The Speed of Dark - Elizabeth MoonTHE SPEED OF DARK
Elizabeth Moon



CHAPTER ONE
^ » 
QUESTIONS, ALWAYS QUESTIONS. THEY DIDN’T WAIT FOR the answers, either. They 
rushed on, piling questions on questions, covering every moment with questions, 
blocking off every sensation but the thorn stab of questions.
And orders. If it wasn’t, “Lou, what is this?” it was, “Tell me what this is.” A 
bowl. The same bowl, time after time. It is a bowl and it is an ugly bowl, a 
boring bowl, a bowl of total and complete boring blandness, uninteresting. I am 
uninterested in that uninteresting bowl.
If they aren’t going to listen, why should I talk?
I know better than to say that out loud. Everything in my life that I value has 
been gained at the cost of not saying what I really think and saying what they 
want me to say.
In this office, where I am evaluated and advised four times a year, the 
psychiatrist is no less certain of the line between us than all the others have 
been. Her certainty is painful to see, so I try not to look at her more than I 
have to. That has its own dangers; like the others, she thinks I should make 
more eye contact than I do. I glance at her now.
Dr. Fornum, crisp and professional, raises an eyebrow and shakes her head not 
quite imperceptibly. Autistic persons do not understand these signals; the book 
says so. I have read the book, so I know what it is I do not understand.
What I haven’t figured out yet is the range of things they don’t understand. The 
normals. The reals. The ones who have the degrees and sit behind the desks in 
comfortable chairs.
I know some of what she doesn’t know. She doesn’t know that I can read. She 
thinks I’m hyperlexic, just parroting the words. The difference between what she 
calls parroting and what she does when she reads is imperceptible to me. She 
doesn’t know that I have a large vocabulary. Every time she asks what my job is 
and I say I am still working for the pharmaceutical company, she asks if I know 
what pharmaceutical means. She thinks I’m parroting. The difference between what 
she calls parroting and my use of a large number of words is imperceptible to 
me. She uses large words when talking to the other doctors and nurses and 
technicians, babbling on and on and saying things that could be said more 
simply. She knows I work on a computer, she knows I went to school, but she has 
not caught on that this is incompatible with her belief that I am actually 
nearly illiterate and barely verbal.
She talks to me as if I were a rather stupid child. She does not like it when I 
use big words (as she calls them) and she tells me to just say what I mean.
What I mean is the speed of dark is as interesting as the speed of light, and 
maybe it is faster and who will find out?
What I mean is about gravity, if there were a world where it is twice as strong, 
then on that world would the wind from a fan be stronger because the air is 
thicker and blow my glass off the table, not just my napkin? Or would the 
greater gravity hold the glass more firmly to the table, so the stronger wind 
couldn’t move it?
What I mean is the world is big and scary and noisy and crazy but also beautiful 
and still in the middle of the windstorm.
What I mean is what difference does it make if I think of colors as people or 
people as sticks of chalk, all stiff and white unless they are brown chalk or 
black?
What I mean is I know what I like and want, and she does not, and I do not want 
to like or want what she wants me to like or want.
She doesn’t want to know what I mean. She wants me to say what other people say. 
“Good morning, Dr. Fornum.”
“Yes, I’m fine, thank you.”
“Yes, I can wait. I don’t mind.”
I don’t mind. When she answers the phone I can look around her office and find 
the twinkly things she doesn’t know she has. I can move my head back and forth 
so the light in the corner glints off and on over there, on the shiny cover of a 
book in the bookcase. If she notices that I’m moving my head back and forth she 
makes a note in my record. She may even interrupt her phone call to tell me to 
stop. It is called stereotypy when I do it and relaxing her neck when she does 
it. I call it fun, watching the reflected light blink off and on.
Dr. Fornum’s office has a strange blend of smells, not just the paper and ink 
and book smell and the carpet glue and the plastic smell of the chair frames, 
but something else that I keep thinking must be chocolate. Does she keep a box 
of candy in her desk drawer? I would like to find out. I know if I asked her she 
would make a note in my record. Noticing smells is not appropriate. Notes about 
noticing are bad notes, but not like bad notes in music, which are wrong.
I do not think everyone else is alike in every way. She has told me that 
Everyone knows this and Everyone does that, but I am not blind, just autistic, 
and I know that they know and do different things. The cars in the parking lot 
are different colors and sizes. Thirty-seven percent of them, this morning, are 
blue. Nine percent are oversize: trucks or vans. There are eighteen motorcycles 
in three racks, which would be six apiece, except that ten of them are in the 
back rack, near Maintenance. Different channels carry different programs; that 
would not happen if everyone were alike.
When she puts down the phone and looks at me, her face has that look. I don’t 
know what most people would call it, but I call it the I AM REAL look. It means 
she is real and she has answers and I am someone less, not completely real, even 
though I can feel the nubbly texture of the office chair right through my 
slacks. I used to put a magazine under me, but she says I don’t need to do that. 
She is real, she thinks, so she knows what I need and don’t need.
“Yes, Dr. Fornum, I am listening.” Her words pour over me, slightly irritating, 
like a vat of vinegar. “Listen for conversational cues,” she tells me, and 
waits. “Yes,” I say. She nods, marks on the record, and says, ‘Very good,“ 
without looking at me. Down the hall somewhere, someone starts walking this way. 
Two someones, talking. Soon their talk tangles with hers. I am hearing about 
Debby on Friday… next time…
going to the Did they? And I told her. But never bird on a stool… can’t be, and 
Dr. Fornum is waiting for me to answer something. She would not talk to me about 
a bird on a stool. “I’m sorry,” I say. She tells me to pay better attention and 
makes another mark on my record and asks about my social life.
She does not like what I tell her, which is that I play games on the Internet 
with my friend Alex in Germany and my friend Ky in Indonesia. “In real life,” 
she says firmly. “People at work,” I say, and she nods again and then asks about 
bowling and miniature golf and movies and the local branch of the Autism 
Society.
Bowling hurts my back and the noise is ugly in my head. Miniature golf is for 
kids, not grownups, but I didn’t like it even when I was a kid. I liked laser 
tag, but when I told her that in the first session she put down “violent 
tendencies.” It took a long time to get that set of questions about violence off 
my regular agenda, and I’m sure she has never removed the notation. I remind her 
that I don’t like bowling or miniature golf, and she tells me I should make an 
effort. I tell her I’ve been to three movies, and she asks about them. I read 
the reviews, so I can tell her the plots. I don’t like movies much, either, 
especially in movie theaters, but I have to have something to tell her… and so 
far she hasn’t figured out that my bald recitation of the plot is straight from 
a review.
I brace myself for the next question, which always makes me angry. My sex life 
is none of her business. She is the last person I would tell about a girlfriend 
or boyfriend. But she doesn’t expect me to have one; she just wants to document 
that I do not, and that is worse.
Finally it is over. She will see me next time, she says, and I say, “Thank you, 
Dr. Fornum,” and she says, “Very good,” as if I were a trained dog.
Outside, it is hot and dry, and I must squint against the glitter of all the 
parked cars. The people walking on the sidewalk are dark blots in the sunlight, 
hard to see against the shimmer of the light until my eyes adjust.
I am walking too fast. I know that not just from the firm smack of my shoes on 
the pavement, but because the people walking toward me have their faces bunched 
up in the way that I think means they’re worried. Why? I am not trying to hit 
them. So I will slow down and think music.
Dr. Fornum says I should learn to enjoy music other people enjoy. I do. I know 
other people like Bach and Schubert and not all of them are autistic. There are 
not enough autistic people to support all those orchestras and operas. But to 
her other people means “the most people.” I think of the Trout Quintet, and as 
the music flows through my mind I can feel my breathing steady and my steps slow 
to match its tempo.
My key slides into my car’s door lock easily, now that I have the right music. 
The seat is warm, cozily warm, and the soft fleece comforts me. I used to use 
hospital fleece, but with one of my first paychecks I bought a real sheepskin. I 
bounce a little to the internal music before turning on the engine. It’s hard to 
keep the music going sometimes when the engine starts; I like to wait until it’s 
on the beat.
On the way back to work, I let the music ease me through intersections, traffic 
lights, near-jams, and then the gates of the campus, as they call it. Our 
building is off to the right; I flash my ID at the parking lot guard and find my 
favorite space. I hear people from other buildings complain about not getting 
their favorite space, but here we always do. No one would take my space, and I 
would not take anyone else’s. Dale on my right and Linda on my left, facing into 
Cameron.
I walk to the building, on the last phrase of my favorite part of the music, and 
let it fade as I go through the door. Dale is there, by the coffee machine. He 
does not speak, nor do I. Dr. Fornum would want me to speak, but there is no 
reason. I can see that Dale is thinking very hard and doesn’t need to be 
interrupted. I am still annoyed about Dr. Fornum, as I am every quarter, so I 
pass my desk and go on into the mini-gym. Bouncing will help. Bouncing always 
helps. No one else is there, so I hang the sign on the door and turn good 
bouncing music up loud.
No one interrupts me while I bounce; the strong thrust of the trampoline 
followed by weightless suspension makes me feel vast and light. I can feel my 
mind stretching out, relaxing, even as I keep perfect time with the music. When 
I feel the concentration returning and curiosity drives me once more toward my 
assignment, I slow the bouncing to tiny little baby bounces and swing off the 
trampoline.
No one interrupts me as I walk to my desk. I think Linda is there, and Bailey, 
but it doesn’t matter. Later we may go for supper, but not now. Now I am ready 
to work.
The symbols I work with are meaningless and confusing to most people. It is hard 
to explain what I do, but I know it is valuable work, because they pay me enough 
to afford the car, the apartment, and they supply the gym and the quarterly 
visits to Dr. Fornum. Basically I look for patterns. Some of the patterns have 
fancy names and other people find them hard to see, but for me they have always 
been easy. All I had to do was learn the way to describe them so others could 
see that I had something in mind.
I put headphones on and choose a music. For the project I’m on now, Schubert is 
too lush. Bach is perfect, the complex patterns mirroring the pattern I need. I 
let the place in my mind that finds and generates patterns sink into the 
project, and then it is like watching ice crystals grow on the surface of still 
water: one after another, the lines of ice grow, branch, branch again, 
interlace… All I have to do is pay attention and ensure that the pattern remains 
symmetrical or asymmetrical or whatever the particular project calls for. This 
time it is more intensely recursive than most, and I see it in my mind as stacks 
of fractal growth, forming a spiky sphere.
When the edges blur, I shake myself and sit back. It has been five hours, and I 
didn’t notice. All the agitation from Dr. Fornum has gone, leaving me clear. 
Sometimes when I come back I can’t work for a day or so, but this time I got 
back into balance with the bouncing. Above my workstation, a pinwheel spins 
lazily in the draft of the ventilation system. I blow at it, and after a 
moment—1.3 seconds, actually—it spins faster, twinkling purple-and-silver in the 
light. I decide to turn on my swiveling fan so all the pinwheels and spin 
spirals can spin together, filling my office with twinkling light.
The dazzle has just started when I hear Bailey calling from down the hall, 
“Anyone for pizza?” I am hungry; my stomach makes noises and I can suddenly 
smell everything in the office: the paper, the workstation, the carpet, the 
metal/plastic/dust/cleaning solution… myself. I turn off the fan, give a last 
glance at the spinning and twinkling beauty, and go out into the hall. A quick 
flick of a glance at my friends’ faces is all I need to know who is coming and 
who is not. We do not need to talk about it; we know one another.
We come into the pizza place about nine. Linda, Bailey, Eric, Dale, Cameron, and 
me. Chuy was ready to eat, too, but the tables here hold only six. He 
understands. I would understand if he and the others were ready first. I would 
not want to come here and sit at another table, so I know that Chuy will not 
come here and we will not have to try to squeeze him in. A new manager last year 
did not understand that. He was always trying to arrange big dinners for us and 
mix us up in seating. “Don’t be so hidebound,” he would say. When he wasn’t 
looking, we went back to where we like to sit. Dale has an eye tic that bothers 
Linda, so she sits where she can’t see it. I think it’s funny and I like to 
watch it, so I sit on Dale’s left, where it looks like he’s winking at me.
The people who work here know us. Even when other people in the restaurant look 
too long at us for our movements and the way we talk— or don’t—the people here 
don’t ever give us that go-away look I’ve had other places. Linda just points to 
what she wants or sometimes she writes it out first, and they never bother her 
with more questions.
Tonight our favorite table is dirty. I can hardly stand to look at the five 
dirty plates and pizza pans; it makes my stomach turn to think of the smears of 
sauce and cheese and crust crumbs, and the uneven number makes it worse. There 
is an empty table to our right, but we do not like that one. It’s next to the 
passage to the rest rooms, and too many people go by behind us.
We wait, trying to be patient, as Hi-I’m-Sylvia—she has that on her name tag, as 
if she were a product for sale and not a person—signals to one of the others to 
clean up our table. I like her and can remember to call her Sylvia without the 
Hi-I’m as long as I’m not looking at her name tag. Hi-I’m-Sylvia always smiles 
at us and tries to be helpful; Hi-I’m-Jean is the reason we don’t come in on 
Thursdays, when she works this shift. Hi-I’m-Jean doesn’t like us and mutters 
under her breath if she sees us. Sometimes one of us will come to pick up an 
order for the others; the last time I did, Hi-I’m-Jean said, “At least he didn’t 
bring all the other freaks in here,” to one of the cooks as I turned away from 
the register. She knew I heard. She meant me to hear. She is the only one who 
gives us trouble.
But tonight it’s Hi-I’m-Sylvia and Tyree, who is picking up the plates and dirty 
knives and forks as if it didn’t bother him. Tyree doesn’t wear a name tag; he 
just cleans tables. We know he’s Tyree because we heard the others call him 
that. The first time I used his name to him, he looked startled and a little 
scared, but now he knows us, though he doesn’t use our names.
“Be done in a minute here,” Tyree says, and gives us a sidelong look. “You doin’ 
okay?”
“Fine,” Cameron says. He’s bouncing a little from heel to toe. He always does 
that a little, but I can tell he’s bouncing a bit faster than usual.
I am watching the beer sign blinking in the window. It comes on in three 
segments, red, green, then blue in the middle, and then goes off all at once. 
Blink, red. Blink, green, blink blue, then blink red/green/blue, all off, all 
on, all off, and start over. A very simple pattern, and the colors aren’t that 
pretty (the red is too orange for my taste and so is the green, but the blue is 
a lovely blue), but still it’s a pattern to watch.
“Your table’s ready,” Hi-I’m-Sylvia says, and I try not to twitch as I shift my 
attention from the beer sign to her.
We arrange ourselves around the table in the usual way and sit down. We are 
having the same thing we have every time we come here, so it doesn’t take long 
to order. We wait for the food to come, not talking because we are each, in our 
own way, settling into this situation. Because of the visit to Dr. Fornum, I’m 
more aware than usual of the details of this process: that Linda is bouncing her 
fingers on the bowl of her spoon in a complex pattern that would delight a 
mathematician as much as it does her. I’m watching the beer sign out of the 
corner of my eye, as is Dale. Cameron is bouncing the tiny plastic dice he keeps 
in his pocket, discreetly enough that people who don’t know him wouldn’t notice, 
but I can see the rhythmic flutter of his sleeve. Bailey also watches the beer 
sign. Eric has taken out his multicolor pen and is drawing tiny geometric 
patterns on the paper place mat. First red, then purple, then blue, then green, 
then yellow, then orange, then red again. He likes it when the food arrives just 
when he finishes a color sequence.
This time the drinks come while he’s at yellow; the food comes on the next 
orange. His face relaxes.
We are not supposed to talk about the project off-campus. But Cameron is still 
bouncing in his seat, full of his need to tell us about a problem he solved, 
when we’ve almost finished eating. I glance around. No one is at a table near 
us. “Ezzer,” I say. Ezzer means “go ahead” in our private language. We aren’t 
supposed to have a private language and nobody thinks we can do something like 
that, but we can. Many people have a private language without even knowing it. 
They may call it jargon or slang, but it’s really a private language, a way of 
telling who is in the group and who is not.
Cameron pulls a paper out of his pocket and spreads it out. We aren’t supposed 
to take papers out of the office, in case someone else gets hold of them, but we 
all do it. It’s hard to talk, sometimes, and much easier to write things down or 
draw them.
I recognize the curly guardians Cameron always puts in the corner of his 
drawings. He likes anime. I recognize as well the patterns he has linked through 
a partial recursion that has the lean elegance of most of his solutions. We all 
look at it and nod. “Pretty,” Linda says. Her hands jerk sideways a little; she 
would be flapping wildly if we were back at the campus, but here she tries not 
to do it.
“Yes,” Cameron says, and folds the paper back up.
I know that this exchange would not satisfy Dr. Fornum. She would want Cameron 
to explain the drawing, even though it is clear to all of us. She would want us 
to ask questions, make comments, talk about it. There is nothing to talk about: 
it is clear to all of us what the problem was and that Cameron’s solution is 
good in all senses. Anything else is just busy talk. Among ourselves we don’t 
have to do that.
“I was wondering about the speed of dark,” I say, looking down. They will look 
at me, if only briefly, when I speak, and I don’t want to feel all those gazes.
“It doesn’t have a speed,” Eric says. “It’s just the space where light isn’t.”
“What would it feel like if someone ate pizza on a world with more than one 
gravity?” Linda asks.
“I don’t know,” Dale says, sounding worried.
“The speed of not knowing,” Linda says.
I puzzle at that a moment and figure it out. “Not knowing expands faster than 
knowing,” I say. Linda grins and ducks her head. “So the speed of dark could be 
greater than the speed of light. If there always has to be dark around the 
light, then it has to go out ahead of it.”
“I want to go home now,” Eric says. Dr. Fornum would want me to ask if he is 
upset. I know he is not upset; if he goes home now he will see his favorite TV 
program. We say good-bye because we are in public and we all know you are 
supposed to say good-bye in public. I go back to the campus. I want to watch my 
whirligigs and spin spirals for a while before going home to bed.
  
CAMERON AND I ARE IN THE GYM, TALKING IN BURSTS AS WE bounce on the trampolines. 
We have both done a lot of good work in the last few days, and we are relaxing.
Joe Lee comes in and I look at Cameron. Joe Lee is only twenty-four. He would be 
one of us if he hadn’t had the treatments that were developed too late for us. 
He thinks he’s one of us because he knows he would have been and he has some of 
our characteristics. He is very good at abstractions and recursions, for 
instance. He likes some of the same games; he likes our gym. But he is much 
better—he is normal, in fact— in his ability to read minds and expressions. 
Normal minds and expressions. He misses with us, who are his closest relatives 
in that way.
“Hi, Lou,” he says to me. “Hi, Cam.” I see Cameron stiffen. He doesn’t like to 
have his name shortened. He has told me it feels like having his legs cut off. 
He has told Joe Lee, too, but Joe Lee forgets because he spends so much of his 
time with the normals. “Howzitgoin?” he asks, slurring the words and forgetting 
to face us so we can see his lips. I catch it, because my auditory processing is 
better than Cameron’s and I know that Joe Lee often slurs his words.
“How is it going?” I say clearly, for Cameron’s benefit. “Fine, Joe Lee.” 
Cameron breathes out.
“Didja hear?” Joe Lee asks, and without waiting for an answer he rushes on. 
“Somebody’s working on a reversal procedure for autism. It worked on some rats 
or something, so they’re trying it on primates. I’ll bet it won’t be long before 
you guys can be normal like me.”
Joe Lee has always said he’s one of us, but this makes it clear that he has 
never really believed it. We are “you guys” and normal is “like me.” I wonder if 
he said he was one of us but luckier to make us feel better or to please someone 
else.
Cameron glares; I can almost feel the tangle of words filling his throat, making 
it impossible for him to speak. I know better than to speak for him. I speak 
only for myself, which is how everyone should speak.
“So you admit you are not one of us,” I say, and Joe Lee stiffens, his face 
assuming an expression I’ve been taught is “hurt feelings.”
“How can you say that, Lou? You know it’s just the treatment—”
“If you give a deaf child hearing, he is no longer one of the deaf,” I say. “If 
you do it early enough, he never was. It’s all pretending otherwise.”
“What’s all pretending otherwise? Otherwise what?” Joe Lee looks confused as 
well as hurt, and I realize that I left out one of the little pauses where a 
comma would be if you wrote what I said. But his confusion alarms me—being not 
understood alarms me; it lasted so long when I was a child. I feel the words 
tangling in my head, in my throat, and struggle to get them out in the right 
order, with the right expression. Why can’t people just say what they mean, the 
words alone? Why do I have to fight with tone and rate and pitch and variation?
I can feel and hear my voice going tight and mechanical. I sound angry to 
myself, but what I feel is scared. “They fixed you before you were born, Joe 
Lee,” I say. “You never lived days—one day—like us.”
“You’re wrong,” he says quickly, interrupting. “I’m just like you inside, 
except—”
“Except what makes you different from others, what you call normal,” I say, 
interrupting in turn. It hurts to interrupt. Miss Finley, one of my therapists, 
used to tap my hand if I interrupted. But I could not stand to hear him going on 
saying things that were not true. “You could hear and process language 
sounds—you learned to talk normally. You didn’t have dazzle eyes.”
“Yeah, but my brain works the same way.”
I shake my head. Joe Lee should know better; we’ve told him again and again. The 
problems we have with hearing and vision and other senses aren’t in the sensory 
organs but in the brain. So the brain does not work the same if someone doesn’t 
have those problems. If we were computers, Joe Lee would have a different main 
processor chip, with a different instruction set. Even if two computers with 
different chips do use the same software, it will not run the same.
“But I do the same work—”
But he doesn’t. He thinks he does. Sometimes I wonder if the company we work for 
thinks he does, because they have hired other Joe Lees and no more of us, even 
though I know there are unemployed people like us. Joe Lee’s solutions are 
linear. Sometimes that’s very effective, but sometimes… I want to say that, but 
I can’t, because he looks so angry and upset.
“C’mon,” he says. “Have supper with me, you and Cam. My treat.”
I feel cold in the middle. I do not want to have supper with Joe Lee.
“Can’t,” Cameron says. “Got a date.” He has a date with his chess partner in 
Japan, I suspect. Joe Lee turns to look at me.
“Sorry,” I remember to say. “I have a meeting.” Sweat trickles down my back; I 
hope Joe Lee doesn’t ask what meeting. It’s bad enough that I know there is time 
for supper with Joe Lee between now and the meeting, but if I have to lie about 
the meeting I will be miserable for days.
GENE CRENSHAW SAT IN A BIG CHAIR AT ONE END OF THE TABLE; Pete Aldrin, like the 
others, sat in an ordinary chair along one side. Typical, Aldrin thought. He 
calls meetings because he can be visibly important in the big chair. It was the 
third meeting in four days, and Aldrin had stacks of work on his desk that 
wasn’t getting done because of these meetings. So did the others.
Today the topic was the negative spirit in the workplace, which seemed to mean 
anyone who questioned Crenshaw in any way. Instead, they were supposed to “catch 
the vision”—Crenshaw’s vision—and concentrate on that to the exclusion of 
everything else. Anything that didn’t fit the vision was… suspect if not bad. 
Democracy wasn’t in it: this was a business, not a party. Crenshaw said that 
several times. Then he pointed to Aldrin’s unit, Section A as it was known 
in-house, as an example of what was wrong.
Aldrin’s stomach burned; a sour taste came into his mouth. Section A had 
remarkable productivity; he had a string of commendations in his record because 
of it. How could Crenshaw possibly think there was anything wrong with it?
Before he could jump in, Madge Demont spoke up. “You know, Gene, we’ve always 
worked as a team in this department. Now you come in here and pay no attention 
to our established, and successful, ways of working together—”
“I’m a natural leader,” Crenshaw said. “My personality profile shows that I’m 
cut out to be a captain, not crew.”
“Teamwork is important for anyone,” Aldrin said. “Leaders have to learn how to 
work with others—”
“That’s not my gift,” Crenshaw said. “My gift is inspiring others and giving a 
strong lead.”
His gift, Aldrin thought, was being bossy without having earned the right, but 
Crenshaw came highly recommended by higher management. They would all be fired 
before he was.
“These people,” Crenshaw went on, “have to realize that they are not the be-all 
and end-all of this company. They have to fit in; it’s their responsibility to 
do the job they were hired to do—”
“And if some of them are also natural leaders?” Aldrin asked.
Crenshaw snorted. “Autistics? Leaders? You must be kidding. They don’t have what 
it takes; they don’t understand the first thing about how society works.”
“We have a contractual obligation…” Aldrin said, shifting ground before he got 
too angry to be coherent. “Under the terms of the contract, we must provide them 
with working conditions suitable to them.”
“Well, we certainly do that, don’t we?” Crenshaw almost quivered with 
indignation, “At enormous expense, too. Their own private gym, sound system, 
parking lot, all kinds of toys.”
Upper management also had a private gym, sound system, parking lot, and such 
useful toys as stock options. Saying so wouldn’t help.
Crenshaw went on. “I’m sure our other hardworking employees would like the 
chance to play in that sandbox—but they do their jobs.”
“So does Section A,” Aldrin said. “Their productivity figures—”
“Are adequate, I agree. But if they spent the time working that they waste on 
playtime, it would be a lot better.”
Aldrin felt his neck getting hot. “Their productivity is not just adequate, 
Gene. It’s outstanding. Section A is, person for person, more productive than 
any other department. Maybe what we should do is let other people have the same 
kinds of supportive resources that we give Section A—”
“And drop the profit margin to zero? Our stockholders would love that. Pete, I 
admire you for sticking up for your people, but that’s exactly why you didn’t 
make VP and why you won’t rise any higher until you learn to see the big 
picture, get the vision. This company is going places, and it needs a workforce 
of unimpaired, productive workers—people who don’t need all these little extras. 
We’re cutting the fat, getting back to the lean, tough, productive machine…”
Buzzwords, Aldrin thought. The same buzzwords he had fought in the first place, 
to get Section A those very perks that made them so productive. When the 
profitability of Section A proved him right, senior management had given in 
gracefully—he thought. But now they’d put Crenshaw in. Did they know? Could they 
not know?
“I know you have an older brother with autism,” Crenshaw said, his voice 
unctuous. “I feel your pain, but you have to realize that this is the real 
world, not nursery school. Your family problems can’t be allowed to make 
policy.”
Aldrin wanted to pick up the water pitcher and smash it—water and ice cubes and 
all—onto Crenshaw’s head. He knew better. Nothing would convince Crenshaw that 
his reasons for championing Section A were far more complex than having an 
autistic brother. He had almost refused to work there because of Jeremy, because 
of a childhood spent in the shadow of Jeremy’s incoherent rages, the ridicule 
he’d had from other kids about his “crazy retard” brother. He’d had more than 
enough of Jeremy; he’d sworn, when he left home, that he would avoid any 
reminders, that he would live among safe, sane, normal people for the rest of 
his life.
Now, though, it was the difference between Jeremy (still living in a group home, 
spending his days at an adult day-care center, unable to do more than simple 
self-care tasks) and the men and women of Section A that made Aldrin defend 
them. It was still hard, sometimes, to see what they had in common with Jeremy 
and not flinch away. Yet working with them, he felt a little less guilty about 
not visiting his parents and Jeremy more than once a year.
“You’re wrong,” he said to Crenshaw. “If you try to dismantle Section A’s 
support apparatus, you will cost this company more in productivity than you’ll 
gain. We depend on their unique abilities; the search algorithms and pattern 
analysis they’ve developed have cut the time from raw data to production—that’s 
our edge over the competition—”
“I don’t think so. It’s your job to keep them productive, Aldrin. Let’s see if 
you’re up to it.”
Aldrin choked down his anger. Crenshaw had the self-satisfied smirk of a man who 
knew he was in power and enjoyed watching his subordinates cringe. Aldrin 
glanced sideways; the others were studiously not looking at him, hoping that the 
trouble landing on him would not spread to them.
“Besides,” Crenshaw went on. “There’s a new study coming out, from a lab in 
Europe. It’s supposed to be on-line in a day or so. Experimental as yet, but I 
understand very promising. Maybe we should suggest that they get on the protocol 
for it.”
“New treatment?”
“Yeah. I don’t know much about it, but I know someone who does and he knew I was 
taking over a bunch of autistics. Told me to keep an eye out for when it went to 
human trials. It’s supposed to fix the fundamental deficit, make them normal. If 
they were normal, they wouldn’t have an excuse for those luxuries.”
“If they were normal,” Aldrin said, “they couldn’t do the work.”
“In either case, we’d be clear of having to provide this stuff—” Cren-shaw’s 
expansive wave included everything from the gym to individual cubbies with 
doors. “Either they could do the work at less cost to us or, if they couldn’t do 
the work, they wouldn’t be our employees anymore.”
“What is the treatment?” Aldrin asked.
“Oh, some combination of neuro-enhancers and nanotech. It makes the right parts 
of the brain grow, supposedly.” Crenshaw grinned, an unfriendly grin. “Why don’t 
you find out all about it, Pete, and send me a report? If it works we might even 
go after the North American license.”
Aldrin wanted to glare, but he knew glaring wouldn’t help. He had walked into 
Crenshaw’s trap; he would be the one Section A blamed, if this turned out bad 
for them. “You know you can’t force treatment on anyone,” he said, as sweat 
crawled down his ribs, tickling. “They have civil rights.”
“I can’t imagine anyone wanting to be like that,” Crenshaw said. “And if they 
do, that’s a matter for a psych evaluation, I would think. Preferring to be 
sick—”
“They aren’t sick,” Aldrin said.
“And damaged. Preferring special treatment to a cure. That would have to be some 
kind of mental imbalance. Grounds for serious consideration of termination, I 
believe, seeing as they’re doing sensitive work, which other entities would love 
to have.”
Aldrin struggled again with the desire to hit Crenshaw over the head with 
something heavy.
“It might even help your brother,” Crenshaw said.
That was too much. “Please leave my brother out of this,” Aldrin said through 
his teeth.
“Now, now, I didn’t mean to upset you.” Crenshaw smiled even wider. “I was just 
thinking how it might help…” He turned away with a casual wave before Aldrin 
could say any of the devastating things colliding in his mind and turned to the 
next person in line. “Now, Jennifer, about those target dates your team isn’t 
meeting…”
What could Aldrin do? Nothing. What could anyone do? Nothing.
Men like Crenshaw rose to the top because they were like that—that is what it 
took. Apparently.
If there were such a treatment—not that he believed it—would it help his 
brother? He hated Crenshaw for dangling that lure in front of him. He had 
finally accepted Jeremy the way he was; he had worked through the old resentment 
and guilt. If Jeremy changed, what would that mean?



CHAPTER TWO
« ^ » 
MR. CRENSHAW IS THE NEW SENIOR MANAGER. MR. Aldrin, our boss, took him around 
that first day. I didn’t like him much—Crenshaw, that is—because he had the same 
false-hearty voice as the boys’ PE teacher in my junior high school, the one who 
wanted to be a football coach at a high school. Coach Jerry, we had to call him. 
He thought the special-needs class was stupid, and we all hated him. I don’t 
hate Mr. Crenshaw, but I don’t like him, either.
Today on the way to work I wait at a red light, where the street crosses the 
interstate. The car in front of me is a midnight-blue minivan with out-of-state 
plates, Georgia. It has a fuzzy bear with little rubber suckers stuck to the 
back window. The bear grins at me with a foolish expression. I’m glad it’s a 
toy; I hate it when there’s a dog in the back of a car, looking at me. Usually 
they bark at me.
The light changes, and the minivan shoots ahead. Before I can think, No, don’t! 
two cars running a red light speed through, a beige pickup with a brown stripe 
and an orange watercooler in the back and a brown sedan, and the truck hits the 
van broadside. The noise is appalling, shriek/crash/squeal/crunch all together, 
and the van and truck spin, spraying arcs of glittering glass… I want to vanish 
inside myself as the grotesque shapes spin nearer. I shut my eyes.
Silence comes back slowly, punctuated by the honking horns of those who don’t 
know why traffic stopped. I open my eyes. The light is green. People have gotten 
out of their cars; the drivers of the wrecked cars are moving, talking.
The driving code says that any person involved in an accident should not leave 
the scene. The driving code says stop and render assistance. But I was not 
involved, because nothing but a few bits of broken glass touched my car. And 
there are lots of other people to give assistance. I am not trained to give 
assistance.
I look carefully behind me and slowly, carefully, edge past the wreck. People 
look at me angrily. But I didn’t do anything wrong; I wasn’t in the accident. If 
I stayed, I would be late for work. And I would have to talk to policemen. I am 
afraid of policemen.
I feel shaky when I get to work, so instead of going into my office I go to the 
gym first. I put on the “Polka and Fugue” from Schwanda the Bagpiper, because I 
need to do big bounces and big swinging movements. I am a little calmer with 
bouncing by the time Mr. Crenshaw shows up, his face glistening an ugly shade of 
reddish beige.
“Well now, Lou,” he says. The tone is clouded, as if he wanted to sound jovial 
but was really angry. Coach Jerry used to sound like that. “Do you like the gym 
a lot, then?”
The long answer is always more interesting than the short one. I know that most 
people want the short uninteresting answer rather than the long interesting one, 
so I try to remember that when they ask me questions that could have long 
answers if they only understood them. Mr. Crenshaw only wants to know if I like 
the gym room. He doesn’t want to know how much.
“It’s fine,” I tell him.
“Do you need anything that isn’t here?”
“No.” I need many things that aren’t here, including food, water, and a place to 
sleep, but he means do I need anything in this room for the purpose it is 
designed for that isn’t in this room.
“Do you need that music?”
That music. Laura taught me that when people say “that” in front of a noun it 
implies an attitude about the content of the noun. I am trying to think what 
attitude Mr. Crenshaw has about that music when he goes on, as people often do, 
before I can answer.
“It’s so difficult,” he says. “Trying to keep all that music on hand. The 
recordings wear out… It would be easier if we could just turn on the radio.”
The radio here has loud banging noises or that whining singing, not music. And 
commercials, even louder, every few minutes. There is no rhythm to it, not one I 
could use for relaxing.
“The radio won’t work,” I say. I know that is too abrupt by the hardening in his 
face. I have to say more, not the short answer, but the long one. “The music has 
to go through me,” I say. “It needs to be the right music to have the right 
effect, and it needs to be music, not talking or singing. It’s the same for each 
of us. We need our own music, the music that works for us.”
“It would be nice,” Mr. Crenshaw says in a voice that has more overtones of 
anger, “if we could each have the music we like best. But most people—” He says 
“most people” in the tone that means “real people, normal people.”
“Most people have to listen to what’s available.”
“I understand,” I say, though I don’t actually. Everyone could bring in a player 
and their own music and wear earphones while they work, as we do. “But for us—” 
For us, the autistic, the incomplete. “It needs to be the right music.”
Now he looks really angry, the muscles bunching in his cheeks, his face redder 
and shinier. I can see the tightness in his shoulders, his shirt stretched 
across them.
“Very well,” he says. He does not mean that it is very well. He means he has to 
let us play the right music, but he would change it if he could. I wonder if the 
words on paper in our contract are strong enough to prevent him from changing 
it. I think about asking Mr. Aldrin.
It takes me another fifteen minutes to calm down enough to go to my office. I am 
soaked with sweat. I smell bad. I grab my spare clothes and go take a shower. 
When I finally sit down to work, it is an hour and forty-seven minutes after the 
time to start work; I will work late tonight to make up for that.
Mr. Crenshaw comes by again at closing time, when I am still working. He opens 
my door without knocking. I don’t know how long he was there before I noticed 
him, but I am sure he did not knock. I jump when he says, “Lou!” and turn 
around.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Working,” I say. What did he think? What else would I be doing in my office, at 
my workstation?
“Let me see,” he says, and comes over to my workstation. He comes up behind me; 
I feel my nerves rucking up under my skin like a kicked throw rug. I hate it 
when someone is behind me. “What is that?” He points to a line of symbols 
separated from the mass above and below by a blank line. I have been tinkering 
with that line all day, trying to make it do what I want it to do.
“It will be the… the link between this”—I point to the blocks above—“and this.” 
I point to the blocks below.
“And what are they?” he asks.
Does he really not know? Or is this what the books call instructional discourse, 
as when teachers ask questions whose answers they know to find out if the 
students know? If he really doesn’t know, then whatever I say will make no 
sense. If he really does know, he will be angry when he finds out I think he 
does not.
It would be simpler if people said what they meant.
“This is the layer-three system for synthesis,” I say. That is a right answer, 
though it is a short one.
“Oh, I see,” he says. His voice smirks. Does he think I am lying? I can see a 
blurry, distorted reflection of his face in the shiny ball on my desk. It is 
hard to tell what its expression is.
“The layer-three system will be embedded into the production codes,” I say, 
trying very hard to stay calm. “This ensures that the end user will be able to 
define the production parameters but cannot change them to something harmful.”
“And you understand this?” he says.
Which this is this? I understand what I am doing. I do not always understand why 
it is to be done. I opt for the easy short answer.
Yes, I say.
“Good,” he says. It sounds as false as it did in the morning. “You started late 
today,” he says.
“I’m staying late tonight,” I say. “I was one hour and forty-seven minutes late. 
I worked through lunch; that is thirty minutes. I will stay one hour and 
seventeen minutes late.”
“You’re honest,” he says, clearly surprised.
“Yes,” I say. I do not turn to look at him. I do not want to see his face. After 
seven seconds, he turns to leave. From the door he has a last word.
“Things cannot go on like this, Lou. Change happens.”
Nine words. Nine words that make me shiver after the door is closed.
I turn on the fan, and my office fills with twinkling, whirling reflections. I 
work on, one hour and seventeen minutes. Tonight I am not tempted to work any 
longer than that. It is Wednesday night, and I have things to do.
Outside it is mild, a little humid. I am very careful driving back to my place, 
where I change into T-shirt and shorts and eat a slice of cold pizza.
AMONG THE THINGS I NEVER TELL DR. FORNUM ABOUT IS MY sex life. She doesn’t think 
I have a sex life because when she asks if I have a sex partner, a girlfriend or 
boyfriend, I just say no. She doesn’t ask more than that. That is fine with me, 
because I do not want to talk about it with her. She is not attractive to me, 
and my parents said the only reason to talk about sex was to find out how to 
please your partner and be pleased by your partner. Or if something went wrong, 
you would talk to a doctor.
Nothing has ever gone wrong with me. Some things were wrong from the beginning, 
but that’s different. I think about Marjory while I finish my pizza . Marjory is 
not my sex partner, but I wish she were my girlfriend. I met Marjory at fencing 
class, not at any of the social events for disabled people that Dr. Fornum 
thinks I should go to. I don’t tell Dr. Fornum about fencing because she would 
worry about violent tendencies. If laser tag was enough to bother her, long 
pointed swords would send her into a panic. I don’t tell Dr. Fornum about 
Marjory because she would ask questions I don’t want to answer. So that makes 
two big secrets, swords and Marjory.
When I’ve eaten, I drive over to my fencing class, at Tom and Lucia’s. Marjory 
will be there. I want to close my eyes, thinking of Marjory, but I am driving 
and it is not safe. I think of music instead, of the chorale of Bach’s Cantata 
no. 39.
Tom and Lucia have a large house with a big fenced backyard. They have no 
children, even though they are older than I am. At first I thought this was 
because Lucia liked working with clients so much that she did not want to stay 
home with children, but I heard her tell someone else that she and Tom could not 
have children. They have many friends, and eight or nine usually show up for 
fencing practice. I don’t know if Lucia has told anyone at the hospital that she 
fences or that she sometimes invites clients to come learn fencing. I think the 
hospital would not approve. I am not the only person under psychiatric 
supervision who comes to Tom and Lucia’s to learn to fight with swords. I asked 
her once, and she just laughed and said, “What they don’t know won’t scare 
them.”
I have been fencing here for five years. I helped Tom put down the new surface 
on the fencing area, stuff that’s usually used for tennis courts. I helped Tom 
build the rack in the back room where we store our blades. I do not want to have 
my blades in my car or in my apartment, because I know that it would scare some 
people. Tom warned me about it. It is important not to scare people. So I leave 
all my fencing gear at Tom and Lucia’s, and everyone knows that the 
left-hand-but-two slot is mine and so is the left-hand-but-two peg on the other 
wall and my mask has its own pigeonhole in the mask storage.
First I do my stretches. I am careful to do all the stretches; Lucia says I am 
an example to the others. Don, for instance, rarely does all his stretches, and 
he is always putting his back out or pulling a muscle. Then he sits on the side 
and complains. I am not as good as he is, but I do not get hurt because I 
neglect the rules. I wish he would follow the rules because I am sad when a 
friend gets hurt.
