets—fathers who liked young girls or who had some business indiscretions; mothers who cheated or who had problems with drugs or alcohol. Whatever would dampen impulses to blab.

The background check on Vanessa Rizzo Watts had revealed that as a graduate student she had been suspended for plagiarism. Because she had been a popular TA, the episode made the student newspaper, a copy of which was attainable from the archives of the L. U. News by Malenko’s private investigator Oliver Vines, a doggedly persistent agent. Although Ms. Rizzo had been reinstated, that episode told the story of a bright but driven woman who needed to prove herself, who needed to excel, perhaps to overcome deep-seated suspicions that she was not as clever as she appeared on paper. And human nature being what it is, Malenko had a hunch that she would revert to her old habits in pursuit of recognition and easy success.