Flowers for Algernon

rather than to something insignificant and safe.

If only Nemur would look at me as a human being.

After the chairman announced the presentation from Beekman University, we took our seats on the platform be­hind the long table—Algernon in his cage between Burt and me. We were the main attraction of the evening, and when we were settled, the chairman began his introduc­tion. I half expected to hear him boom out: Laideezzz and gentulmennnnnn. Step right this way and see the side show! An act never before seen in the scientific world! A mouse and a moron turned into geniuses before your very eyes!

I admit I had come here with a chip on my shoulder.

All he said was: 'The next presentation really needs no introduction. 'We have all heard about the startling work being done at Beekman University, sponsored by the Wel-berg Foundation grants, under the direction of the chair­man of the psychology department, Professor Nemur, in co-operation with Dr. Strauss of the Beekman Neuropsy-chiatric Center. Needless to say, this is a report we have all been looking forward to with great interest. I turn the meeting over to Professor Nemur and Dr. Strauss.'

Nemur nodded graciously at the chairman's introduc­tory praise and winked at Strauss in the triumph of the moment.

The first speaker from Beekman was Professor Clinger.

I was becoming irritated, and I could see that Alger­non, upset by the smoke, the buzzing, the unaccustomed surroundings, was moving around in his cage nervously. I had the strangest compulsion to open his cage and let him out. It was an absurd thought—more of an itch than a thought—and I tried to ignore it. But as I listened to Pro­fessor Clinger's stereotyped paper on 'The effects of left-handed goal boxes in a T-maze versus right-handed goal boxes in a T-maze,' I found myself toying with the release-lock mechanism of Algernon's cage.

In a short while (before Strauss and Nemur would un­veil their crowning achievement) Burt would read a paper describing the procedures and results of administering in­telligence and learning tests he had devised for Algernon. This would be followed by a demonstration as Algernon was put through his paces of solving a problem in order to get his meal (something I have never stopped resenting!).

Not that I had anything against Burt. He had always been straightforward with me—more so than most of the others—but when he described the white mouse who had been given intelligence, he was as pompous and artificial as the others. As if he were trying on the mantle of his teach­ers. I restrained myself at that point more out of friendship for Burt than anything else. Letting Algernon out of his cage would throw the meeting into chaos, and after all this was Burt's debut into the rat-race of academic preferment.

I had my finger on the cage door release, and as Al­gernon watched the movement of my hand with his pink-candy eyes, I'm certain he knew what I had in mind. At that moment Burt took the cage for his demonstration. He explained the complexity of the shifting lock, and the problem-solving required each time the lock was to be opened. (Thin plastic bolts fell into place in varying pat­terns and had to be controlled by the mouse, who de­ pressed a series of levers in the same order.) As Algernon's intelligence increased, his problem-solving speed in­ creased—that much was obvious. But then Burt revealed one thing I had not known.

At the peak of his intelligence, Algernon's perfor­mance had become variable. There were times, according to Burt's report, when Algernon refused to work at all— even when apparently hungry—and other times when he would solve the problem but, instead of taking his food re­ward, would hurl himself against the walls of his cage.

When someone from the audience asked Burt if he was suggesting that this erratic behavior was directly caused by increased intelligence, Burt ducked the question. 'As far as I am concerned,' he said, 'there's not enough ev­idence to warrant that conclusion. There are other possi­bilities. It is possible that both the increased intelligence and the erratic behavior at this level were created by the original surgery, instead of one being a function of the other. It's also possible that this erratic behavior is unique to Algernon. We didn't find it in any of the other mice, but then none of the others achieved as high a level of intelli­gence nor maintained it for as long as Algernon has.'

I realized immediately that this information had been withheld from me. I suspected the reason, and I was annoyed, but that was nothing to the anger I felt when they brought out the films.

I had never known that my early performances and tests in the laboratory were filmed. There I was, at the table beside Burt, confused and open-mouthed as I tried to run the maze with the electric stylus. Each time I received a shock, my expression changed to an absurd wide-eyed stare, and then that foolish smile again. Each time it hap­pened the audience roared. Race after race, it was repeated, and each time they found it funnier than before.

I told myself they were not gawking curiosity seekers, but scientists here in search of knowledge. They couldn't help finding these pictures funny—but still, as Burt caught the spirit and made amusing comments on the films, I was overcome with a sense of mischief. It would be even funnier to see Algernon escape from his cage, and to see all these people scattering and crawling around on their hands and knees trying to retrieve a small, white, scurrying genius.

But I controlled myself, and by the time Strauss took the podium the impulse had passed.

Strauss dealt largely with the theory and techniques of neurosurgery, describing in detail how pioneer studies on the mapping of hormone control centers enabled him to isolate and stimulate these centers while at the same time removing the hormone-inhibitor producing portion of the cortex. He explained the enzyme-block theory and went on to describe my physical condition before and after sur­gery. Photographs (I didn't know they had been taken) were passed around and commented on, and I could see by the nods and smiles that most people there agreed with him that the 'dull, vacuous facial expression' had been transformed into an 'alert, intelligent appearance.' He also discussed in detail the pertinent aspects of our therapy ses­sions—especially my changing attitudes toward free asso­ciation on the couch.

I had come there as part of a scientific presentation, and I had expected to be put on exhibition, but everyone kept talking about me as if I were some kind of newly cre­ated thing they were presenting to the scientific world. No one in this room considered me an individual—a human being. The constant juxtaposition of 'Algernon and Char­lie,' and 'Charlie and Algernon,' made it clear that they thought of both of us as a couple of experimental animals who had no existence outside the laboratory. But, aside from my anger, I couldn't get it out of my mind that some­thing was wrong.

Finally, it was Nemur's turn to speak—to sum it all up as the head of the project—to take the spotlight as the au­thor of a brilliant experiment. This was the day he had been waiting for.

He was impressive as he stood up there on the plat­form, and, as he spoke, I found myself nodding with him, agreeing with things I knew to be true. The testing, the ex­periment, the surgery, and my subsequent mental develop­ment were described at length, and his talk was enlivened by quotations from my progress reports. More than once I found myself hearing something personal or foolish read to this audience. Thank God I had been careful to keep most of the details about Alice and myself in my private file.

Then, at one point in his summary, he said it: 'We who have worked on this project at Beekman University have the satisfaction of knowing we have taken one of na­ture's mistakes and by our new techniques created a supe­rior human being. When Charlie came to us he was outside of society, alone in a great city without friends or relatives to care about him, without the mental equipment to live a normal life. No past, no contact with the present, no hope for the future. It might be said that Charlie Gor­don did not really exist before this experiment….'

I don't know why I resented it so intensely to have them think of me as something newly minted in their pri­ vate treasury, but it was—I am certain—echoes of that idea that had been sounding in the chambers of my mind from the time we had arrived in Chicago. I wanted to get up and show everyone what a fool he was, to shout at him: I'm a human being, a person —with parents and memories and a history —and I was before you ever wheeled me into that operating room!

At the same time deep in the heat of my anger there was forged an overwhelming insight into the thing that had disturbed me when Strauss spoke and again when Nemur amplified his data. They had made a mistake—of course! The statistical evaluation of the waiting period necessary to prove the permanence of the change had been based on ear­lier experiments in the field of mental development and learning, on waiting periods with normally dull or nor­mally intelligent animals. But it was obvious that the wait­ing period would have to be extended in those cases where an animals intelligence had been increased two or three times.