When I have stretched my arms, my shoulders, my back, my legs, my feet, I go to 
the back room and put on my leather jacket with the sleeves cut off at the elbow 
and my steel gorget. The weight of the gorget around my neck feels good. I take 
down my mask, with my gloves folded inside, and put the gloves in my pocket for 
now. My épée and rapier are in the rack; I tuck the mask under one arm and take 
them out carefully.
Don comes in, rushed and sweating as usual, his face red. “Hi, Lou,” he says. I 
say hi and step back so he can get his blade from the rack. He is normal and 
could carry his épée in his car if he wanted without scaring people, but he 
forgets things. He was always having to borrow someone else’s, and finally Tom 
told him to leave his own here.
I go outside. Marjory isn’t here yet. Cindy and Lucia are lining up with epees; 
Max is putting on his steel helmet. I don’t think I would like the steel helmet; 
it would be too loud when someone hit it. Max laughed when I told him that and 
said I could always wear earplugs, but I hate earplugs. They make me feel as if 
I have a bad cold. It’s strange, because I actually like wearing a blindfold. I 
used to wear one a lot when I was younger, pretending I was blind. I could 
understand voices a little better that way. But feeling my ears stuffed up 
doesn’t help me see better.
Don swaggers out, épée tucked under his arm, buttoning his fancy leather 
doublet. Sometimes I wish I had one like that, but I think I do better with 
plain things.
“Did you stretch?” Lucia asks him.
He shrugs. “Enough.”
She shrugs back. “Your pain,” she says. She and Cindy start fencing. I like to 
watch them and try to figure out what they’re doing. It’s all so fast I have 
trouble following it, but so do normal people.
“Hi, Lou,” Marjory says, from behind me, I feel warm and light, as if there were 
less gravity. For a moment I squeeze my eyes shut. She is beautiful, but it is 
hard to look at her.
“Hi, Marjory,” I say, and turn around. She is smiling at me. Her face is shiny. 
That used to bother me, when people were very happy and their faces got shiny, 
because angry people also get shiny faces and I could not be sure which it was. 
My parents tried to show me the difference, with the position of eyebrows and so 
on, but I finally figured out that the best way to tell was the outside corners 
of the eyes. Marjory’s shiny face is a happy face. She is happy to see me, and I 
am happy to see her.
I worry about a lot of things, though, when I think about Marjory. Is autism 
contagious? Can she catch it from me? She won’t like it if she does. I know it’s 
not supposed to be catching, but they say if you hang around with a group of 
people, you’ll start thinking like them. If she hangs around me, will she think 
like me? I don’t want that to happen to her. If she were born like me it would 
be fine, but someone like her shouldn’t become like me. I don’t think it will 
happen, but I would feel guilty if it did. Sometimes this makes me want to stay 
away from her, but mostly I want to be with her more than I am.
“Hi, Marj,” Don says. His face is even shinier now. He thinks she is pretty, 
too. I know that what I feel is called jealousy; I read it in a book. It is a 
bad feeling, and it means that I am too controlling. I step back, trying not to 
be too controlling, and Don steps forward. Marjory is looking at me, not at Don.
“Want to play?” Don says, nudging me with his elbow. He means do I want to fence 
with him. I did not understand that at first. Now I do. I nod, silently, and we 
go to find a place where we can line up.
Don does a little flick with his wrist, the way he starts every bout, and I 
counter it automatically. We circle each other, feinting and parrying, and then 
I see his arm droop from the shoulder. Is this another feint? It’s an opening, 
at least, and I lunge, catching him on the chest.
“Got me,” he says. “My arm’s really sore.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. He works his shoulder, then suddenly leaps forward and 
strikes at my foot. He’s done this before; I move back quickly and he doesn’t 
get me. After I get him three more times, he heaves a great sigh and says he’s 
tired. That’s fine with me; I would rather talk to Marjory. Max and Tom move out 
to the space we were using. Lucia has stopped to rest; Cindy is lined up with 
Susan.
Marjory is sitting beside Lucia now; Lucia is showing her some pictures. One of 
Lucia’s hobbies is photography. I take off my mask and watch them. Marjory’s 
face is broader than Lucia’s. Don gets between me and Marjory and starts 
talking.
“You’re interrupting,” Lucia says.
“Oh, sorry,” Don says, but he still stands there, blocking my view.
“And you’re right in the middle,” Lucia says. “Please get out from between 
people.” She flicks a glance at me. I am not doing anything wrong or she would 
tell me. More than anyone I know who isn’t like me, she says very clearly what 
she wants.
Don glances back, huffs, and shifts sideways. “I didn’t see Lou,” he says.
“I did,” Lucia says. She turns back to Marjory. “Now here, this is where we 
stayed on the fourth night. I took this from inside—what about that view!”
“Lovely,” Marjory says. I can’t see the picture she’s looking at, but I can see 
the happiness on her face. I watch her instead of listening to Lucia as she 
talks about the rest of the pictures. Don interrupts with comments from time to 
time. When they’ve looked at the pictures, Lucia folds the case of the portable 
viewer and puts it under her chair.
“Come on, Don,” she says. “Let’s see how you do with me.” She puts her gloves 
and mask back on and picks up her épée. Don shrugs and follows her out to an 
open space.
“Have a seat,” Marjory says. I sit down, feeling the slight warmth from Lucia in 
the chair she just left. “How was your day?” Marjory asks.
“I almost was in a wreck,” I tell her. She doesn’t ask questions; she just lets 
me talk. It is hard to say it all; now it seems less acceptable that I just 
drove away, but I was worried about getting to work and about the police.
“That sounds scary,” she says. Her voice is warm, soothing. Not a professional 
soothing, but just gentle on my ears.
I want to tell her about Mr. Crenshaw, but now Tom comes back and asks me if I 
want to fight. I like to fight Tom. Tom is almost as tall as I am, and even 
though he is older, he is very fit. And he’s the best fencer in the group.
“I saw you fight Don,” he says. “You handle his tricks very well. But he’s not 
improving—in fact, he’s let his training slide—so be sure you fight some of the 
better fencers each week. Me, Lucia, Cindy, Max. At least two of us, okay?”
At least means “not less than.”
“Okay,” I say. We each have two long blades, épée and rapier. When I first tried 
to use a second blade, I was always banging one into the other. Then I tried to 
hold them parallel. That way they didn’t cross each other, but Tom could sweep 
them both aside. Now I know to hold them at different heights and angles.
We circle, first one way, then the other. I try to remember everything Tom has 
taught me: how to place my feet, how to hold the blades, which moves counter 
which moves. He throws a shot; my arm rises to parry it with my left blade; at 
the same time I throw a shot and he counters. It is like a dance: 
step-step-thrust-parry-step. Tom talks about the need to vary the pattern, to be 
unpredictable, but last time I watched him fight someone else, I thought I saw a 
pattern in his nonpattern. If I can just hold him off long enough, maybe I can 
find it again.
Suddenly I hear the music of Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet, the stately dance. It 
fills my head, and I move into that rhythm, slowing from the faster movements. 
Tom slows as I slow. Now I can see it, that long pattern he has devised because 
no one can be utterly random. Moving with it, in my personal music, I’m able to 
stay with him, blocking every thrust, testing his parries. And then I know what 
he will do, and without thought my arm swings around and I strike with apunta 
riversa to the side of his head. I feel the blow in my hand, in my arm.
“Good!” he says. The music stops. “Wow!” he says, shaking his head.
“It was too hard I am sorry,” I say.
“No, no, that’s fine. A good clean shot, right through my guard. I didn’t even 
come close to a parry on it.” He is grinning through his mask. “I told you you 
were getting better. Let’s go again.”
I do not want to hurt anyone. When I first started, they could not get me to 
actually touch anyone with the blade, not hard enough to feel. I still don’t 
like it. What I like is learning patterns and then remaking them so that I am in 
the pattern, too.
Light flashes down Tom’s blades as he lifts them both in salute. For a moment 
I’m struck by the dazzle, by the speed of the light’s dance.
Then I move again, in the darkness beyond the light. How fast is dark? Shadow 
can be no faster than what casts it, but not all darkness is shadow. Is it? This 
time I hear no music but see a pattern of light and shadow, shifting, twirling, 
arcs and helices of light against a background of dark.
I am dancing at the tip of the light, but beyond it, and suddenly feel that 
jarring pressure on my hand. This time I also feel the hard thump of Tom’s blade 
on my chest. I say, “Good,” just as he does, and we both step back, 
acknowledging the double kill.
“Owwww!” I look away from Tom and see Don leaning over with a hand to his back. 
He hobbles toward the chairs, but Lucia gets there first and sits beside Marjory 
again. I have a strange feeling: that I noticed and that I cared. Don has 
stopped, still bent over. There are no spare chairs now, as other fencers have 
arrived. Don lowers himself to the flagstones finally, grunting and groaning all 
the way.
“I’m going to have to quit this,” he says. “I’m getting too old.”
“You’re not old,” Lucia says. “You’re lazy.” I do not understand why Lucia is 
being so mean to Don. He is a friend; it is not nice to call friends names 
except in teasing. Don doesn’t like to do the stretches and he complains a lot, 
but that does not make him not a friend.
“Come on, Lou,” Tom says. “You killed me; we killed each other; I want a chance 
to get you back.” The words could be angry, but the voice is friendly and he is 
smiling. I lift my blades again.
This time Tom does what he never does and charges. I have no time to remember 
what he says is the right thing to do if someone charges; I step back and pivot, 
pushing his off-hand blade aside with mine and trying for a thrust to his head 
with the rapier. But he is moving too fast; I miss, and his rapier arm swings 
over his own head and gives me a whack on the top of the head.
“Gotcha!” he says.
“You did that how?” I ask, and then quickly reorder the words. “How did you do 
that?”
“It’s my secret tournament shot,” Tom said, pushing his mask back. “Someone did 
it to me twelve years ago, and I came home and practiced until I could do it to 
a stump… and normally I use it only in competition. But you’re ready to learn 
it. There’s only one trick.” He was grinning, his face streaked with sweat.
“Hey!” Don yelled across the yard. “I didn’t see that. Do it again, huh?”
“What is the trick?” I ask.
“You have to figure out how to do it for yourself. You’re welcome to my stump, 
but you’ve just had all the demonstration you’re going to get. I will mention 
that if you don’t get it exactly right, you’re dead meat to an opponent who 
doesn’t panic. You saw how easy it was to parry the off-hand weapon.”
“Tom, you haven’t showed me that one—do it again,” Don said.
“You’re not ready,” Tom said. “You have to earn it.” He sounds angry now, just 
as Lucia did. What has Don done to make them angry? He hasn’t stretched and gets 
tired really fast, but is that a good reason? I can’t ask now, but I will ask 
later.
I take my mask off and walk over to stand near Marjory. From above I can see the 
lights reflecting from her shiny dark hair. If I move back and forth, the lights 
run up and down her hair, as the light ran up and down Tom’s blades. I wonder 
what her hair would feel like.
“Have my seat,” Lucia says, standing up. “I’m going to fight again.”
I sit down, very conscious of Marjory beside me. “Are you going to fence 
tonight?” I ask.
“Not tonight. I have to leave early. My friend Karen’s coming in at the airport, 
and I promised to pick her up. I just stopped by to see… people.”
I want to tell her I’m glad she did, but the words stick in my mouth. I feel 
stiff and awkward. “Karen is coming from where?” I finally say.
“Chicago. She was visiting her parents.” Marjory stretches her legs out in front 
of her. “She was going to leave her car at the airport, but she had a flat the 
morning she left. That’s why I have to pick her up.” She turns to look at me; I 
glance down, unable to bear the heat of her gaze. “Are you going to stay long 
tonight?”
“Not that long,” I say. If Marjory is leaving and Don is staying, I will go 
home.
“Want to ride out to the airport with me? I could bring you back by here to pick 
up your car. Of course, it’ll make you late getting home; her plane won’t be in 
until ten-fifteen.”
Ride with Marjory? I am so surprised/happy that I can’t move for a long moment. 
“Yes,” I say. “Yes.” I can feel my face getting hot.
ON THE WAY TO THE AIRPORT, I LOOK OUT THE WINDOW. I FEEL light, as if I could 
float up into the air. “Being happy makes it feel like less than normal 
gravity,” I say.
I feel Marjory’s glance. “Light as a feather,” she says. “Is that what you 
mean?”
“Maybe not a feather. I feel more like a balloon,” I say.
“I know that feeling,” Marjory says. She doesn’t say she feels like that now. I 
don’t know how she feels. Normal people would know how she feels, but I can’t 
tell. The more I know her, the more things I don’t know about her. I don’t know 
why Tom and Lucia were being mean to Don, either.
“Tom and Lucia both sounded angry with Don,” I say. She gives me a quick 
sideways glance. I think I am supposed to understand it, but I don’t know what 
it means. It makes me want to look away; I feel funny inside.
“Don can be a real heel,” she says.
Don is not a heel; he is a person. Normal people say things like this, changing 
the meaning of words without warning, and they understand it. I know, because 
someone told me years ago, that heel is a slang word for “bad person.” But he 
couldn’t tell me why, and I still wonder about it. If someone is a bad person 
and you want to say that he is a bad person, why not just say it? Why say “heel” 
or “jerk” or something? And adding “real” to it only makes it worse. If you say 
something is real, it should be real.
But I want to know why Tom and Lucia are angry with Don more than I want to 
explain to Marjory about why it’s wrong to say Don is a real heel. “Is it 
because he doesn’t do enough stretches?”
“No.” Marjory sounds a little angry now, and I feel my stomach tightening. What 
have I done? “He’s just… just mean, sometimes, Lou. He makes jokes about people 
that aren’t funny.”
I wonder if it is the jokes or the people that aren’t funny. I know about jokes 
that most people don’t think are funny, because I have made some. I still don’t 
understand why some jokes are funny and why mine aren’t, but I know it is true.
“He made jokes about you,” Marjory says, a block later, in a low voice. “And we 
didn’t like it.”
I don’t know what to say. Don makes jokes about everybody, even Marjory. I 
didn’t like those jokes, but I didn’t do anything about it. Should I have? 
Marjory glances at me again. This time I think she wants me to say something. I 
can’t think of anything. Finally I do.
“My parents said acting mad at people didn’t make them act better.”
Marjory makes a funny noise. I don’t know what it means. “Lou, sometimes I think 
you’re a philosopher.”
“No,” I say. “I’m not smart enough to be a philosopher.”
Marjory makes the noise again. I look out the window; we are almost to the 
airport. The airport at night has different-colored lights laid out along the 
runways and taxiways. Amber, blue, green, red. I wish they had purple ones. 
Marjory parks in the short-term section of the parking garage, and we walk 
across the bus lanes into the terminal.
When I’m traveling alone, I like to watch the automatic doors open and close. 
Tonight, I walk on beside Marjory, pretending I don’t care about the doors. She 
stops to look at the video display of departures and arrivals. I have already 
spotted the flight it must be: the right airline, from Chicago, landing at 10:15 
P.M., on time, Gate Seventeen. It takes her longer; it always takes normal 
people longer.
At the security gate for “Arrivals,” I feel my stomach tightening again. I know 
how to do this; my parents taught me, and I have done it before. Take everything 
metallic out of your pockets and put it in the little basket. Wait your turn. 
Walk through the arch. If nobody asks me any questions, it’s easy. But if they 
ask, I don’t always hear them exactly: it’s too noisy, with too many echoes off 
the hard surfaces. I can feel myself tensing up.
Marjory goes first: her purse onto the conveyor belt, her keys in the little 
basket. I see her walk through; no one asks her anything. I put my keys, my 
wallet, my change into the little basket and walk through. No buzz, no bleep. 
The man in uniform stares at me as I pick up my keys, my wallet, my change and 
put them back in my pockets. I turn away, toward Marjory waiting a few yards 
away. Then he speaks.
“May I see your ticket, please? And some ID?”
I feel cold all over. He hasn’t asked anyone else—not the man with the long 
braided hair who pushed past me to get his briefcase off the conveyor belt, not 
Marjory—and I haven’t done anything wrong. You don’t have to have a ticket to go 
through security for arrivals; you just have to know the flight number you’re 
meeting. People who are meeting people don’t have tickets because they aren’t 
traveling. Security for departures requires a ticket.
“I don’t have a ticket,” I say. Beyond him, I can see Marjory shift her weight, 
but she doesn’t come closer. I don’t think she can hear what he is saying, and I 
don’t want to yell in a public place.
“ID?” he says. His face is focused on me and starting to get shiny. I pull out 
my wallet and open it to my ID. He looks at it, then back at me. “If you don’t 
have a ticket, what are you doing here?” he asks.
I can feel my heart racing, sweat springing out on my neck. “I’m… I’m… I’m…
“Spit it out,” he says, frowning. “Or do you stutter like that all the time?”
I nod. I know I can’t say anything now, not for a few minutes. I reach into my 
shirt pocket and take out the little card I keep there. I offer it to him; he 
glances at it.
“Autistic, huh? But you were talking; you answered me a second ago. Who are you 
meeting?”
Marjory moves, coming up behind him. “Anything wrong, Lou?”
“Stand back, lady,” the man says. He doesn’t look at her.
“He’s my friend,” Marjory says. “We’re meeting a friend of mine on Flight 
Three-eighty-two, Gate Seventeen. I didn’t hear the buzzer go off…” There is an 
edge of anger to her tone.
Now the man turns his head just enough to see her. He relaxes a little. “He’s 
with you?”
“Yes. Was there a problem?”
“No, ma’am. He just looked a little odd. I guess this”—he still has my card in 
his hand—“explains it. As long as you’re with him…”
“I’m not his keeper,” Marjory says, in the same tone that she used when she said 
Don was a real heel. “Lou is my friend.”
The man’s eyebrows go up, then down. He hands me back my card and turns away. I 
walk away, beside Marjory, who is headed off in a fast walk that must be 
stretching her legs. We say nothing until after we arrive at the secured waiting 
area for Gates Fifteen through Thirty. On the other side of the glass wall, 
people with tickets, on the departures side, sit in rows; the seatframes are 
shiny metal and the seats are dark blue. We don’t have seats in arrivals because 
we are not supposed to come more than ten minutes before the flight’s scheduled 
arrival.
This is not the way it used to be. I don’t remember that, of course— I was born 
at the turn of the century—but my parents told me about being able to just walk 
right up to the gates to meet people arriving. Then after the 2001 disasters, 
only departing passengers could go to the gates. That was so awkward for people 
who needed help, and so many people asked for special passes, that the 
government designed these arrival lounges instead, with separate security lines. 
By the time my parents took me on an airplane for the first time, when I was 
nine, all large airports had separated arriving and departing passengers.
I look out the big windows. Lights everywhere. Red and green lights on the tips 
of the airplanes’ wings. Rows of dim square lights along the planes, showing 
where the windows are. Headlights on the little vehicles that pull baggage 
carts. Steady lights and blinking lights.
“Can you talk now?” Marjory asks while I’m still looking out at the lights.
“Yes.” I can feel her warmth; she is standing very close beside me. I close my 
eyes a moment. “I just… I can get confused.” I point to an airplane coming 
toward a gate. “Is that the one?”
“I think so.” She moves around me and turns to face me. “Are you all right?”
“Yes. It just… happens that way sometimes.” I am embarrassed that it happened 
tonight, the first time I have ever been alone with Marjory. I remember in high 
school wanting to talk to girls who didn’t want to talk to me. Will she go away, 
too? I could get a taxi back to Tom and Lucia’s, but I don’t have a lot of money 
with me.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Marjory says, and then the door opens and people start 
coming off the plane. She is watching for Karen, and I am watching her. Karen 
turns out to be an older woman, gray-haired. Soon we are all back outside and 
then on the way to Karen’s apartment. I sit quietly in the backseat, listening 
to Marjory and Karen talk. Their voices flow and ripple like swift water over 
rocks. I can’t quite follow what they’re talking about. They go too fast for me, 
and I don’t know the people or places they speak of. It’s all right, though, 
because I can watch Marjory without having to talk at the same time.
When we get back to Tom and Lucia’s, where my car is, Don has gone and the last 
of the fencing group are packing things in their car. I remember that I did not 
put my blades and mask away and go outside to collect them, but Tom has picked 
them up, he says. He wasn’t sure what time we would get back; he didn’t want to 
leave them out in the dark.
I say good-bye to Tom and Lucia and Marjory and drive home in the swift dark.



CHAPTER THREE
« ^ » 
MY MESSAGER IS BLINKING WHEN I GET HOME. IT’S Lars’s code; he wants me to come 
on-line. It’s late. I don’t want to oversleep and be late tomorrow. But Lars 
knows I fence on Wednesdays, and he doesn’t usually try to contact me then. It 
must be important.
I sign on and find his message. He has clipped a journal article for me, 
research on reversal of autistic-like symptoms in adult primates. I skim it, my 
heart thudding. Reversing genetic autism in the infant or brain damage that 
resulted in autisticlike syndromes in the small child has now become common, but 
I had been told it was too late for me. If this is real, it is not too late. In 
the last sentence, the article’s author makes that connection, speculating that 
the research might be applicable to humans and suggesting further research.
As I read, other icons pop up on my screen. The logo of our local autistic 
society. Cameron’s logo and Dale’s. So they’ve heard about it, too. I ignore 
them for the time being and go on reading. Even though it is about brains like 
mine, this is not my field and I cannot quite understand how the treatment is 
supposed to work. The authors keep referring to other articles in which the 
procedures were spelled out. Those articles aren’t accessible—not to me, not 
tonight. I don’t know what “Ho and Delgracia’s method” is. I don’t know what all 
the words mean, either, and my dictionary doesn’t have them.
When I look at the clock, it is long after midnight. Bed. I must sleep. I turn 
everything off, set the alarm, and go to bed. In my mind, photons chase darkness 
but never catch up.
AT WORK THE NEXT MORNING, WE ALL STAND IN THE HALL, NOT quite meeting one 
anothers’ eyes. Everybody knows.
“I think it’s a fake,” Linda says. “It can’t possibly work.”
“But if it does,” Cameron says. “If it does, we can be normal.”
“I don’t want to be normal,” Linda says. “I am who I am. I’m happy.” She does 
not look happy. She looks fierce and determined.
“Me, too,” Dale says. “What if it works for monkeys—what does that mean? They’re 
not people; they’re simpler than we are. Monkeys don’t talk.” His eyelid 
twitches more than usual.
“We already communicate better than monkeys,” Linda says.
When we are together like this, just us, we can talk better than any other time. 
We laugh about that, about how normal people must be putting out a field that 
inhibits our abilities. We know that’s not true, and we know the others would 
think we were paranoid if we told that joke around them. They would think we 
were crazy in a bad way; they would not understand that it is a joke. When we do 
not recognize a joke, they say it is because we are literal-minded, but we know 
that we cannot say that about them.
“I would like to not have to see a psychiatrist every quarter,” Cameron says.
I think of not having to see Dr. Fornum. I would be much happier if I did not 
have to see Dr. Fornum. Would she be happy not to have to see me?
“Lou, what about you?” Linda asks. “You’re already living partly in their 
world.”
We all are, by working here, by living independently. But Linda doesn’t like 
doing anything with people who are not autistic, and she has said before she 
thinks I shouldn’t hang around with Tom and Lucia’s fencing group or the people 
at my church. If she knew how I really felt about Marjory she would say mean 
things.
“I get along… I don’t see why change.” I hear my voice, harsher than usual and 
wish it didn’t do that when I get upset. I’m not angry; I don’t want to sound 
angry.
“See?” Linda looks at Cameron, who looks away.
“I need to work,” I say, and head for my office, where I turn on the little fan 
and watch the twinkles of light. I need to bounce, but I don’t want to go in the 
gym, in case Mr. Crenshaw comes in. I feel like something is squeezing me. It is 
hard to get into the problem I’m working on.
I wonder what it would be like to be normal. I made myself quit thinking about 
that when I left school. When it comes up, I push the thought away. But now… 
what would it be like to not be worried that people think I’m crazy when I 
stutter or when I can’t answer at all and have to write on my little pad? What 
would it be like to not carry that card in my pocket? To be able to see and hear 
everywhere? To know what people are thinking just by looking at their faces?
The block of symbols I’m working on suddenly looks densely meaningless, as 
meaningless as voices used to sound.
Is that it? Is this why normal people don’t do the kind of work we do? Do I have 
to choose between this work I know how to do, this work I’m good at, and being 
normal? I look around the office. The spin spirals suddenly annoy me. All they 
do is turn around, the same pattern, over and over and over. I reach to turn the 
fan off. If this is normal, I don’t like it.
The symbols come alive again, rich with meaning, and I dive into them, 
submerging my mind in them so I don’t have to see the sky overhead.
When I emerge again, it is past lunchtime. I have a headache from sitting too 
long in one place and not eating lunch. I get up, walk around my office, trying 
not to think about what Lars told me. I can’t help it. I am not hungry, but I 
know I should eat. I go to the kitchenette in our building and get my plastic 
box from the refrigerator. None of us like the smell of the plastic, but it does 
keep our food separate, so that I don’t have to smell Linda’s tuna fish sandwich 
and she doesn’t have to smell my jerky and fruit.
I eat an apple and a few grapes, then nibble on the jerky. My stomach feels 
unsettled; I think about going into the gym, but when I check, Linda and Chuy 
are in there. Linda is bouncing high, her face set in a scowl; Chuy is sitting 
on the floor, watching colored streamers blow from the fan. Linda catches sight 
of me and turns around on the trampoline. She does not want to talk. I do not 
want to talk, either.
The afternoon seems to last forever. I leave right on time, striding out to my 
car in its spot. The music is all wrong, loud and pounding in my head. When I 
open the door of my car, superheated air puffs out. I stand by the car, wishing 
for autumn and cooler weather. I see the others come out, all showing tension in 
one way or another, and avoid their gaze. No one speaks. We get in our cars; I 
leave first because I came out first.
It is hard to drive safely in the hot afternoon, with the wrong music in my 
head. Light flashes off windshields, bumpers, trim; there are too many flashing 
lights. By the time I get home, my head hurts and I’m shaking. I take the 
pillows off my couch into the bedroom, closing all the shades tightly and then 
the door. I lie down, piling the pillows on top of me, then turn off the light.
This is something else I never tell Dr. Fornum about. She would make notes in my 
record about this; I know it. As I lie there in the dark, the gentle, soft 
pressure gradually eases my tension, and the wrong music in my mind empties out. 
I float in a soft, dark silence… at rest, at peace, uninvaded by the fast-moving 
photons.
Eventually I am ready to think and feel again. I am sad. I am not supposed to be 
sad. I tell myself what Dr. Fornum would tell me. I am healthy. I have a job 
that pays pretty well. I have a place to live and clothes to wear. I have a rare 
high-status permit for a private automobile so that I do not have to ride with 
anyone else or take the noisy, crowded public transit. I am lucky.
I am sad anyway. I try so hard, and it is still not working. I wear the same 
clothes as the others. I say the same words at the same times: good morning, hi, 
how are you, I’m fine, good night, please, thank you, you’re welcome, no thank 
you, not right now. I obey the traffic laws; I obey the rules. I have ordinary 
furniture in my apartment, and I play my unusual music very softly or use 
headphones. But it is not enough. Even as hard as I try, the real people still 
want me to change, to be like them.
They do not know how hard it is. They do not care. They want me to change. They 
want to put things in my head, to change my brain. They would say they don’t, 
but they do.
I thought I was safe, living independently, living like anyone else. But I 
wasn’t.
Under the pillows, I’m starting to shake again. I don’t want to cry; crying 
might be too loud and my neighbors might notice. I am hearing the labels 
crowding in on me, the labels they put in my record when I was a child. Primary 
diagnosis Autistic Spectrum Disorder/autism. Sensory integration deficit. 
Auditory processing deficit. Visual processing deficit. Tactile defensiveness.
I hate the labels; they make me feel sticky, where they are stuck to me with 
professional glue I can’t pry off.
All babies are born autistic, one of our group said once. We laughed nervously. 
We agreed, but it was dangerous to say so.
It takes a neurologically normal infant years to learn to integrate the incoming 
sensory data into a coherent concept of the world. While it took me much 
longer—and I readily admit that my sensory processing is not normal even now—I 
went at the task much the same way as any other infant. First flooded by 
ungated, unedited sensory input, protecting myself from sensory overload with 
sleep and inattention.
You might think, reading the literature, that only neurologically damaged 
children do this, but in fact all infants control their exposure— by closing 
their eyes, averting their gaze, or simply falling asleep when the world is too 
much. Over time, as they make sense of this data chunk and then that, they learn 
what patterns of retinal excitation signal what events in the visible world, 
what patterns of auditory excitation signal a human voice—and then a human voice 
speaking their native tongue.
For me—for any autistic individual—this took much longer. My parents explained 
it to me, when I was old enough to understand: for some reason, my infant nerves 
needed a stimulus to persist longer before it would bridge the gap. They—and 
I—were lucky that techniques were available to provide my neurons this needed 
duration of signal. Instead of being labeled with an “attention deficit” (which 
used to be quite common), I was simply given stimuli to which I could attend.
I can remember the time before I was exposed to the computer-assisted primary 
language-learning program… when the sounds that came from people’s mouths seemed 
as random—no, more random— than a cow mooing and moaning in the field. I 
couldn’t hear many consonants—they didn’t last long enough. Therapy helped—a 
computer stretched the sounds out until I could hear them, and gradually my 
brain learned to capture briefer signals. But not all of them. To this day, a 
fast-talking speaker can lose me, no matter how I concentrate.
It used to be much worse. Before the computer-assisted language-learning 
programs, children like me might never learn language at all. Back in the 
mid-twentieth century, therapists thought autism was a mental illness, like 
schizophrenia. My mother had read a book by a woman who had been told she had 
made her child crazy. The idea that autistic people are, or become, mentally ill 
persisted right through the end of the twentieth century, and I even saw an 
article about that in a magazine a few years ago. That is why I have to visit 
Dr. Fornum, so that she can be sure I am not developing a mental illness.
I wonder if Mr. Crenshaw thinks I am crazy. Is that why his face gets shiny when 
he talks to me? Is he frightened? I don’t think Mr. Aldrin is frightened of 
me—of any of us. He talks to us as if we were real. But Mr. Crenshaw talks to me 
as if I were a stubborn animal, one he had a right to train. I am often scared, 
but now, after the rest under the pillows, I am not.
WHAT I WISH IS THAT I COULD GO OUT AND LOOK UP AT THE stars. My parents took me 
camping in the Southwest; I remember lying there and seeing all the beautiful 
patterns, patterns that went on and on forever. I would like to see the stars 
again. They made me feel calm when I was a child; they showed me an ordered 
universe, a patterned universe, in which I could be a small part of a large 
pattern. When my parents told me how long the light had traveled to reach my 
eyes—hundreds, thousands, of years—I felt comforted though I could not say why.
I cannot see the stars from here. The safety lights in the parking lot next to 
our building are sodium vapor lights emitting a pinkish yellow light. They make 
the air seem fuzzy, and the stars can’t show through the blurry black lid of 
sky. Only the moon and a few bright stars and planets show at all.
Sometimes I used to go out in the country and try to find a spot to look at the 
stars. It is hard. If I park on a country road and turn off the lights of the 
car, someone could run into me because he can’t see me. I have tried parking 
beside the road or in some unused lane that leads to a barn, but someone who 
lives nearby may notice and call the police. Then the police will come and want 
to know why I’m parked there late at night. They do not understand wanting to 
see the stars. They say that is just an excuse. I don’t do this anymore. 
Instead, I try to save up enough money that I can take my vacations where there 
are stars.
It’s funny about the police. Some of us have more trouble than others. Jorge, 
who grew up in San Antonio, told me if you are anything but rich, white, and 
normal they think you are a criminal. He had been stopped many times when he was 
growing up; he didn’t learn to talk until he was twelve and even then couldn’t 
talk very well. They always thought he was drunk or on drugs, he said. Even when 
he wore a bracelet that explained who he was and that he couldn’t talk, they’d 
wait until they’d taken him to the station to look at it. Then they’d try to 
find a parent to take him home, rather than taking him back across town 
themselves. Both his parents worked, so he usually had to sit there for three or 
four hours.
That didn’t happen to me, but sometimes I’ve been stopped for no reason I can 
understand, like with the security man at the airport. I get very scared when 
someone speaks harshly to me and sometimes I have trouble answering. I practiced 
saying, “My name is Lou Arrendale; I am autistic; I have trouble answering 
questions,” in front of a mirror until I could say it no matter how scared I am. 
My voice sounds harsh and strained when I do it. They ask, “Do you have 
identification?” I know I’m supposed to say, “In my pocket.” If I try to get my 
own wallet out, they may be scared enough to kill me. Miss Sevier in high school 
told us the police think we have knives or guns in our pockets and that they 
have killed people who were just trying to get out their IDs.
I think that is wrong, but I read where the court decided it was all right if 
the police were really scared. Yet if anybody else is really scared of the 
police it’s not all right for the scared person to kill a policeman.
This does not make sense. There is no symmetry.
The policeman who visited our class in high school said the police were there to 
help us and that only people who had done wrong would be scared of them. Jen 
Brouchard said what I was thinking, that it was hard not to be scared of people 
who yelled at you and threatened you and could make you lie facedown on the 
ground. That even if you hadn’t done anything, having a big man waving a gun at 
you would scare anyone. The policeman got red in the face and said that attitude 
didn’t help. Neither did his, I thought, but I knew better than to say so.
Yet the policeman who lives in our building has always been pleasant to me. His 
name is Daniel Bryce, but he says to call him Danny. He says good morning and 
good evening when he sees me, and I say good morning and good evening. He 
complimented me on how clean I keep my car. We both helped Miss Watson move when 
she had to go to Assisted Living; we each had one end of her coffee table 
carrying it downstairs. He offered to be the one to go backward. He doesn’t yell 
at anyone that I know of. I do not know what he thinks about me, except that he 
likes it that my car is clean. I do not know if he knows that I am autistic. I 
try not to be scared of him, because I have not done anything wrong, but I am, a 
little.
I would like to ask him if he thinks people are scared of him, but I do not want 
to make him angry. I do not want him to think I am doing something wrong, 
because I am still scared a little.
I tried watching some police shows on TV, but that scared me again. The police 
seemed tired and angry all the time, and the shows make it seem that this is all 
right. I am not supposed to act angry even when I am angry, but they can.
Yet I do not like to be judged by what others like me do, and I do not want to 
be unfair to Danny Bryce. He smiles at me, and I smile back. He says good 
morning and I say good morning back. I try to pretend that the gun he carries is 
a toy, so that I do not sweat too much when I am around him and make him think I 
am guilty of something I did not do.
Under the blankets and pillows, I am sweaty now as well as calm. I crawl out, 
replace the pillows, and take a shower. It is important not to smell bad. People 
who smell bad make other people angry or scared. I do not like the smell of the 
soap I use—it is an artificial scent, too strong—but I know it is an acceptable 
smell to other people.
It is late, after nine, when I get out of the shower and dress again. Usually I 
watch Cobalt 457 on Thursdays, but it is too late for that now. I am hungry; I 
put water on to boil and then drop some noodles into it.
The phone rings. I jump; no matter which of the choice of ringers I use, the 
phone always surprises me, and I always jump when I am surprised.
It is Mr. Aldrin. My throat tightens; I cannot speak for a long moment, but he 
does not go on talking. He waits. He understands.
I do not understand. He belongs at the office; he is part of the office cast. He 
has never called me at home before. Now he wants to meet with me. I feel 
trapped. He is my boss. He can tell me what to do, but only at work. It feels 
wrong to hear his voice on the phone at home.
“I—I did not expect you to call,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “I called you at home because I needed to talk to you away 
from the office.”
My stomach feels tight. “For what reason?” I ask.
“Lou, you need to know before Mr. Crenshaw calls you all in. There’s an 
experimental treatment that may reverse adult autism.”
“I know,” I say. “I heard about it. They have tried it on apes.”
“Yes. But what’s in the journal is over a year old; there’s been… progress. Our 
company bought out the research. Crenshaw wants all of you to try the new 
treatment. I don’t agree with him. I think it is too early, and I think he is 
wrong to ask you. At least it should be your choice; no one should pressure you. 
But he is my boss, and I can’t keep him from talking to you about it.”
If he cannot help, why is he calling? Is this one of those maneuvers I have read 
about normal people doing when they want sympathy for doing wrong because they 
could not help it?
“I want to help you,” he says. I remember my parents saying that wanting to do 
something was not the same thing as doing… that trying was not the same thing as 
doing. Why doesn’t he say, “I will help you,” instead?
“I think you need an advocate,” he says. “Someone to help you negotiate with 
Crenshaw. Someone better than me. I can find that person for you.”
I think he does not want to be our advocate. I think he is afraid Crenshaw will 
fire him. This is reasonable. Crenshaw could fire any of us. I struggle with my 
stubborn tongue to get the words out. “Shouldn’t… wouldn’t it… I think… I think 
I—we—should find our own person.”
“Can you?” he asks. I hear the doubt in his voice. Once I would have heard only 
something other than happiness and I would have been afraid he was angry with 
me. I am glad not to be like that anymore. I wonder why he has that doubt, since 
he knows the kind of work we can do and knows I live independently.
“I can go to the Center,” I say.
“Maybe that would be better,” he says. A noise starts at his end of the 
telephone; his voice speaks, but I think it is not for me. “Turn that down; I’m 
on the phone.” I hear another voice, an unhappy voice, but I can’t hear the 
words clearly. Then Mr. Aldrin’s voice, louder, in my ear: “Lou, if you have any 
trouble finding someone… if you want me to help, please let me know. I want the 
best for you; you know that.”
I do not know that. I know that Mr. Aldrin has been our manager and he has 
always been pleasant and patient with us and he has provided things for us that 
make our work easier, but I do not know that he wants the best for us. How would 
he know what that is? Would he want me to marry Marjory? What does he know of 
any of us outside work?
“Thank you,” I say, a safe conventional thing to say at almost any occasion. Dr. 
Fornum would be proud.
“Right, then,” he says. I try not to let my mind tangle on those words that have 
no meaning in themselves at this time. It is a conventional thing to say; he is 
coming to the end of the conversation. “Call me if you need any help. Let me 
give you my home number…” He rattles off a number; my phone system captures it, 
though I will not forget. Numbers are easy and this one is especially so, being 
a series of primes, though he probably has never noticed it. “Good-bye, Lou,” he 
says at the end. “Try not to worry.”
Trying is not doing. I say good-bye, hang up the phone, and return to my 
noodles, now slightly soggy. I do not mind soggy noodles; they are soft and 
soothing. Most people do not like peanut butter on noodles, but I do.
I think about Mr. Crenshaw wanting us to take the treatment. I do not think he 
can make us do that. There are laws about us and medical research. I do not know 
exactly what the laws say, but I do not think they would let him make us do it. 
Mr. Aldrin should know more about this than I do; he is a manager. So he must 
think Mr. Crenshaw can do it or will try to do it.
It is hard to go to sleep.
ON FRIDAY MORNING, CAMERON TELLS ME THAT MR. ALDRIN called him, too. He called 
everyone. Mr. Crenshaw has not said anything to any of us yet. I have that 
uncomfortable sick feeling in my stomach, like before a test that I do not 
expect to pass. It is a relief to get on the computer and go to work.
Nothing happens all day except that I finish the first half of the current 
project and the test runs all come out clean. After lunch, Cameron tells me that 
the local autism society has posted a meeting at the Center about the research 
paper. He is going. He thinks we should all go. I had not planned anything this 
Saturday other than cleaning my car, and I go to the Center almost every 
Saturday morning anyway.
On Saturday morning, I walk over to the Center. It is a long walk, but it is not 
hot this early in the morning and it makes my legs feel good. Besides, there is 
a brick sidewalk on the way, with two colors of brick—tan and red—laid in 
interesting patterns. I like to see it.
At the Center, I see not only people from my work group but also those who are 
dispersed elsewhere in the city. Some, mostly the older ones, are in adult day 
care or sheltered workshops with a lot of supervision and live in group homes. 
Stefan is a professor at the smaller university here; he does research in some 
area of biology. Mai is a professor at the larger university; her field is in 
some overlap of mathematics and biophysics. Neither of them comes to meetings 
often. I have noticed that the people who are most impaired come most often; the 
young people who are like Joe Lee almost never show up.
I chat with some of the others I know and like, some from work and some from 
elsewhere, like Murray, who works for a big accounting firm. Murray wants to 
hear about my fencing; he studies aikido and also hasn’t told his psychiatrist 
about it. I know that Murray has heard about the new treatment, or for what 
reason would he be here today, but I think he does not want to talk about it. He 
doesn’t work with us; he may not know it is near human trials. Maybe he wants it 
and wishes it were. I do not want to ask him that, not today.
The Center isn’t just for autistic people; we see a lot of people with various 
other disabilities, too, especially on weekends. I do not know what all of the 
disabilities are. I do not want to think about all the things that can be wrong 
with someone.
