Neuropath (4 page)

'Immoral?
You
think it's immoral?'

'Fucking A, I do.'

Neil scowled and smiled at once. 'Weren't you the one always arguing that morality was a sham? That we're simply meat puppets deluded into believing we live in a moral and meaningful world?'

Thomas had nodded. 'Ah, the Argument.'

The Argument. Its mere mention seemed to open a pit in his stomach. Evidence of an old atrocity.

'Well,' Neil had said, 'we
are
talking about terror suspects here.'

'Bullshit again. That's just part of the Paleolithic dreamworld people live in. They estimate threats as if they still live in a stone-age community of a hundred and fifty people rather than a world of billions. Terrorism is theater, you know that. Slippery bathtubs are more of a threat. Christ, campaigns against autoerotic asphyxiation would save more lives! The powers that be are just milking our psychological vulnerabilities to secure their agenda.'

A derisive glance. 'And what about Moscow?'

'That has precious little to—'

'You know,' Neil interrupted, 'it's hard not to feel sorry for them, sometimes, even when you know for a fact that they've had a hand in dozens of deaths. Our heads are just filled with so much crap. The older ones, in particular, think they're Captain Kirk or something. Our evil mind-scanning technology is no match for the
human spirit
. I even had one old theo-terrorist tell me that his soul was his citadel, and that God guarded the gate.'

He paused for a moment, as though pensive with regret. His face was drawn.

'What did you say?' Thomas asked lamely. He still couldn't believe he was having this conversation.

'That I could give a rat's ass about his spirit. That it was his brain I was interested in. That his will was simply one more neural mechanism, and that once it was offline, he would quite happily tell me everything our field operatives needed to know. And I was right. We had moved far beyond sensory deprivation interrogations by that time. Using all the imaging data on the brain's executive functions—you know, Roach's famous experiments on the differences between weak-willed and strong-willed individuals—we simply isolated the offending circuits and shut them off. It was as easy as flicking a switch.' His laugh was more a breath-filled snort. 'Who would have guessed, huh?'

'Guessed what?'

'That all that evil mind-scanner stuff would be so laughably far from the truth. Why design a machine to read thoughts when all you have to do is shut down a few circuits and have your subject read them out for you?'

Dumbstruck, Thomas stared at him. Neil, his best friend, was saying that he was one of the bad guys.

Wasn't he?

'I…' Thomas began in a thin voice. 'I don't know what to say… let alone think.'

'Fucked up, huh?'

Thomas studied the shot-glass before him, the ring of hard light across the rim. 'It's not so simple.'

'But it is, Goodbook. Desires arise from the deepest of the brain's mechanisms. It's like plastic surgery. There's what?
Five
high-production channels entirely devoted to plastic surgery on the web now? Evolution has hardwired us to assess the fitness of prospective mates in terms of visual appearances. Once our tools and techniques allow us to manipulate skin and bone, desire does the rest. The old taboos are gradually rinsed away, and before you know it, the cosmetic surgery industry is producing a quarter of the country's bio-waste, and makeovers require bone-saws instead of dainty little pencils and brushes. Where once we used to paint ourselves to conform to desire, now we
recarve
ourselves. Same with designer babies. Or gene-doping in sports. You name it. Neuromanipulation. Neurocosmetic surgery. Are you telling me you don't think it's inevitable?'

Thomas glared at him, breathing evenly. 'No. I'm telling you I don't think it's right.'

Neil shrugged. 'If you mean that most people would
disapprove
, then you're correct.' He had looked away while saying this. Now his eyes flashed dark and menacing. 'But why should I give a fuck?'

Thomas belted down another shot, not because he wanted it, but because it seemed safer than replying. It was funny how easily a lifetime of learning could be forgotten, how all the layers of sophistication could be stripped away, leaving a wounded boy, a hurt and mystified friend.

'Have you an arm like God?' Neil suddenly asked, obviously quoting something. He laughed.

'I don't understand.'

'It's
his
program,' Neil had said. 'So why not just enjoy the ride?'

Booze was never a good thing when having conversations like this. The content came through loud and clear; it was the emotional significance that was filtered. Booze had a way of making sharp things fuzzy and fuzzy things sharp.