Some are friendly and speak to us, and some do not. Emmy comes right up to me 
today. She is nearly always there. She is shorter than I am, with straight dark 
hair and thick glasses. I do not know why she has not had eye surgery. It is not 
polite to ask. Emmy always seems angry. Her eyebrows bunch together, and she has 
tight little wads of muscle at the corners of her mouth, and her mouth turns 
down. “You have a girlfriend,” she says.
“No,” I say.
“Yes. Linda told me. She’s not one of us.”
“No,” I say again. Marjory isn’t my girlfriend—yet—and I do not want to talk 
about her to Emmy. Linda should not have told Emmy anything, and certainly not 
that. I did not tell Linda Marjory was my girlfriend because she is not. It was 
not right.
“Where you go to play with swords,” Emmy says. “There’s a girl—”
“She is not a girl,” I say. “She is a woman, and she is not my girlfriend.” Yet, 
I think. I feel heat on my neck, thinking of Marjory and the look on her face 
last week.
“Linda says she is. She’s a spy, Lou.”
Emmy rarely uses people’s names; when she says my name it feels like a slap on 
the arm. “What do you mean, ‘spy’?”
“She works at the university. Where they do that project, you know.” She glares 
at me, as if I were doing the project. She means the research group on 
developmental disabilities. When I was a child, my parents took me there for 
evaluation and for three years I went to the special class. Then my parents 
decided that the group was more interested in doing research papers to get grant 
money than in helping children, so they put me in another program, at the 
regional clinic. It is the policy of our local society to require researchers to 
disclose their identity; we do not allow them to attend our meetings.
Emmy works at the university herself, as a custodian, and I suppose this is how 
she knows Marjory works there.
“Lots of people work at the university,” I say. “Not all are in the research 
group.”
“She is a spy, Lou,” Emmy says again. “She is only interested in your diagnosis, 
not in you as a person.”
I feel a hollow opening inside me; I am sure that Marjory is not a researcher, 
but not that sure.
“To her you are a freak,” Emmy says. “A subject.” She made subject sound 
obscene, if I understand obscene. Nasty. A mouse in a maze, a monkey in a cage. 
I think about the new treatment; the people who take it first will be subjects, 
just like the apes they tried it on first.
“That’s not true,” I say. I can feel the prickling of sweat under my arms, on my 
neck, and the faint tremor that comes when I feel threatened. “But anyway, she 
is not my girlfriend.”
“I’m glad you have that much sense,” Emmy says.
I go on to the meeting because if I left the Center Emmy would talk to the 
others about Marjory and me. It is hard to listen to the speaker, who is talking 
about the research protocol and its implications. I hear and do not hear what he 
says; I notice when he says something I have not heard before, but I do not pay 
much attention. I can read the posted speech on the Center Web site later. I was 
not thinking about Marjory until Emmy said that about her, but now I cannot stop 
thinking about Marjory.
Marjory likes me. I am sure she likes me. I am sure she likes me as myself, as 
Lou who fences with the group, as Lou she asked to come to the airport with her 
that Wednesday night. Lucia said Marjory liked me. Lucia does not lie.
But there is liking and liking. I like ham, as a food. I do not care what the 
ham thinks when I bite into it. I know that ham doesn’t think, so it does not 
bother me to bite into it. Some people will not eat meat because the animals it 
came from were once alive and maybe had feelings and thoughts, but this does not 
bother me once they are dead. Everything eaten was alive once, saving a few 
grams of minerals, and a tree might have thoughts and feelings if we knew how to 
access them.
What if Marjory likes me as Emmy says—as a thing, a subject, the equivalent of 
my bite of ham? What if she likes me more than some other research subject 
because I am quiet and friendly?
I do not feel quiet and friendly. I feel like hitting someone.
The counselor at the meeting does not say anything we have not already read 
on-line. He cannot explain the method; he does not know where someone would go 
to apply to be in the study. He does not say that the company I work for has 
bought up the research. Maybe he does not know. I do not say anything. I am not 
sure Mr. Aldrin is right about that.
After the meeting the others want to stay and talk about the new process, but I 
leave quickly. I want to go home and think about Marjory without Emmy around. I 
do not want to think about Marjory being a researcher; I want to think about her 
sitting beside me in the car. I want to think about her smell, and the lights in 
her hair, and even the way she fights with a rapier.
It is easier to think about Marjory while I am cleaning out my car. I untie the 
sheepskin seat pad and shake it out. No matter how careful I am, there are 
always things caught in it, dust and threads and—today— a paper clip. I do not 
know where that came from. I lay it on the front of the car and sweep the seats 
with a little brush, then vacuum the floor. The noise of the vacuum hurts my 
ears, but it is quicker than sweeping and less dust gets up my nose. I clean the 
inside of the windshield, being careful to go all the way into the corners, then 
clean the mirrors. Stores sell special cleaners for cars, but they all smell 
very bad and make me feel sick, so I just use a damp rag.
I put the sheepskin back on the seat and tie it snugly in place. Now my car is 
all clean for Sunday morning. Even though I take the bus to church, I like to 
think of my car sitting clean in its Sunday clothes on Sunday.
I TAKE MY SHOWER QUICKLY, NOT THINKING ABOUT MARJORY, and then I go to bed and 
think of her. She is moving, in my thoughts, always moving and yet always still. 
Her face expresses itself more clearly to me than most faces. The expressions 
stay long enough that I can interpret them. When I fall asleep, she is smiling.



CHAPTER FOUR
« ^ » 
FROM THE STREET TOM WATCHED MARJORY SHAW AND Don Poiteau walk across the yard. 
Lucia thought Marjory was becoming attached to Lou Arrendale, but here she was 
walking with Don. Granted, Don had grabbed her gear bag from her, but—if she 
didn’t like him, wouldn’t she take it back?
He sighed, running a hand through his thinning hair. He loved the sport of 
fencing, loved having people over, but the constant burden of the interpersonal 
intrigues of the group exhausted him more as he got older. He wanted his and 
Lucia’s home to be a place where people grew into their potential, physical and 
social, but sometimes it seemed he was stuck with a yardful of permanent 
adolescents. Sooner or later, they all came to him with their complaints, their 
grudges, their hurt feelings.
Or they dumped on Lucia. Mostly the women did that. They sat down beside her, 
pretending an interest in her needlework or her pictures, and poured out their 
troubles. He and Lucia spent hours talking about what was going on, who needed 
which kind of support, how best to help without taking on too much 
responsibility.
As Don and Marjory came closer, Tom could see that she was annoyed. Don, as 
usual, was oblivious, talking fast, swinging her bag in his enthusiasm for what 
he was saying. Case in point, Tom thought. Before the night was out, he was sure 
he’d hear what Don had done to annoy Marjory and from Don he’d hear that Marjory 
wasn’t understanding enough.
“He has to have his stuff in exactly the same place every time, can’t put it 
anywhere else,” Don was saying as he and Marjory came within earshot.
“It’s tidy,” Marjory said. She sounded prissy, which meant she was more than 
just annoyed. “Do you object to tidy?”
“I object to obsessive,” Don said. “You, my lady, exhibit a healthy flexibility 
in sometimes parking on this side of the street and sometimes on that and 
wearing different clothes. Lou wears the same clothes every week—clean, I’ll 
give him that, but the same—and this thing he has about where to store his 
gear…”
“You put it in the wrong place and Tom made you move it, didn’t he?” Marjory 
said.
“Because Lou would be upset,” Don said, sounding sulky. “It’s not fair—”
Tom could tell Marjory wanted to yell at Don. So did he. But yelling at Don 
never seemed to do any good. Don’d had an earnest, hardworking girlfriend who 
put eight years of her life into parenting him, and he was still the same.
“I like the place tidy, too,” Tom said, trying to keep the sting out of his 
voice. “It’s much easier for everyone when we know where to find each person’s 
gear. Besides, leaving things all over the place could be considered just as 
obsessive as insisting on having the same place.”
“C’mon, Tom; forgetful and obsessive are opposites.” He didn’t even sound 
annoyed, just amused, as if Tom were an ignorant boy. Tom wondered if Don acted 
that way at work. If he did, it would explain his checkered employment history.
“Don’t blame Lou for my rules,” Tom said. Don shrugged and went into the house 
to get his equipment.
A few minutes of peace, before things started… Tom sat down beside Lucia, who 
had begun her stretches, and reached for his toes. It used to be easy. Marjory 
sat on Lucia’s other side and leaned forward, trying to touch her forehead to 
her knees.
“Lou should be here tonight,” Lucia said. She gave Marjory a sideways look.
“I wondered if I’d bothered him,” Marjory said. “Asking him to come with me to 
the airport.”
“I don’t think so,” Lucia said. “I’d have said he was very pleased indeed. Did 
anything happen?”
“No. We picked up my friend; I dropped Lou back here. That was all. Don said 
something about his gear—”
“Oh, Tom made him pick up lots of the gear, and Don was going to just shove it 
in the racks anyhow. Tom made him do it right. As many times as he’s seen it 
done, he ought to have the way of it by now, but Don… he just will not learn. 
Now that he’s not with Helen anymore, he’s really backsliding into the slapdash 
boy we had years back. I wish he’d grow up.”
Tom listened without joining in. He knew the signs: any moment now Lucia would 
tackle Marjory about her feelings for Lou and for Don, and he wanted to be far 
away when that happened. He finished stretching and stood up just as Lou came 
around the corner of the house.
AS HE CHECKED THE LIGHTS AND MADE A FINAL SWEEP OF THE area for possible hazards 
that might cause injury, Tom watched Lou stretching… methodical as always, 
thorough as always. Some people might think Lou was dull, but Tom found him 
endlessly fascinating. Thirty years before, he might well never have made it in 
the ordinary way; fifty years before, he would have spent his life in an 
institution. But improvements in early intervention, in teaching methods, and in 
computer-assisted sensory integration exercises had given him the ability to 
find good employment, live independently, deal with the real world on near-equal 
terms.
A miracle of adaptation and also, to Tom, a little sad. Younger people than Lou, 
born with the same neurological deficit, could be completely cured with gene 
therapy in the first two years of life. Only those whose parents refused the 
treatment had to struggle, as Lou had done, with the strenuous therapies Lou had 
mastered. If Lou had been younger, he’d not have suffered. He might be normal, 
whatever that meant.
Yet here he was, fencing. Tom thought of the jerky, uneven movements Lou had 
made when he first began—it had seemed, for the longest time, that Lou’s fencing 
could be only a parody of the real thing. At each stage of development, he’d had 
the same slow, difficult start and slow, difficult progression… from foil to 
épée, from épée to rapier, from single blade to foil and dagger, épée and 
dagger, rapier and dagger, and so on.
He had mastered each by sheer effort, not by innate talent. Yet now that he had 
the physical skills, the mental skills that took other fencers decades seemed to 
come to him in only a few months.
Tom caught Lou’s eye and beckoned him over. “Remember what I said—you need to be 
fencing with the top group now.”
“Yes…” Lou nodded, then made a formal salute. His opening moves seemed stiff, 
but he quickly shifted into a style that took advantage of his more fractal 
movement. Tom circled, changed direction, feinted and probed and offered fake 
openings, and Lou matched him movement for movement, testing him as he was 
tested. Was there a pattern in Lou’s moves, other than a response to his own? He 
couldn’t tell. But again and again, Lou almost caught him out, anticipating his 
own moves… which must mean, Tom thought, that he himself had a pattern and Lou 
had spotted it.
“Pattern analysis,” he said aloud, just as Lou’s blade slipped his and made a 
touch on his chest. “I should have thought of that.”
“Sorry,” Lou said. He almost always said, “Sorry,” and then looked embarrassed.
“Good touch,” Tom said. “I was trying to think how you were doing what you were 
doing, rather than concentrating on the match. But are you using pattern 
analysis?”
“Yes,” Lou said. His tone was mild surprise, and Tom wondered if he was 
thinking, Doesn’t everyone?
“I can’t do it in real time,” Tom said. “Not unless someone’s got a very simple 
pattern.”
“Is it not fair?” Lou asked.
“It’s very fair, if you can do it,” Tom said. “It’s also the sign of a good 
fencer—or chess player, for that matter. Do you play chess?”
“No.”
“Well… then let’s see if I can keep my mind on what I’m doing and get a touch 
back.” Tom nodded, and they began again, but it was hard to concentrate. He 
wanted to think about Lou—about when that awkward jerkiness had become 
effective, when he’d first seen real promise, when Lou had begun reading the 
patterns of the slower fencers. What did it say about the way he thought? What 
did it say about him as a person?
Tom saw an opening and moved in, only to feel the sharp thud on his chest of 
another touch.
“Shoot, Lou, if you keep doing this we’ll have to promote you to tournaments,” 
he said, only half joking. Lou stiffened, his shoulders hunching. “Does that 
bother you?”
“I… do not think I should fence in a tournament,” Lou said.
“It’s up to you.” Tom saluted again. He wondered why Lou phrased it that way. It 
was one thing to have no desire for competition but another to think he 
“shouldn’t” do it. If Lou had been normal—Tom hated himself for even thinking 
the word, but there it was—he’d have been in tournaments for the past three 
years. Starting too early, as most people did, rather than keeping to this 
private practice venue for so long. Tom pulled his mind back to the bout, barely 
parried a thrust, and tried to make his own attacks more random.
Finally, his breath failed and he had to stop, gasping. “I need a break, Lou. 
C’mon over here and let’s review—” Lou followed him obediently and sat on the 
stone ledge bordering the patio while Tom took one of the chairs. Lou was 
sweating, he noticed, but not breathing particularly hard.
TOM FINALLY STOPS, GASPING, AND DECLARES HIMSELF TOO tired to go on. He leads me 
off to one side while two others step onto the ring. He is breathing very hard; 
his words come spaced apart, which makes it easier to understand them. I am glad 
he thinks I am doing so well.
“But here—you’re not out of breath yet. Go fight someone else, give me a chance 
to catch mine, and we’ll talk later.”
I look over at Marjory sitting beside Lucia. I saw her watching me while Tom and 
I fought. Now she is looking down and the heat has brought more pink into her 
face. My stomach clenches, but I get up and walk over to her.
“Hi, Marjory,” I say. My heart is pounding.
She looks up. She is smiling, a complete smile. “Hi, Lou,” she says. “How are 
you tonight?”
“Fine,” I say. “Will you… do you want to… will you fence with me?”
“Of course.” She reaches down to pick up her mask and puts it on. I cannot see 
her face as well now, and she will not be able to see mine when I’m masked; I 
slide it back over my head. I can look without being seen; my heart steadies.
We begin with a recapitulation of some sequences from Saviolo’s fencing manual. 
Step by step, forward and sideways, circling and feeling each other out. It is 
both ritual and conversation, as I balance parry against her thrust and thrust 
against her parry. Do I know this? Does she know that? Her movements are softer, 
more tentative, than Tom’s. Circle, step, question, answer, a dialogue in steel 
to music I can hear in my head.
I make a touch when she does not move as I expect. I did not want to hit her. 
“Sorry,” I say. My music falters; my rhythm stumbles. I step back, breaking 
contact, blade tip grounded.
“No—a good one,” Marjory says. “I know better than to let down my guard…”
“You’re not hurt?” It felt like a hard touch, jarring the palm of my hand.
“No… let’s go on.”
I see the flash of teeth inside her mask: a smile. I salute; she answers; we 
move back into the dance. I try to be careful, and through the touch of steel on 
steel I can feel that she is firmer, more concentrated, moving faster. I do not 
speed up; she makes a touch on my shoulder. From that point, I try to fence at 
her pace, making the encounter last as long as it can.
Too soon I hear her breathing roughen and she is ready to stop for a rest. We 
thank each other, clasping arms; I feel giddy.
“That was fun,” she says. “But I’ve got to quit making excuses for not working 
out. If I’d been doing my weights, my arm wouldn’t hurt.”
“I do weights three times a week,” I say. Then I realize she might think I am 
telling her what to do or boasting, but all I meant was that I do weights so my 
arms don’t hurt.
“I should,” she says. Her voice sounds happy and relaxed. I relax too. She is 
not unhappy that I said I do weights. “I used to. But I’m on a new project and 
it’s eating my time.”
I picture the project as something alive gnawing at a clock. This must be the 
research Emmy mentioned.
“Yes. What project is that?” I can hardly breathe as I wait for the answer.
“Well, my field is neuromuscular signal systems,” Marjory said. “We’re working 
on possible therapies for some of the genetic neuromuscular diseases that 
haven’t yielded to gene therapy.” She looks at me, and I nod.
“Like muscular dystrophy?” I ask.
“Yes, that’s one,” Marjory says “It’s how I got involved in fencing, actually.”
I feel my forehead wrinkling: confusion. How would fencing and muscular 
dystrophy be connected? People with MD don’t fence. “Fencing… ?”
“Yes. I was on my way to a departmental meeting, years ago, and cut through a 
courtyard just as Tom was giving a fencing demo. I had been thinking of good 
muscle function from a physician’s perspective, not from a user’s perspective… I 
remember I was standing there, watching people fence and thinking of the 
biochemical behavior of muscle cells, when Tom suddenly asked me if I’d like to 
try it. I think he mistook the look on my face for interest in fencing when it 
was the leg muscles I’d been watching.”
“I thought you fenced in college,” Lou said.
“That was college,” Marjory said. “I was a grad student at the time.”
“Oh… and you’ve always worked on muscles?”
“In one sense or another. With the success of some gene therapies for pure 
muscle diseases I’ve shifted more toward neuromuscular… or my employers have, I 
should say. I’m hardly a project director.” She looks at my face a long time; I 
have to look away because the feeling is too intense. “I hope you didn’t mind my 
asking you to ride with me to the airport, Lou. I felt safer with you along.”
I feel myself getting hot. “It’s not… I didn’t… I wanted—” A gulp and a swallow. 
“I am not upset,” I say when I get my voice under control. “I was glad to go 
with you.”
“That’s good,” Marjory says.
She says nothing more; I sit beside her feeling my body relax. If it were 
possible, I would just sit here all night. As my heart slows, I look around at 
the others. Max and Tom and Susan are fencing two-on-one. Don is slouched in a 
chair across the patio; he is staring at me but looks away when I look at him.
TOM WAVED GOOD-BYE TO MAX, SUSAN, AND MARJORY, WHO all walked out together. When 
he turned around, Lou was still there. Lucia had gone inside, trailed as usual 
by those who wanted to talk.
“There’s research,” Lou said. “New. A treatment, maybe.”
Tom listened more to the jerkiness of Lou’s voice, the strain obvious in the 
pitch and tonality, than to the actual words. Lou was frightened; he sounded 
like this only when he was anxious.
“Is it still experimental, or is it available?”
“Experimental. But they, the office, they want—my boss said… they want me to… to 
take it.”
“An experimental treatment? That’s odd. Usually those aren’t open to commercial 
health plans.”
“It’s—they—it is something developed at the Cambridge center.” Lou said, his 
voice even more jerky and mechanical. “They own it now. My boss says his boss 
wants us to take it. He does not agree, but he cannot stop them.”
Tom felt a sudden desire to slam his fist into someone’s head. Lou was scared; 
someone was bullying him. He’s not my child, Tom reminded himself. He had no 
rights in this situation, but as Lou’s friend, he did have responsibilities.
“Do you know how it’s supposed to work?” he asked.
“Not yet.” Lou shook his head. “It just came out on the Web this past week; the 
local autism society had a meeting about it, but they didn’t know… They think 
it’s still years from human use. Mr. Aldrin—my supervisor—said it could be 
tested now, and Mr. Crenshaw wants us to take it.”
“They can’t make you use experimental stuff, Lou; it’s against the law to force 
you—”
“But they could take my job—”
“Are they threatening to fire you if you don’t? They can’t do that.” He didn’t 
think they could. They couldn’t at the university, but the private sector was 
different. That different? “You need a lawyer,” he said. He tried to think of 
lawyers he knew. Gail might be the right lawyer for this, Tom thought. Gail had 
done human rights work for a long time and, more than that, had made it pay. He 
would think about who might help, rather than his own increasing desire to smash 
someone’s head in.
“No… yes… I do not know. I am worried. Mr. Aldrin said we should get help, a 
lawyer—”
“That’s exactly right,” Tom said. He wondered if giving Lou something else to 
think about would be a help or not. “Look, you know I mentioned tournaments to 
you—”
“I am not good enough,” Lou said quickly.
“Actually, you are. And I’m wondering if maybe fighting in a tournament would 
help you with this other problem—” Tom scrambled through his own thoughts, 
trying to clarify why he thought it might be a good idea. “If you end up needing 
to go to court against your employer, that’s kind of like a fencing match. The 
confidence you get from fencing could help.”
Lou just looked at him, almost expressionless. “I do not understand why it would 
help.”
“Well… maybe it wouldn’t. I just thought having some other experience, with more 
people than us, might.”
“When is a tournament?”
“The next one locally is a couple of weeks away,” Tom said. “Saturday. You could 
ride with us; Lucia and I would be around to back you up, make sure you met the 
nice people.”
“There are not-nice people?”
“Well, yes. There are not-nice people everywhere, and a few always manage to get 
into the fencing groups. But most of them are nice. You might enjoy it.” He 
shouldn’t push, even though he felt more and more that Lou needed more exposure 
to the normal world, if you could call a bunch of historical re-creation 
enthusiasts normal. They were normal in their everyday lives; they just liked to 
wear fancy costumes and pretend to kill each other with swords.
“I do not have a costume,” Lou said, looking down at his old leather jacket with 
the cut-off sleeves.
“We can find you something,” Tom said. Lou would probably fit into one of his 
costumes well enough. He had more than he needed, more than most 
seventeeth-century men had owned. “Lucia could help us out.”
“I am not sure,” Lou said.
“Well, let me know next week if you want to try it. We’ll need to get your entry 
money in. If not, there’s another one later on.”
“I will think about it,” Lou said.
“Good. And about this other—I may know a lawyer who could help you. I’ll check 
with her. And what about the Center—have you talked to them?”
“No. Mr. Aldrin phoned me, but no one has said anything official and I think I 
should not say anything until they do.”
“It wouldn’t hurt to find out what legal rights you have ahead of time,” Tom 
said. “I don’t know for sure—I know the laws have changed back and forth, but 
nothing I do involves research with human subjects, so I’m not up on the current 
legal situation. You need an expert.”
“It would cost a lot,” Lou said.
“Maybe,” Tom said. “That is something else to find out. Surely the Center can 
get you that information.”
“Thank you,” Lou said.
Tom watched him walk away, quiet, contained, a little frightening sometimes in 
his own harmless way. The very thought of someone experimenting on Lou made him 
feel sick. Lou was Lou, and fine the way he was.
Inside, Tom found Don sprawled on the floor under the ceiling fan talking a blue 
streak as usual while Lucia stitched on her embroidery with that expression that 
meant “Rescue me!” Don turned to him.
“So… you think Lou’s ready for open competition, huh?” Don asked.
Tom nodded. “You overheard that? Yes, I do. He’s improved a lot. He’s fencing 
with the best we have and holding his own.”
“It’s a lot of pressure for someone like him,” Don said.
“ ‘Someone like him’… you mean autistic?”
“Yeah. They don’t do well with crowds and noise and stuff, do they? I read 
that’s why the ones who are so good at music don’t become concert performers. 
Lou’s okay, but I think you shouldn’t push him into tournaments. He’ll fold.”
Tom choked back his first thought and said instead, “Do you remember your first 
tournament, Don?”
“Well, yeah… I was pretty young… It was a disaster.”
“Yes. Do you remember what you told me after your first bout?”
“No… not really. I know I lost… I just fell apart.”
“You told me you’d been unable to concentrate because of the people moving 
around.”
“Yeah, well, it’d be worse for someone like Lou.”
“Don—how could he lose worse than you did?”
Don’s face turned red. “Well, I—he—it would just be worse for him. Losing, I 
mean. For me—”
“You went and drank a six-pack and threw up behind a tree,” Tom said. “Then you 
cried and told me it was the worst day of your life.”
“I was young,” Don said. “And I let it all out, and it didn’t bother me after 
that… He’ll brood.”
“I’m glad you’re worried about his feelings,” Lucia said. Tom almost winced at 
the sarcasm in her voice, even though it wasn’t directed at him.
Don shrugged, though his eyes had narrowed. “Of course I worry,” he said. “He’s 
not like the rest of us—”
“That’s right,” Lucia said. “He’s a better fencer than most of us and a better 
person than some.”
“Jeez, Luci, you’re in a bad mood,” Don said, in the jokey tone that Tom knew 
meant he wasn’t joking.
“You’re not improving it,” Lucia said, folding her needlework and standing; she 
was gone before Tom could say anything. He hated it when she said what he was 
thinking and then he had to cope with the aftermath, knowing that she had 
expressed the thoughts he tried to keep hidden. Now, predictably, Don was giving 
him a complicit man-to-man look that invited a shared view of women that he 
didn’t share.
“Is she getting… you know… sort of midlife?” Don asked.
“No,” Tom said. “She’s expressing an opinion.” Which he happened to share, but 
should he say that? Why couldn’t Don just grow up and quit causing these 
problems? “Look—I’m tired, and I have an early class tomorrow.”
“Okay, okay, I can take a hint,” Don said, clambering up with a dramatic wince 
and a hand to his back.
The problem was, he couldn’t take a hint. It was another fifteen minutes before 
he finally left; Tom locked the front door and turned off the lights before Don 
could think of something else to say and come back, the way he often did. Tom 
felt bad; Don had been a charming and enthusiastic boy, years ago, and surely he 
should have been able to help him grow into a more mature man than he’d become. 
What else were older friends for?
“It’s not your fault,” Lucia said from the hall. Her voice was softer now, and 
he relaxed a little; he had not been looking forward to soothing a furious 
Lucia. “He’d be worse if you hadn’t worked on him.”
“I dunno,” Tom said. “I still think—”
“Born teacher that you are, Tom, you still think you should be able to save them 
all from themselves. Think: there’s Marcus at Columbia, and Grayson at Michigan, 
and Vladianoff in Berlin—all your boys once and all better men for knowing you. 
Don is not your fault.”
“Tonight I’ll buy that,” Tom said. Lucia, backlit by the light from their 
bedroom, had an almost magical quality.
“That’s not all I’m selling,” she said, her voice teasing, and she dropped the 
robe.
IT DOES NOT MAKE SENSE TO ME THAT TOM WOULD ASK ME again about entering a 
fencing tournament when I was talking about an experimental treatment for 
autism. I think about that on the drive home. It is clear that I am improving in 
my fencing and that I can hold my own with the better fencers in the group. But 
what does that have to do with the treatment or with legal rights?
People who fence in tournaments are serious about it. They have practiced. They 
have their own equipment. They want to win. I am not sure I want to win, though 
I do enjoy understanding the patterns and finding my way through them. Maybe Tom 
thinks I should want to win? Maybe Tom thinks I need to want to win in fencing 
so that I will want to win in court?
These two things are not connected. Someone can want to win a game or want to 
win a case in court without wanting to do both.
What is alike? Both are contests. Someone wins and someone else loses. My 
parents emphasized that everything in life is not a contest, that people can 
work together, that everyone can win when they do. Fencing is more fun when 
people are cooperating, trying to enjoy it with each other. I do not think of 
making touches on someone as winning but as playing the game well.
Both require preparation? Everything requires preparation. Both require—I swerve 
to avoid a bicyclist whose taillight is out; I barely saw him.
Forethought. Attention. Understanding. Patterns. The thoughts flick through my 
head like flash cards, each with its nested concepts topped by a neat word that 
cannot say everything.
I would like to please Tom. When I helped with the fencing surface and the 
equipment racks, he was pleased. It was like having my father back again, on his 
good days. I would like to please Tom again, but I do not know whether entering 
this tournament will do it. What if I fence badly and lose? Will he be 
disappointed? What does he expect?
It would be fun to fence with people I’ve never seen before. People whose 
patterns I do not know. People who are normal and will not know that I am not 
normal. Or will Tom tell them? Somehow I do not think he will.
Next Saturday I am going to the planetarium with Eric and Linda. The following 
Saturday, it is the third of the month, and I always spend extra time cleaning 
my apartment on the third Saturday of the month. The tournament is the Saturday 
after. I do not have anything planned for then.
When I get home I pencil in “fencing tournament” on the fourth Saturday of the 
month. I think about calling Tom, but it is late and, besides, he said to tell 
him next week. I put a reminder sticky on the calendar: “Tell Tom yes.”



CHAPTER FIVE
« ^ » 
BY FRIDAY AFTERNOON MR. CRENSHAW HAS STILL NOT said anything to us about the 
experimental treatment. Maybe Mr. Aldrin was wrong. Maybe Mr. Aldrin talked him 
out of it. On-line, there’s a flurry of discussion, mostly on the private news 
groups, but nobody seems to know when or where human trials are scheduled.
I do not say anything on-line about what Mr. Aldrin told us. He did not say not 
to talk about it, but it does not feel right. If Mr. Crenshaw has changed his 
mind and everyone gets upset, then he will be angry. He looks angry much of the 
time anyway when he comes to check on us.
The show at the planetarium is “Exploring the Outer Planets and Their 
Satellites.” It has been on since Labor Day, which means it is not too crowded 
now, even on Saturday. I go early, to the first showing, which is also less 
crowded even on days when it is crowded. Only a third of the seats are occupied, 
so Eric and Linda and I can take up a whole row without being too close to 
anyone.
The amphitheater smells funny, but it always does. As the lights dim and the 
artificial sky darkens, I feel the same old excitement. Even though these 
pinpricks of light that begin to show on the dome are not really stars, it is 
about stars. The light is not as old; it has not been worn smooth by its passage 
through billions and billions of miles—it has come from a projector less than a 
ten-thousandth of a light-second away—but I still enjoy it.
What I don’t enjoy is the long introduction that talks about what we knew a 
hundred years ago, and fifty years ago, and so on. I want to know what we know 
now, not what my parents might have heard when they were children. What 
difference does it make if someone in the distant past thought there were canals 
on Mars?
The plush on my seat has a hard, rough spot. I feel it with my fingers—someone 
has stuck gum or candy there and the cleaning compound hasn’t taken it all. Once 
I notice it, I can’t not notice it. I slide my brochure between me and the rough 
spot.
Finally the program moves out of history and into the present. The latest 
space-probe photographs of the outer planets are spectacular; the simulated 
flybys almost make me feel that I could fall out of my seat into the gravity 
well of one planet after another. I wish I could be there myself. When I was 
little and first saw newscasts of people in space I wanted to be an astronaut, 
but I know that’s impossible. Even if I had the new LifeTime treatment so I 
would live long enough, I would still be autistic. What you can’t change don’t 
grieve over, my mother said.
I don’t learn anything I don’t already know, but I enjoy the show anyway. After 
the show, I am hungry. It is past my usual lunchtime.
“We could have lunch,” Eric says.
“I am going home,” I say. I have good jerky at home, and apples that will not be 
crisp much longer.
Eric nods and turns away.
ON SUNDAY I GO TO CHURCH. THE ORGANIST PLAYS MOZART before the service starts. 
The music sounds right with the formality of the worship. It all matches, like 
shirt and tie and jacket should match: not alike but fitting together 
harmoniously. The choir sings a pleasant anthem by Rutter. I do not like Rutter 
as much as Mozart, but it doesn’t make my head hurt.
Monday is cooler, with a damp chill breeze out of the northeast. It is not cold 
enough to wear a jacket or sweater, but it is more comfortable. I know that the 
worst of the summer is over.
On Tuesday it is warm again. Tuesdays I do my grocery shopping. The stores are 
less crowded on Tuesdays, even when Tuesday falls on the first of the month.
I watch the people in the grocery store. When I was a child, we were told that 
soon there would be no grocery stores. Everyone would order their food over the 
Internet, and it would be delivered to their doors. The family next door did 
that for a while, and my mother thought it was silly. She and Mrs. Taylor used 
to argue about it. Their faces would get shiny, and their voices sounded like 
knives scraping together. I thought they hated each other when I was little, 
before I learned that grownups— people—could disagree and argue without 
disliking each other.
There are still places where you can have your groceries delivered, but around 
here the places that tried it went out of business. What you can do now is order 
groceries to be held in the “Quick Pickup” section, where a conveyor belt 
delivers a box to the pickup lane. I do that sometimes, but not often. It costs 
10 percent more, and it is important for me to have the experience of shopping. 
That’s what my mother said. Mrs. Taylor said maybe I was getting enough stress 
without that, but my mother said Mrs. Taylor was too sensitive. Sometimes I 
wished that Mrs. Taylor was my mother instead of my mother, but then I felt bad 
about that, too.
When people in the grocery store are shopping alone, they often look worried and 
intent and they ignore others. Mother taught me about the social etiquette of 
grocery stores, and a lot of it came easily to me, despite the noise and 
confusion. Because no one expects to stop and chat with strangers, they avoid 
eye contact, making it easy to watch them covertly without annoying them. They 
don’t mind that I don’t make eye contact, though it is polite to look directly 
at the person who takes your card or money, just for a moment. It is polite to 
say something about the weather, even if the person in front of you in line said 
almost the same thing, but you don’t have to.
Sometimes I wonder how normal normal people are, and I wonder that most in the 
grocery store. In our Daily Life Skills classes, we were taught to make a list 
and go directly from one aisle to another, checking off items on the list. Our 
teacher advised us to research prices ahead of time, in the newspaper, rather 
than compare prices while standing in the aisle. I thought—he told us—that he 
was teaching us how normal people shop.
But the man who is blocking the aisle in front of me has not had that lecture. 
He seems normal, but he is looking at every single jar of spaghetti sauce, 
comparing prices, reading labels. Beyond him, a short gray-haired woman with 
thick glasses is trying to peer past him at the same shelves; I think she wants 
one of the sauces on my side, but he is in the way and she is not willing to 
bother him. Neither am I. The muscles of his face are tight, making little 
bulges on his brow and cheeks and chin. His skin is a little shiny. He is angry. 
The gray-haired woman and I both know that a well-dressed man who looks angry 
can explode if he is bothered.
Suddenly he looks up and catches my eye. His face flushes and looks redder and 
shinier. “You could have said something!” he says, yanking his basket to one 
side, blocking the gray-haired woman even more. I smile at her and nod; she 
pushes her basket out around him, and then I go through.
“It’s so stupid,” I hear him mutter. “Why can’t they all be the same size?”
I know better than to answer him, though it is tempting. If people talk, they 
expect someone to listen. I am supposed to pay attention and listen when people 
talk, and I have trained myself to do that most of the time. In a grocery store 
sometimes people do not expect an answer and they get angry if you answer them. 
This man is already angry. I can feel my heart beating.
Ahead of me now are two giggling children, very young, pulling packets of 
seasoning mix out of racks. A young woman in jeans looks around the end of row 
and snarls, “Jackson! Misty! Put those back!” I jump. I know she wasn’t talking 
to me, but the tone sets my teeth on edge. One child squeals, right beside me 
now, and the other says, “Won’t!” The woman, her face squeezed into a strange 
shape by her anger, rushes past me. I hear a child yelp and do not turn around. 
I want to say, “Quiet, quiet, quiet,” but it is not my business; it is not all 
right to tell other people to be quiet if you are not the parent or the boss. I 
hear other voices now, women’s voices, someone scolding the woman with the 
children, and turn quickly into the cross-aisle. My heart is running in my 
chest, faster and stronger than usual.
People choose to come to stores like this, to hear this noise and see other 
people being rushed and angry and upset. Remote ordering and delivery failed 
because they would rather come and see other people than sit alone and be alone 
until the delivery comes. Not everywhere: in some cities, remote ordering has 
been successful. But here… I steer around a center display of wine, realize I’ve 
gone past the aisle I wanted, and look carefully all ways before turning back.
I always go down the spice aisle, whether I need spices or not. When it’s not 
crowded—and today it’s not—I stop and let myself smell the fragrances. Even over 
floor wax, cleaning fluid, and the scent of bubble gum from some child nearby I 
can detect a faint blend of spices and herbs. Cinnamon, cumin, cloves, marjoram, 
nutmeg… even the names are interesting. My mother liked to use spices and herbs 
in cooking. She let me smell them all. Some I did not like, but most of them 
felt good inside my head. Today I need chili spice. I do not have to stop and 
look; I know where it is on the shelf, a red-and-white box.
I AM DRENCHED IN SWEAT SUDDENLY. MARJORY IS AHEAD OF me, not noticing me because 
she is in grocery store shopping mode. She has opened a spice container—which, I 
wonder, until the air current brings me the unmistakable fragrance of cloves. My 
favorite. I turn my head quickly and try to concentrate on the shelf of food 
colorings, candied fruit, and cake decorations. I do not understand why these 
are in the same aisle with spices and herbs, but they are.
Will she see me? If she sees me, will she speak? Should I speak to her? My 
tongue feels as big as a zucchini. I sense motion approaching. Is it her or 
someone else? If I were really shopping, I would not look. I do not want cake 
decorations or candied cherries.
“Hi, Lou,” she says. “Baking a cake?”
I turn to look at her. I have not seen her except at Tom and Lucia’s or in the 
car to and from the airport. I have never seen her in this store before. This is 
not her right setting… or it may be, but I didn’t know it. “I—I’m just looking,” 
I say. It is hard to talk. I hate it that I am sweating.
“They are pretty colors,” she says, in a voice that seems to hold nothing but 
mild interest. At least she is not laughing out loud. “Do you like fruitcake?”
“N-no,” I say, swallowing the large lump in my throat. “I think… I think the 
colors are prettier than the taste.” That is wrong—tastes are not pretty or 
ugly—but it is too late to change.
She nods, her expression serious. “I feel the same way,” she says. “The first 
time I had fruitcake, when I was little, I expected it to taste good because it 
was so pretty. And then… I didn’t like it.”
“Do you… do you shop here often?” I ask.
“Not usually,” she says. “I’m on my way to a friend’s house and she asked me to 
pick up some things for her.” She looks at me, and I am once more conscious of 
how it is hard to talk. It is even hard to breathe, and I feel slimy with the 
sweat trickling down my back. “Is this your regular store?”
Yes, I say.
“Then maybe you can show me where to find rice and aluminum foil,” she says.
My mind is blank for a moment before I can remember; then I know again. “The 
rice is third aisle, halfway along,” I say. “And the foil’s over on Eighteen—”
“Oh, please,” she says, her voice sounding happy. “Just show me. I’ve already 
wandered around in here for what feels like an hour.”
“Show—take you?” I feel instantly stupid; this is what she meant, of course. 
“Come on,” I say, wheeling my basket and earning a glare from a large woman with 
a basket piled high with produce. “Sorry,” I say to her; she pushes past without 
answering.
“I’ll just follow,” Marjory says. “I don’t want to annoy people…”
I nod and head first for the rice, since we’re on Aisle Seven and that is 
closer. I know that Marjory is behind me; knowing that makes a warm place on my 
back, like a ray of sun. I am glad she cannot see my face; I can feel the heat 
there, too.
While Marjory looks at the shelves of rice—rice in bags, rice in boxes, 
long-grain and short-grain and brown, and rice in combinations with other 
things, and she does not know where the kind of rice is that she wants—I look at 
Marjory. One of her eyelashes is longer than the others and darker brown. Her 
eyes have more than one color in them, little flecks in the iris that make it 
more interesting.
Most eyes have more than one color, but usually they’re related. Blue eyes may 
have two shades of blue, or blue and gray, or blue and green, or even a fleck or 
two of brown. Most people don’t notice that. When I first went to get my state 
ID card, the form asked for eye color. I tried to write in all the colors in my 
own eyes, but the blank space wasn’t big enough. They told me to put “brown.” I 
put “brown,” but that is not the only color in my eyes. It is just the color 
that people see because they do not really look at other people’s eyes.
I like the color of Marjory’s eyes because they are her eyes and because I like 
all the colors in them. I like all the colors in her hair, too. She probably 
puts “brown” on forms that ask her for hair color, but her hair has many 
different colors, more than her eyes. In the store’s light, it looks duller than 
outside, with none of the orange glints, but I know they are there.
“Here it is,” she says. She is holding a box of rice, white, long-grained, 
quick-cooking. “On to the foil!” she says. Then she grins. “The cooking kind, 
not the fencing kind, I mean.”
I grin back, feeling my cheek muscles tighten. I knew what kind of foil she 
meant. Did she think I didn’t know, or was she just making a joke? I lead her to 
the middle cross-aisle of the store, all the way across to the aisle that has 
plastic bags and plastic storage dishes and rolls of plastic film and waxed 
paper and aluminum foil.
“That was quick,” she says. She is quicker to pick out the foil she wants than 
she was with the rice. “Thanks, Lou,” she says. “You were a big help.”
I wonder if I should tell her about the express lines at this store. Will she be 
annoyed? But she said she was in a hurry.
“The express lines,” I say. My mind blanks suddenly, and I hear my voice going 
flat and dull. “At this time, people come in and have more than the express 
lines sign says—”
“That’s so frustrating,” she says. “Is there one end or the other that’s 
faster?”
I am not sure what she means at first. The two ends of the checkout go the same 
speed, one coming as another leaves. It’s the middle, where the checker is, that 
can be slow or fast. Marjory is waiting, not rushing me. Maybe she means which 
end of the row of checkout stands, if not the express lanes, is faster. I know 
that; it’s the end nearest the customer services desk. I tell her, and she nods.
“Sorry, Lou, but I have to rush,” she says. “I’m supposed to meet Pam at 
six-fifteen.” It is 6:07; if Pam lives very far away she will not make it.
“Good luck,” I say. I watch her move briskly down the aisle away from me, 
swerving smoothly around the other shoppers.
“So—that’s what she looks like,” says someone behind me. I turn around. It is 
Emmy. As usual, she looks angry. “She’s not that pretty.”
“I think she is pretty,” I say.
“I can tell,” Emmy says. “You’re blushing.”
My face is hot. I may be blushing, but Emmy didn’t have to say so. It is not 
polite to comment on someone else’s expression in public. I say nothing.
“I suppose you think she’s in love with you,” Emmy says. Her voice is hostile. I 
can tell she thinks this is what I think and that she thinks I am wrong, that 
Marjory is not in love with me. I am unhappy that Emmy thinks these things but 
happy that I can understand all that in what she says and how she says it. Years 
ago I would not have understood.
“I do not know,” I say, keeping my voice calm and low. Down the aisle, a woman 
has paused with her hand on a package of plastic storage containers to look at 
us. “You do not know what I think,” I say to Emmy. “And you do not know what she 
thinks. You are trying to mind-read; that is an error.”
“You think you’re so smart,” Emmy says. “Just because you work with computers 
and math. You don’t know anything about people.”
I know the woman down the aisle is drifting closer and listening to us. I feel 
seared. We should not be talking like this in public. We should not be noticed. 
We should blend in; we should look and sound and act normal. If I try to tell 
Emmy that, she will be even angrier. She might say something loud. “I have to 
go,” I say to Emmy. “I’m late.”
“For what, for a date?” she asks. She says the word date louder than the other 
words and with an upward-moving tone that means she is being sarcastic.
“No,” I say in a calm voice. If I am calm maybe she will let me alone. “I am 
going to watch TV. I always watch TV on—” Suddenly I cannot think of the day of 
the week; my mind is blank. I turn away, as if I had said the whole sentence. 
Emmy laughs, a harsh sound, but she does not say anything else that I can hear. 
I hurry back to the spice aisle and pick up my box of chili powder and go to the 
checkout lanes. They all have lines.
In my line there are five people ahead of me. Three women and two men. One with 
light hair, four with dark hair. One man has a light-blue pullover shirt almost 
the same shade as a box in his basket. I try to think only about color, but it 
is noisy and the lights in the store make the colors different than they really 
are. As they are in daylight, I mean. The store is also reality. The things I 
don’t like are as much reality as the things I do like.
Even so, it is easier if I think about the things I do like and not about the 
ones I don’t. Thinking about Marjory and Haydn’s Te Deum makes me very happy; if 
I let myself think of Emmy, even for a moment, the music goes sour and dark and 
I want to run away. I fix my mind on Marjory, as if she were an assignment at 
work, and the music dances, happier and happier.
“Is she your girlfriend?”
I stiffen and half turn. It is the woman who was watching Emmy and me; she has 
come up behind me In the checkout line. Her eyes glisten in the store’s bright 
light; her lipstick has dried in the corners of her mouth to a garish orange. 
She smiles at me, but it is not a soft smile. It is a hard smile, of the mouth 
only. I say nothing, and she speaks again.
“I couldn’t help noticing,” she says. “Your friend was so upset. She’s a little… 
different, isn’t she?” She bares more teeth.
I do not know what to say. I have to say something; other people in the line are 
now watching.
“I don’t mean to be rude,” the woman says. The muscles around her eyes are 
tense. “It’s just… I noticed her way of speaking.”
Emmy’s life is Emmy’s life. It is not this woman’s life; she has no right to 
know what is wrong with Emmy. If anything is wrong.
“It must be hard for people like you,” the woman says. She turns her head, 
glancing at the people in the line who are watching us, and gives a little 
giggle. I do not know what she thinks is funny. I do not think any of this is 
funny. “Relationships are hard enough for the rest of us,” she says. Now she is 
not smiling. She has the same expression as Dr. Fornum has when she is 
explaining something she wants me to do. “It must be worse for you.”
The man behind her has an odd expression on his face; I can’t tell if he agrees 
with her or not. I wish someone would tell her to be quiet. If I tell her to be 
quiet, that is rude.
“I hope I haven’t upset you,” she says, in a higher voice, and her eyebrows 
lift. She is waiting for me to give the right answer.
I think there is no right answer. “I don’t know you,” I say, keeping my voice 
very low and calm. I mean “I don’t know you and I do not want to talk about Emmy 
or Marjory or anything personal with someone I do not know.”
Her face bunches up; I turn away quickly. From behind me I hear a huffed, 
“Well!” and behind that a man’s voice softly muttering, “Serves you right.” I 
think it is the man behind the woman, but I will not turn around and look. Ahead 
of me the line is down to two people; I look straight ahead without focusing on 
anything in particular, trying to hear the music again, but I can’t. All I can 
hear is noises.
When I carry my groceries out, the sticky heat seems even worse than when I went 
in. I can smell everything: candy on discarded candy wrappers, fruit peels, gum, 
people’s deodorant and shampoo, the asphalt of the parking lot, exhaust from the 
buses. I set my groceries on the back of the car while I unlock it.
“Hey,” someone says. I jump and turn. It is Don. I did not expect to see Don 
here. I did not expect to see Marjory here, either. I wonder if other people in 
the fencing group shop here. “Hi, fella,” he says. He is wearing a striped knit 
shirt and dark slacks. I have not seen him wear anything like this before; when 
he comes to fencing he wears either a T-shirt and jeans or a costume.
“Hi, Don,” I say. I do not want to talk to Don even though he is a friend. It is 
too hot, and I need to get my groceries home and put them away. I pick up the 
first sack and put it in the backseat.
“This where you shop?” he asks. It is a silly question when I am standing here 
with grocery sacks on my car. Does he think I stole them?
“I come here on Tuesdays,” I say.
He looks disapproving. Maybe he thinks Tuesdays are the wrong day for grocery 
shopping—but then why is he here? “Coming to fencing tomorrow?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. I put the other sack in the car, and close the back door.
“Going to that tournament?” He is staring at me in a way that makes me want to 
look down or away.
“Yes,” I say. “But I have to go home now.” Milk should be kept at a temperature 
of thirty-eight degrees F. or below. It is at least ninety degrees F. here in 
the parking lot, and the milk I bought will be warming up.
“Have a real routine, don’t you?” he says.
I do not know what a false routine would be. I wonder if this is like real heel.
“Do the same thing every day?” he asks.
“Not the same thing every day,” I say. “The same things on the same days.”
“Oh, right,” he says. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow, you regular guy, you.” He 
laughs. It is a strange laugh, not as if he were really enjoying it. I open the 
front door and get into my car; he does not say anything or walk off. When I 
start the engine, he shrugs, an abrupt twitch of the shoulders as if something 
had stung him.
“Good-bye,” I say, being polite.
“Yeah,” he says. “Bye.” He is still standing there as I drive off. In the 
rearview mirror I can see him standing in the same place until I am almost to 
the street. I turn right onto the street; when I glance back, he is gone.
IT IS QUIETER IN MY APARTMENT THAN OUTSIDE, BUT IT IS NOT really quiet. Beneath 
me, the policeman Danny Bryce has the TV on, and I know that he is watching a 
game show with a studio audience. Above me, Mrs. Sanderson is dragging chairs to 
the table in her kitchenette; she does this every night. I can hear the ticking 
of my windup alarm and a faint hum from the booster power supply for my 
computer. It changes tone slightly as the power cycles. Outside noises still 
come in: the rattle of a commuter train, the whine of traffic, voices in the 
side yard.
When I am upset it is harder to ignore the sounds. If I turn on my music, it 
will press down on top of them, but they will still be there, like toys shoved 
under a thick rug. I put my groceries away, wiping the beads of condensation off 
the milk carton, then turn on my music. Not too loud; I must not annoy my 
neighbors. The disk in the player is Mozart, which usually works. I can feel my 
tension letting go, bit by bit.
I do not know why that woman would speak to me. She should not do that. The 
grocery store is neutral ground; she should not talk to strangers. I was safe 
until she noticed me. If Emmy hadn’t talked so loud, the woman would not have 
noticed. She said that. I do not like Emmy much anyway; I feel my neck getting 
hot when I think about what Emmy said and what that woman said.
My parents said that I should not blame other people when they noticed that I 
was different. I should not blame Emmy. I should look at myself and think what 
happened.
I do not want to do that. I did not do anything wrong. I need to go grocery 
shopping. I was there for the right reason. I was behaving appropriately. I did 
not talk to strangers or talk out loud to myself. I did not take up more space 
in the aisle than I should. Marjory is my friend; I was not wrong to talk to her 
and help her find the rice and aluminum foil.
Emmy was wrong. Emmy talked too loud and that is why the woman noticed. But even 
so, that woman should have minded her own business. Even if Emmy talked too 
loud, it was not my fault.



CHAPTER SIX
« ^ » 
I NEED TO KNOW IF WHAT I FEEL IS WHAT NORMAL PEOPLE feel when they are in love. 
We had a few stories about people in love in school, in English classes, but the 
teachers always said those were unrealistic. I do not know the way they were 
unrealistic. I did not ask then, because I did not care. I thought it was silly. 
Mr. Neilson in Health said it was all hormones and not to do anything stupid. 
The way he described sexual intercourse made me wish I had nothing down there, 
like a plastic doll. I could not imagine having to put this into that. And the 
words for the body parts are ugly. Being pricked hurts; who would want to have a 
prick? I kept thinking of thorns. The others aren’t much better, and the 
official medical term, penis, sounds whiny. Teeny, weeny, meanie… penis. The 
words for the act itself are ugly, pounding words; they made me think of pain. 
The thought of that closeness, of having to breathe someone else’s breath, 
smelling her body up close… disgusting. The locker room was bad enough; I kept 
wanting to throw up.
It was disgusting then. Now… the scent off Marjory’s hair, when she has been 
fencing, makes me want to get closer. Even though she uses a scented soap for 
her clothes, even though she uses a deodorant with a powdery sort of smell, 
there’s something… but the idea is still awful. I’ve seen pictures; I know what 
a woman’s body looks like. When I was in school, boys passed around little video 
clips of naked women dancing and men and women having sex. They always got hot 
and sweaty when they did this, and their voices sounded different, more like 
chimpanzee voices on nature programs. I wanted to see at first, because I didn’t 
know—my parents didn’t have things like that in the house—but it was kind of 
boring, and the women all looked a little angry or frightened. I thought if they 
were enjoying it, they would look happy.
I never wanted to make anyone look scared or angry. It does not feel good to be 
scared or angry. Scared people make mistakes. Angry people make mistakes. Mr. 
Neilson said it was normal to have sexual feelings, but he did not explain what 
they were, not in a way that I could understand. My body grew the same as other 
boys’ bodies; I remember how surprised I was when I found the first dark hairs 
growing on my crotch. Our teacher had told us about sperm and eggs and how 
things grew from seeds. When I saw those hairs I thought someone had planted the 
seeds for them, and I didn’t know how it happened. My mother explained it was 
puberty and told me not to do anything stupid.
I could never be sure which kind of feeling they meant, a body feeling like hot 
and cold or a mind feeling like happy and sad. When I saw the pictures of naked 
girls I had a body feeling sometimes, but the only mind feeling I had was 
disgust.
I have seen Marjory fencing and I know she enjoys it, but she is not smiling 
most of the time. They said a smiling face is a happy face. Maybe they were 
wrong? Maybe she would enjoy it?
When I get to Tom and Lucia’s, Lucia tells me to go on out. She is doing 
something in the kitchen; I can hear the rattle of pans. I smell spices. No one 
else is here yet.
Tom is sanding the nicks off one of his blades when I get to the backyard. I 
begin stretching. They are the only couple I know who have been married so long 
since my parents died, and since my parents are dead I cannot ask them what 
marriage is like.
“Sometimes you and Lucia sound angry at each other,” I say, watching Tom’s face 
to see if he is going to be angry with me.
“Married people argue sometimes,” Tom said. “It’s not easy to stay this close to 
someone for years.”
“Does—” I cannot think how to say what I want to say. “If Lucia is angry at you… 
if you are angry at her… it means you are not loving each other?”
Tom looks startled. Then he laughs, a tense laugh. “No, but it’s hard to 
explain, Lou. We love each other, and we love each other even when we’re angry. 
The love is behind the anger, like a wall behind a curtain or the land as a 
storm passes over it. The storm goes away, and the land is still there.”
“If there is a storm,” I say, “sometimes there is a flood or a house gets blown 
away.”
“Yes, and sometimes, if love isn’t strong enough or the anger is big enough, 
people do quit loving each other. But we aren’t.”
I wonder how he can be so sure. Lucia has been angry so many times in the past 
three months. How can Tom know that she still loves him?
“People sometimes have a bad time for a while,” Tom says, as if he knew what I 
was thinking. “Lucia’s been upset lately about a situation at work. When she 
found that you were being pressured to take the treatment, that also upset her.”
I never thought about normal people having trouble at work. The only normal 
people I know have had the same jobs as long as I have known them. What kind of 
trouble do normal people have? They cannot have a Mr. Crenshaw asking them to 
take medicine they don’t want to take. What makes them angry at their work?
“Lucia is angry because of her work and because of me?”
“Partly, yes. A lot of things have hit her at once.”
“It is not as comfortable when Lucia is angry,” I say.
Tom makes a funny sound that is part laugh and part something else. “You can say 
that again,” he says. I know this does not mean that I should say what I said 
again, though it still seems like a silly thing to say instead of “I agree with 
you” or “You’re right.”
“I thought about the tournament,” I say. “I decided—”
Marjory comes out into the yard. She always goes through the house, though many 
people go through the side yard gate. I wonder what it would feel like if 
Marjory were angry with me the way Lucia gets angry with Tom or the way Tom and 
Lucia have been angry with Don. I have always been upset when people were angry 
with me, even people I didn’t like. I think it would be worse to have Marjory 
mad at me than even my parents.
“You decided…” Tom does not quite ask. Then he glances up and sees Marjory. “Ah. 
Well?”
“I would like to try,” I say. “If it is still all right.”
“Oh,” Marjory says. “You’ve decided to enter the tournament, Lou? Good for you!”
“It is very much all right,” Tom says. “But now you have to hear my standard 
number-one lecture. Go get your stuff, Marjory; Lou has to pay attention.”
I wonder how many number lectures he has and why I need a number lecture to 
enter a fencing tournament. Marjory goes into the house, and then it is easier 
to listen to Tom.
“First off, between now and then, you’ll practice as much as you can. Every day, 
if possible, until the last day. If you can’t come over here, at least do 
stretches, legwork, and point control at home.”
I do not think I can come to Tom and Lucia’s every day. When would I do the 
laundry or the grocery shopping or clean my car? “How many should I do?”
“Whatever you have time for without getting too sore,” Tom says. “Then, a week 
before, check all your equipment. You keep your equipment in good repair, but 
it’s still good to check it. We’ll go over it together. Do you have a spare 
blade?”
“No… should I order one?”
“Yes, if you can afford it. Otherwise, you can have one of mine.”
“I can order one.” It is not in my budget, but I have enough right now.
“Well, then. You want to have all your equipment checked out, have it clean and 
ready to pack. The day before, you don’t practice—you need to relax. Pack your 
gear, then go take a walk or something.”
“Could I just stay home?”
“You could, but it’s a good idea to get some exercise, just not overdo it. Eat a 
good supper; go to bed at your usual time.”
I can understand what this plan will accomplish, but it will be hard to do what 
Tom wants and go to work and do the other things I must do. I do not have to 
watch TV or play games on the ’net with my friends, and I do not have to go to 
the Center on Saturday, even though I usually do.
“It will be… you will have… fencing practice here other nights than Wednesday?”
“For students entering the tournament, yes,” Tom says. “Come any day but 
Tuesday. That’s our special night.”
I feel my face getting hot. I wonder what it would be like to have a special 
night. “I do my grocery shopping on Tuesday,” I say.
Marjory, Lucia, and Max come out of the house. “Enough lecture,” Lucia says. 
“You’ll scare him off. Don’t forget the entry form.”
“Entry form!” Tom smacks himself on the forehead. He does this whenever he 
forgets something. I do not know why. It does not help me remember when I try 
it. He goes into the house. I am through with my stretches now, but the others 
are just starting. Susan, Don, and Cindy come through the side gate. Don is 
carrying Susan’s blue bag; Cindy has a green one. Don goes inside to get his 
gear; Tom comes back out with a paper for me to fill out and sign.
The first part is easy: my name, address, contact number, age, height, and 
weight. I do not know what to put in the space marked “persona.”
“Ignore that,” Tom says. “It’s for people who like to play a part.”
“In a play?” I ask.
“No. All day, they pretend to be someone they’ve made up, from history. Well, 
from pretend history.”
“It is another game?” I ask.
“Yes, exactly. And people treat them as if they were their pretend person.”
When I talked about pretend persons to my teachers, they got upset and made 
notes in my records. I would like to ask Tom if normal people do this often and 
if he does it, but I do not want to upset him.
“For instance,” Tom says, “when I was younger I had a persona named Pierre 
Ferret—that’s spelled like the animal ferret—who was a spy for the evil 
cardinal.”
“What is evil about a bird?” I ask.
“The other kind of cardinal,” Tom says. “Didn’t you ever read The Three 
Musketeers?”
“No,” I say. I never even heard of The Three Musketeers.
“Oh, well, you’d love it,” he says. “But it would take too long to tell the 
story now—it’s just that there was a wicked cardinal and a foolish queen and an 
even more foolish young king and three brave musketeers who were the best 
swordsmen in the world except for D’Artagnan, so naturally half the group wanted 
to be the musketeers. I was young and wild, so I decided to be the cardinal’s 
spy.”
I cannot imagine Tom as a spy. I cannot imagine Tom pretending to be someone 
named Pierre Ferret and people calling him that instead of Tom. It seems a lot 
of trouble if what he really wanted to do was fence.
“And Lucia,” he goes on. “Lucia made a most excellent lady-in-waiting.”
“Don’t even start,” Lucia says. She does not say what he is not supposed to 
start, but she is smiling. “I’m too old for that now,” she says.
“So are we both,” Tom says. He does not sound like he means it. He sighs. “But 
you don’t need a persona, Lou, unless you want to be someone else for a day.”
I do not want to be someone else. It is hard enough to be Lou.
I skip all the blanks that concern the persona I do not have and read the Ritual 
Disclaimer at the bottom. That is what the bold print says, but I do not know 
exactly what it means. By signing it I agree that fencing is a dangerous sport 
and that any injuries I may suffer are not the fault of the tournament 
organizers and therefore I cannot sue them. I further agree to abide by the 
rules of the sport and the rulings of all referees, which will be final.
I hand the signed form to Tom, who hands it to Lucia. She sighs and puts it in 
her needlework basket.
THURSDAY EVENING I USUALLY WATCH TELEVISION, BUT I AM going to the tournament. 
Tom told me to practice every day I could. I change and drive over to Tom and 
Lucia’s. It feels very strange driving this way on a Thursday. I notice the 
color of the sky, of the leaves on the trees, more than I usually do. Tom takes 
me outside and tells me to start doing footwork exercises, then drills of 
specific parry/riposte combinations.
Soon I am breathing hard. “That’s good,” he says. “Keep going. I’m having you do 
things you can do at home, since you probably won’t make it over here every 
night.”
No one else comes. In half an hour Tom puts on his mask, and we do slow and fast 
drills on the same moves, over and over. It is not what I expected, but I can 
see how it will help me. I leave by 8:30 and am too tired to go on-line and play 
games when I get home. It is much harder when I am fencing all the time, instead 
of taking turns and watching the others.
I take a shower, feeling the new bruises gingerly. Even though I am tired and 
stiff, I feel good. Mr. Crenshaw has not said anything about the new treatment 
and humans. Marjory said, “Oh. Good for you!” when she found out I was going to 
be in the tournament. Tom and Lucia are not angry with each other, at least not 
enough to quit being married.
The next day I do laundry, but on Saturday after cleaning, I go to Tom and 
Lucia’s again for another lesson. I am not as stiff on Sunday as I was on 
Friday. On Monday I have another extra lesson. I am glad Tom and Lucia’s special 
day is Tuesday because this means I do not have to change the day I do grocery 
shopping. Marjory is not at the store. Don is not at the store. On Wednesday, I 
go fencing as usual. Marjory is not there; Lucia says she is out of town. Lucia 
gives me special clothes for the tournament. Tom tells me not to come on 
Thursday, that I am ready enough.
Friday morning at 8:53 Mr. Crenshaw calls us together and says he has an 
announcement to make. My stomach knots.
“You are all very lucky,” he says. “In today’s tough economic climate I am, 
frankly, very surprised that this is even remotely possible, but in fact… you 
have the chance to receive a brand-new treatment at no cost to yourselves.” His 
mouth is stretched in a big false grin; his face is shiny with the effort he is 
making.
He must think we are really stupid. I glance at Cameron, then Dale, then Chuy, 
the only ones I can see without turning my head. Their eyes are moving, too.
Cameron says, in a flat voice, “You mean the experimental treatment developed in 
Cambridge and reported in Nature Neuroscience a few weeks ago?”
Crenshaw pales and swallows. “Who told you about that?”
“It was on the Internet,” Chuy says.
“It—it—” Crenshaw stops, and glares at all of us. Then he twists his mouth into 
a smile again. “Be that as it may, there is a new treatment, which you have the 
opportunity to receive at no cost to you.”
“I don’t want it,” Linda says. “I do not need a treatment; I am fine the way I 
am.” I turn and look at her.
Crenshaw turns red. “You are not fine,” he says, his voice getting louder and 
harsher. “And you are not normal. You are autistics, you are disabled, you were 
hired under a special provision—”
“ ‘Normal’ is a dryer setting,” Chuy and Linda say together. They grin briefly.
“You have to adapt,” Crenshaw says. “You can’t expect to get special privileges 
forever, not when there’s a treatment that will make you normal. That gym, and 
private offices, and all that music, and those ridiculous decorations—you can be 
normal and there’s no need for that. It’s uneconomic. It’s ridiculous.” He turns 
as if to leave and then whirls back. “It has to stop,” he says. Then he does 
leave.
We all look at one another. Nobody says anything for several minutes. Then Chuy 
says, “Well, it’s happened.”
“I won’t do it,” Linda says. “They can’t make me.”
“Maybe they can,” Chuy says. “We don’t know for sure.”
In the afternoon, we each get a letter by interoffice mail, a letter on paper. 
The letter says that due to economic pressure and the need to diversify and 
remain competitive, each department must reduce staff. Individuals actively 
taking part in research protocols are exempt from consideration for termination, 
the letter says. Others will be offered attractive separation allowances for 
voluntary separation. The letter does not specifically say that we must agree to 
treatment or lose our jobs, but I think that is what it means.
Mr. Aldrin comes by our building in late afternoon and calls us into the hall.
“I couldn’t stop them,” he says. “I tried.” I think again of my mother’s saying: 
“Trying isn’t doing.” Trying isn’t enough. Only doing counts. I look at Mr. 
Aldrin, who is a nice man, and it is clear that he is not as strong as Mr. 
Crenshaw, who is not a nice man. Mr. Aldrin looks sad. “I’m really sorry,” he 
says, “but maybe it’s for the best,” and then he leaves. That is a silly thing 
to say. How can it be for the best?
“We should talk,” Cameron says. “Whatever I want or you want, we should talk 
about it. And talk to someone else—a lawyer, maybe.”
“The letter says no discussion outside the office,” Bailey says.
“The letter is to frighten us,” I say.
“We should talk,” Cameron says again. “Tonight after work.”
“I do my laundry on Friday night,” I say.
“Tomorrow, at the Center…”
“I am going somewhere tomorrow,” I say. They are all looking at me; I look away. 
“It is a fencing tournament,” I say. I am a little surprised when no one asks me 
about it.
“We will talk and we may ask at the Center,” Cameron says. “We will bounce you 
about it later.”
“I do not want to talk,” Linda says. “I want to be left alone.” She walks away. 
She is upset. We are all upset.
I go into my office and stare at the monitor. The data are flat and empty, like 
a blank screen. Somewhere in there are the patterns I am paid to find or 
generate, but today the only pattern I can see is closing like a trap around me, 
darkness swirling in from all sides, faster than I can analyze it.
I fix my mind on the schedule for tonight and tomorrow: Tom told me what to do 
to prepare and I will do it.
TOM PULLED INTO THE PARKING LOT OF LOU’S APARTMENT building, aware that he had 
never before seen where Lou lived while Lou had been in and out of his house for 
years. It looked like a perfectly ordinary apartment building, built sometime in 
the previous century. Predictably, Lou was ready on time, waiting outside with 
all his gear, other than his blades, neatly stowed in a duffel. He looked 
rested, if tense; he had all the signs of someone who had followed the advice, 
who had eaten well and slept adequately. He wore the outfit Lucia had helped him 
assemble; he looked uncomfortable in it, as most first-timers did in period 
costume.
“You ready?” Tom asked.
Lou looked around himself as if to check and said, “Yes. Good morning, Tom. Good 
morning, Lucia.”
“Good morning to you,” Lucia said. Tom glanced at her. They’d had one argument 
already about Lou; Lucia was ready to dismember anyone who gave him the least 
trouble, and Tom felt that Lou could handle minor problems on his own. She had 
been so tense about Lou lately, he thought. She and Marjory were up to 
something, but Lucia wouldn’t explain. He hoped it wouldn’t erupt at the 
tournament.
Lou was silent in the backseat on the way; it was restful, compared to the 
chatterers Tom was used to. Suddenly Lou spoke up. “Did you ever wonder,” he 
asked, “about how fast dark is?”
“Mmm?” Tom dragged his mind back from wondering whether the middle section of 
his latest paper needed tightening.
“The speed of light,” Lou said. “They have a value for the speed of light in a 
vacuum… but the speed of dark…”
“Dark doesn’t have a speed,” Lucia said. “It’s just what’s there when light 
isn’t—it’s just a word for absence.”
“I think… I think maybe it does,” Lou said.
Tom glanced in the rearview mirror; Lou’s face looked a little sad. “Do you have 
any idea how fast it might be?” Tom asked. Lucia glanced at him; he ignored her. 
She always worried when he indulged Lou in his word games, but he couldn’t see 
the harm in it.
“It’s where light isn’t,” Lou said. “Where light hasn’t come yet. It could be 
faster—it’s always ahead.”
“Or it could have no movement at all, because it’s already there, in place,” Tom 
said. “A place, not a motion.”
“It isn’t a thing,” Lucia said. “It’s just an abstraction, just a word for 
having no light. It can’t have motion…”
“If you’re going to go that far,” Tom said, “light is an abstraction of sorts. 
And they used to say it existed only in motion, particle, and wave, until early 
in this century when they stopped it.”
He could see Lucia scowl without even looking at her, from the edge in her 
voice. “Light is real. Darkness is the absence of light.”
“Sometimes dark seems darker than dark,” Lou said. “Thicker.”
“Do you really think it’s real?” Lucia asked, half turning in the seat.
“ ‘Darkness is a natural phenomenon characterized by the absence of light,’ ” 
Lou’s singsong delivery made it clear this was a quote. “That’s from my high 
school general science book. But it doesn’t really tell you anything. My teacher 
said that although the night sky looks dark between the stars, there’s actually 
light—stars give off light in all directions, so there’s light or you couldn’t 
see them.”
“Metaphorically,” Tom said, “if you take knowledge as light and ignorance as 
dark, there does sometimes seem to be a real presence to the dark—to ignorance. 
Something more tactile and muscley than just lack of knowledge. A sort of will 
to ignorance. It would explain some politicians.”
“Metaphorically,” Lucia said, “you can call a whale a symbol of the desert or 
anything something else.”
“Are you feeling all right?” Tom asked. He saw her sudden shift in the seat from 
the corner of his eye.
“I’m feeling annoyed,” Lucia said. “And you know why.”
“I’m sorry,” Lou said from behind.
“Why are you sorry?” Lucia asked.
“I should not have said anything about the speed of dark,” Lou said. “It has 
upset you.”
“You did not upset me,” Lucia said. “Tom did.”
Tom drove on as uncomfortable silence overfilled the car. When they reached the 
park where the tournament would be, he hurried through the business of getting 
Lou signed in, his weapons checked, and then took him on a quick tour of the 
facilities. Lucia went off to talk to friends of hers; Tom hoped she would get 
over her annoyance, which upset Lou as well as himself.
After a half hour, Tom felt himself relaxing into the familiar camaraderie. He 
knew almost everyone; familiar conversations flowed around him.
Who was studying with whom, who had entered this tournament or that, who had won 
or lost. What the current quarrels were and who was not speaking. Lou seemed to 
be holding up well, able to greet the people Tom introduced him to. Tom coached 
him through a little warm-up; then it was time to bring him back to the rings 
for his first match.
“Now remember,” Tom said, “your best chance to score is to attack immediately. 
Your opponent won’t know your attack and you won’t know his, but you are fast. 
Just blow past his guard and nail him, or try to. It’ll shake him up anyway—”
“Hi, guys,” Don said from behind Tom. “Just got here—has he fought yet?”
Trust Don to break Lou’s concentration. “No—he’s about to. Be with you in a 
minute.” He turned back to Lou. “You’ll do fine, Lou. Just remember—it’s best 
three out of five, so don’t worry if he does get a touch on you. You can still 
win. And listen to the ref…” Then it was time, and Lou turned away to enter the 
roped-off ring. Tom found himself suddenly stricken by panic. What if he had 
pushed Lou into something beyond his capacity?
Lou looked as awkward as in his first year. Though his stance was technically 
correct, it looked stiff and contrived, not the stance of someone who could 
actually move.
“I told you,” Don said, quietly for him. “It’s too much for him; he—”
“Shut up,” Tom said. “He’ll hear you.”
I AM READY BEFORE TOM ARRIVES. I AM WEARING THE COSTUME Lucia assembled for me, 
but I feel very peculiar wearing it in public. It does not look like normal 
clothes. The tall socks hug my legs all the way to the knees. The big sleeves of 
the shirt blow in the breeze, brushing up and down on my arms. Even though the 
colors are sad colors, brown and tan and dark green, I do not think Mr. Aldrin 
or Mr. Crenshaw would approve if they saw me in it.
“Promptness is the courtesy of kings,” my fourth-grade teacher wrote on the 
board. She told us to copy it. She explained it. I did not understand about 
kings then or why we should care what kings did, but I have always understood 
that making people wait is rude. I do not like it when I have to wait. Tom is 
also on time, so I do not have to wait long.
The ride to the tournament makes me feel scared, because Lucia and Tom are 
arguing again. Even though Tom said it was all right, I do not feel that it is 
all right, and I feel that somehow it is my fault. I do not know how or why. I 
do not understand why if Lucia is angry about something at work she does not 
talk about that, instead of snapping at Tom.
At the tournament site, Tom parks on the grass, in a row with other vehicles. 
There is no place to plug in the batteries here. Automatically, I look at the 
cars and count colors and type: eighteen blue, five red, fourteen brown or beige 
or tan. Twenty-one have solar panels on the roof. Most people are wearing 
costumes. All the costumes are as odd as mine, or odder. One man wears a big 
flat hat covered with feathers. It looks like a mistake. Tom says it is not, 
that people really dressed like that centuries ago. I want to count colors, but 
most of the costumes have many colors, so it is harder. I like the swirling 
cloaks that are one color on the outside and another on the inside. It is almost 
like a spin spiral when they move.
First we go to a table where a woman in a long dress checks our names against a 
list. She hands us little metal circles with holes in them, and Lucia pulls thin 
ribbons out of her pocket and gives me a green one. “Put it on this,” she says, 
“and then around your neck.” Then Tom leads me over to another table with a man 
in puffy shorts who checks my name off on another list.
“You’re up at ten-fifteen,” he says. “The chart’s over there”—he points to a 
green-and-yellow-striped tent.
The chart is made of big pieces of cardboard taped together, with lines for 
names like a genealogy chart, only mostly blank. Only the left-hand set of lines 
has been filled in. I find my name and the name of my first opponent.
“It’s nine-thirty now,” Tom says. “Let’s take a look at the field and then find 
you a place to warm up.”
When it is my turn and I step into the marked area, my heart is pounding and my 
hands are shaking. I do not know what I am doing here. I should not be here: I 
do not know the pattern. Then my opponent attacks and I parry. It is not a good 
parry—I was slow—but he did not touch me. I take a deep breath and concentrate 
on his movement, on his patterns.
My opponent does not seem to notice when I make touches. I am surprised, but Tom 
told me that some people do not call shots against them. Some of them, he said, 
may be too excited to feel a light or even medium touch, especially if it is 
their first match. It could happen to you, too, he said. This is why he has been 
telling me to make firmer touches. I try again, and this time the other man is 
rushing forward just as I thrust and I hit him too hard. He is upset and speaks 
to the referee, but the referee says it is his fault for rushing.
In the end, I win the bout. I am breathless, not just from the fight. It feels 
so different, and I do not know what the difference is. I feel lighter, as if 
gravity had changed, but it is not the same lightness I feel when I am near 
Marjory. Is it from fighting someone I did not know or from winning?
Tom shakes my hand. His face is shiny; his voice is excited. “You did it, Lou. 
You did a great job—”
“Yeah, you did fine,” Don interrupts. “And you were a bit lucky, too. You want 
to watch your parries in three, Lou; I’ve noticed before that you don’t use that 
often enough and when you do you really telegraph what you’re going to do next—”
“Don…” Tom says, but Don goes on talking.
“—and when somebody charges you like that, you shouldn’t be caught off-guard—”
“Don, he won. He did fine. Let up.” Tom’s eyebrows have come down.
“Yeah, yeah, I know he won, he got lucky in his first bout, but if he wants to 
go on winning—”
“Don, go get us something to drink.” Tom sounds upset now.
Don blinks, startled. He takes the money Tom hands him. “Oh—all right. Be right 
back.”
I do not feel lighter anymore. I feel heavier. I made too many mistakes.
Tom turns to me; he is smiling. “Lou, that’s one of the best first bouts I’ve 
seen,” Tom says. I think he wants me to forget what Don said, but I cannot. Don 
is my friend; he is trying to help me.
“I… I did not do what you said to do. You said attack first—”
“What you did worked. That’s the meterstick here. I realized after you went up 
that it could have been bad advice.” Tom’s brow is furrowed. I do not know why.
“Yes, but if I had done what you said to do he might not have gotten the first 
point.”
“Lou—listen to me. You did very, very well. He got the first point, but you did 
not fall apart. You recovered. And you won. If he had called shots fairly, you 
would have won sooner.”
“But Don said—”
Tom shakes his head hard, as if something hurt. “Forget what Don said,” he says. 
“In Don’s first tournament, he fell apart at the first match. Completely. Then 
he was so upset by losing that he blew off the rest of the tournament, didn’t 
even fight in the losers’ round-robin—”
“Well, thank you,” Don says. He is back, holding three cans of soda; he drops 
two of them on the ground. “I thought you were so hot on caring about people’s 
feelings—” He stalks off with one of the cans. I can tell he is angry.
Tom sighs. “Well… it’s true. Don’t let it worry you, Lou. You did very well; you 
probably won’t win today—first-timers never do—but you’ve already shown 
considerable poise and ability, and I’m proud that you’re in our group.”
“Don is really upset,” I say, looking after him. I think Tom should not have 
said that about Don’s first tournament. Tom picks up the sodas and offers me 
one. It fizzes over when I open it. His fizzes over, too, and he licks the foam 
off his fingers. I did not know that was acceptable, but I lick the foam off my 
fingers.
“Yes, but Don is… Don,” Tom says. “He does this; you’ve seen it.” I am not sure 
which this he means, Don telling other people what they did wrong or Don getting 
angry.
“I think he is trying to be my friend and help me,” I say. “Even though he likes 
Marjory and I like Marjory and he probably wants her to like him, but she thinks 
he is a real heel.”
Tom chokes on his soda and then coughs. Then he says, “You like Marjory? Like as 
in like, or as in special like?
“I like her a lot,” I say. “I wish—” But I cannot say that wish out loud.
“Marjory had a bad experience with a man something like Don,” Tom says. “She 
will think of that other man every time she sees Don act the same way.”
“Was he a fencer?” I ask.
“No. Someone she knew at work. But sometimes Don acts the way he did. Marjory 
doesn’t like that. Of course she would like you better.”
“Marjory said that Don said something not nice about me.”
“Does that make you angry?” Tom asks.
“No… sometimes people say things because they do not understand. That’s what my 
parents said. I think Don does not understand.” I take a sip of my soda. It is 
not as cold as I like, but it is better than nothing.
Tom takes a long swallow of his soda. In the ring, another match has started; we 
edge away from it. “What we should do now,” he said, staving off that problem, 
“is register your win with the scribe and be sure you’re ready for your next 
bout.”
At the thought of the next bout, I realize I am tired and can feel the bruises 
where my opponent hit me. I would like to go home now and think about everything 
that has happened, but there are more bouts to fight and I know Tom wants me to 
stay and finish.



CHAPTER SEVEN
« ^ » 
IAM FACING MY SECOND OPPONENT. IT FEELS VERY DIFFERENT the second time because 
it is not all a surprise. This man was wearing the hat like a pizza with 
feathers. Now he is wearing a mask that’s transparent in front rather than wire 
mesh. This kind costs a lot more. Tom told me he is very good but very fair. He 
will count my touches, Tom said. I can see the man’s expression clearly; he 
looks almost sleepy, his eyelids drooping over blue eyes.
The referee drops his handkerchief; my opponent leaps forward in a blur and I 
feel his touch on my shoulder. I raise my hand. His sleepy expression does not 
mean he is slow. I want to ask Tom what to do. I do not look around; the bout is 
still on and the man could make another touch.
This time I move sideways and the man also circles; his blade leaps out, so fast 
it seems to disappear and then reappear touching my chest. I do not know how he 
moves so fast; I feel stiff and clumsy. I will lose with another touch. I rush 
into attack, though it feels strange. I feel my blade against his—I have parried 
successfully this time. Again, again— and finally, when I lunge, I feel in my 
hand that I have touched something. Instantly he draws back and raises his hand. 
“Yes,” he says. I look at his face. He is smiling. He does not mind that I made 
a touch.
We circle the other way, blades flashing. I begin to see that his pattern, while 
rapid, is understandable, but he gets a third touch on me before I can use these 
data.
“Thanks,” he says, at the end. “You gave me a fight.”
“Good job, Lou,” Tom says when I come out of the ring. “He’ll probably win the 
tournament; he usually does.”
“I got one touch,” I say.
“Yes, and a good one. And you almost got him several more times.”
“Is it over?” I ask.
“Not quite,” Tom says. “You’ve lost only one bout; now you go into the pool of 
other one-rounders, and you’ll have at least one more match. Are you doing all 
right?”
“Yes,” I say. I am breathless and tired of the noise and movement, but I am not 
as ready to go home as I was earlier. I wonder if Don was watching; I do not see 
him anywhere.
“Want some lunch?” Tom asks.
I shake my head. I want to find a quiet place to sit down.
Tom leads me through the crowd. Several people I do not know grab my hand or 
slap my shoulder and say, “Good fighting.” I wish they would not touch me, but I 
know they are being friendly.
Lucia and a woman I do not know are sitting under a tree. Lucia pats the ground. 
I know that means “sit here,” and I sit down.
“Gunther won, but Lou got a touch on him,” Tom says.
The odaer woman claps her hands. “That’s very good,” she says. “Almost nobody 
gets a touch on Gunther their first bout.”
“It was not actually my first bout, but my first bout with Gunther,” I say.
“That’s what I meant,” she says. She is taller than Lucia and heavier; she is 
wearing a fancy costume with a long skirt. She has a little frame in her hands, 
and her fingers work back and forth. She is weaving a narrow strip of material, 
a geometric pattern of brown and white. The pattern is simple, but I have never 
seen anyone weave before and I watch carefully until I am sure how she does it, 
how she makes the brown pattern change direction.
“Tom told me about Don,” Lucia says, glancing at me. I feel cold suddenly. I do 
not want to remember how angry he was. “Are you all right?” she asks.
“I am all right,” I say.