'Why tell me this now?' Thomas asked.

'Because,' Neil said, reapplying his mischievous smile, 'I've quit.'

'But…' Thomas paused. Suddenly it dawned on him that Neil was doing far more than breaking a nondisclosure agreement, or even committing a felony for that matter. This stuff had to be
classified—
which meant his friend was committing treason. They were treading water in the deep end of the pool.

Death-penalty deep.

'Just like that?' Thomas asked.

'Just like that.'

'I didn't think they let you guys quit.'

'No. They don't.'

'But they're making an exception for you.'

Another smile, a second coat of mischievousness. He ran a finger along a dark braid in the couch's upholstery. 'They have no choice.'

'No choice,' Thomas repeated, looking with dread at the brimming shot of whiskey before him. 'Why?'

'Because I've covered my bases,' Neil replied. 'I've been planning this for a long time.'

Despite the booze, Thomas suddenly felt very alert. Something told him he needed to be careful.

'So you
do
think it's wrong… what you did, I mean.'

Neil leaned forward, elbows on knees like a basketball coach.

'The world is on the brink, Goodbook. I'm simply the first to cross over.'

Thomas knew what he was talking about, but for some reason found himself pretending otherwise. 'Brink. What brink?'

Neil wasn't buying. 'Is it the kids?'

'What are you talking about?'

'Are they the reason?'

'The reason for what?'

'The reason you moved back into Disney World?'

The confusion, the double-take disorientation, evaporated, and Thomas suddenly felt focused the way only whiskey and outrage could make possible. 'You're drunk, Neil. Leave them out of this.'

Disney World was their pet term for the world as understood by the masses, one papered over with conceit after comforting conceit. A world anchored in psychological need rather than physical fact. A world with a billion heroes and happy endings, where the unknown was irrelevant and confronting your own weaknesses was the breakfast of losers.

'You know, I find it hard to remember what it's like living with one foot in both worlds. To know, on the one hand, that paternal love is simply nature's way of duping us into perpetuating our genes—'

'It's not
duping
… Look, Neil, you're really starting to piss me—'

'Not duping? Hmm. Then you tell me, why do you love your son?'

'Because he's my son.'

'And that's an explanation?'

Thomas had glared at his friend. 'The only one I need.'

'Evolution wouldn't have it any other way,' Neil had said. 'It takes a lot of commitment to raise a child to reproductive age.'

Thomas tossed back his shot, clenched his teeth in revulsion and dismay. What the fuck was going on?

'Because you love your kids,' Neil continued, 'you expend tremendous resources on them, you train them, feed them, protect them, you would even die for them. You do all the things that
your genes happen to require
, and for reasons that have nothing to do with the harsh realities of natural selection.' Neil frowned, leaned back into the cushions. He hooked his toes on the coffee table. 'And that's not duping?'

'They're just different descriptions of the same thing,' Thomas said. 'Different angles.'

Neil paused to slam back his whiskey. 'C'mon,' he continued, gasping. 'This is
your
argument I'm making, Goodbook. Didn't you spend an entire chapter listing all the ways we bullshit ourselves to feel better? And how about your cognitive psych classes? Didn't you tell me that you spend the first two weeks discussing the relationship between gut feeling and socialization? How all those movies urging people to "follow their hearts" were simply another way for culture to reinforce the status qu—?'

'Enough!' Thomas cried. 'What are you saying, Neil? Are you actually trying to talk me out of
loving my children
,'

Again the one-shoulder shrug. 'Just saying,' he had said, his manner both offhand and nightmarish. Marilyn swam ethereally across his broad chest.

'Just reminding you what you already know.'

Speechless, Thomas did what most men did when at a loss for words: he turned on the TV. The lights automatically dimmed. The quiet seemed to sizzle beneath the television blare.