“Don, the boy wonder?” the other woman asks Lucia.
Lucia makes a face. “Yes. He can be a real jerk sometimes.”
“What was it this time?” the other woman asks.
Lucia glances at me. “Oh—just the usual kind of thing. Big mouthitis.”
I am glad she does not explain. I do not think he is as bad as Tom must have 
said. It makes me unhappy to think of Tom not being fair to someone.
Tom comes back and tells me that I have another match at 1:45. “It’s another 
first-timer,” he says. “He lost his first bout early this morning. You should 
eat something.” He hands me a bun with meat in it. It smells all right. I am 
hungry. When I take a bite, it tastes good, and I eat it all.
An old man stops to talk to Tom. Tom stands up; I do not know if I should stand 
up, too. Something about the man catches my eye. He twitches. He talks very 
fast, too. I do not know what he is talking about—people I do not know, places I 
have not been.
In my third match, my opponent is wearing all black with red trimming. He also 
has one of the transparent plastic masks. He has dark hair and eyes and very 
pale skin; he has long sideburns trimmed to points. He does not move well, 
though. He is slow and not very strong. He does not carry through his attacks; 
he jerks his blade back and forth without coming close. I make a touch that he 
does not call and then a harder touch that he does. His face shows his feelings; 
he is both alarmed and angry. Even though I am tired, I know I can win if I want 
to.
It is not right to make people angry, but I would like to win. I move around 
him; he turns slowly, stiffly. I make another touch. His lower lip sticks out; 
his forehead stands up in ridges. It is not right to make people feel stupid. I 
slow down, but he does not make use of this. His pattern is very simple, as if 
he knew only two parries and attacks. When I move closer, he moves back. But 
standing still and exchanging blows is boring. I want him to do something. When 
he does not, I disengage from one of his weak parries and strike past it. His 
face contracts in anger, and he says a string of bad words. I know I am supposed 
to shake his hand and say thank you, but he has already walked off. The referee 
shrugs.
“Good for you,” Tom says. “I saw you slow down and give him a chance for an 
honorable hit… too bad the idiot didn’t know what to do with it. Now you know 
why I don’t like my students getting into tournaments too early. He wasn’t 
nearly ready.”
He was not nearly ready. Nearly ready would be almost ready. He was not ready at 
all.
When I go to report my win, I find that I am now in a pool of those who have a 
2:1 record. Only eight are undefeated. I am feeling very tired now, but I do not 
want to disappoint Tom, so I do not withdraw. My next match comes almost at 
once, with a tall dark woman. She wears a plain costume in dark blue and a 
conventional wire-front mask. She is not at all like the last man; she attacks 
instantly and after a few exchanges she gets the first touch. I get the second, 
she the third, and I the fourth. Her pattern is not easy to see. I hear voices 
from the margins; people are saying it is a good fight. I am feeling light 
again, and I am happy. Then I feel her blade on my chest and the bout is over. I 
do not mind. I am tired and sweaty; I can smell myself.
“Good fight!” she says, and clasps my arm.
“Thank you,” I say.
Tom is pleased with me; I can tell by his grin. Lucia is there, too; I did not 
see her come and watch. They are arm in arm; I feel even happier. “Let’s see 
where this puts you in the rankings,” he says.
“Rankings?”
“All the fencers will be ranked by their results,” he says. “Novices get a 
separate rank. I expect you did fairly well. There are still some to go, but I 
think all the first-timers have finished by now.”
I did not know this. When we look at the big chart, my name is number nineteen, 
but down in the lower right-hand corner, where seven first-time fencers are 
listed, my name is at the top. “Thought so,” Tom says. “Claudia—” One of the 
women writing names on the board turns around. “Are all the first-timers 
finished?”
Yes—is this Lou Arrendale?“ She glances at me.
“Yes,” I say. “I am Lou Arrendale.”
“You did really well for a first-timer,” she says.
“Thank you,” I say.
“Here’s your medal,” she says, reaching under the table and pulling out a little 
leather sack with something in it. “Or you can wait and get it at the award 
ceremony.” I did not know I would get a medal; I thought only the person who won 
all the fights got a medal.
“We have to get back,” Tom says.
“Well, then—here it is.” She hands it to me. It feels like real leather. “Good 
luck next time.”
“Thank you,” I say.
I do not know if I am supposed to open the sack, but Tom says, “Let’s see…” and 
I take out the medal. It is a round piece of metal with a sword design molded 
into it and a little hole near the edge. I put it back in the bag.
On the way home, I replay each match in my mind. I can remember all of it and 
can even slow down the way Gunther moved, so that next time—I am surprised to 
know that there will be a next time, that I want to do this again—I can do 
better against him.
I begin to understand why Tom thought this would be good for me if I have to 
fight Mr. Crenshaw. I went where no one knew me and competed as a normal person 
would. I did not need to win the tournament to know that I had accomplished 
something.
When I get home, I take off the sweaty clothes Lucia loaned me. She said not to 
wash them, because they are special; she said to hang them up and bring them 
over to their house on Wednesday, when I come to fencing class. I do not like 
the way they smell; I would like to take them back tonight or tomorrow, but she 
said Wednesday. I hang them over the back of the couch in the living room while 
I shower.
The hot water feels very good; I can see little blue marks showing from some of 
the touches against me. I take a long shower, until I feel completely clean, and 
then put on the softest sweatshirt and sweatpants I have. I feel very sleepy, 
but I need to see what the others e-mailed me about their talk.
I have e-mails from Cameron and Bailey both. Cameron says they talked but didn’t 
decide anything. Bailey says who came—everyone but me and Linda—and that they 
asked a counselor at the Center what the rules were on human experimentation. He 
says Cameron made it sound like we had heard about this treatment and we wanted 
to try it. The counselor is supposed to find out more about the laws involved. I 
go to bed early.
ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY, WE HEAR NOTHING MORE FROM Mr. Crenshaw or the company. 
Maybe the people who would do the treatment are not ready to try it on humans. 
Maybe Mr. Crenshaw has to argue them into it. I wish we knew more. I feel the 
way I felt standing in the ring before that first match. Not-knowing definitely 
seems faster than knowing.
I look again at the abstract of the journal article on-line, but I still do not 
understand most of the words. Even when I look them up, I still do not 
understand what the treatment actually does and how it does it. I am not 
supposed to understand it. It is not my field.
But it is my brain and my life. I want to understand it. When I first began to 
fence, I did not understand that, either. I did not know why I had to hold the 
foil a certain way or why my feet had to be pointed out from each other at an 
angle. I did not know any of the terms or any of the moves. I did not expect to 
be good at fencing; I thought my autism would get in the way, and at first it 
did. Now I have been in a tournament with normal people. I didn’t win, but I did 
better than other first-timers.
Maybe I can learn more about the brain than I know now. I do not know if there 
will be time, but I can try.
On Wednesday, I take the costume clothes back to Tom and Lucia’s. They are dry 
now and do not smell so bad, but I can still smell the sourness of my sweat. 
Lucia takes the clothes, and I go through the house to the equipment room. Tom 
is already in the backyard; I pick up my equipment and go out. It is chilly but 
still, no breeze. He is stretching, and I start stretching, too. I was stiff on 
Sunday and Monday, but now I am not stiff and only one bruise is still sore.
Marjory comes out into the yard.
“I was telling Marjory how well you did at the tournament,” Lucia says, from 
behind her. Marjory is grinning at me.
“I didn’t win,” I say. “I made mistakes.”
“You won two matches,” Lucia says, “and the novice medal. You didn’t make that 
many mistakes.”
I do not know how many mistakes “that many” would be. If she means “too many,” 
why does she say “that many”?
Here, in this backyard, I’m remembering Don and how angry he was at what Tom 
said about him rather than the light feeling I had when I won those two matches. 
Will he come tonight? Will he be angry with me? I think I should mention him, 
and then I think I shouldn’t.
“Simon was impressed,” Tom says. He is sitting up now, rubbing his blade with 
sandpaper to smooth out the nicks. I feel my blade and do not find any new 
nicks. “The referee, I mean; we’ve known each other for years. He really liked 
the way you handled yourself when that fellow didn’t call hits.”
“You said that was what to do,” I say.
“Yeah, well, not everybody follows my advice,” Tom says. “Tell me now—several 
days later—was it more fun or more bother?”
I had not thought of the tournament as fun, but I had not thought of it as 
bother, either.
“Or something else entirely?” Marjory says.
“Something else entirely,” I say. “I did not think it was bother; you told me 
what to do to prepare, Tom, and I did that. I did not think of it as fun, but a 
test, a challenge.”
“Did you enjoy it at all?” Tom asked.
“Yes. Parts of it very much.” I do not know how to describe the mixture of 
feelings. “I enjoy doing new things sometimes,” I say.
Someone is opening the gate. Don. I feel a sudden tension in the yard.
“Hi,” he says. His voice is tight.
I smile at him, but he does not smile back.
“Hi, Don,” Tom says.
Lucia says nothing. Marjory nods to him.
“I’ll just get my stuff,” he says, and goes into the house.
Lucia looks at Tom; he shrugs. Marjory comes up to me.
“Want a bout?” she asks. “I can’t stay late tonight. Work.”
“Sure,” I say. I feel light again.
Now that I have fenced in the tournament, I feel very relaxed fencing here. I do 
not think about Don; I think only about Marjory’s blade. Again I have the 
feeling that touching her blade is almost like touching her—that I can feel, 
through the steel, her every movement, even her mood. I want this to last; I 
slow a little, prolonging the contact, not making touches I could make so that 
we can keep this going. It is a very different feeling from the tournament, but 
light is the only word I can think of to describe it.
Finally she backs up; she is breathing hard. “That was fun, Lou, but you’ve worn 
me out. I’ll have to take a breather.”
“Thank you,” I say.
We sit down side by side, both breathing hard. I time my breaths to hers. It 
feels good to do that.
Suddenly Don comes out of the equipment room, carrying his blades in one hand, 
his mask in the other. He glares at me and walks around the corner of the house, 
stiff-legged. Tom follows him out and shrugs, spreading his hands.
“I tried to talk him out of it,” he says to Lucia. “He still thinks I insulted 
him on purpose at the tournament. And he only placed twentieth, behind Lou. 
Right now it’s all my fault, and he’s going to study with Gunther.”
“That won’t last long,” Lucia says. She stretches out her legs. “He won’t put up 
with the discipline.”
“It is because of me?” I ask.
“It is because the world does not arrange itself to suit him,” Tom says. “I give 
him a couple of weeks before he’s back, pretending nothing has happened.”
“And you’ll let him back?” Lucia says with an edge to her voice.
Tom shrugs again. “If he behaves, sure. People do grow, Lucia.”
“Crookedly, some of them,” she says.
Then Max and Susan and Cindy and the others arrive in a bunch and they all speak 
to me. I did not see them at the tournament, but they all saw me. I feel 
embarrassed that I didn’t notice, but Max explains.
“We were trying to stay out of your way, so you could concentrate. You only want 
one or two people talking to you at a time like that,” he says. That would make 
sense if other people also had trouble concentrating. I did not know they 
thought that way; I thought they wanted lots of people around all the time.
Maybe if the things I was told about myself were not all correct, the things I 
was told about normal people were also not all correct.
I fence with Max and then Cindy and sit down next to Marjory until she says she 
has to go. I carry her bag out to her car for her. I would like to spend more 
time with her, but I am not sure how to do it. If I met someone like 
Marjory—someone I liked—at a tournament, and she did not know I was autistic, 
would it be easier to ask that person out to dinner? What would that person say? 
What would Marjory say if I asked her? I stand beside the car after she gets in 
and wish I had already said the words and was waiting for her answer. Emmy’s 
angry voice rings in my head. I do not believe she is right; I do not believe 
that Marjory sees me only as my diagnosis, as a possible research subject. But I 
do not not believe it enough to ask her out to dinner. I open my mouth and no 
words come out: silence is there before sound, faster than I can form the 
thought.
Marjory is looking at me; I am suddenly cold and stiff with shyness. “Good 
night,” I say.
“Good-bye,” she says. “See you next week.” She turns on the engine; I back away.
When I get back to the yard, I sit beside Lucia. “If a person asks a person to 
dinner,” I say, “then if the person who is asked does not want to go, is there 
any way to tell before the person who is asking asks?”
She does not answer for a time I think is over forty seconds. Then she says, “If 
a person is acting friendly toward a person, that person will not mind being 
asked but still might not want to go. Or might have something else to do that 
night.” She pauses again. “Have you ever asked someone out to dinner, Lou?”
“No,” I say. “Not except people I work with. They are like me. That is 
different.”
“Indeed it is,” she says. “Are you thinking of asking someone to dinner?”
My throat closes. I cannot say anything, but Lucia does not keep asking. She 
waits.
“I am thinking of asking Marjory,” I say at last, in a soft voice. “But I do not 
want to bother her.”
“I don’t think she’d be bothered, Lou,” Lucia says. “I don’t know if she’d come, 
but I don’t think she would be upset at all by your asking.”
At home and that night in bed I think of Marjory sitting across a table from me, 
eating. I have seen things like this in videos. I do not feel ready to do it 
yet.
THURSDAY MORNING I COME OUT THE DOOR OF MY APARTMENT and look across the lot to 
my car. It looks strange. All four tires are splayed out on the pavement. I do 
not understand. I bought those tires only a few months ago. I always check the 
air pressure when I buy gas, and I bought gas three days ago. I do not know why 
they are flat. I have only one spare, and even though I have a foot pump in the 
car, I know that I cannot pump up three tires fast enough. I will be late for 
work. Mr. Crenshaw will be angry. Sweat is trickling down my ribs already.
“What happened, buddy?” It is Danny Bryce, the policeman who lives here.
“My tires are flat,” I say. “I don’t know why. I checked the air yesterday.”
He comes closer. He is in uniform; he smells like mint and lemon, and his 
uniform smells like a laundry. His shoes are very shiny. He has a name tag on 
his uniform shirt that says DANNY BRYCE in little black letters on silver.
“Somebody slashed ’em,” he says. He sounds serious but not angry.
“Slashed them?” I have read about this, but it has never happened to me. “Why?”
“Mischief,” he says, leaning over to look. “Yup. Definitely a vandal.”
He looks at the other cars. I look, too. None of them have flat tires, except 
for one tire of the old flatbed trailer that belongs to the apartment building 
owner, and it has been flat for a long time. It looks gray, not black. “And 
yours is the only one. Who’s mad at you?”
“Nobody is mad at me yet. I haven’t seen anyone today yet. Mr. Crenshaw is going 
to be mad at me,” I say. “I am going to be late for work.”
“Just tell him what happened,” he says.
Mr. Crenshaw will be angry anyway, I think, but I do not say that. Do not argue 
with a policeman.
“I’ll call this in for you,” he says. “They’ll send someone out—”
“I have to go to work,” I say. I can feel myself sweating more and more. I can’t 
think what to do first. I don’t know the transit schedule, though I do know 
where the stop is. I need to find a schedule. I should call the office, but I 
don’t know if anyone will be there yet.
“You really should report this,” he says. His face has sagged down, a serious 
expression. “Surely you can call your boss and let him know…”
I do not know Mr. Crenshaw’s extension at work. I think if I call him he will 
just yell at me. “I will call him afterward,” I say.
It takes only sixteen minutes before a police car arrives. Danny Bryce stays 
with me instead of going to work. He does not say much, but I feel better with 
him there. When the police car arrives, a man wearing tan slacks and a brown 
sports coat gets out of the car. He does not have a name tag. Mr. Bryce walks 
over to the car, and I hear the other man call him Dan.
Mr. Bryce and the officer who came are talking; their eyes glance toward me and 
then away. What is Mr. Bryce saying about me? I feel cold; it is hard to focus 
my vision. When they start walking toward me, they seem to move in little jumps, 
as if the light were hopping.
“Lou, this is Officer Stacy,” Mr. Bryce says, smiling at me. I look at the other 
man. He is shorter than Mr. Bryce and thinner; he has sleek black hair that 
smells of something oily and sweet.
“My name is Lou Arrendale,” I say. My voice sounds odd, the way it sounds when I 
am scared.
“When did you last see your car before this morning?” he asks.
“Nine forty-seven last night,” I tell him. “I am sure because I looked at my 
watch.”
He glances at me, then enters something on his handcomp.
“Do you park in the same spot every time?”
“Usually,” I say. “The parking places aren’t numbered, and sometimes someone 
else is there when I get home from work.”
“You got home from work at nine”—he glances down at his handcomp—“forty-seven 
last night?”
“No, sir,” I say. “I got home from work at five fifty-two, and then I went—” I 
don’t want to say “to my fencing class.” What if he thinks there is something 
wrong with fencing? With me fencing? “To a friend’s house,” I say instead.
“Is this someone you visit often?”
“Yes. Every week.”
“Were there other people there?”
Of course there were other people there. Why would I go visit someone if nobody 
but me was there? “My friends who live in that house were there,” I say. “And 
some people who do not live in that house.”
He blinks and looks briefly at Mr. Bryce. I do not know what that look means. 
“Ah… do you know these other people? Who didn’t live in the house? Was it a 
party?”
Too many questions. I do not know which to answer first. These other people? 
Does he meant the people at Tom and Lucia’s who were not Tom and Lucia? Who 
didn’t live in the house? Most people did not live in that house… do not live in 
that house. Out of the billions of people in the world, only two people live in 
that house and that is… less than one-millionth of one percent.
“It was not a party,” I say, because that is the easiest question to answer.
“I know you go out every Wednesday night,” Mr. Bryce says. ‘Sometimes you’re 
carrying a duffel bag—I thought maybe you went to a gym.“
If they talk to Tom or Lucia, they will find out about the fencing. I will have 
to tell them now. “It is… it is a fencing… fencing class,” I say. I hate it when 
I stutter or maze.
“Fencing? I’ve never seen you with blades,” Mr. Bryce says. He sounds surprised 
and also interested.
“I—I keep my things at their house,” I say. “They are my instructors. I do not 
want to have things like that in my car or in my apartment.”
“So—you went to a friend’s house for a fencing class,” the other policeman says. 
“And you’ve been doing it—how long?”
“Five years,” I say.
“So anyone who wanted to mess with your car would know that? Would know where 
you were on Wednesday nights?”
“Maybe…” I don’t think that, really. I think someone who wanted to damage my car 
would know where I lived, not where I went when I went out.
“You get along with these people okay?” the officer asks.
“Yes.” I think it is a silly question; I would not keep going for five years if 
they weren’t nice people.
“We’ll need a name and contact number.”
I give him Tom’s and Lucia’s names and their primary contact number. I do not 
understand why he needs that, because the car was not damaged at Tom and Lucia’s 
house, but here.
“Probably just vandals,” the officer says. “This neighborhood’s been quiet for a 
while, but over across Broadway there’ve been a lot of tire slashings and broken 
windshields. Some kid decided it was getting hot over there and came over here. 
Something could’ve scared him before he did more than yours.” He turned to Mr. 
Bryce. “Let me know if anything else happens, okay?”
“Sure.”
The officer’s handcomp buzzes and extrudes a slip of paper. “Here you 
are—report, case number, investigating officer, everything you need for your 
insurance claim.” He hands me the paper. I feel stupid; I have no idea what to 
do with it. He turns away.
Mr. Bryce looks at me. “Lou, do you know who to call about the tires?”
“No…” I am more worried about work than about the tires. If I do not have a car, 
I can ride public transit, but if I lose the job because I am late again, I will 
have nothing.
“You need to contact your insurance company, and you need to get someone to 
replace those tires.”
Replacing the tires will be expensive. I do not know how I can drive the car to 
the auto center on four flat tires.
“You want some help?”
I want the day to be some other day, when I am in my car and driving to work on 
time. I do not know what to say; I want help only because I do not know what to 
do. I would like to know what to do so that I do not need help.
“If you haven’t had to file an insurance claim before, it can be confusing. But 
I don’t want to butt in where you don’t want me.” Mr. Bryce’s expression is one 
I do not completely understand. Part of his face looks a little sad, but part 
looks a little angry.
“I have never filed an insurance claim,” I say. “I need to learn how to file an 
insurance claim if I am supposed to file one now.”
“Let’s go up to your apartment and log on,” he says. “I can guide you through 
it.”
For a moment I cannot move or speak. Someone come to my apartment? Into my 
private space? But I need to know what to do. He knows what I should do. He is 
trying to help. I did not expect him to do that.
I start toward the apartment building without saying anything else. After a few 
steps I remember that I should have said something. Mr. Bryce is still standing 
beside my car. “That is nice,” I say. I do not think that is the right thing to 
say, but Mr. Bryce seems to understand it, for he follows me.
My hands are trembling as I unlock the apartment door. All the serenity that I 
have created here disappears into the walls, out the windows, and the place is 
full of tension and fear. I turn on my home system and toggle it quickly to the 
company ’net. The sound comes up with the Mozart I left on last night, and I 
turn it down. I need the music, but I do not know what he will think of it.
“Nice place,” Mr. Bryce says from behind me. I jump a little, even though I know 
he is there. He moves to the side, where I can see him. That is a little better. 
He leans closer. “Now what you need to do is—”
“Tell my supervisor I am late,” I say. “I have to do that first.”
I have to look up Mr. Aldrin’s E-mail on the company Web site. I have not ever 
e-mailed him from outside before. I do not know how to explain, so I put it very 
plain:
I am late because my car’s tires were all cut and flat this morning, and the 
police came. I will come as fast as I can.
Mr. Bryce does not look at the screen while I’m typing; that is good. I toggle 
back to the public ’net. “I told him,” I say.
“Okay, then, what you need to do now is file with your insurance company. If you 
have a local agent, start there—either the agent or the company or both will 
have a site.”
I am already searching. I do not have a local agent. The company site comes up, 
and I quickly navigate through “client services,”, “auto policies,” and “new 
claims” to find a form on-screen.
“You’re good at that,” Mr. Bryce says. His voice has the lift that means he is 
surprised.
“It is very clear,” I say. I enter my name and address, pull in my policy number 
from my personal files, enter the date, and mark the “yes” box for “adverse 
incident reported to police?”
Other blanks I do not understand. “That’s the police incident report number,” 
Mr. Bryce says, pointing to one line on the slip of paper I was given. “And 
that’s the investigating officer’s code number, which you enter there, and his 
name here.” I notice that he does not explain what I have figured out on my own. 
He seems to understand what I can and cannot follow. I write “in your own words” 
an account of what happened, which I did not see. I parked my car at night, and 
in the morning all four tires were flat. Mr. Bryce says that is enough.
After I file the insurance claim, I have to find someone to work on the tires.
“I can’t tell you who to call,” Mr. Bryce says. “We had a mess about that last 
year, and people accused the police of getting kickbacks from service outlets.” 
I do not know what “kickback” is. Ms. Tomasz, the apartment manager, stops me on 
my way back downstairs to say that she knows someone who can do it. She gives me 
a contact number. I do not know how she knows what happened but Mr. Bryce does 
not seem surprised that she knows. He acts like this is normal. Could she have 
heard us talking in the parking lot? That thought makes me feel uncomfortable.
“And I’ll give you a ride to the transit station,” Mr. Bryce says. “Or I’ll be 
late for work myself.”
I did not know that he did not drive to work every day. It is kind of him to 
give me a ride. He is acting like a friend. “Thank you, Mr. Bryce,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I told you before: call me Danny, Lou. We’re neighbors.”
“Thank you, Danny,” I say.
He smiles at me, gives a quick nod, and unlocks the doors of his car. His car is 
very clean inside, like mine but without the fleece on the seat. He turns on his 
sound system; it is loud and bumpy and makes my insides quiver. I do not like 
it, but I like not having to walk to the transit station.
The station and the shuttle are both crowded and noisy. It is hard to stay calm 
and focus enough to read the signs that tell me what ticket to buy and at which 
gate to stand in line.



CHAPTER EIGHT
« ^ » 
IT FEELS VERY STRANGE TO SEE THE CAMPUS FROM THE transit station and not the 
drive and parking lot. Instead of showing my ID tag to the guard at the car 
entrance, I show it to a guard at the station exit. Most people on this shift 
are already at work; the guard glares at me before he jerks his head telling me 
to go through. Wide sidewalks edged with flower beds lead to the administration 
building. The flowers are orange and yellow with puffy-looking blossoms; the 
color seems to shimmer in the sunlight. At the administration building, I have 
to show my ID to another guard.
“Why didn’t you park where you’re supposed to?” he asks. He sounds angry.
“Someone slashed my tires,” I say.
“Bummer,” he says. His face sags; his eyes go back to his desk. I think maybe he 
is disappointed that he has nothing to be angry about.
“What is the shortest way from here to Building Twenty-one?” I ask.
“Through this building, angle right around the end of Fifteen, then past the 
fountain with the naked woman on a horse. You can see your parking lot from 
there.” He does not even look up.
I go through Administration, with its ugly green marble floor and its 
unpleasantly strong lemon smell, and out again into the bright sun. It is 
already much hotter than it was earlier. Sunlight glares off the walks. Here 
there are no flower beds; grass comes right up to the pavement.
I am sweating by the time I get to our building and put my ID in the door lock. 
I can smell myself. It is not a good smell. Inside the building, it is cool and 
dim and I can relax. The soft color of the walls, the steady glow of 
old-fashioned lighting, the nonscent of the cool air— all this soothes me. I go 
directly to my office and turn the AC fan up to high.
My office machine is on, as usual, with a blinking message icon. I turn on one 
of the whirlies, and my music—Bach, an orchestral version of “Sheep May Safely 
Graze”—before bringing up the message:
Call as soon as you arrive. [Signed] Mr. Crenshaw, Extension 2313.
I reach for the office phone, but it buzzes before I can pick it up.
“I told you to call as soon as you got to the office,” Mr. Crenshaw’s voice 
says.
“I just got here,” I say.
“You checked through the main gate twenty minutes ago,” he says. He sounds very 
angry. “It shouldn’t take even you twenty minutes to walk that far.”
I should say I am sorry, but I am not sorry. I do not know how long it took me 
to walk from the gate, and I do not know how fast I could have walked if I had 
tried to walk faster. It was too hot to hurry. I do not know how much more I 
could do than what I have done. I feel my neck getting tight and hot.
“I did not stop,” I say.
“And what’s this about a flat tire? Can’t you change a tire? You’re over two 
hours late.”
“Four tires,” I say. “Someone slashed all four tires.”
“Four! I suppose you reported it to the police,” he says.
“Yes,” I say.
“You could have waited until after work,” he says. “Or called from work.”
“The policeman was there,” I say.
“There? Someone saw your car being vandalized?”
“No—” Against the impatience and anger in his voice I am struggling to interpret 
his words; they sound farther and farther away, less like meaningful speech. It 
is hard to think what the right answer is. “The policeman who lives with—in my 
apartment house. He saw the flat tires. He called in the other policeman. He 
told me what to do.”
“He should have told you to go to work,” Crenshaw says. “There was no reason for 
you to hang around. You’ll have to make the time up, you know.”
“I know.” I wonder if he has to make the time up when something delays him. I 
wonder if he has ever had a flat tire, or four flat tires, on the way to work.
“Be sure you don’t put it down as overtime,” he says, and clicks off. He did not 
say he was sorry I had four flat tires. That is the conventional thing to say, 
“too bad” or “how awful,” but although he is normal, he did not say either of 
those things. Maybe he is not sorry; maybe he has no sympathy to express. I had 
to learn to say conventional things even when I did not feel them, because that 
is part of fitting in and learning to get along. Has anyone ever asked Mr. 
Crenshaw to fit in, to get along?
It would be my lunch hour, though I am behind, needing to make up time. I feel 
hollow inside; I start for the office kitchenette and realize that I do not have 
anything for lunch. I must have left it on the counter when I went back to my 
apartment to file the insurance claim. There is nothing in the refrigerator box 
with my initials on it. I had emptied it the day before.
We have no food vending machine in our building. Nobody would eat the food and 
it spoiled, so they took the machine away. The company has a dining hall across 
the campus, and there is a vending machine in the next building over. The food 
in those machines is awful. If it is a sandwich, all the parts of the sandwich 
are mushed together and slimy with mayonnaise or salad dressing. Green stuff, 
red stuff, meat chopped up with other flavors. Even if I take one apart and 
scrape the bread clean of mayonnaise, the smell and taste linger and are on 
whatever meat it is. The sweet things—the doughnuts and rolls—are sticky, 
leaving disgusting smears on the plastic containers when you take them out. My 
stomach twists, imagining this.
I would drive out and buy something, even though we don’t usually leave at 
lunch, but my car is still at the apartment, forlorn on its flat tires. I do not 
want to walk across the campus and eat in that big, noisy room with people I do 
not know, people who think of us as weird and dangerous. I do not know if the 
food there would be any better.
“Forget your lunch?” Eric asks. I jump. I have not talked to any of the others 
yet.
“Someone cut the tires on my car,” I say. “I was late. Mr. Crenshaw is angry 
with me. I left my lunch at home by accident. My car is at home.”
“You are hungry?”
“Yes. I do not want to go to the dining hall.”
“Chuy is going to run errands at lunch,” Eric says.
“Chuy does not like anyone to ride with him,” Linda says.
“I can talk to Chuy,” I say.
Chuy agrees to pick up some lunch for me. He is not going to a grocery store, so 
I will have to eat something he can pick up easily. He comes back with apples 
and a sausage in a bun. I like apples but not sausage. I do not like the little 
mixed-up bits in it. It is not as bad as some things, though, and I am hungry, 
so I eat it and do not think about it much.
It is 4:16 when I remember that I have not called anyone to replace the tires on 
my car. I call up the local directory listings and print the list of numbers. 
The on-line listings show the locations, so I begin with the ones closest to my 
apartment. When I contact them, one after another tells me it is too late to do 
anything today.
“Quickest thing to do,” one of them says, “is buy four mounted tires and put 
them on yourself, one at a time.” It would cost a lot of money to buy four tires 
and wheels, and I do not know how I would get them home. I do not want to ask 
Chuy for another favor so soon.
It is like those puzzle problems with a man, a hen, a cat, and a bag of feed on 
one side of a river and a boat that will hold only two, which he must use to 
transfer them all to the other side, without leaving alone the cat and the hen 
or the hen and the bag of feed. I have four slashed tires and one spare tire. If 
I put on the spare tire and roll the tire from that wheel to the tire store, 
they can put on a new tire and I can roll it back, put it on, then take the next 
slashed tire. Three of those, and I will have four whole tires on the car and 
can drive the car, with the last bad tire, to the store.
The nearest tire store is a mile away. I do not know how long it will take me to 
roll the flat tire—longer than it would one with air in it, I guess. But this is 
the only thing I can think of. They would not let me on the transit with a tire, 
even if it went the right direction.
The tire store stays open until nine. If I work my two extra hours tonight and 
can get home by eight, then surely I can get that tire to the store before they 
close. Tomorrow if I leave work on time, I might be able to do two more.
I am home by 7:43. I unlock the trunk of my car and wrestle out the spare. I 
learned to change a tire in my driving class, but I have not changed a tire 
since. It is simple in theory, but it takes longer than I want. The jack is hard 
to position, and the car doesn’t go up very fast. The front end sags down onto 
the wheels; the flat tires make a dull squnch as the tread rubs on itself. I am 
breathless and sweating a lot when I finally get the wheel off and the spare 
positioned on it. There is something about the order in which you are supposed 
to tighten the lug nuts, but I do not remember it exactly. Ms. Melton said it 
was important to do it right. It is after eight now and dark around the edges of 
the lights.
“Hey—!”
I jerk upright. I do not recognize the voice at first or the dark bulky figure 
rushing at me. It slows.
“Oh—it’s you, Lou. I thought maybe it was the vandal, come to do more mischief. 
What’d you do, buy a new set of wheels?”
It’s Danny. I feel my knees sag with relief. “No. It is the spare. I will put 
the spare on, then take the tire to the tire store and have them put on another, 
and then when I come back I can change that for a bad one. Tomorrow I can do 
another.”
“You—but you could have called someone to come do all four for you. Why are you 
doing it the hard way?”
“They could not do it until tomorrow or the next day, they said. One place told 
me to buy a set of tires on rims and change them myself if I wanted it done 
faster. So I thought about it. I remembered my spare. I thought how to do it 
myself and save money and time and decided to start when I got home—“
“You just got home?”
“I was late to work this morning. I worked late today to make up for it. Mr. 
Crenshaw was very angry.”
“Yes, but—it’s still going to take you several days. Anyway, the store closes in 
less than an hour. Were you going to take a cab or something?”
“I will roll it,” I say. The wheel with its saggy flat tire mocks me; it was 
hard enough to roll to one side. When we changed a tire in driving class, the 
tire had air in it.
“On foot?” Danny shakes his head. “You’ll never make it, buddy. Better put it in 
my car and I’ll run you over. Too bad we can’t take two of them… Or, actually, 
we can.”
“I do not have two spares,” I say.
“You can use mine,” he says. “We have the same wheel size.” I did not know this. 
We do not have the same make and model of car, and not all have the same size. 
How would he know? “You do remember to tighten the ones across from each 
other—partway—then the others, then tighten the rest of the way in opposites, 
right? You keep your car so carefully, you may’ve never needed to know that.”
I bend to tighten the lug nuts. With his words, I remember exactly what Ms. 
Melton said. It is a pattern, an easy pattern. I like patterns with symmetry. By 
the time I have finished, Danny is back with his spare, glancing at his watch.
“We’re going to have to hurry,” he says. “Do you mind if I do the next one? I’m 
used to it—”
“I do not mind,” I say. I am not telling the whole truth. If he is right that I 
can take two tires in tonight, then that is a big help, but he is pushing into 
my life, rushing me, making me feel slow and stupid. I do mind that. Yet he is 
acting like a friend, being helpful. It is important to be grateful for help.
At 8:21, both spares are on the back of my car; it looks funny with flat tires 
in front and full tires behind. Both slashed tires we took off the back of my 
car are in the trunk of Danny’s car, and I am sitting beside him. Again he turns 
on the sound system and rattling booms shake my body. I want to jump out of 
there; it is too much sound and the wrong sound. He talks over the sound, but I 
cannot understand him; the sound and his voice clash.
When we get to the tire store, I help him lug the flat tires on their wheels 
into the store. The clerk looks at me with almost no expression. Before I can 
even explain what I want, he is shaking his head.
“It’s too late,” he says. “We can’t change out tires now.”
“You are open until nine,” I say.
“The desk, yes. But we don’t put tires on this late.” He glances at the door to 
the shop, where a lanky man in dark-blue pants and a tan shirt with a patch on 
it is leaning on the frame, wiping his hands on a red rag.
“But I could not get here earlier,” I say. “And you are open until nine.”
“Look, mister,” the clerk says. One side of his mouth has lifted, but it is not 
a smile or even half a smile. “I told you—you’re too late. Even if we would put 
tires on now, it’d keep us after nine. I’ll bet you don’t stay late just to 
finish a job some idiot dumped on you at the last minute.”
I open my mouth to say that I do stay late, I stayed late today, and that is why 
I’m late here, but Danny has moved forward. The man at the desk suddenly stands 
taller and looks alarmed. But Danny is looking at the man by the door.
“Hello, Fred,” he says, in a happy voice, as if he had just met a friend. But 
under that is another voice. “How’s it going these days?”
“Ah… fine, Mr. Bryce. Staying clean.”
He does not look clean. He has black marks on his hands and dirty fingernails. 
His pants and shirt have black marks, too.
“That’s good, Fred. Look—my friend here had his car vandalized last night. Had 
to work late because he was late to work this morning. I was really hoping you 
could help him out.”
The man by the door looks at the man behind the desk. Their eyebrows go up and 
down at each other. The man behind the desk shrugs. “You’ll have to close,” he 
said. Then to me, “I suppose you know what kind of tire you want?”
I do know. I bought tires here only a few months ago, so I know what to say. He 
writes down the numbers and type and hands it to the other man—Fred—who nods and 
comes forward to take the wheels from me.
It is 9:07 when Danny and I leave with the two whole tires. Fred rolls them out 
to Danny’s car and slings them into the trunk. I am very tired. I do not know 
why Danny is helping me. I do not like the thought of his spare on my car; it 
feels wrong, like a lump of fish in a beef stew. When we get back to the 
apartment house parking lot, he helps me put the two good new tires on the front 
wheels of my car and the slashed tires from the front into my trunk. It is only 
then that I realize this means I can drive to work in the morning and at noon I 
can replace both slashed tires.
“Thank you,” I say. “I can drive now.”
“That you can,” Danny says. He smiles, and it is a real smile. “And I have a 
suggestion: move your car tonight. Just in case that vandal comes back. Put it 
over there, toward the back. I’ll put an alarm call on it; if anyone touches it 
I’ll hear the alarm.”
“That is a good idea,” I say. I am so tired it is very hard to say this.
“For nada,” Danny says. He waves and goes into the building.
I get into my car. It smells a little musty, but the seat feels right. I am 
shaking. I turn on the engine and then the music—the real music—and slowly back 
out, turn the wheel, and edge past the other cars to the slot Danny suggested. 
It is next to his car.
IT IS HARD TO GO TO SLEEP EVEN THOUGH—OR MAYBE because—I am so tired. My back 
and legs ache. I keep thinking I hear things and jerk awake. I turn on my music, 
Bach again, and finally drift to sleep on that gentle tide.
Morning comes too soon, but I jump up and take another shower. I hurry 
downstairs and do not see my car. I feel cold inside until I remember that it is 
not in the usual place and walk around the side of the building to find it. It 
looks fine. I go back inside to eat breakfast and fix my lunch and meet Danny on 
the stairs.
“I will get the tires replaced at noon,” I tell him. “I will return your spare 
this evening.”
“No hurry,” he says. “I’m not driving today anyway.”
I wonder if he means that. He meant it when he helped me. I will do it anyway, 
because I do not like his spare; it does not match because it is not mine.
WHEN I GET TO WORK, FIVE MINUTES EARLY, MR. CRENSHAW and Mr. Aldrin are standing 
in the hall, talking. Mr. Crenshaw looks at me. His eyes look shiny and hard; it 
does not feel good to look at them, but I try to keep eye contact.
“No flat tires today, Arrendale?”
“No, Mr. Crenshaw,” I say.
“Did the police find that vandal?”
“I don’t know.” I want to get to my office, but he is standing there and I would 
have to push past him. It is not polite to do that.
“Who’s the investigating officer?” Mr. Crenshaw asks.
“I do not remember his name, but I have his card,” I say, and pull out my 
wallet.
Mr. Crenshaw makes a twitch with his shoulders and shakes his head. The little 
muscles near his eyes have tightened. “Never mind,” he says. Then, to Mr. 
Aldrin, “Come on, let’s get over to my office and hash this out.” He turns away, 
his shoulders hunched a little, and Mr. Aldrin follows. Now I can get to my 
office.
I do not know why Mr. Crenshaw asked the policeman’s name but then did not look 
at his card. I would like to ask Mr. Aldrin to explain, but he has gone away, 
too. I do not know why Mr. Aldrin, who is normal, follows Mr. Crenshaw around 
that way. Is he afraid of Mr. Crenshaw? Are normal people afraid of other people 
like that? And if so, what is the benefit of being normal? Mr. Crenshaw said if 
we took the treatment and become normal, we could get along with other people 
more easily, but I wonder what he means by “get along with.” Perhaps he wants 
everyone to be like Mr. Aldrin, following him around. We would not get our work 
done if we did that.
I put this out of my mind when I start again on my project.
At noon, I take the tires to another tire store, near the campus, and leave them 
to be replaced. I have the size and kind of tire I want written down and hand 
that to the desk clerk. She is about my age, with short dark hair; she is 
wearing a tan shirt with a patch embroidered in red that says: Customer Service.
“Thanks,” she says. She smiles at me. “You would not believe how many people 
come in here with no idea what size tire they need and start waving their 
hands.”
“It is easy to write it down,” I say.
“Yes, but they don’t think of that. Are you going to wait or come back later?”
“Come back later,” I say. “How late are you open?”
“Until nine. Or you could come tomorrow.”
“I will come before nine,” I say. She runs my bankcard through the machine and 
marks the order slip “Paid in Advance.”
“Here’s your copy,” she says. “Don’t lose it—though someone smart enough to 
write down the tire size is probably smart enough not to lose his order slip.”
I walk back out to the car breathing easier. It is easy to fool people into 
thinking I am like everyone else in encounters like this. If the other person 
likes to talk, as this woman did, it is easier. All I have to say are a few 
conventional things and smile and it is done.
Mr. Crenshaw is in our hall again when I get back, three minutes before the end 
of our official lunchtime. His face twitches when he sees me. I do not know why. 
He turns around almost at once and walks away. He does not speak to me. 
Sometimes when people do not speak, they are angry, but I do not know what I 
have done to make him angry. I have been late twice lately, but neither time was 
my fault. I did not cause the traffic accident, and I did not cut my own tires.
It is hard to settle down to work.
I am home by 7:00, with my own tires on all four wheels and Danny’s spare in the 
trunk along with mine. I decide to park next to Danny’s car although I do not 
know if he is home. It will be easier to move his spare from one car to another 
if they are close together.
I knock on his door. “Yes?” His voice.
“It is Lou Arrendale,” I say. “I have your spare in my trunk.”
I hear his footsteps coming to the door. “Lou, I told you—you didn’t have to 
rush. But thanks.” He opens the door. He has the same multi-toned 
brown/beige/rust carpet on the floor that I have, though I covered mine with 
something that didn’t make my eyes hurt. He has a large dark-gray video screen; 
the speakers are blue and do not match as a set. His couch is brown with little 
dark squares on the brown; the pattern is regular, but it clashes with the 
carpet. A young woman is sitting on the couch; she has on a yellow, green, and 
white patterned shirt that clashes with both the carpet and the couch. He 
glances back at her. “Lyn, I’m going to go move my spare from Lou’s car to 
mine.”
“Okay.” She doesn’t sound interested; she looks down at the table. I wonder if 
she is Danny’s girlfriend. I did not know he had a girlfriend. I wonder, not for 
the first time, why a woman friend is called a girlfriend and not a womanfriend.
Danny says, “Come on in, Lou, while I get my keys.” I do not want to come in, 
but I do not want to seem unfriendly, either. The clashing colors and patterns 
make my eyes tired. I step in. Danny says, “Lyn, this is Lou from upstairs—he 
borrowed my spare yesterday.”
“Hi,” she says, glancing up and then down.
“Hi,” I say. I watch Danny as he walks over to a desk and picks up his keys. The 
desk is very neat on top, a blotter and a telephone.
We go downstairs and out to the parking lot. I unlock my trunk and Danny swings 
the spare tire out. He opens his trunk and puts it in, then slams his trunk. It 
makes a different sound than mine does.
“Thank you for your help,” I say.
“No problemo,” Danny says. “Glad to be of service. And thanks for getting my 
spare back to me so quickly.”
“You’re welcome,” I say. It does not feel right to say “you’re welcome” when he 
did more to help me, but I do not know what else to say.
He stands there, looking at me. He does not say anything for a moment; then he 
says, “Well, be seeing you,” and turns away. Of course he will be seeing me; we 
live in the same building. I think this means he does not want to walk back 
inside with me. I do not know why he could not just say that, if that is what he 
means. I turn to my car and wait until I hear the front door open and close.
If I took the treatment, would I understand this? Is it because of the woman in 
his apartment? If I had Marjory visiting me, would I not want Danny to walk back 
inside with me? I do not know. Sometimes it seems obvious why normal people do 
things and other times I cannot understand it at all.
Finally I go inside and up to my apartment. I put on quieting music, Chopin 
preludes. I put two cups of water in the small saucepan and open a packet of 
noodles and vegetables. As the water boils, I watch the bubbles rise. I can see 
the pattern of the burner below by the location of the first bubbles, but when 
the water really boils, it forms several cells of fast-bubbling water. I keep 
thinking there is something important about that, something more than just a 
rolling boil, but I haven’t figured the whole pattern out yet. I drop the 
noodles and vegetables in and stir, as the directions say to do. I like to watch 
the vegetables churn in the boiling water.
And sometimes I am bored by the silly dancing vegetables.



CHAPTER NINE
« ^ » 
ON FRIDAYS I DO MY LAUNDRY, SO THAT I HAVE THE weekend free. I have two laundry 
baskets, one for light and one for dark. I take the sheets off the bed and the 
pillowcase off the pillow and put them in the light basket. The towels go in the 
dark basket. My mother used two pale-blue plastic baskets for sorted clothes; 
she called one dark and one light, and that bothered me. I found a dark-green 
wicker basket and use it for dark clothes; my basket for light clothes is plain 
wicker, a sort of honey color. I like the woven pattern of the wicker, and I 
like the word wicker. The strands go out around the uprights like the wih sound 
of wicker and then comes the sharp k, like the stick the strands bend around, 
and the soft er sound as they bend back into the shadow.
I take the exact right change out of my change box, plus one extra coin in case 
one of them won’t work in the machines. It used to make me angry when a 
perfectly round coin would not make the machine go. My mother taught me to take 
an extra coin. She said it is not good to stay angry. Sometimes a coin will work 
in the soft drink machine when it does not work in the washing machine or dryer, 
and sometimes one that will not work in the soft drink machine will work in the 
washing machine. This does not make sense, but it is how the world is.
I put the coins in my pocket, tuck the packet of detergent in the light basket, 
and set the light basket on top of the dark one. Light should go on top of dark. 
That balances.
I can just see over them to walk down the hall. I fix the Chopin prelude in my 
mind and head for the laundry room. As usual on Friday nights, only Miss 
Kimberly is there. She is old, with fuzzy gray hair, but not as old as Miss 
Watson. I wonder if she thinks about the life extension treatments or if she is 
too old. Miss Kimberly is wearing light-green knit slacks and a flowered top. 
She usually wears this on Fridays when it is warm. I think about what she wears 
instead of the smell in the laundry room. It is a harsh, sharp smell that I do 
not like.
“Good evening, Lou,” she says now. She has already done her wash and is putting 
her things into the left-hand dryer. She always uses the left-hand dryer.
“Good evening, Miss Kimberly,” I say. I do not look at her washing; it is rude 
to look at women’s washing because it may have underwear in it. Some women do 
not want men looking at their underwear. Some do and that makes it confusing, 
but Miss Kimberly is old and I do not think she wants me to see the pink puckery 
things in among the sheets and towels. I do not want to see them anyway.
“Did you have a good week?” she asks. She always asks this. I do not think she 
really cares whether I had a good week or not.
“My tires were slashed,” I say.
She stops putting things in the dryer and looks at me. “Someone slashed your 
tires? Here? Or at work?”
I do not know why that makes a difference. “Here,” I say. “I came out Thursday 
morning and they were all flat.”
She looks upset. “Right here in this parking lot? I thought it was safe here!”
“It was very inconvenient,” I say. “I was late to work.”
“But… vandals! Here!” Her face makes a shape I have never seen on it before. It 
is something like fear and something like disgust. Then she looks angry, staring 
right at me as if I had done something wrong. I look away. “I’ll have to move,” 
she says.
I do not understand: why does she have to move because my tires were slashed? No 
one could slash her tires, because she has no tires. She does not have a car.
“Did you see who did it?” she asks. She has left part of her wash hanging over 
the edge of the machine; it looks very messy and unpleasant, like food hanging 
over the edge of a plate.
“No,” I say. I take the light things out of the light basket and put them in the 
right-hand washing machine. I add the detergent, measuring carefully because it 
is wasteful to use too much and things will not be clean if I do not use enough. 
I put the coins in the slot, close the door, set the machine for warm wash, cool 
rinse, regular cycle, and push the START button. Inside the machine, something 
goes thunk and water hisses through the valves.
“It’s terrible,” Miss Kimberly says. She is scooping the rest of her wash into 
the dryer, the movements of her hands jerky. Something puckery and pink falls to 
the floor; I turn away and lift clothes out of the dark basket. I put them into 
the middle washer. “It’s all right for people like you,” she says.
“What is all right for people like me?” I ask. She has never talked this way 
before.
“You’re young,” she says. “And a man. You don’t have to worry.”
I do not understand. I am not young, according to Mr. Crenshaw. I am old enough 
to know better. I am a man, but I do not see why this means it is all right for 
my tires to be slashed.
“I did not want my tires slashed,” I say, speaking slowly because I do not know 
what she will do.
“Well, of course you didn’t,” she says, all in a rush. Usually her skin looks 
pale and yellowish in the lights of the laundry room, but now peach-colored 
patches glow on her cheeks. “But you don’t have to worry about people jumping on 
you. Men.”
I look at Miss Kimberly and cannot imagine anyone jumping on her. Her hair is 
gray and her pink scalp shows through it on top; her skin is wrinkled and she 
has brown spots on her arms. I want to ask if she is serious, but I know she is 
serious. She does not laugh, even at me when I drop something.
“I am sorry you are worried,” I say, shaking detergent into the washer full of 
dark things. I put the coins into the slot. The dryer door bangs shut; I had 
forgotten about the dryer, trying to understand Miss Kimberly, and my hand 
jerks. One of the coins misses the slot and falls into the wash. I will have to 
take everything out to find it, and the detergent will spill off the clothes 
onto the washer. I feel a buzzing in my head.
“Thank you, Lou,” Miss Kimberly says. Her voice is calmer, warmer. I am 
surprised. I did not expect to say the right thing. “What’s wrong?” she asks as 
I start lifting out the clothes, shaking them so most of the detergent falls 
back into the washing machine.
“I dropped a coin in,” I say.
She is coming closer. I do not want her to come closer. She wears a strong 
perfume, very sweet-smelling.
“Just use another. That one’ll be really clean when you take the clothes out,” 
she says.
I stand still a moment, the clothes in my hand. Can I leave that coin in? I have 
the spare in my pocket. I drop the clothes and reach for the coin in my pocket. 
It is the right size. I put it in the slot, close the door, set the machine, and 
push START. Again the thunk, the hiss of water. I feel strange inside. I thought 
I understood Miss Kimberly before, when she was the predictable old lady who 
washed her clothes on Friday night, as I do. I thought I understood her a few 
minutes ago, at least to understand that she was upset about something. But she 
thought of a solution so fast, while I was thinking she was still upset. How did 
she do that? Is that something normal people can do all the time?
“It’s easier than taking the clothes out,” she says. “This way you don’t get 
stuff on the machine and have to clean it up. I always bring some extra coins 
just in case.” She laughs, a little dry laugh. “As I get older, my hands shake 
sometimes.” She pauses, looking at me. I am still wondering how she did that, 
but I realize she is waiting for something from me. It is always appropriate to 
say thank you, even when you aren’t sure why.
“Thank you,” I say.
It was the right thing to say again; she smiles.
“You’re a nice man, Lou; I’m sorry about your tires,” she says. She looks at her 
watch. “I need to go make some phone calls; are you going to be here? To watch 
the dryer?”
“I will be downstairs,” I say. “Not in this room; it is too noisy.” I have said 
this before when she has asked me to keep an eye on her clothes. I always think 
of taking out an eye and putting it on the clothes, but I do not tell her that 
is what I think. I know what the expression means socially, but it is a silly 
meaning. She nods and smiles and goes out. I check again that the setting on 
both washers is correct and then go out into the hall.
The floor in the laundry room is ugly gray concrete, sloping down slightly to a 
big drain under the washing machines. I know the drain is there because two 
years ago I brought my washing down and workmen were there. They had moved the 
machines out and had the cover off the drain. It smelled very bad, sour and 
sick.
The floor in the hall is tile, each tile streaked with two shades of green on 
beige. The tiles are twelve-inch squares; the hall is five squares wide and 
forty-five and a half squares long. The person who laid the tiles laid them so 
that the streaks are crosswise to each other—each tile is laid so that the 
streaks are facing ninety degrees to the tile next to it. Most of the tiles are 
laid in one of two ways, but eight of them are laid upside down to the other 
tiles in the same orientation.
I like to look at this hall and think about those eight tiles. What pattern 
could be completed by having those eight tiles laid in reverse? So far I have 
come up with three possible patterns. I tried to tell Tom about it once, but he 
was not able to see the patterns in his head the way I can. I drew them all out 
on a sheet of paper, but soon I could tell that he was bored. It is not polite 
to bore people. I never tried to talk to him about it again.
But I find it endlessly interesting. When I get tired of the floor—but I never 
do get tired of the floor—I can look at the walls. All the walls in the hall are 
painted, but on one wall there was tile-patterned wallboard before. Those 
pretend tiles were four inches on a side, but unlike the floor tiles, the 
pretend wall tiles had a space for pretend grout. So the real pattern size is 
four and a half inches. If it were four inches, then three wall tiles would make 
one floor tile.
I look for the places where the line between the tiles can go up the wall and 
over the ceiling and back around without stopping. There is one place in this 
hall where the line almost makes it, but not quite. I used to think if the hall 
were twice as long there would be two places, but that’s not how it works. When 
I really look at it, I can tell that the hall would have to be five and a third 
times as long for all the lines to match exactly twice.
Hearing one washing machine whine down from spin, I go back into the laundry 
room. I know that it takes me exactly that long to arrive at the machine just as 
the drum stops turning. It is a kind of game, to take that last step when the 
machine takes its last turn. The left-hand dryer is still mumbling and bumbling; 
I take my wet clothes and put them in the empty right-hand dryer. By the time I 
have them all in and have checked to be sure nothing is left in the washer, the 
second washer comes spinning down. Once last year I worked out the relationship 
between the frictional force slowing the rotation and the frequency of the sound 
it makes. I did it by myself, without a computer, which made it more fun.
I take my clothes from the second machine, and there at the bottom is the 
missing coin, shiny and clean and smooth in my fingers. I put it in my pocket, 
put the clothes into the dryer, insert the coins, and start it up. Long ago, I 
used to watch the tumbling clothes and try to figure out what the pattern 
was—why this time the arm of a red sweatshirt was in front of the blue robe, 
falling down and around, and next time the same red arm was between the yellow 
sweatpants and the pillowcase instead. My mother didn’t like it when I mumbled 
while watching the clothes rise and fall, so I learned to do it all in my head.
Miss Kimberly comes back just as the dryer with her clothes in it stops. She 
smiles at me. She has a plate with some cookies on it. “Thanks, Lou,” she says. 
She holds out the plate. “Have a cookie. I know boys—I mean young men—like 
cookies.”
She brings cookies almost every week. I do not always like the kind of cookie 
she brings, but it is not polite to say so. This week it is lemon crisps. I like 
them a lot. I take three. She puts the plate on the folding table and takes her 
things out of the dryer. She puts them in her basket; she does not fold her 
clothes down here. “Just bring the plate up when you’re done, Lou,” she says. 
This is the same as last week.
“Thank you, Miss Kimberly,” I say.
“You’re quite welcome,” she says, as she always does.
I finish the cookies, dust the crumbs into the trash basket, and fold my laundry 
before going upstairs. I hand her the plate and go on to my apartment.
ON SATURDAY MORNINGS, I GO TO THE CENTER. ONE OF THE counselors is available 
from 8:30 to 12:00, and once a month there’s a special program. Today there is 
no program, but Maxine, one of the counselors, is walking toward the conference 
room when I arrive. Bailey did not say if she was the counselor they talked to 
last week. Maxine wears orange lipstick and purple eye shadow; I never ask her 
anything. I think about asking her anyway, but someone else goes in before I 
make up my mind.
The counselors know how to find us legal assistance or an apartment, but I do 
not know if they will understand the problem we face now. They always encourage 
us to do everything to become more normal. I think they will say we should want 
this treatment even if they think it is too dangerous to try while it is still 
experimental. Eventually I will have to talk to someone here, but I am glad 
someone is ahead of me. I do not have to do it right now.
I am looking at the bulletin board with its notices of AA meetings and other 
support group meetings (single parents, parents of teens, job seekers) and 
interest group meetings (funkdance, bowling, technology assistance) when Emmy 
comes up to me. “Well, how’s your girlfriend?”
“I do not have a girlfriend,” I say.
“I saw her,” Emmy says. “You know I did. Don’t lie about it.”
“You saw my friend,” I say. “Not my girlfriend. A girlfriend is someone who 
agrees to be your girlfriend and she has not agreed.” I am not being honest and 
that is wrong, but I still do not want to talk to Emmy, or listen to Emmy, about 
Marjory.
“You asked her?” Emmy says.
“I do not want to talk to you about her,” I say, and turn away.
“Because you know I’m right,” Emmy says. She moves around me quickly, standing 
in front of me again. “She is one of those—call themselves normal—using us like 
lab rats. You’re always hanging around with that kind, Lou, and it’s not right.”
“I do not know what you mean,” I say. I see Marjory only once a week—twice the 
week of the grocery store—so how can that be “hanging around” with her? If I 
come to the Center every week and Emmy is there, does this mean I am hanging 
around with Emmy? I do not like that thought.
“You haven’t come to any of the special events in months,” she says. “You’re 
spending time with your normal friends.” She makes normal into a curse word by 
her tone.
I have not come to the special events because they do not interest me. A lecture 
on parenting skills? I have no children. A dance? The music they were going to 
have is not the kind I like. A pottery demo and class? I do not want to make 
things out of clay. Thinking about it, I realize that very little in the Center 
now interests me. It is an easy way to run into other autistics, but they are 
not all like me and I can find more people who share my interests on-line or at 
the office. Cameron, Bailey, Eric, Linda… we all go to the Center to meet one 
another before going somewhere else, but it is just a habit. We do not really 
need the Center, except maybe to talk to the counselors now and then.
“If you’re going to look for girlfriends, you should start with your own kind,” 
Emmy says.
I look at her face, with the physical signs of anger all over it—the flushed 
skin, the bright eyes between tense lids, the square-shaped mouth, the teeth 
almost together. I do not know why she is angry with me this time. I do not know 
why it matters to her how much time I spend at the Center. I do not think she is 
my kind anyway. Emmy is not autistic. I do not know her diagnosis; I do not care 
about her diagnosis.
“I am not looking for girlfriends,” I say.
“So, she came looking for you?”
“I said I do not want to talk about this to you,” I say. I look around. I do not 
see anyone else I know. I thought Bailey might be in this morning, but maybe he 
has figured out what I just realized. Maybe he isn’t coming because he knows he 
does not need the Center. I do not want to stand here and wait for Maxine to be 
free.
I turn to go, aware of Emmy behind me, radiating dark feelings faster than I can 
get away. Linda and Eric come in. Before I can say anything, Emmy blurts out, 
“Lou’s been seeing that girl again, that researcher.”
Linda looks down and away; she does not want to hear. She does not like to get 
involved in arguments anyway. Eric’s gaze brushes across my face and finds the 
pattern on the floor tiles. He is listening but not asking.
“I told him she was a researcher, just out to use him, but he won’t listen,” 
Emmy says. “I saw her myself and she’s not even pretty.”
I feel my neck getting hot. It is not fair of Emmy to say that about Marjory. 
She does not even know Marjory. I think Marjory is prettier than Emmy, but 
pretty is not the reason I like her.
“Is she trying to get you to take the treatment, Lou?” Eric asks.
“No,” I say. “We do not talk about that.”
“I do not know her,” Eric says, and turns away. Linda is already out of sight.
“You don’t want to know her,” Emmy says.
Eric turns back. “If she is Lou’s friend, you should not say bad things about 
her,” he says. Then he walks on, after Linda.
I think about following them, but I do not want to stay here. Emmy might follow 
me. She might talk more. She would talk more. It would upset Linda and Eric.
I turn to leave, and Emmy does say more. “Where are you going?” she asks. “You 
just got here. Don’t think you can run away from your problems, Lou!”
I can run away from her, I think. I cannot run away from work or Dr. Fornum, but 
I can run from Emmy. I smile, thinking that, and she turns even redder.
“What are you smiling about?”
“I am thinking about music,” I say. That is always safe. I do not want to look 
at her; her face is red and shiny and angry. She circles me, trying to make me 
face her. I look at the floor instead. “I think about music when people are 
angry with me,” I say. That is sometimes true.
“Oh, you’re impossible!” she says, and storms off down the hall. I wonder if she 
has any friends at all. I never see her with other people. That is sad, but it 
is not something I can fix.
Outside it feels much quieter, even though the Center is on a busy street. I do 
not have plans now. If I am not spending Saturday morning at the Center, I am 
not sure what to do. I did my laundry. My apartment is clean. The books say that 
we do not cope well with uncertainty or changes in schedule. Usually it does not 
bother me, but this morning I feel shaky inside. I do not want to think of 
Marjory being what Emmy says she is. What if Emmy is right? What if Marjory is 
lying to me? It does not feel right, but my feelings can be wrong.
I wish I could see Marjory now. I wish we were going to do something together, 
something where I could look at her. Just look and listen to her talk to someone 
else. Would I know if she liked me? I think she does like me. I do not know if 
she likes me a lot or a little, though. I do not know if she likes me the way 
she likes other men or as a grownup likes a child. I do not know how to tell. If 
I were normal I would know. Normal people must know, or they could not ever get 
married.
Last week at this time I was at the tournament. I did enjoy it. I would rather 
be there than here. Even with the noise, with all the people, with all the 
smells. That is a place I belong; I do not belong here anymore. I am changing, 
or rather I have changed.
I decide to walk back to the apartment, even though it is a long way. It is 
cooler than it has been, and fall flowers show in some of the yards I walk past. 
The rhythm of walking eases my tension and makes it easier to hear the music 
I’ve chosen to walk with. I see other people with earphones on. They are 
listening to broadcast or recorded music; I wonder if the ones without earphones 
are listening to their own music or walking without music.
The smell of fresh bread stops me partway home. I turn aside into a small bakery 
and buy a loaf of warm bread. Next to the bakery is a flower shop with ranked 
masses of purples, yellows, blues, bronzes, deep reds. The colors carry more 
than wavelengths of light; they project joy, pride, sadness, comfort. It is 
almost too much to bear.
I store the colors and textures in my memory and take the bread home, breathing 
in that fragrance and combining it with the colors I pass. One house I pass has 
a late-blooming rose trained up a wall; even across the yard I can catch a hint 
of its sweetness.
IT HAS BEEN OVER A WEEK, AND MR. ALDRIN AND MR. CRENSHAW have not said anything 
more about the treatment. We have had no more letters. I would like to think 
this means something has gone wrong with the process and they will forget about 
it, but I think they will not forget. Mr. Crenshaw always looks and sounds so 
angry. Angry people do not forget injuries; forgiveness dissolves anger. That is 
what the sermon this week was about. My mind should not wander during the 
sermon, but sometimes it is boring and I think of other things. Anger and Mr. 
Crenshaw seem connected.
On Monday, we all get a notice that we are to meet on Saturday. I do not want to 
give up my Saturday, but the notice does not include any reason for staying 
away. Now I wish I had waited to talk to Maxine at the Center, but it is too 
late.
“Do you think we have to go?” Chuy asks. “Will they fire us if we don’t?”
“I don’t know,” Bailey says. “I want to find out what they’re doing, so I would 
go anyway.”
“I will go,” Cameron says. I nod, and so do the others. Linda looks most 
unhappy, but she usually looks most unhappy.
“LOOK… ER… PETE. …” CRENSHAW’S VOICE OOZED FALSE friendliness; Aldrin noticed 
his difficulty in remembering the name. “I know you think I’m a hard-hearted 
bastard, but the fact is the company’s struggling. The space-based production is 
necessary, but it’s eating up profits like you wouldn’t believe.”
Oh, wouldn’t I? Aldrin thought. It was stupid, in his opinion: the advantages to 
low- and zero-G facilities were far outweighed by their expense and the 
drawbacks. There were riches enough to be made down here, on the earth, and he 
would not have voted for the commitment to space if anyone had given him a vote.
“Your guys are fossils, Pete. Face it. The auties older than them were 
throwaways, nine out of ten. And don’t recite that woman, whatever her name was, 
that designed slaughterhouses or something—”
“Grandin,” Aldrin murmured, but Crenshaw ignored him.
“One in a million, and I have the highest respect for someone who pulls 
themselves up by their bootstraps the way she did. But she was the exception. 
Most of those poor bastards were hopeless. Not their fault, all right? But 
still, no good to themselves or anyone else, no matter how much money was spent 
on them. And if the damned shrinks had kept hold of the category, your guys 
would be just as bad. Lucky for them the neurologists and behaviorists got some 
influence. But still… they’re not normal, whatever you say.”
Aldrin said nothing. Crenshaw in full flow wouldn’t listen anyway. Crenshaw took 
that silence for consent and went on.
“And then they figured out what it was that went wrong and started fixing it in 
babies… so your guys are fossils, Pete. Marooned between the bad old days and 
the bright new ones. Stuck. It’s not fair to them.”
Very little in life was fair, and Aldrin could not believe that Crenshaw had a 
clue about fairness.
“Now you say they have this unique talent and deserve the expensive extras we 
shower on them because they produce. That may’ve been true five years ago, 
Pete—maybe even two years ago—but the machines have caught up, as they always 
do.” He held out a printout. “I’ll bet you don’t keep up with the literature in 
artificial intelligence, do you?”
Aldrin took the printout without looking at it. “Machines have never been able 
to do what they do,” he said.
“Once upon a time, machines couldn’t add two and two,” Crenshaw said. “But you 
wouldn’t hire someone now to add up columns of figures with pencil and paper, 
would you?”
Only during a power outage: small businesses found it expedient to be sure the 
people who worked checkout registers could, in fact, add two and two with paper 
and pencil. But mentioning that would not work, he knew.
“You’re saying machines could replace them?” he asked.
“Easy as pie,” Crenshaw said. “Well… maybe not that easy. It’d take new 
computers and some pretty high-powered software… but then all it takes is the 
electricity. None of that silly stuff they’ve got.”
Electricity that had to be paid for constantly, whereas the supports for his 
people had been paid off long ago. Another thing Crenshaw wouldn’t listen to.
“Suppose they all took the treatment and it worked: would you still want to 
replace them with machines?”
“Bottom line, Pete, bottom line. Whatever comes out best for the company is what 
I want. If they can do the work as well and not cost as much as new machines, 
I’m not out to put anyone on unemployment. But we have to cut costs—have to. In 
this market, the only way to get investment income is to show efficiency. And 
that plush private lab and those offices—that’s not what any stockholder would 
call efficiency.”
The executive gym and dining room, Aldrin knew, were considered inefficiency by 
some stockholders, but this had never resulted in loss of executive privileges. 
Executives, it had been explained repeatedly, needed these perks to help them 
maintain peak performance. They had earned the privileges they used, and the 
privileges boosted their efficiency. It was said, but Aldrin didn’t believe it. 
He also didn’t say it.
“So, bottom line, Gene—” It was daring to use Crenshaw’s first name, but he was 
in the mood to be daring. “Either they agree to treatment, in which case you 
might consider letting them stay on, or you’ll find a way to force them out. Law 
or no law.”
“The law does not require a company to bankrupt itself,” Crenshaw said. “That 
notion went overboard early this century. We’d lose the tax break, but that’s 
such a tiny part of our budget that it’s worthless, really. Now if they’d agree 
to dispense with their so-called support measures and act like regular 
employees, I wouldn’t push the treatment—though why they wouldn’t want it I 
can’t fathom.”
“So you want me to do what?” Aldrin asked.
Crenshaw smiled. “Glad to see you’re coming onboard with this, Pete. I want you 
to make it clear to your people what the options are. One way or another, they 
have to quit being a drag on the company: give up their luxuries now, or take 
the treatment and give them up if it’s really the autism that makes them need 
that stuff, or…” He ran a finger across his throat. “They can’t hold the company 
hostage. There’s not a law in this land we can’t find a way around or get 
changed.” He sat back and folded his hands behind his head. “We have the 
resources.”
Aldrin felt sick. He had known this all his adult life, but he had never been at 
a level where anyone said it out loud. He had been able to hide it from himself.
“I’ll try to explain,” he said, his tongue stiff in his mouth.
“Pete, you’ve got to quit trying and start doing,” Crenshaw said. “You’re not 
stupid or lazy; I can tell that. But you just don’t have the… the push.”
Aldrin nodded and escaped from Crenshaw’s office. He went into the washroom and 
scrubbed his hands… He still felt soiled. He thought of quitting, of turning in 
his resignation. Mia had a good job, and they had chosen not to have children 
yet. They could coast a while on her salary if they had to.
But who would look after his people? Not Crenshaw. Aldrin shook his head at 
himself in the mirror. He was only fooling himself if he thought he could help. 
He had to try, but… who else in the family could pay his brother’s bills for 
residential treatment? What if he lost his job?
He tried to think of his contacts: Betty in Human Resources. Shirley in 
Accounting. He didn’t know anyone in Legal; he’d never needed to. HR took care 
of the interface with laws concerning special-needs employees; they talked to 
Legal if it was necessary.
MR. ALDRIN HAS INVITED THE WHOLE SECTION OUT TO DINNER. We are at the pizza 
place, and because the group is too large for one table, we are at two tables 
pushed together, in the wrong part of the room.
I am not comfortable with Mr. Aldrin sitting at the table with us, but I do not 
know what to do about it. He is smiling a lot and talking a lot. Now he thinks 
the treatment is a good idea, he says. He does not want to pressure us, but he 
thinks it would benefit us. I try to think about the taste of the pizza and not 
listen, but it is harder.
After a while he slows down. He has had another beer, and his voice is softening 
at the edges, like toast in hot chocolate. He sounds more like the Mr. Aldrin I 
am used to, more tentative. “I still don’t understand why they’re in such a 
hurry,” he says. “The expense of the gym and things is minimal, really. We don’t 
need the space. It’s a drop in the bucket, compared to the profitability of the 
section. And there aren’t enough autistics like you in the world to make this a 
profitable treatment even if it does work perfectly for all of you.”
“Current estimates are that there are millions of autistic persons in the United 
States alone,” Eric says.
“Yes, but—”
“The cost of social services for that population, including residential 
facilities for the most impaired, is estimated at billions a year. If the 
treatment works, that money would be available—”
“The workforce can’t handle that many new workers,” Mr. Aldrin says. “And some 
of them are too old. Jeremy—” He stops suddenly and his skin turns red and 
shiny. Is he angry or embarrassed? I am not sure. He takes a long breath. “My 
brother,” he says. “He is too old to get a job now.”
“You have a brother who is autistic?” Linda asks. She looks at his face for the 
first time. “You never told us.” I feel cold suddenly, exposed. I thought Mr. 
Aldrin could not see into our heads, but if he has an autistic brother, then he 
may know more than I thought.
“I… didn’t think it was important.” His face is still red and shiny, and I think 
he is not telling the truth. “Jeremy is older than any of you. He’s in a 
residential facility—”
I am trying to put this new idea about Mr. Aldrin, that he has an autistic 
brother, together with his attitudes toward us, so I say nothing.
“You lied to us,” Cameron says. His eyelids have pulled down; his voice sounds 
angry. Mr. Aldrin’s head jerks back, as if someone had pulled a string.
“I did not—”
“There are two kinds of lie,” Cameron says. I can tell he is quoting something 
he was told. “The lie of commission, which states an untruth known to the 
speaker to be untrue, and the lie of omission, which omits to state a truth 
known to the speaker to be true. You lied when you did not tell us your brother 
was autistic.”
“I’m your boss, not your friend,” Mr. Aldrin blurts out. He turns even redder. 
He said earlier he was our friend. Was he lying then, or is he lying now? “I 
mean… it had nothing to do with work.”
“It is the reason you wanted to be our supervisor,” Cameron says.
“It’s not. I didn’t want to be your supervisor at first.”
“At first.” Linda is still staring at his face. “Something changed. It was your 
brother?”
“No. You are not much like my brother. He is… very impaired.”
“You want the treatment for your brother?” Cameron asks.
“I… don’t know.”
That does not sound like the truth, either. I try to imagine Mr. Aldrin’s 
brother, this unknown autistic person. If Mr. Aldrin thinks his brother is very 
impaired, what does he think of us, really? What was his childhood like?
“I’ll bet you do,” Cameron says. “If you think it’s a good idea for us, you must 
think it could help him. Maybe you think if you can get us to do it, they’ll 
reward you with his treatment? Good boy: here’s a candy?”
“That’s not fair,” Mr. Aldrin says. His voice is louder, too. People are turning 
to look. I wish we were not here. “He’s my brother, naturally I want to help him 
any way I can, but—”
“Did Mr. Crenshaw tell you that if you talked us into it, your brother could get 
treatment?”
“I… it’s not that—” His eyes slide from side to side; his face changes color. I 
see the effort on his face, the effort to fool us convincingly. The book said 
autistic persons are gullible and easily fooled because they do not understand 
the nuances of communication. I do not think lying is a nuance. I think lying is 
wrong. I am sorry Mr. Aldrin is lying to us but glad that he is not doing it 
very well.
“If there is not enough market for this treatment to autistic persons, what else 
is it good for?” Linda asks. I wish she had not changed the subject back to 
before, but it is too late. Mr. Aldrin’s face relaxes a little.
I have an idea, but it is not clear yet. “Mr. Crenshaw said he would be willing 
to keep us on without the treatment if we gave up the support services, isn’t 
that right?”
“Yes, why?”
“So… he would like to have what we—what autistic persons—are good at without the 
things we are not good at.”
Mr. Aldrin’s brow wrinkles. It is the movement that shows confusion. “I 
suppose,” he says slowly. “But I’m not sure what that has to do with the 
treatment.”
“Somewhere in the original article is the profit,” I say to Mr. Aldrin. “Not 
changing autistic persons—there are no more kids born like we were born, not in 
this country. There are not enough of us. But something we do is valuable enough 
that if normal people could do it, that would be profitable.” I think of that 
time in my office when for a few moments the meaning of the symbols, the 
beautiful intricacy of the patterns of data, went away and left me confused and 
distracted. “You have watched us work for years now; you must know what it is—”
“Your ability in pattern analysis and math, you know that.”
“No—you said Mr. Crenshaw said the new software could do that as well. It is 
something else.”
“I still want to know about your brother,” Linda says.
Aldrin closes his eyes, refusing contact. I was scolded for doing just that. He 
opens them again. “You’re… relentless,” he says. “You just don’t quit.”
The pattern forming in my mind, the light and dark shifting and circling, begins 
to cohere. But it is not enough; I need more data.
“Explain the money,” I say to Aldrin.
“Explain… what?”
“The money. How does the company make money to pay us?”
“It’s… very complicated, Lou. I don’t think you could understand.”
“Please try. Mr. Crenshaw claims we cost too much, that the profits suffer. 
Where do the profits really come from?”



CHAPTER TEN
« ^ » 
MR. ALDRIN JUST STARES AT ME. FINALLY HE SAYS, “I don’t know how to say it, Lou, 
because I don’t know what the process is, exactly, or what it could do if 
applied to someone who isn’t autistic.”
“Can’t you even—”
“And… and I don’t think I should be talking about this. Helping you is one 
thing…” He has not helped us yet. Lying to us is not helping us. “But 
speculating about something that doesn’t exist, speculating that the company is 
contemplating some broader action that may be… that could be construed as…” He 
stops and shakes his head without finishing the sentence. We are all looking at 
him. His eyes are very shiny, as if he were about to cry.
“I shouldn’t have come,” he says after a moment. “This was a big mistake. I’ll 
pay for the meal, but I have to go now.”
He pushes back his chair and gets up; I see him at the cash register with his 
back to us. None of us says anything until he has gone out the front door.
“He’s crazy,” Chuy says.
“He’s scared,” Bailey says.
“He hasn’t helped us, not really,” Linda says. “I don’t know why he bothered—”
“His brother,” Cameron says.
“Something we said bothered him even more than Mr. Crenshaw or his brother,” I 
say.
“He knows something he doesn’t want us to know.” Linda brushes the hair off her 
forehead with an abrupt gesture.
“He doesn’t want to know it himself,” I say. I am not sure why I think that, but 
I do. It is something we said. I need to know what it was.
“There was something, back around the turn of the century,” Bailey says. “In one 
of the science journals, something about making people sort of autistic so they 
would work harder.”
“Science journal or science fiction?” I ask.
“It was—wait; I’ll look it up. I know somebody who will know.” Bailey makes a 
note on his handcomp.
“Don’t send it from the office,” Chuy says.
“Why—? Oh. Yes.” Bailey nods.
“Pizza tomorrow,” Linda says. “Coming here is normal.”
I open my mouth to say that Tuesday is my day to shop for groceries and shut it 
again. This is more important. I can go a week without groceries, or I can shop 
a little later.
“Everybody look up what you can find,” Cameron says.
At home, I log on and e-mail Lars. It is very late where he is, but he is awake. 
I find out that the original research was done in Denmark, but the entire lab, 
equipment and all, was bought up and the research base shifted to Cambridge. The 
paper I first heard about weeks ago was based on research done more than a year 
ago. Mr. Aldrin was right about that. Lars thinks much of the work to make the 
treatments human-compatible has been done; he speculates on secret military 
experiments. I do not believe this; Lars thinks everything is a secret military 
experiment. He is a very good game player, but I do not believe everything he 
says.
Wind rattles my windows. I get up and lay a hand on the glass. Much colder. A 
spatter of rain and then I hear thunder. It is late anyway; I shut down my 
system and go to bed.
Tuesday we do not speak to one another at work, other than “good morning” and 
“good afternoon.” I spend fifteen minutes in the gym when I finish another 
section of my project, but then I go back to work. Mr. Aldrin and Mr. Crenshaw 
both come by, not quite arm in arm, but as if they were friendly. They do not 
stay long, and they do not talk to me.
After work, we go back to the pizza place. “Two nights in a row!” says 
Hi-I’m-Sylvia. I cannot tell if she is happy or unhappy about that. We take our 
usual table but pull over another one so there is room for everybody.
“So?” Cameron says, after we’ve ordered. “What have we found out?”
I tell the group what Lars said. Bailey has found the text of the old article, 
which is clearly fiction and not nonfiction. I did not know that science 
journals ever published science fiction on purpose, and apparently it only 
happened for one year.
“It was supposed to make people really concentrate on an assigned project and 
not waste time on other things,” Bailey said.
“Like Mr. Crenshaw thinks we waste time?” I say.
Bailey nods.
“We don’t waste as much time as he wastes walking around looking angry,” Chuy 
says.
We all laugh, but quietly. Eric is drawing curlicues with his colored pens; they 
look like laughing sounds.
“Does it say how it was going to work?” Linda asks.
“Sort of,” Bailey says. “But I’m not sure the science is good. And that was 
decades ago. What they thought would work might not be what really works.”
“They don’t want autistic people like us,” Eric says. “They wanted—or the story 
said they wanted—savant talents and concentration without the other side 
effects. Compared to a savant we waste a lot of time, though not as much as Mr. 
Crenshaw thinks.”
“Normal people waste a lot of time on nonproductive things,” Cameron says. “At 
least as much as we do, maybe more.”
“It would take what to turn a normal person into a savant without the other 
problems?” Linda asks.
“I don’t know,” Cameron says. “They would have to be smart to start with. Good 
at something. Then they would have to want to do that instead of anything else.”
“It wouldn’t do any good if they wanted to do something they were bad at,” Chuy 
says. I imagine a person determined to be a musician who has no rhythm and no 
pitch sense; it is ridiculous. We all see the funny side of this and laugh.
“Do people ever want to do what they aren’t good at?” Linda asks. “Normal 
people, that is?” For once she does not make the word normal sound like a bad 
word.
We sit and think a moment; then Chuy says, “I had an uncle who wanted to be a 
writer. My sister—she reads a lot—she said he was really bad. Really, really 
bad. He was good at doing things with his hands, but he wanted to write.”
“Here y’are, then,” Hi-I’m-Sylvia says, putting down the pizzas. I look at her. 
She is smiling, but she looks tired and it is not even seven yet.
“Thank you,” I say. She waves a hand and hurries away.
“Something to keep people from paying attention to distraction,” Bailey says. 
“Something to make them like the right things.”
“ ‘Distractibility is determined by the sensory sensitivity at every level of 
processing and by the strength of sensory integration,’” Eric recites. “I read 
that. Part of it’s inborn. That’s been known for forty or fifty years; late in 
the twentieth century that knowledge had worked its way down to the popular 
level, in books on parenting. Attention control circuitry is developed early in 
fetal life; it can be compromised by later injury…”
I feel almost sick for a moment, as if something were attacking my brain right 
now, but push that feeling aside. Whatever caused my autism is in the past, 
where I cannot undo it. Now it is important not to think about me but about the 
problem.
All my life I’ve been told how lucky I was to be born when I was— lucky to 
benefit from the improvements in early intervention, lucky to be born in the 
right country, with parents who had the education and resources to be sure I got 
that good early intervention. Even lucky to be born too soon for definitive 
treatment, because—my parents said—having to struggle gave me the chance to 
demonstrate strength of character.
What would they have said if this treatment had been available for me when I was 
a child? Would they have wanted me to be stronger or be normal? Would accepting 
treatment mean I had no strength of character? Or would I find other struggles?
I AM STILL THINKING ABOUT THIS THE NEXT EVENING AS I change clothes and drive to 
Tom and Lucia’s for fencing. What behaviors do we have that someone could profit 
from, other than the occasional savant talents? Most of the autistic behaviors 
have been presented to us as deficits, not strengths. Unsocial, lacking social 
skills, problems with attention control… I keep coming back to that. It is hard 
to think from their perspective, but I have the feeling that this attention 
control issue is at the middle of the pattern, like a black hole at the center 
of a space-time whirlpool. That is something else we are supposed to be 
deficient in, the famous Theory of Mind.