He could feel Neil sitting on the couch to his left, watching him. That annoying Coca-Cola pop-up—the 'gurgle-gurgle' one his kids loved—flashed onto the screen. Surgical white flickered across the room. He clicked through the news sites, letting the fragments of info-chatter seal the hard moment that had passed between them. An update on the French eco-riots. A retrospect on the causes of the Chinese economic crisis. A tasteless story about Ray Kurzweil's recent death. Accusations that Wal-Mart had installed hidden low-field MRIs to monitor their employees.

Neil reached out to pour them two more shots of whiskey. 'I guess you have no choice,' he said.

Thomas gingerly raised the shot-glass, downed it. He was drinking mechanically now, a talent he had picked up in the final days of his marriage. 'What do you mean?' he asked, pretending to watch the screen. The high-definition images seemed to drain away all his anger, make his world as small and trivial as it actually was.

'To rationalize. To set up shop in Disney World.'

Thomas shook his head. 'Look. Neil. All this stuff was great in college. I mean we were soooo radical, even in Skeat's class, mopping the floor with lit majors, freaking people out around the bong…' A pained grimace. 'But
now?
C'mon. Give it a rest.'

Neil was watching him carefully. 'That doesn't make it any less real, Goodbook.' He gestured to the TV, where lines of Muscovites stretching out into a haze of grey snow shared the screen with talking heads and warm studio lighting. 'Just look. It's
ending
, just as Skeat said it would. No virulent pandemic, no mass environmental collapse, no thermonuclear Armageddon, just mobs and mobs of people, hominids pretending to be angels, clutching at rules that don't exist, feeding, fighting, fucking…'

Thomas snorted. 'Neil…'

'So where are your knockdown arguments? Outside the threat of coercion, why should anybody play along? Why should we help granny across the street? Because it
feels
right? Please. Anyone can train a cat to shit in a box. Because of what philosophers say? Double please. We can blah, blah, blah forever, come up with an endless stream of flattering bullshit, redefine this and redefine that, and in the end all we've done is confirm you cognitive psychologists and your Christmas catalogue of ways we bullshit to make ourselves feel better.'

Thomas laughed. Emotionally, it always felt like standing on marbles when he was drunk. Annoyed one minute, amused another. In balance, and out.

'So,' Neil pressed, 'where are your knockdown arguments?'

'I have two,' Thomas said, raising the same number of thick-feeling fingers. 'Frankie and Ripley.'

Neil shook his head and smiled. Now it was his turn to feign interest in the images tumbling across the TV. He cradled his beer between steepled fingers. For the first time, Thomas saw past his own irritation and disbelief, and realized just how much stress his best friend must be suffering.

The NSA… unbelievable.

On the screen, images of armed men shooting into the sky floated beneath a GE corporate banner: Islamic fighters in some breakaway Chinese province.

'Theo-terrorists,' Neil said.

'I think,' Thomas replied, 'the technical term would be "insurgents."'

'Whatever. You know how we dealt with them in the Neuromanipulation Division?'

Marilyn tittered at the edge of the pool on his T-shirt.

'How?'

'Love,' Neil said. 'We made them love us.'

Thomas had stared blankly at the screen.

'As easy as flicking a switch.'

This had been the pattern, since their first days rooming together at Princeton. Neil with his questions. Neil with his demands. Neil with his mocking replies, his outrageous claims. All of it hedged with
just-fucking-with-you
glances and a
what's-your-problem
tone. Just as no two people are exactly equal in terms of capacities, no friendships are perfectly mutual. Neil had always been quicker, better looking, more articulate—inequities that had always expressed themselves through the complicated weave of their relationship.

And Thomas had always been more forgiving.

'But hey,' Neil drawled after a moment, 'I came here to celebrate, not to break your balls.'

Thomas shot him a humorless look. Black-and-white Marilyn seemed to be drowning across his chest, but it was just a trick of the angle. 'I was beginning to think the two were indistinguishable.'

'I'm sorry, man. Just a mood, you know. Here.' He splashed two more shots of whiskey, then raised his in a toast. After a reluctant heartbeat, Thomas raised his in turn. He could feel himself sway ever so slightly.

'I've escaped,' Neil said. There was something embarrassingly direct about his blue-eyed gaze. 'I've completely escaped.'

Thomas had been too afraid to ask which…

The NSA or Disney World?