I am a little early. No one else is parked outside yet. I pull up carefully so 
that there is the most room possible behind me. Sometimes the others are not so 
careful, and then fewer people can park without inconveniencing others. I could 
be early every week, but that would not be fair to others.
Inside, Tom and Lucia are laughing about something. When I go in, they grin at 
me, very relaxed. I wonder what it would be like to have someone in the house 
all the time, someone to laugh with. They do not always laugh, but they seem 
happy more often than not.
“How are you, Lou?” Tom asks. He always asks that. It is one of the things 
normal people do, even if they know that you are all right.
“Fine,” I say. I want to ask Lucia about medical things, but I do not know how 
to start or if it is polite. I start with something else. “The tires on my car 
were slashed last week.”
“Oh, no!” Lucia says. “How awful!” Her face changes shape; I think she means to 
express sympathy.
“It was in the parking lot at the apartment,” I say. “In the same place as 
usual. All four tires.”
Tom whistles. “That’s expensive,” he says. “Has there been a lot of vandalism in 
the area? Did you report it to the police?”
I cannot answer one of those questions at all. “I did report it,” I say. “There 
is a policeman who lives in our apartment building. He told me how to report 
it.”
“That’s good,” Tom says. I am not sure if he means it is good that a policeman 
lives in our building or that I reported it, but I do not think it is important 
to know which.
“Mr. Crenshaw was angry that I was late to work,” I say.
“Didn’t you tell me he’s new?” Tom asks.
“Yes. He does not like our section. He does not like autistic people.”
“Oh, he’s probably…” Lucia begins, but Tom looks at her and she stops.
“I don’t know why you think he doesn’t like autistic people,” Tom says.
I relax. It is so much easier to talk to Tom when he says things this way. The 
question is less threatening. I wish I knew why.
“He says we should not need the supportive environment,” I say. “He says it is 
too expensive and we should not have the gym and… and the other things.” I have 
never actually talked about the special things that make our workplace so much 
better. Maybe Tom and Lucia will think the same way as Mr. Crenshaw when they 
find out about them.
“That’s…” Lucia pauses, looks at Tom, and then goes on. “That’s ridiculous. It 
doesn’t matter what he thinks; the law says they have to provide a supportive 
work environment.”
“As long as we’re as productive as other employees,” I say. It is hard to talk 
about this; it is too scary. I can feel my throat tightening and hear my own 
voice sounding strained and mechanical. “As long as we fit the diagnostic 
categories under the law…”
“Which autism clearly does,” Lucia says. “And I’m sure you’re productive, or 
they wouldn’t have kept you this long.”
“Lou, is Mr. Crenshaw threatening to fire you?” Tom asks.
“No… not exactly. I told you about that experimental treatment. They didn’t say 
anything more about it for a while, but now they—Mr. Crenshaw, the company—they 
want us to take that experimental treatment. They sent a letter. It said people 
who were part of a research protocol were protected from cutbacks. Mr. Aldrin 
talked to our group; we are having a special meeting on Saturday. I thought they 
could not make us take it, but Mr. Aldrin says that Mr. Crenshaw says they can 
shut down our section and refuse to rehire us for something else because we are 
not trained in something else. He says if we do not take the treatment they will 
do this and it is not firing because companies can change with the times.”
Tom and Lucia both look angry, their faces knotted with tight muscle and the 
shiny look coming out on their skin. I should not have said this now; this was 
the wrong time, if anything was the right time.
“Those bastards,” Lucia says. She looks at me and her face changes from the 
tight knots of anger, smoothing out around the eyes. “Lou— Lou, listen: I am not 
angry with you. I am angry with people who hurt you or do not treat you well… 
not with you.”
“I should not have said this to you,” I say, still uncertain.
“Yes, you should,” Lucia says. “We are your friends; we should know if something 
goes wrong in your life, so that we can help.”
“Lucia’s right,” Tom says. “Friends help friends—just as you’ve helped us, like 
when you built the mask rack.”
“That is something we both use,” I say. “My work is just about me.”
“Yes and no,” Tom says. “Yes in that we are not working with you and cannot help 
you directly. But no when it is a big problem that has general application, like 
this one. This isn’t just about you. It could affect every disabled person who’s 
employed anywhere. What if they decided that a person in a wheelchair didn’t 
need ramps? You definitely need a lawyer, all of you. Didn’t you say that the 
Center could find one for you?”
“Before the others get here, Lou,” Lucia says, “why don’t you tell us more about 
this Mr. Crenshaw and his plans?”
I sit down on the sofa, but even though they have said they want to listen it is 
hard to talk. I look at the rug on their floor, with its wide border of 
blue-and-cream geometric patterns—there are four patterns within a frame of 
plain blue stripes—and try to make the story clear.
“There is a treatment they—someone—used on adult apes,” I say. “I did not know 
apes could be autistic, but what they said was that autistic apes became more 
normal when they had this treatment. Now Mr. Crenshaw wants us to have it.”
“And you don’t want it?” Tom asks.
“I do not understand how it works or how it will make things better,” I say.
“Very sensible,” Lucia says. “Do you know who did the research, Lou?”
“I do not remember the name,” I say. “Lars—he’s a member of an international 
group of autistic adults—e-mailed me about it several weeks ago. He sent me the 
journal Web site and I went there, but I did not understand much of it. I did 
not study neuroscience.”
“Do you still have that citation?” Lucia asks. “I can look it up, see what I can 
find out.”
“You could?”
“Sure. And I can ask around in the department, find out if the researchers are 
considered any good or not.”
“We had an idea,” I say.
“We who?” Tom asks.
“We… the people I work with,” I say.
“The other autistic people?” Tom asks.
“Yes.” I close my eyes briefly to calm down. “Mr. Aldrin bought us pizza. He 
drank beer. He said that he did not think there was enough profit in treating 
adult autistic persons—because they now treat pre-borns and infants and we are 
the last cohort who will be like us. At least in this country. So we wondered 
why they wanted to develop this treatment and what else it could do. It is like 
some pattern analysis I have done. There is one pattern, but it is not the only 
pattern. Someone can think they are generating one pattern and actually generate 
several more, and one of those may be useful or not useful, depending on what 
the problem is.” I look up at Tom and he is looking at me with a strange 
expression. His mouth is a little open.
He shakes his head, a quick jerk. “So—you are thinking maybe they have something 
else in mind, something that you people are just part of?”
“It might be,” I say cautiously.
He looks at Lucia, and she nods. “It certainly could be,” he says. “Trying 
whatever it is on you would give them additional data, and then… Let me think…”
“I think it is something to do with attention control,” I say. “We all have a 
different way of perceiving sensory input and… and setting attention 
priorities.” I am not sure I have the words right, but Lucia nods vigorously.
“Attention control—of course. If they could control that in the architecture, 
not chemically, it’d be a lot easier to develop a dedicated workforce.”
“Space,” Tom says.
I am confused, but Lucia only blinks and then nods.
“Yes. The big limitation in space-based employment is getting people to 
concentrate, not be distracted. The sensory inputs up there are not what we’re 
used to, what worked in natural selection.” I do not know how she knows what he 
is thinking. I would like to be able to read minds like that. She grins at me. 
“Lou, I think you’re onto something big, here. Get me that citation, and I’ll 
run with it.”
I feel uneasy. “I am not supposed to talk about work outside the campus,” I say.
“You’re not talking about work,” she says. “You’re talking about your work 
environment. That’s different.”
I wonder if Mr. Aldrin would see it that way.
Someone knocks on the door, and we quit talking. I am sweaty even though I have 
not been fencing. The first to arrive are Dave and Susan. We go through the 
house, collect our gear, and start stretching in the backyard.
Marjory is next to arrive, and she grins at me. I feel lighter than air again. I 
remember what Emmy said, but I cannot believe it when I see Marjory. Maybe 
tonight I will ask her to go to dinner with me. Don has not come. I suppose he 
is still angry with Tom and Lucia for not acting like friends. It makes me sad 
that they are not all still friends; I hope they do not get angry with me and 
quit being friends with me.
I am fencing with Dave when I hear a noise from the street and then a squeal of 
tires moving fast. I ignore it and do not change my attack, but Dave stops and I 
hit him too hard in the chest.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“It’s okay,” he says. “That sounded close; did you hear it?”
“I heard something,” I say. I am trying to replay the sounds, 
thump-crash-tinkle-tinkle-squeal-roar, and think what it could be. Someone 
dropped a bowl out of their car?
“Maybe we’d better check,” Dave says.
Several of the others have gotten up to look. I follow the group to the front 
yard. In the light from the streetlight on the corner I can see a glitter on the 
pavement.
“It’s your car, Lou,” Susan says. “The windshield.”
I feel cold.
“Your tires last week… what day was that, Lou?”
“Thursday,” I say. My voice shakes a little and sounds harsh.
“Thursday. And now this…” Tom looks at the others, and they look back. I can 
tell that they are thinking something together, but I do not know what it is. 
Tom shakes his head. “I guess we’ll have to call the police. I hate to break up 
the practice, but—”
“I’ll drive you home, Lou,” Marjory says. She has come up behind me; I jump when 
I hear her voice.
Tom calls the police because, he says, it happened in front of his house. He 
hands the phone to me after a few minutes, and a bored voice asks my name, my 
address, my phone number, the license number of the car. I can hear noise in the 
background on the other end, and people are talking in the living room; it is 
hard to understand what the voice is saying. I am glad it is just routine 
questions; I can figure those out.
Then the voice asks something else, and the words tangle together and I cannot 
figure it out. “I’m sorry…” I say.
The voice is louder, the words more separated. Tom shushes the people in the 
living room. This time I understand.
“Do you have any idea who might have done this?” the voice asks.
“No,” I say. “But someone slashed my tires last week.”
“Oh?” Now it sounds interested. “Did you report that?”
Yes, I say.
“Do you remember who the investigating officer was?”
“I have a card; just a minute—” I put the phone down and get out my wallet. The 
card is still there. I read off the name, Malcolm Stacy, and the case number.
“He’s not in now; I’ll put this report on his desk. Now… are there any 
witnesses?”
“I heard it,” I say, “but I didn’t see it. We were in the backyard.”
“Too bad. Well, we’ll send someone out, but it’ll be a while. Just stay there.”
By the time the patrol car arrives, it is almost 10:00 P.M.; everyone is sitting 
around the living room tired of waiting. I feel guilty, even though it is not my 
fault. I did not break my own windshield or tell the police to tell people to 
stay. The police officer is a woman named Isaka, short and dark and very brisk. 
I think she thinks this is too small a reason to call the police.
She looks at my car and the other cars and street and sighs. “Well, someone 
broke your windshield, and someone slashed your tires a few days ago, so I’d say 
it’s your problem, Mr. Arrendale. You must’ve really pissed someone off, and you 
probably know who it is, if you’ll just think. How are you getting along at 
work?”
“Fine,” I say, without really thinking. Tom shifts his weight. “I have a new 
boss, but I do not think Mr. Crenshaw would break a windshield or cut tires.” I 
cannot imagine that he would, even though he gets angry.”
“Oh?” she says, making a note.
“He was angry when I was late for work after my tires were slashed,” I say. “I 
do not think he would break my windshield. He might fire me.”
She looks at me but says nothing more to me. She is looking now at Tom. “You 
were having a party?”
“A fencing club practice night,” he says.
I see the police officer’s neck tense. “Fencing? Like with weapons?”
“It’s a sport,” Tom says. I can hear the tension in his voice, too. “We had a 
tournament week before last; there’s another coming up in a few weeks.”
“Anyone ever get hurt?”
“Not here. We have strict safety rules.”
“Are the same people here every week?”
“Usually. People do miss a practice now and then.”
“And this week?”
“Well, Larry’s not here—he’s in Chicago on business. And I guess Don.”
“Any problems with the neighbors? Complaints about noise or anything of that 
sort?”
“No.” Tom runs his hand through his hair. “We get along with the neighbors; it’s 
a nice neighborhood. Not usually any vandalism, either.”
“But Mr. Arrendale has had two episodes of vandalism against his car in less 
than a week… That’s pretty significant.” She waits; no one says anything. 
Finally she shrugs and goes on.
“It’s like this. If the car was headed east, on the right-hand side of the road, 
the driver would have had to stop, get out, break the glass, run around his own 
car, get in, and drive off. There’s no way to break the glass while in the 
driver’s seat of a car going the same way your car was parked, not without a 
projectile weapon—and even then the angles are bad. If the car was headed west, 
though, the driver could reach across with something—a bat, say—or lob a rock 
through the windshield while still in motion. And then be gone before anyone got 
out to the front yard.”
“I see,” I say. Now that she has said it, I can visualize the approach, the 
attack, the escape. But why?
“You have to have some idea who’s upset with you,” the police officer says. She 
sounds angry with me.
“It does not matter how angry you are with someone; it is not all right to break 
things,” I say. I am thinking, but the only person I know who has been angry 
with me about going fencing is Emmy. Emmy does not have a car; I do not think 
she knows where Tom and Lucia live. I do not think Emmy would break windshields 
anyway. She might come inside and talk too loud and say something rude to 
Marjory, but she would not break anything.
“That’s true,” the officer says. “It’s not all right, but people do it anyway. 
Who is angry with you?”
If I tell her about Emmy, she will make trouble for Emmy and Emmy will make 
trouble for me. I am sure it is not Emmy. “I don’t know,” I say. I feel a 
stirring behind, me, almost a pressure. I think it is Tom, but I am not sure.
“Would it be all right, Officer, if the others left now?” Tom asks.
“Oh, sure. Nobody saw anything; nobody heard anything; well, you heard 
something, but you didn’t see anything—did anyone?”
A murmur of “no” and “not me” and “if I had only moved faster,” and the others 
trickle away to their cars. Marjory and Tom and Lucia stay.
“If you’re the target, and it appears you are, then whoever it is knew you would 
be here tonight. How many people know you come here on Wednesdays?”
Emmy does not know what night I go fencing. Mr. Crenshaw does not know I do 
fencing at all.
“Everyone who fences here,” Tom answers for me. “Maybe some of those from the 
last tournament—it was Lou’s first. Do people at your job know, Lou?”
“I don’t talk about it much,” I say. I do not explain why. “I’ve mentioned it, 
but I don’t remember telling anyone where the class is. I might have.”
“Well, we’re going to have to find out, Mr. Arrendale,” the officer says. “This 
kind of thing can escalate to physical harm. You be careful now.” She hands me a 
card with her name and number on it. “Call me, or Stacy, if you think of 
anything.”
When the police car moves away, Marjory says again, “I’ll be glad to drive you 
home, Lou, if you’d like.”
“I will take my car,” I say. “I will need to get it fixed. I will need to 
contact the insurance company again. They will not be happy with me.”
“Let’s see if there’s glass on the seat,” Tom says. He opens the car door. Light 
glitters on the tiny bits of glass on the dashboard, the floor, in the sheepskin 
pad of the seat. I feel sick. The pad should be soft and warm; now it will have 
sharp things in it. I untie the pad and shake it out onto the street. The bits 
of glass make a tiny high-pitched noise as they hit the pavement. It is an ugly 
sound, like some modern music. I am not sure that all the glass is gone; little 
bits may be in the fleece like tiny hidden knives.
“You can’t drive it like that, Lou,” Marjory says.
“He’ll have to drive it far enough to get a new windshield,” Tom says. “The 
headlights are all right; he could drive it, if he took it slow.”
“I can drive it home,” I say. “I will go carefully.” I put the sheepskin pad in 
the backseat and sit very gingerly on the front seat.
At home, later, I think about things Tom and Lucia said, playing the tape of it 
in my head.
“The way I look at it,” Tom said, “your Mr. Crenshaw has chosen to look at the 
limitations and not the possibilities. He could have considered you and the rest 
of your section as assets to be nurtured.”
“I am not an asset,” I said. “I am a person.”
“You’re right, Lou, but we’re talking here of a corporation. As with armies, 
they look at people who work for them as assets or liabilities. An employee who 
needs anything different from other employees can be seen as a 
liability—requiring more resources for the same output. That’s the easy way to 
look at it, and that’s why a lot of managers do look at it that way.”
“They see what is wrong,” I said.
“Yes. They may also see your worth—as an asset—but they want to get the asset 
without the liability.”
“What good managers do,” Lucia said, “is help people grow. If they’re good at 
part of their job and not so good at the rest of it, good managers help them 
identify and grow in those areas where they’re not as strong—but only to the 
point where it doesn’t impair their strengths, the reason they were hired.”
“But if a newer computer system can do it better—”
“That doesn’t matter. There’s always something. Lou, no matter if a computer or 
another machine or another person can do any particular task you do… do it 
faster or more accurately or whatever… one thing nobody can do better than you 
is be you.”
“But what good is that if I do not have a job?” I asked. “If I cannot get a 
job…”
“Lou, you’re a person—an individual like no one else. That’s what’s good, 
whether you have a job or not.”
“I’m an autistic person,” I said. “That is what I am. I have to have some way… 
If they fire me, what else can I do?”
“Lots of people lose their jobs and then get other jobs. You can do that, if you 
have to. If you want to. You can choose to make the change; you don’t have to 
let it hit you over the head. It’s like fencing—you can be the one who sets the 
pattern or the one who follows it.”
I play this tape several times, trying to match tones to words to expressions as 
I remember them. They told me several times to get a lawyer, but I am not ready 
to talk to anyone I do not know. It is hard to explain what I am thinking and 
what has happened. I want to think it out for myself.
If I had not been what I am, what would I have been? I have thought about that 
at times. If I had found it easy to understand what people were saying, would I 
have wanted to listen more? Would I have learned to talk more easily? And from 
that, would I have had more friends, even been popular? I try to imagine myself 
as a child, a normal child, chattering away with family and teachers and 
classmates. If I had been that child, instead of myself, would I have learned 
math so easily? Would the great complicated constructions of classical music 
have been so obvious to me at first hearing? I remember the first time I heard 
Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor… the intensity of joy I felt. Would I have 
been able to do the work I do? And what other work might I have been able to do?
It is harder to imagine a different self now that I am an adult. As a child, I 
did imagine myself into other roles. I thought I would become normal, that 
someday I would be able to do what everyone else did so easily. In time, that 
fantasy faded. My limitations were real, immutable, thick black lines around the 
outline of my life. The only role I play is normal.
The one thing all the books agreed on was the permanence of the deficit, as they 
called it. Early intervention could ameliorate the symptoms, but the central 
problem remained. I felt that central problem daily, as if I had a big round 
stone in the middle of myself, a heavy, awkward presence that affected 
everything I did or tried to do.
What if it weren’t there?
I had given up reading about my own disability when I finished school. I had no 
training as a chemist or biochemist or geneticist… Though I work for a 
pharmaceutical company, I know little of drugs. I know only the patterns that 
flow through my computer, the ones I find and analyze, and the ones they want me 
to create.
I do not know how other people learn new things, but the way I learn them works 
for me. My parents bought me a bicycle when I was seven and tried to tell me how 
to start riding. They wanted me to sit and pedal first, while they steadied the 
bike, and then begin to steer on my own. I ignored them. It was clear that 
steering was the important thing and the hardest thing, so I would learn that 
first.
I walked the bicycle around the yard, feeling how the handlebars jiggled and 
twitched and jerked as the front wheel went over the grass and rocks. Then I 
straddled it and walked it around that way, steering it, making it fall, 
bringing it back up again. Finally I coasted down the slope of our driveway, 
steering from side to side, my feet off the ground but ready to stop. And then I 
pedaled and never fell again.
It is all knowing what to start with. If you start in the right place and follow 
all the steps, you will get to the right end.
If I want to understand what this treatment can do that will make Mr. Crenshaw 
rich, then I need to know how the brain works. Not the vague terms people use, 
but how it really works as a machine. It is like the handlebars on the 
bicycle—it is the way of steering the whole person. And I need to know what 
drugs really are and how they work.
All I remember about the brain from school is that it is gray and uses a lot of 
glucose and oxygen. I did not like the word glucose when I was in school. It 
made me think of glue, and I did not like to think of my brain using glue. I 
wanted my brain to be like a computer, something that worked well by itself and 
did not make mistakes.
The books said that the problem with autism was in the brain, and that made me 
feel like a faulty computer, something that should be sent back or scrapped. All 
the interventions, all the training, were like software designed to make a bad 
computer work right. It never does, and neither did I.



CHAPTER ELEVEN
« ^ » 
TOO MANY THINGS ARE HAPPENING TOO FAST. IT FEELS like the speed of events is 
faster than light, but I know that is not objectively true. Objectively true is 
a phrase I found in one of the texts I’ve been trying to read on-line. 
Subjectively true, that book said, is what things feel like to the individual. 
It feels to me that too many things are happening so fast that they cannot be 
seen. They are happening ahead of awareness, in the dark that is always faster 
than light because it gets there first.
I sit by the computer, trying to find a pattern in this. Finding patterns is my 
skill. Believing in patterns—in the existence of patterns—is apparently my 
creed. It is part of who I am. The book’s author writes that who a person is 
depends on the person’s genetics, background, and surroundings.
When I was a child, I found a book in the library that was all about scales, 
from the tiniest to the largest. I thought that was the best book in the 
building; I did not understand why other children preferred books with no 
structure, mere stories of messy human feelings and desires. Why was reading 
about an imaginary boy getting on a fictional softball team more important than 
knowing how starfish and stars fitted into the same pattern?
Who I was thought abstract patterns of numbers were more important than abstract 
patterns of relationship. Grains of sand are real. Stars are real. Knowing how 
they fit together gave me a warm, comfortable feeling. People around me were 
hard enough to figure out, impossible to figure out. People in books made even 
less sense.
Who I am now thinks that if people were more like numbers, they would be easier 
to understand. But who I am now knows that they are not like numbers. Four is 
not always the square root of sixteen, in human fours and sixteens. People are 
people, messy and mutable, combining differently with one another from day to 
day—even hour to hour. I am not a number, either. I am Mr. Arrendale to the 
police officer investigating the damage to my car and Lou to Danny, even though 
Danny is also a police officer. I am Lou-the-fencer to Tom and Lucia but 
Lou-the-employee to Mr. Aldrin and Lou-the-autistic to Emmy at the Center.
It makes me feel dizzy to think about that, because on the inside I feel like 
one person, not three or four or a dozen. The same Lou, bouncing on the 
trampoline or sitting in my office or listening to Emmy or fencing with Tom or 
looking at Marjory and feeling that warm feeling. The feelings move over me like 
light and shadow over a landscape on a windy day. The hills are the same, 
whether they are in the shadow of a cloud or in the sunlight.
In the time-lapse pictures of clouds blowing across the sky, I have seen 
patterns… clouds growing on one side and dissolving into clear air on the other, 
where the hills make a ridge.
I am thinking about patterns in the fencing group. It makes sense to me that 
whoever broke my windshield tonight knew where to find that particular 
windshield he wanted to break. He knew I would be there, and he knew which car 
was mine. He was the cloud, forming on the ridge and blowing away into the clear 
air. Where I am, there he is.
When I think of the people who know my car by sight and then the people who know 
where I go on Wednesday nights, the possibilities contract. The evidence sucks 
in to a point, dragging along a name. It is an impossible name. It is a friend’s 
name. Friends do not break windshields of friends. And he has no reason to be 
angry with me, even if he is angry with Tom and Lucia.
It must be someone else. Even though I am good at patterns, even though I have 
thought about this carefully, I cannot trust my reasoning when it comes to how 
people act. I do not understand normal people; they do not always fit reasonable 
patterns. There must be someone else, someone who is not a friend, someone who 
dislikes me and is angry with me. I need to find that other pattern, not the 
obvious one, which is impossible.
PETE ALDRIN LOOKED THROUGH THE LATEST COMPANY DIRECTORY. So far the firings were 
still a mere trickle, not enough to raise media awareness, but at least half the 
names he knew weren’t on the list anymore. Soon word would begin to spread. 
Betty in Human Resources… took early retirement. Shirley in Accounting…
The thing was, he had to make it look like he was helping Crenshaw, whatever he 
did. As long as he thought about opposing him, the knot of icy fear in Aldrin’s 
stomach kept him from doing anything. He didn’t dare go over Crenshaw’s head. He 
didn’t know if Crenshaw’s boss knew about the plan, too, or if it had all been 
Crenshaw’s idea. He didn’t dare confide in any of the autists; who knew if they 
could understand the importance of keeping a secret?
He was sure Crenshaw hadn’t really checked this out with upstairs. Crenshaw 
wanted to be seen as a problem solver, a forward-thinking future executive, 
someone managing his own empire efficiently. He wouldn’t ask questions; he 
wouldn’t ask permission. This could be a nightmare of adverse publicity if it 
got out; someone higher up would have noticed that. But how far up? Crenshaw was 
counting on no publicity, no leaks, no gossip. That wasn’t reasonable, even if 
he did have a choke hold on everyone in his division.
And if Crenshaw went down and Aldrin was perceived as his helper, he’d lose his 
job then, too.
What would it take to convert Section A into a group of research subjects? They 
would have to have time off work: how much? Would they be expected to fold their 
vacation and sick leave time into it, or would the company provide leave? If 
extra leave was needed, what about pay? What about seniority? What about the 
accounting through his section—would they be paid out of this section’s 
operating funds or out of Research?
Had Crenshaw already made deals with someone in HR, in Accounting, in Legal, in 
Research? What kind of deals? He didn’t want to use Crenshaw’s name at first; he 
wanted to see what reaction he got without it.
Shirley was still in Accounting; Aldrin called her. “Remind me what kind of 
paperwork I need if someone’s being transferred to another section,” he said to 
start with. “Do I take it off my budget right away or what?”
“Transfers are frozen,” Shirley said. “This new management—” He could hear her 
take a breath. “You didn’t get the memo?”
“Don’t think so,” Aldrin said. “So—if we have an employee who wants to take part 
in a research protocol, we can’t just transfer their pay source to Research?”
“Good grief, no!” Shirley said. “Tim McDonough—you know, head of Research—would 
have your hide tacked to the wall in no time.” After a moment, she said, “What 
research protocol?”
“Some new drug thing,” he said.
“Oh. Well, anyway, if you have an employee who wants to get on it, they’ll have 
to do it as a volunteer—stipend’s fifty dollars per day for protocols that 
require overnight clinic residence, twenty-five dollars per day for others, with 
a minimum of two hundred and fifty dollars. Of course, with clinic residence 
they also get bed and board and all necessary medical support. You wouldn’t get 
me to test drugs for that, but the ethics committee says there shouldn’t be a 
financial incentive.”
“Well… would they still get paid their salary?”
“Only if they’re working or it’s paid vacation time,” Shirley said. She 
chuckled. “It would save the company money if we could make everyone into a 
research subject and just pay the stipends, wouldn’t it? Lot simpler 
accounting—no PICA or FUCA or state withholding. Thank God they can’t.”
“I guess so,” Aldrin said. So, he wondered, what was Crenshaw planning to do 
about pay and about research stipends? Who was funding this? And why hadn’t he 
thought of this before? “Thanks, Shirley,” he said belatedly.
“Good luck,” she said.
So, supposing the treatment would take, he realized he had no idea how long it 
might take. Was that in the stuff Crenshaw had given him? He looked it up and 
read it carefully, lips pursed. If Crenshaw hadn’t made some arrangement to have 
Research fund Section A’s salary, then he was converting technical staff with 
seniority to low-paid lab rats… and even if they were out of rehab in a month 
(the most optimistic estimate in the proposal) that would save… a lot of money. 
He ran the figures. It looked like a lot of money, but it wasn’t, compared to 
the legal risks the company would run.
He didn’t know anybody high on the tree in Research, just Marcus over in Data 
Support. Back to Human Resources… with Betty gone, he tried to remember other 
names. Paul. Debra. Paul was on the list; Debra wasn’t.
“Make it snappy,” Paul said. “I’m leaving tomorrow.”
“Leaving?”
“One of the famous ten percent,” Paul said. Aldrin could hear the anger in his 
voice. “No, the company’s not losing money, no, the company’s not cutting 
personnel; they just happen to be no longer in need of my services.”
Icy fingers ran down his back. This could be himself next month. No, today, if 
Crenshaw realized what he was doing.
“Buy you coffee,” Aldrin said.
“Yeah, like I need something to keep me awake nights,” Paul said.
“Paul, listen. I need to talk to you, and not on the phone.”
A long silence, then, “Oh. You, too?”
“Not yet. Coffee?”
“Sure. Ten-thirty, snack bar?”
“No, early lunch. Eleven-thirty,” Aldrin said, and hung up. His palms were 
sweaty.
“So, WHAT’S THE BIG SECRET?” PAUL ASKED. His FACE SHOWED nothing; he sat hunched 
over a table near the middle of the snack bar.
Aldrin would have chosen a table in the corner, but now—seeing Paul out in the 
middle—he remembered a spy thriller he’d seen. Corner tables might be monitored. 
For all he knew, Paul was wearing a… a wire, they called it. He felt sick.
“C’mon, I’m not recording anything,” Paul said. He sipped his coffee. “It will 
be more conspicuous if you stand there gaping at me or pat me down. You must 
have one helluva secret.”
Aldrin sat, his coffee slopping over the edge of his mug. “You know my new 
division head is one of the new brooms—”
“Join the club,” Paul said, with an intonation of get on with it.
“Crenshaw,” Aldrin said.
“Lucky bastard,” Paul said. “He’s got quite a reputation, our Mr. Crenshaw.”
“Yeah, well, remember Section A?”
“The autistics, sure.” Paul’s expression sharpened. “Is he taking after them?
Aldrin nodded.
“That’s stupid,” Paul said. “Not that he’s not, but—that’s really stupid. Our 
Section Six-fourteen-point-eleven tax break depends on ’em. Your division is 
marginal anyway for Six-fourteen-point-eleven employees, and they’re worth 
one-point-five credits each. Besides, the publicity…”
“I know,” Aldrin said. “But he’s not listening. He says they’re too expensive.”
“He thinks everyone but himself is too expensive,” Paul said. “He thinks he’s 
underpaid, if you can believe it.” He sipped his coffee again. Aldrin noticed he 
didn’t say what Crenshaw was paid, even now. “We had a time with him when he 
came through our office—he knows every benefit and tax trick in the book.”
“I’m sure,” Aldrin said.
“So what’s he want to do, fire them? Dock their pay?”
“Threaten them into volunteering for a human-trials research protocol,” Aldrin 
said.
Paul’s eyes widened. “You’re kidding! He can’t do that!”
“He is.” Aldrin paused, then went on. “He says there’s not a law the company 
can’t get around.”
“Well, that may be true, but—we can’t just ignore the laws. We have to subvert 
them. And human trials—what is it, a drug?”
“A treatment for adult autistics,” Aldrin said. “Supposed to make them normal. 
It supposedly worked on an ape.”
“You can’t be serious.” Paul stared at him. “You are serious. Crenshaw’s trying 
to bully Category Six-fourteen-point-eleven employees into stage-one human 
trials on something like that? It’s asking for a publicity nightmare; it could 
cost the company billions—”
“You know that and I know that, but Crenshaw… has his own way of looking at 
things.”
“So—who signed off on it upstairs?”
“Nobody that I know of,” Aldrin said, crossing mental fingers. That was the 
literal truth, because he hadn’t asked.
Paul no longer looked sour and sulky. “That power-mad idiot,” he said. “He 
thinks he can pull this off and gain ground on Samuelson.”
“Samuelson?”
“Another one of the new brooms. Don’t you keep up with what’s going on?”
“No,” Aldrin said. “I’m not any good at that sort of thing.”
Paul nodded. “I used to think I was, but this pink slip proves I’m not. But 
anyway, Samuelson and Crenshaw came in as rivals. Samuelson’s cut manufacturing 
costs without raising a ripple in the press— though that’s going to change soon, 
I think. Anyway, Crenshaw must think he can pull a triple play—get some 
volunteers who’ll be too scared for their jobs to complain about it if something 
goes wrong, push it through all on his own without letting anyone else know, and 
then take the credit. And you’ll go down with him, Pete, if you don’t do 
something.”
“He’ll fire me in a second if I do,” Aldrin said.
“There’s always the ombudsman. They haven’t cut that position yet, though 
Laurie’s feeling pretty shaky.”
“I can’t trust it,” Aldrin said, but he filed it away. Meanwhile he had other 
questions. “Look—I don’t know how he’s going to account for their time, if they 
do this. I was hoping to find out more about the law—can he make them put their 
sick leave and vacation time into it? What’s the rule for special employees?”
“Well, basically, what he’s proposing is illegal as hell. First off, if Research 
gets a whiff that they’re not genuine volunteers, they’ll stomp all over it. 
They have to report to NIH, and they don’t want the feds down on them for half a 
dozen breaches of medical ethics and the fair employment laws. Then, if it’ll 
put ’em out of the office more than thirty days—will it?” Aldrin nodded and Paul 
went on. “Then it can’t be classed as vacation time, and there are special rules 
for leave and sabbatical, especially regarding special-category employees. They 
can’t be made to lose seniority. Or salary for that matter.” He ran his finger 
around the rim of his mug. “Which is not going to make Accounting happy. Except 
for senior scientists on sabbatical in other institutions, we have no accounting 
category for employees not actually on the job who are receiving full salary. 
Oh, and it’ll shoot your productivity to hell and gone, too.”
“I thought of that,” Aldrin murmured.
Paul’s mouth quirked. “You can really nail this guy,” he said. “I know I can’t 
get my job back, not the way things are, but… I’ll enjoy knowing what’s going 
on.”
“I’d like to do it subtly,” Aldrin said. “I mean—of course I’m worried about my 
job, but that’s not all of it. He thinks I’m stupid and cowardly and lazy, 
except when I lick his boots, and then he only thinks I’m a natural-born 
bootlicker. I thought of sort of blundering along, trying to help in a way that 
exposes him—”
Paul shrugged. “Not my style. I’d stand up and yell, myself. But you’re you, and 
if that’s what rocks your boat…”
“So—who can I talk to in Human Resources to arrange leave time for them? And 
what about Legal?”
“That’s awfully roundabout. It’ll take longer. Why not talk to the ombudsman 
while we have one or, if you’re feeling heroic, go make an appointment with the 
top guns? Bring all your little retards or whatever they are along; make it 
really dramatic.”
“They aren’t retards,” Aldrin said automatically. “They’re autists. And I don’t 
know what would happen if they had a clue how illegal this all was. They should 
know, by rights, but what if they called a reporter or something? Then the shit 
really would be in the fire.”
“So go by yourself. You might even like the rarefied heights of the managerial 
pyramid.” Paul laughed a little too loudly, and Aldrin wondered if Paul had put 
something in his coffee.
“I dunno,” he said. “I don’t think they’ll let me get far enough up. Crenshaw 
would find out I was making an appointment, and you remember that memo about 
chain of command.”
“ ’Swhat we get for hiring a retired general as CEO,” Paul said.
But now the lunch crowd was thinning out, and Aldrin knew he had to go.
HE WASN’T SURE WHAT TO DO NEXT, WHICH APPROACH WOULD be most fruitful. He still 
wished that maybe Research would put the lid back on the box and he wouldn’t 
have to do anything.
Crenshaw disposed of that idea in late afternoon. “Okay, here’s the research 
protocol,” he said, slamming a data cube and some printouts on Aldrin’s desk. “I 
do not understand why they need all these preliminary tests—PET scans, for God’s 
sake, and MRIs and all the rest of it—but they say they do, and I don’t run 
Research.” The yet of Crenshaw’s ambition did not have to be spoken to be heard.
“Get your people scheduled in for the meetings, and liaise with Bart in Research 
about the test schedules.”
“Test schedules?” Aldrin asked. “What about when tests conflict with normal 
working hours?”
Crenshaw scowled, then shrugged. “Hell, we’ll be generous—they don’t have to 
make up the time.”
“And what about the accounting end? Whose budget—?”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Pete, just take care of it!” Crenshaw had turned an ugly 
puce. “Get your thumb out and start solving problems, not finding them. Run it 
past me; I’ll sign off on it; in the meantime use the authorization code on 
those.” He nodded at the pile of paper.
“Right, sir,” Aldrin said. He couldn’t back away—he was standing behind his 
desk—but after a moment Crenshaw turned and went back to his own office.
Solve problems. He would solve problems, but they wouldn’t be Crenshaw’s 
problems.
I DO NOT KNOW WHAT I CAN UNDERSTAND AND WHAT I MISUNDERSTAND while thinking I 
understand it. I look up the lowest-level text in neurobiology that I can find 
on the ’net, looking first at the glossary. I do not like to waste time linking 
to definitions if I can learn them first. The glossary is full of words I never 
saw before, hundreds of them. I do not understand the definitions, either.
I need to start further back, find light from a star further away, deeper in the 
past.
A text on biology for high school students: that might be at my level. I glance 
at the glossary: I know these words, though I have not seen some of them in 
years. Only perhaps a tenth are new to me.
When I start the first chapter, it makes sense, though some of it is different 
than I remember. I expect that. It does not bother me. I finish the book before 
midnight.
The next night, I do not watch my usual show. I look up a college text. It is 
too simple; it must have been written for college students who had not studied 
biology in high school. I move on to the next level, guessing at what I need. 
The biochemistry text confuses me; I need to know organic chemistry. I look up 
organic chemistry on the Internet and download the first chapters of a text. I 
read late into the night again and before and after work on Friday and while I 
am doing my laundry.
On Saturday we have the meeting at the campus; I want to stay home and read, but 
I must not. The book fizzes in my head as I drive; little jumbled molecules 
wriggle in patterns I can’t quite grasp yet. I have never been to the campus on 
a weekend; I did not know that it would be almost as busy as on a weekday.
Cameron’s and Bailey’s cars are there when I arrive; the others haven’t come 
yet. I find my way to the designated meeting room. It has walls paneled in fake 
wood, with a green carpet. There are two rows of chairs with metal legs and 
padded seats and backs covered with rose-colored fabric with little flecks of 
green in it facing one end of the room. Someone I don’t know, a young woman, 
stands by the door. She is holding a pasteboard box with name tags in it. She 
has a list with little photographs, and she looks at me, then says my name. 
“Here’s yours,” she says, handing me a name tag. It has a little metal clip on 
it. I hold it in my hand. “Put it on,” she says. I do not like this kind of 
clip; it makes my shirt pull. I clip it on anyway and go in.
The others are sitting in chairs; each empty chair has a folder with a name on 
it, one for each of us. I find my seat. I do not like it; I am in the front row 
on the right-hand side. It might not be polite to move. I glance along the row 
and see that we have been put in alphabetical order, from the point of view of a 
speaker facing us.
I am seven minutes early. If I had brought a printout of the text I have been 
reading, I could read now. Instead, I think about what I have read. So far 
everything makes sense.
When all of us are in the room, we sit in silence, waiting, for two minutes and 
forty seconds. Then I hear Mr. Aldrin’s voice. “Are they all here?” he asks the 
woman at the door. She says yes.
He comes in. He looks tired but otherwise normal. He is wearing a knit shirt and 
tan slacks and loafers. He smiles at us, but it is not a whole smile.
“I’m glad to see you all here,” he says. “In just a few minutes, Dr. Ransome 
will explain to prospective volunteers what this project is about. In your 
folders are questionnaires about your general health history; please fill those 
out while you’re waiting. And sign the nondisclosure agreement.”
The questionnaires are simple, multiple-choice rather than fill-in-the-blank. I 
am almost finished with mine (it takes little time to check the “no” box for 
heart disease, chest pain, shortness of breath, kidney disease, difficulty in 
urination…) when the door opens and a man in a white coat comes in. His coat has 
Dr. Ransome embroidered on the pocket. He has curly gray hair and bright blue 
eyes; his face looks too young to have gray hair. He, too, smiles at us, with 
eyes and mouth both.
“Welcome,” he says. “I’m glad to meet you. I understand you’re all interested in 
this clinical trial?” He does not wait for the answer we do not give. “This will 
be brief,” he says. “Today, anyway, is just a chance for you to hear what this 
is about, the projected schedule of preliminary tests and so on. First, let me 
give a little history.”
He talks very fast, reading from a notebook, rattling off a history of the 
research on autism, starting around the turn of the century with the discovery 
of two genes associated with autistic spectrum disorders. By the time he turns 
on a projector and shows us a picture of the brain, my mind is numb, overloaded. 
He points to different areas with a light pen, still talking fast. Finally he 
gets to the current project, again starting at the beginning, with the original 
researcher’s early work on primate social organization and communication, 
leading—in the end—to this possible treatment.
“That’s just some background,” he says. “It’s probably too much for you, but 
you’ll have to excuse my enthusiasm. There’s a simplified version in your 
folders, including diagrams. Essentially what we’re going to do is normalize the 
autistic brain, and then train it in an enhanced and faster version of infant 
sensory integration, so the new architecture works properly.” He pauses, sips 
from a glass of water, and goes on. “Now that’s about it for this meeting; 
you’ll be scheduled for tests—it’s all in your folders—and there will be more 
meetings with the medical teams, of course. Just hand in your questionnaires and 
other paperwork to the girl at the door, and you’ll be notified if you are 
accepted onto the protocol.” He turns away and is gone before I can think of 
anything to say. Neither does anyone else.
Mr. Aldrin stands up and turns to us. “Just hand me your finished questionnaires 
and the signed nondisclosure—and don’t worry; you will all be accepted onto the 
protocol.”
That is not what worries me. I finish my questionnaire, sign the statement, hand 
both to Mr. Aldrin, and leave without talking to the others. It has wasted 
almost my whole Saturday morning, and I want to go back to my reading.
I drive home as quickly as the speed limit allows and start reading as soon as I 
am back in my apartment. I do not stop to clean my apartment or my car. I do not 
go to church on Sunday. I take printouts of the chapter I am on, and the next, 
with me to work on Monday and Tuesday and read during my lunch break as well as 
late into the night. The information flows in, clear and organized, its patterns 
stacked neatly in paragraphs and chapters and sections. My mind has room for 
them all.
By the following Wednesday, I feel ready to ask Lucia what I should read to 
understand the way the brain works. I have taken the on-line assessment tests in 
biology level one, biology level two, biochemistry levels one and two, organic 
chemistry theory one. I glance at the neurology book, which now makes much more 
sense, but I am not sure it is the right one. I do not know how much time I 
have; I do not want to waste it on the wrong book.
I am surprised that I have not done this before. When I started fencing, I read 
all the books that Tom recommended and watched the videos he said would be 
helpful. When I play computer games, I read all about them.
Yet I have never before set out to learn all about the way my own brain works. I 
do not know why. I know that it felt very strange at first and I was almost sure 
I would not be able to figure out what the books said. But it is actually easy. 
I think I could have completed a college degree in this if I had tried. All my 
advisers and counselors told me to go into applied mathematics, so I did. They 
told me what I was capable of, and I believed them. They did not think I had the 
kind of brain that could do real scientific work. Maybe they were wrong.
I show Lucia the list I have printed out, of all the things I have read, and the 
scores I got on the assessment tests. “I need to know what to read next,” I say.
“Lou—I’m ashamed to say I’m amazed.” Lucia shakes her head. “Tom, come see this. 
Lou’s just about done the work for an undergraduate biology degree in one week.”
“Not really,” I say. “This is all aimed at one thing, and the undergraduate 
requirements would include a course in population biology, a course in botany—”
“I was thinking more of the depth and not the breadth,” Lucia says. “You’ve gone 
from lower-level to challenging upper-division courses… Lou, do you really 
understand organic synthesis?”
“I do not know,” I say. “I have not done any of the lab work. But the patterns 
of it are obvious, the way the chemicals fit together—”
“Lou, can you tell me why some groups attach to a carbon ring adjacent to one 
another and some have to skip a carbon or two?”
It is a silly question, I think. It is obvious that the place groups join is the 
result of their shape or the charge they carry. I can see them easily in my 
mind, the lumpy shapes with the positive or negative charge clouds around them. 
I do not want to tell Tom I think it is a silly question. I remember the 
paragraphs in the text that explain, but I think he wants it in my words, not 
parroted. So I say it as clearly as I can, not using any of the same phrases.
“And you got that just from reading the book—how many times?”
“Once,” I say. “Some paragraphs twice.”
“Holy shit,” Tom says. Lucia clucks at him. She does not like strong language. 
“Lou—do you have any idea how hard most college students work to learn that?”
Learning is not hard. Not learning is hard. I wonder why they are not learning 
it for long enough to feel like work. “It is easy to see in my head,” I say 
instead of asking that. “And the books have pictures.”
“Strong visual imagination,” Lucia murmurs.
“Even with the pictures, even with the video animations,” Tom says, “most 
college students have trouble with organic chemistry. And you got that much of 
it with just one run through the book—Lou, you’ve been holding out on us. You’re 
a genius.”
“It may be a splinter skill,” I say. Tom’s expression scares me; if he thinks I 
am a genius maybe he will not want to let me fence with them.
“Splinter skill, hooey,” Lucia says. She sounds angry; I feel my stomach 
clenching. “Not you,” she says quickly. “But the whole concept of splinter 
skills is so… antiquated. Everybody has strengths and weaknesses; everybody 
fails to generalize many of the skills they have. Physics students who make top 
grades in mechanics mess up driving vehicles on slick roads: they know the 
theory, but they can’t generalize to real driving. And I’ve known you for years 
now—your skills are skills, not splinter skills.”
“But I think it’s mostly memorizing,” I say, still worried. “I can memorize 
really rapidly. And I am good at most standardized tests.”
“Explaining it in your own words isn’t memorizing,” Tom says. “I know the 
on-line text… You know, Lou, you haven’t ever asked what I do for a living.”
It is a shock, like touching a doorknob in cold weather. He is right. I did not 
ask what his job was; it does not occur to me to ask people what their jobs are. 
I met Lucia at the clinic so I knew she was a doctor, but Tom?
“What is your job?” I ask now.
“I’m on the university faculty,” he says. “Chemical engineering.”
“You teach classes?” I ask.
“Yes. Two undergraduate classes and one graduate-level class. Chem-E majors have 
to take organic chemistry, so I know what they think of it. And how kids who 
understand it describe it, as opposed to those who don’t.”
“So—you really think I do?”
“Lou, it’s your mind. Do you think you understand it?”
“I think so… but I am not sure I would know.”
“I think so, too. And I have never known anyone who picked it up cold in less 
than a week. Did you ever have an IQ test, Lou?”
“Yes.” I do not want to talk about that. I had tests every year, not always the 
same ones. I do not like tests. The ones where I was supposed to guess which 
meaning of the word the person who made the test meant from the pictures, for 
instance. I remember the time the word was track and the pictures included the 
mark of a tire on a wet street and some cupolas on top of a long, tall building 
that looked—to me, anyway— like the grandstand at a racetrack. I picked that for 
the word track, but it was wrong.
“And did they tell you the result or just your parents?”
“They didn’t tell my parents, either,” I say. “It made my mother upset. They 
said they did not want to affect her expectations for me. But they said I should 
be able to graduate from high school.”
“Umm. I wish we had some idea… Would you take the tests again?”
“Why?” I ask.
“I guess… I just want to know… but if you can do this stuff without, what 
difference does it really make?”
“Lou, who has your records?” Lucia asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I suppose—the schools back home? The doctors? I haven’t 
been back since my parents died.”
“They’re your records: you should be able to get them now. If you want to.”
This is something else I never thought of before. Do people get their school 
records and medical records after they grow up and move away? I do not know if I 
want to know exactly what people put in those records. What if they say worse 
things about me than I remember?
“Anyway,” Lucia goes on. “I think I know a good book for you to try next. It’s 
kind of old, but nothing in it is actually wrong, though a lot more’s been 
learned. Cego and Clinton’s Brain Functionality. I have a copy… I think…” She 
goes out of the room, and I try to think about everything she and Tom said. It 
is too much; my head is buzzing with thoughts like swift photons bouncing off 
the inside of my skull.
“Here, Lou,” Lucia says, handing me a book. It is heavy, a thick volume of paper 
with cloth cover. The title and authors are printed in gold on a black rectangle 
on the spine. It has been a long time since I saw a paper book. “It may be 
on-line somewhere by now, but I don’t know where. I bought it back when I was 
just starting med school. Take a look.”
I open the book. The first page has nothing on it. The next one has the title, 
the authors’ names—Betsy R. Cego and Malcolm R. Clinton. I wonder if the R. 
stands for the same middle name in both and if that is why they wrote the book 
together. Then blank space, and at the bottom a company name and date. I guess 
that is the book company. R. Scott Landsdown & Co. Publishers. Another R. On the 
back of that page is some information in small print. Then another page with the 
title and authors. The next page says “Preface.” I start reading.
“You can skip that and the introduction,” Lucia says. “I want to see if you’re 
okay with the level of instruction in the chapters.”
Why would the authors put in something that people weren’t going to read? What 
is the preface for? The introduction? I do not want to argue with Lucia, but it 
seems to me that I should read that part first because it is first. If I am 
supposed to skip over it for now, why is it first? For now, though, I page 
through until I find chapter 1.
It is not hard to read, and I understand it. When I look up, after ten pages or 
so, Tom and Lucia are both watching me. I feel my face getting hot. I forgot 
about them while I was reading. It is not polite to forget about people.
“Is it okay, Lou?” Lucia asks.
“I like it,” I say.
“Good. Take it home and keep it as long as you like. I’ll e-mail you some other 
references that I know are on-line. How’s that?”
“Fine,” I say. I want to go on reading, but I hear a car door slam outside and 
know it is time to do fencing instead.



CHAPTER TWELVE
« ^ » 
THE OTHERS ARRIVE IN A BUNCH, WITHIN JUST A COUPLE of minutes. We move to the 
backyard, then stretch and put on our gear and start fencing. Marjory sits with 
me between bouts. I am happy when she sits next to me. I would like to touch her 
hair, but I do not.
We do not talk much. I do not know what to say. She asks if I got the windshield 
fixed, and I say yes. I watch her fence with Lucia; she is taller than Lucia, 
but Lucia is the better fencer. Marjory’s brown hair bounces when she moves; 
Lucia wears her light hair in a ponytail. They both wear white fencing jackets 
tonight; soon Marjory’s has little brown smudges where Lucia has scored hits.
I am still thinking about Marjory when I fence with Tom. I am seeing Marjory’s 
pattern, and not Tom’s, and he kills me quickly twice.
“You’re not paying attention,” he says to me.
“I’m sorry,” I say. My eyes slide to Marjory.
Tom sighs. “I know you’ve got a lot on your mind, Lou, but one reason to do this 
is to get a break from it.”
“Yes… I’m sorry.” I drag my eyes back and focus on Tom and his blade. When I 
concentrate, I can see his pattern—a long and complicated one—and now I can 
parry his attacks. Low, high, high, low, reverse, low, high, low, low, reverse… 
he’s throwing a reverse shot every fifth and varying the setup to it. Now I can 
prepare for the reverse, pivoting and then making a quick diagonal step: attack 
obliquely, one of the old masters says, never directly. It is like chess in that 
way, with the knight and bishop attacking at an angle. At last I set up the 
series I like best and get a solid hit.
“Wow!” Tom says. “I thought I’d managed real randomness—”
“Every fifth is a reverse,” I say.
“Damn,” Tom said. “Let’s try that again—”
This time he doesn’t reverse for nine shots, the next time seven—I notice he’s 
always using a reverse attack on the odd numbers. I test that through longer 
series, just waiting. Sure enough… nine, seven, five, then back to seven. That’s 
when I step past on the diagonal and get him again.
“That wasn’t five,” he says. He sounds breathless.
“No… but it was an odd number,” I say.
“I can’t think fast enough,” Tom says. “I can’t fence and think. How do you do 
it?”
“You move, but the pattern doesn’t,” I say. “The pattern—when I see it—is still. 
So it is easier to hold in mind because it doesn’t wiggle around.”
“I never thought of it that way,” Tom says. “So—how do you plan your own 
attacks? So they aren’t patterned?”
“They are,” I say. “But I can shift from one pattern to another…” I can tell 
this is not getting across to him and try to think of another way of saying it. 
“When you drive somewhere, there are many possible routes… many patterns you 
might choose. If you start off on one and a road you would use for that pattern 
is blocked, you take another and get onto one of your other patterns, don’t 
you?”
“You see routes as patterns?” Lucia says. “I see them as strings—and I have real 
trouble shifting from one to another unless the connection is within a block.”
“I get completely lost,” Susan says. “Mass transit’s a real boon to me—I just 
read the sign and get on. In the old days, if I’d had to drive everywhere, I’d 
have been late all the time.”
“So, you can hold different fencing patterns in your head and just… jump or 
something… from one to another?”
“But mostly I’m reacting to the opponent’s attacks while I analyze the pattern,” 
I say.
“That would explain a lot about your learning style when you started fencing,” 
Lucia says. She looks happy. I do not understand why that would make her happy. 
“Those first bouts, you did not have time to learn the pattern—and you were not 
skilled enough to think and fence both, right?”
“I… it’s hard to remember,” I say. I am uncomfortable with this, with other 
people picking apart how my brain works. Or doesn’t work.
“It doesn’t matter—you’re a good fencer now—but people do learn differently.”
The rest of the evening goes by quickly. I fence with several of the others; in 
between I sit beside Marjory if she is not fencing. I listen for noise from the 
street but hear nothing. Sometimes cars drive by, but they sound normal, at 
least from the backyard. When I go out to my car, the windshield is not broken 
and the tires are not flat. The absence of damage was there before the damage 
occurred—if someone came to damage my car, the damage would be subsequent… very 
much like dark and light. The dark is there first, and then comes light.
“Did the police ever get back to you about the windshield?” Tom asks. We are all 
out in the front yard together.
“No,” I say. I do not want to think about the police tonight. Marjory is next to 
me and I can smell her hair.
“Did you think who might have done it?” he asks.
“No,” I say. I do not want to think about that, either, not with Marjory beside 
me.
“Lou—” He scratches his head. “You need to think about it. How likely is it that 
your car was vandalized twice in a row, on fencing night, by strangers?”
“It was not anyone in our group,” I say. “You are my friends.”
Tom looks down, then back at my face. “Lou, I think you need to consider—” My 
ears do not want to hear what he will say next.
“Here you are,” Lucia says, interrupting. Interrupting is rude, but I am glad 
she interrupts. She has brought the book with her. She hands it to me when I 
have put my duffel back in the trunk. “Let me know how you get on with it.”
In the light from the street lamp on the corner the book’s cover is a dull gray. 
It feels pebbly under my fingers.
“What are you reading, Lou?” Marjory asks. My stomach tightens. I do not want to 
talk about the research with Marjory. I do not want to find out that she already 
knows about it.
“Cego and Clinton,” Lucia says, as if that is a title.
“Wow,” Marjory says. “Good for you, Lou.”
I do not understand. Does she know the book just from its authors? Did they 
write only one book? And why does she say the book is good for me? Or did she 
mean “good for you” as praise? I do not understand that meaning, either. I feel 
trapped in this whirlpool of questions, not-knowing swirling around me, drowning 
me.
Light speeds toward me from the distant specks, the oldest light taking longest 
to arrive.
I drive home carefully, even more aware than usual of the pools and streams of 
light washing over me from street lamps and lighted signs. In and out of the 
fast dark—and it does feel faster in the dark.
TOM SHOOK HIS HEAD AS LOU DROVE AWAY. “I DON’T KNOW—” he said, and paused.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Lucia asked.
“It’s the only real possibility,” Tom said. “I don’t like to think it, it’s hard 
to believe Don could be capable of anything this serious, but… who else could it 
be? He would know Lou’s name; he could find out his address; he certainly knows 
when fencing practice is and what Lou’s car looks like.”
“You didn’t tell the police,” Lucia said.
“No. I thought Lou would figure it out, and it’s his car, after all. I felt I 
shouldn’t horn in. But now… I wish I’d gone on and told Lou flat out to beware 
of Don. He still thinks of him as a friend.”
“I know.” Lucia shook her head. “He’s so—well, I don’t know if it’s really 
loyalty or just habit. Once a friend, always a friend? Besides—”
“It might not be Don. I know. He’s been a nuisance and a jerk at times, but he’s 
never done anything violent before. And nothing happened tonight.”
“The night’s not over,” Lucia said. “If we hear about anything else, we have to 
tell the police. For Lou’s sake.”
“You’re right, of course.” Tom yawned. “Let’s just hope nothing happens and it’s 
random coincidence.”
AT THE APARTMENT, I CARRY THE BOOK AND MY DUFFEL UPSTAIRS. I hear no sound from 
Danny’s apartment as I go past it. I put my fencing jacket in the dirty-clothes 
basket and take the book to my desk. In the light of the desk lamp, the cover is 
light blue, not gray.
I open it. Without Lucia to prompt me to skip them, I read all the pages 
carefully. On the page headed “Dedications,” Betsy R. Cego has put: “For Jerry 
and Bob, with thanks,” and Malcolm R. Clinton has put: “To my beloved wife, 
Celia, and in memory of my father, George.” The foreword, written by Peter J. 
Bartleman, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus, Johns Hopkins University School of 
Medicine, includes the information that Betsy R. Cego’s R. stands for Rodham and 
Malcom R. Clinton’s R. stands for Richard, so the R. probably has nothing to do 
with their coauthorship. Peter J. Bartleman says the book is the most important 
compilation, of the current state of knowledge on brain function. I do not know 
why he wrote the foreword.
The preface answers that question. Peter J. Bartleman taught Betsy R. Cego when 
she was in medical school and awakened a lifelong interest in and commitment to 
the study of brain function. The phrasing seems awkward to me. The preface 
explains what the book is about, why the authors wrote it, and then thanks a lot 
of people and companies for their help. I am surprised to find the name of the 
company I work for in that list. They provided assistance with computational 
methods.
Computational methods are what our division develops. I look again at the 
copyright date. When this book was written I was not yet working there.
I wonder if any of those old programs are still around.
I turn to the glossary in back and read quickly through the definitions. I know 
about half of them now. When I turn to the first chapter, a review of brain 
structure, it makes sense. The cerebellum, amygdala, hippocampus, cerebrum… 
diagrammed in several ways, sectioned top to bottom and front to back and side 
to side. I have never seen a diagram that showed the functions of the different 
areas, though, and I look at it closely. I wonder why the main language center 
is in the left brain when there is a perfectly good auditory processing area in 
the right brain. Why specialize like that? I wonder if sounds coming into one 
ear are heard more as language than sounds coming in the other ear. The tiers of 
visual processing are just as hard to understand.
It is on the last page of that chapter that I find a sentence so overwhelming 
that I have to stop and stare at it: “Essentially, physiological functions 
aside, the human brain exists to analyze and generate patterns.”
My breath catches in my chest; I feel cold, then hot. That is what I do. If that 
is the essential function of the human brain, then I am not a freak, but normal.
This cannot be. Everything I know tells me that I am the different one, the 
deficient one. I read the sentence again and again, trying to make it fit with 
what I know.
Finally, I read past it to the rest of the paragraph: “The pattern-analysis or 
pattern-making may be flawed, as with some mental diseases, resulting in 
mistaken analysis or patterns generated on the basis of erroneous ‘data,’ but 
even in the most severe cognitive failure, these two activities are 
characteristic of the human brain—and indeed, of brains much less sophisticated 
than human ones. Readers interested in these functions in nonhumans should 
consult references below.”
So perhaps I am normal and freakish… normal in seeing and making patterns, but 
perhaps I make the wrong patterns?
I read on, and when I finally stop, feeling shaky and exhausted, it is almost 
three in the morning. I have reached chapter 6, “Computational Assessments of 
Visual Processing.”
I AM CHANGING ALREADY. A FEW MONTHS AGO, I DID NOT know that I loved Marjory. I 
did not know I could fence in a tournament with strangers. I did not know I 
could learn biology and chemistry the way I have been. I did not know I could 
change this much.
One of the people at the rehab center where I spent so many hours as a child 
used to say that disabilities were God’s way of giving people a chance to show 
their faith. My mother would pinch her lips together, but she did not argue. 
Some government program at that time funneled money through churches to provide 
rehab services, and that was what my parents could afford. My mother was afraid 
that if she argued, they might kick me out of the program. Or at least she’d 
have to listen to more of the sermonizing.
I do not understand God that way. I do not think God makes bad things happen 
just so that people can grow spiritually. Bad parents do that, my mother said. 
Bad parents make things hard and painful for their children and then say it was 
to help them grow. Growing and living are hard enough already; children do not 
need things to be harder. I think this is true even for normal children. I have 
watched little children learning to walk; they all struggle and fall down many 
times. Their faces show that it is not easy. It would be stupid to tie bricks on 
them to make it harder. If that is true for learning to walk, then I think it is 
true for other growing and learning as well.
God is supposed to be the good parent, the Father. So I think God would not make 
things harder than they are. I do not think I am autistic because God thought my 
parents needed a challenge or I needed a challenge. I think it is like if I were 
a baby and a rock fell on me and broke my leg. Whatever caused it was an 
accident. God did not prevent the accident, but He did not cause it, either.
Accidents happen to people; my mother’s friend Celia said most accidents weren’t 
really accidents, they were caused by someone doing something stupid, but the 
person who gets hurt isn’t always the one who did something stupid. I think my 
autism was an accident, but what I do with it is me. That is what my mother 
said.
That is what I think most of the time. Sometimes I am not sure.
IT IS A GRAY MORNING, WITH LOW CLOUDS. THE SLOW LIGHT has not yet chased all the 
darkness away. I pack my lunch. I pick up Cego and Clinton and go downstairs. I 
can read during my lunch break.
My tires are all still full. My new windshield is unbroken. Perhaps the person 
who is not my friend is tired of hurting my car. I unlock the car, put my lunch 
and the book on the passenger seat, and get in. The morning music I like for 
driving is playing in my head.
When I turn the key, nothing happens. The car will not start. There is no sound 
but the little click of the turning key. I know what that means. My battery is 
dead.
The music in my head falters. My battery was not dead last night. The charge 
level indicator was normal last night.
I get out and unlatch the hood of the car. When I lift the hood, something jumps 
out at me; I stagger back and almost fall over the curb.
It is a child’s toy, a jack-in-the-box. It is sitting where the battery should 
be. The battery is gone.
I will be late for work. Mr. Crenshaw will be angry. I close the hood over the 
engine without touching the toy. I did not like jack-in-the-box toys when I was 
a child. I must call the police, the insurance company, the whole dreary list. I 
look at my watch. If I hurry to the transit stop, I can catch a commuter train 
to work and I will not be late.
I take the lunch sack and the book from the passenger seat, relock the car, and 
walk quickly to the transit stop. I have the cards of the police officers in my 
wallet. I can call them from work.
On the crowded train, people stare past one another without making eye contact. 
They are not all autistic; they know somehow that it is appropriate not to make 
eye contact on the train. Some read news faxes. Some stare at the monitor at the 
end of the car. I open the book and read what Cego and Clinton said about how 
the brain processes visual signals. At the time they wrote, industrial robots 
could use only simple visible input to guide movement. Binocular vision in 
robots hadn’t been developed yet except for the laser targeting of large 
weapons.
I am fascinated by the feedback loops between the layers of visual processing; I 
had not realized that something this interesting went on inside normal people’s 
heads. I thought they just looked at things and recognized them automatically. I 
thought my visual processing was faulty when—if I understand this correctly—it 
is only slow.
When I get to the campus stop, I now know which way to go, and it takes less 
time to walk to our building. I am three minutes and twenty seconds early. Mr. 
Crenshaw is in the hall again, but he does not speak to me; he moves aside 
without speaking, so that I can get to my office. I say, “Good morning, Mr. 
Crenshaw,” because that is appropriate, and he grunts something that might have 
been, “Morning.” If he had had my speech therapist, he would enunciate more 
clearly.
I put the book on my desk and go out in the hall to take my lunch to the 
kitchenette. Mr. Crenshavy is now by the door, looking out at the parking lot. 
He turns around and sees me. “Where’s your car, Arren-dale?” he asks.
“Home,” I say. “I took the transit.”
“So you can take the transit,” he says. His face is a little shiny. “You don’t 
really need a special parking lot.”
“It is very noisy,” I say. “Someone stole my battery last night.”
“A car’s only a constant problem for someone like you,” he says, coming closer. 
“People who don’t live in secure areas, with secure parking, really shouldn’t 
flaunt having a car.”
“Nothing happened until a few weeks ago,” I say. I do not understand why I want 
to argue with him. I do not like to argue.
“You were lucky. But it looks like someone has found you out now, doesn’t it? 
Three episodes of vandalism. At least this time you weren’t late.”
“I was only late once because of that,” I say.
“That’s not the point,” he says. I wonder what the point is, besides his dislike 
of me and the others. He glances at my office door. “You’ll want to get back to 
work,” he says. “Or start—” Now he looks at the clock in the hall. It is two 
minutes, eighteen seconds past starting time. What I want to say is, You made me 
late, but I do not say that. I go in my office and shut the door. I am not going 
to make up the two minutes, eighteen seconds. It is not my fault. I feel a 
little excited about that.
I call up yesterday’s work, and the beautiful patterns form again in my mind. 
One parameter after another flows in, shifting the pattern from one structure to 
another, seamlessly. I vary the parameters across the permitted range, checking 
to see that there is no unwanted shift. When I look up again, it is an hour and 
eleven minutes later. Mr. Crenshaw will not be in our building now. He never 
stays this long. I go out in the hall for some water. The hall is empty, but I 
see the sign on the gym door. Someone is in there. I do not care.
I write down the words I will need to say, then call the police and ask for the 
investigating officer from the first incident, Mr. Stacy. When he comes onto the 
line, I can hear noises in the background. Other people are talking, and there 
is a kind of rumbling noise.
“This is Lou Arrendale,” I say. “You came when my car had its tires slashed. You 
said to call—”
“Yes, yes,” he says. He sounds impatient and as if he is not really listening. 
“Officer Isaka told me about the windshield the following week. We haven’t had 
time to follow that up—”
“Last night my battery was stolen,” I say. “And someone put a toy where the 
battery should be.”
“What?”
“When I went out this morning, my car would not start. I looked under the hood 
and something jumped at me. It was a jack-in-the-box someone had put where the 
battery should have been.”
“Just stay there and I’ll send someone over—” he says.
“I am not at home,” I say. “I am at work. My boss would be angry if I did not 
come on time. The car is at home.”
“I see. Where is the toy?”
“In the car,” I say. “I did not touch it. I do not like jack-in-the-box toys. I 
just shut the lid.” I meant “hood,” but the wrong word came in my mouth.
“I’m not happy about this,” he says. “Someone really does not like you, Mr. 
Arrendale. Once is mischief, but—do you have any idea who might have done it?”
“The only person I know who has been angry with me is my boss, Mr. Crenshaw,” I 
say. “When I came in late, that time. He does not like autistic people. He wants 
us to try an experimental treatment—”
“Us? Are there other autistic people where you work?”
I realize he does not know; he did not ask about this before. “Our section is 
all autistic people,” I say. “But I do not think Mr. Crenshaw would do this sort 
of thing. Although… he does not like it that we have special permits to drive 
and a separate parking lot. He thinks we should all ride the train like everyone 
else.”
“Hmmm. And all the attacks have been on your car.”
“Yes. But he does not know about my fencing class.” I cannot imagine Mr. 
Crenshaw driving around the city to find my car and then smashing the 
windshield.
“Anything else? Anything at all?”
I do not want to make false accusations. Making false accusations is very wrong. 
But I do not want my car to be damaged again. It takes my time away from other 
things; it messes up my schedule. And it costs money.
“There is someone at the Center, Emmy Sanderson, who thinks I should not have 
normal friends,” I say. “But she does not know where the fencing group is.” I do 
not really think it is Emmy, but she is the one person, besides Mr. Crenshaw, 
who has been angry with me in the last month or so. The pattern does not really 
fit for her or for Mr. Crenshaw, but the pattern must be wrong, because a 
possible name has not come out.
“Emmy Sanderson,” he says, repeating the name. “And you don’t think she knows 
where the house is?”
“No.” Emmy is not my friend, but I do not believe she has done these things. Don 
is my friend, and I do not want to believe he has done these things.
“Isn’t it more likely someone connected to your fencing group? Is there someone 
you don’t get along with?”
I am sweating suddenly. “They are my friends,” I say. “Emmy says they can’t 
really be friends, but they are. Friends do not hurt friends.”
He grunts. I do not know what that grunt means. “There are friends and friends,” 
he says. “Tell me about the people in that group.”
I tell him about Tom and Lucia first and then the others; he takes down the 
names, asking me how to spell some of them.
“And were they all there, these last few weeks?”
“Not all every week,” I say. I tell him what I can remember, who was on a 
business trip and who was there. “And Don switched to a different instructor; he 
got upset with Tom.”
“With Tom. Not with you?”
“No.” I do not know how to say this without criticizing friends, and criticizing 
friends is wrong. “Don teases sometimes, but he is my friend,” I say. “He got 
upset with Tom because Tom told me about something Don did a long time ago and 
Don wanted him not to have told me.”
“Something bad?” Stacy asks.
“It was at a tournament,” I say. “Don came to me after the match and told me 
what I did wrong, and Tom—my instructor—told him to let me alone. Don was trying 
to help me, but Tom thought he wasn’t helping me. Tom said I had done better 
than Don had at his first tournament, and Don heard him, and then he was angry 
with Tom. After that he quit coming to our group.”
“Huh. Sounds more like a reason to slash your instructor’s tires. I suppose we’d 
better check him out, though. If you think of anything else, let me know. I’ll 
send someone over to retrieve that toy; we’ll see if we can get some 
fingerprints or something off of it.”
When I have put the phone down, I sit thinking of Don, but that is not pleasant. 
I think of Marjory instead, and then Marjory and Don. It makes me feel a little 
sick in my stomach to think of Don and Marjory as… friends. In love. I know 
Marjory does not like Don. Does he like her? I remember how he sat beside her, 
how he stood between me and her, how Lucia shooed him away.
Has Marjory told Lucia she likes me? This is another thing that normal people 
do, I think. They know when someone likes someone and how much. They do not have 
to wonder. It is like their other mind reading, knowing when someone is joking 
and when someone is serious, knowing when a word is used correctly and when it 
is used in a joking way. I wish I could know for sure if Marjory likes me. She 
smiles at me. She talks to me in a pleasant voice. But she might do that anyway, 
as long as she did not dislike me. She is pleasant to people; I saw that in the 
grocery store.
Emmy’s accusations come back to me. If Marjory does see me as an interesting 
case, a research subject even though not in her field, she might still smile and 
talk to me. It would not mean she liked me. It would mean she is a nicer person 
than Dr. Fornum, and even Dr. Fornum smiles an appropriate smile when she says 
hello and good-bye, though it never reaches her eyes as Marjory’s smile does. I 
have seen Marjory smile at other people and her smile is always whole. Still, if 
Marjory is my friend, she is telling me the truth when she tells me about her 
research, and if I am her friend, I should believe her.
I shake my head to drive these thoughts back into the darkness where they 
belong. I turn on the fan to make my spin spirals whirl. I need that now; I am 
breathing too fast and I can feel sweat on my neck. It is because of the car, 
because of Mr. Crenshaw, because of having to call the police. It is not because 
of Marjory.
After a few minutes, my brain’s functionality returns to pattern analysis and 
pattern generation. I do not let my mind drift to Cego and Clinton. I will work 
through part of my lunch hour to make up the time I spent talking to the police, 
but not the two minutes and eighteen seconds Mr. Crenshaw cost me.
Immersed in the complexity and beauty of the patterns, I do not emerge for lunch 
break until 1:28:17.
THE MUSIC IN MY HEAD IS BRUCH’S VlOLIN CONCERTO NO. 2. I have four recordings of 
it at home. A very old one with a twentieth century soloist named Perlman, my 
favorite. Three newer, two fairly competent but not very interesting and one 
with last year’s Tchaikovsky Competition winner, Idris Vai-Kassadelikos, who is 
still very young. Vai-Kassadelikos may be as good as Perlman when she is older. 
I do not know how good he was when he was her age, but she plays with passion, 
pulling out the long notes in smooth, heartbreaking phrases.
This is music that makes it easier to see some kinds of patterns than others. 
Bach enhances most of them, but not the ones that are… elliptical is the best 
way I can say it. The long sweep of this music, which obscures the rosetted 
patterns Bach brings out, helps me find and build the long, asymmetrical 
components that find rest in fluidity.
It is dark music. I hear it as long, undulating streaks of darkness, like 
blue-black ribbons blowing in the wind at night, obscuring and revealing the 
stars. Now soft, now louder, now the single violin, with the orchestra just 
breathing behind it, and now louder, the violin riding up over the orchestra 
like the ribbons on a current of air.
I think it will be good music to have in mind while I am reading Cego and 
Clinton. I eat my lunch quickly and set a timer on my fan. That way the moving 
twinkles of light will let me know when it is time to go back to work.
Cego and Clinton talk about the way the brain processes edges, angles, textures, 
colors, and how the information flows back and forth between the layers of 
visual processing. I did not know there was a separate area for facial 
recognition, though the reference they cite goes back to the twentieth century. 
I did not know that the ability to recognize an object in different orientations 
is impaired in those born blind who gain sight later.
Again and again they talk about things I have had trouble with in the context of 
being born blind or having brain trauma from a head injury or stroke or 
aneurysm. When my face does not turn strange like other people’s do when they 
feel strong emotion, is it just that my brain doesn’t process the change of 
shape?
A tiny hum: my fan coming on. I shut my eyes, wait three seconds, and open them. 
The room is awash in color and movement, the spin spirals and whirligigs all 
moving, reflecting light as they move. I put the book down and go back to work. 
The steady oscillation of the twinkles soothes me; I have heard normal people 
call it chaotic, but it is not. It is a pattern, regular and predictable, and it 
took me weeks to get it right. I think there must be some easier way to do it, 
but I had to adjust each of the moving parts until it moved at the right speed 
in relation to the others.
My phone rings. I do not like it when the phone rings; it jerks me out of what I 
am doing, and there will be someone on the other end who expects me to be able 
to talk right away. I take a deep breath. When I answer, “This is Lou 
Arrendale,” at first I hear only noise.
“Ah—this is Detective Stacy,” the voice says. “Listen—we sent someone over to 
your apartment. Tell me again what your license number is.”
I recite it for him.
“Um. Well, I’m going to need to talk to you in person.” He stops and I think he 
expects me to say something, but I do not know what to say. Finally he goes on. 
“I think you may be in danger, Mr. Arrendale. Whoever’s doing this is not a nice 
guy. When our guys tried to get that toy out, there was a small explosion.”
Explosion!
“Yes. Luckily, our guys were careful. They didn’t like the setup, so they called 
the bomb squad. But if you’d picked up that toy, you might’ve lost a finger or 
two. Or the thing might’ve hit you in the face.”
“I see.” I could in fact see it, imagine it visually. I had almost reached out 
and grabbed the toy… and if I had… I feel cold suddenly; my hand starts to 
tremble.
“We really need to find this person. Nobody’s home at your fencing 
instructor’s—”
“Tom teaches at the university,” I say. “Chemical engineering.”
“That’ll help. Or his wife?”
“Lucia’s a doctor,” I say. “She works at the medical center. Do you really think 
this person wants to hurt me?”
“He sure wants to cause you trouble,” the officer said. “And the vandalism seems 
more violent each time. Can you come down to the station?”
“I cannot leave here until after work,” I say. “Mr. Crenshaw would be angry with 
me.” If someone is trying to hurt me, I do not want anyone else angry.
“We’re sending someone out,” Mr. Stacy says. “Which building are you in?” I tell 
him that and which gate to enter and which turns to take to arrive in our 
parking area, and he continues, “Should be there within a half hour. We have 
fingerprints; we’ll need to take yours to compare with the others. Your 
fingerprints should be all over that car—and you’ve had it in for repairs 
lately, too, so there’ll be others. But if we find a set that doesn’t match 
yours or any of the repair people… we’ll have something solid to go on.”
I wonder if I should tell Mr. Aldrin or Mr. Crenshaw that the police are coming 
here to talk to me. I do not know which would make Mr. Crenshaw more angry. Mr. 
Aldrin does not seem to get angry as often. I call his office.
“The police are coming to talk to me,” I say. “I will make up the time.”
“Lou! What’s wrong? What have you done?”
“It is my car,” I say.
Before I can say more, he is talking fast. “Lou, don’t say anything to them. 
We’ll get you a lawyer. Was anyone hurt?”
“Nobody was hurt,” I say. I hear his breath gush out.
“Well, that’s a mercy,” he says.
“When I opened the hood, I did not touch the device.”
“Device? What are you talking about?”
“The… the thing that someone put in my car. It looked like a toy, a 
jack-in-the-box.”
“Wait—wait. Are you telling me that the police are coming because of something 
that happened to you, that someone else did? Not something you did?”
“I did not touch it,” I say. The words he has just said filter through slowly, 
one by one; the excitement in his voice made it hard to hear them clearly. He 
thought at first that I had done something wrong, something to bring the police 
here. This man I have known since I started working here—he thinks I could do 
something so bad. I feel heavier.
“I’m sorry,” he says before I can say anything. “It sounds like—it must sound 
like—I jumped to the conclusion that you had done something wrong. I’m sorry. I 
know you would not. But I still think you need one of the company’s lawyers with 
you when you talk to the police.”
“No,” I say. I feel chilly and bitter; I do not want to be treated like a child. 
I thought Mr. Aldrin liked me. If he does not like me, then Mr. Crenshaw, who is 
so much worse, must really hate me. “I do not want a lawyer. I do not need a 
lawyer. I have not done anything wrong. Someone has been vandalizing my car.”
“More than once?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say. “Two weeks ago, when all my tires were flat. Someone had slashed 
them. That is the time I was late. Then, the following Wednesday, while I was at 
a friend’s house, someone smashed my windshield. I called the police then, too.”
“But you didn’t tell me, Lou,” Mr. Aldrin says.
“No… I thought Mr. Crenshaw would be angry. And this morning, my car wouldn’t 
start. The battery was gone, and a toy was there instead. I came to work and 
called the police. When they went to look, the toy had an explosive under it.”
“My God, Lou—that’s… you could have been hurt. That’s horrible. Do you have any 
idea—no, of course you don’t. Listen, I’m coming right over.”
He has hung up before I can ask him not to come right over. I am too excited to 
work now. I do not care what Mr. Crenshaw thinks. I need my time in the gym. No 
one else is there. I put on bouncing music and begin bouncing on the trampoline, 
big, swooping bounces. At first I am out of rhythm with the music, but then I 
stabilize my movement. The music lifts me, swings me down; I can feel the beat 
in the compression of my joints as I meet the stretchy fabric and spring upward 
again.
By the time Mr. Aldrin arrives, I am feeling better. I am sweaty and I can smell 
myself, but the music is moving strongly inside me. I am not shaky or scared. It 
is a good feeling.
Mr. Aldrin looks worried, and he wants to come closer than I want him to come. I 
do not want him to smell me and be offended. I do not want him to touch me, 
either. “Are you all right, Lou?” he asks. His hand keeps reaching out, as if to 
pat me.
“I am doing okay,” I say.
“Are you sure? I really think we should have a lawyer here, and maybe you should 
go by the clinic—”
“I was not hurt,” I say. “I am all right. I do not need to see a doctor, and I 
do not want the lawyer.”
“I left word at the gate for the police,” Mr. Aldrin says. “I had to tell Mr. 
Crenshaw.” His brow lowers. “He was in a meeting. He will get the message when 
he gets out.”
The door buzzer sounds. Employees authorized to be in this building have their 
own key cards. Only visitors have to ring the buzzer. “I’ll go,” Mr. Aldrin 
says. I do not know whether to go in my office or stand in the hall. I stand in 
the hall and watch Mr. Aldrin go to the door. He opens it and says something to 
the man who is standing there. I cannot see if it is the same man I talked to 
before until he is much closer, and then I can tell that it is.



CHAPTER THIRTEEN
« ^ » 
HI, MR. ARRENDALE,” HE SAYS, AND PUTS OUT HIS HAND. I put out mine, though I do 
not like to shake hands. I know it is appropriate. “Is there somewhere we could 
talk?” he asks.
“My office,” I say. I lead the way in. I do not have visitors, so there is no 
extra chair. I see Mr. Stacy looking at all the twinklies, the spin spirals and 
pinwheels and other decorations. I do not know what he thinks about it. Mr. 
Aldrin speaks softly to Mr. Stacy and leaves. I do not sit down because it is 
not polite to sit when other people have to stand, unless you are their boss. 
Mr. Aldrin comes in with a chair that I recognize from the kitchenette. He puts 
it down in the space between my desk and the files. Then he stands by the door.
“And you are?” Mr. Stacy asks, turning to him.
“Pete Aldrin; I’m Lou’s immediate supervisor. I don’t know if you understand—” 
Mr. Aldrin gives me a look that I am not sure of, and Mr. Stacy nods.
“I’ve interviewed Mr. Arrendale before,” he says. Once more I am astonished at 
how they do it, the way they pass information from one to another without words. 
“Don’t let me keep you.”
“But… but I think he needs—”
“Mr. Aldrin, Mr. Arrendale here isn’t in trouble. We’re trying to help him, keep 
this nutcase from hurting him. Now if you’ve got a safe place for him to stay 
for a few days, while we try to track this person down, that would be a help, 
but otherwise—I don’t think he needs baby-sitting while I chat with him. Though 
it’s up to him…” The policeman looks at me. I see something in his face that I 
think may be laughter, but I am not sure. It is very subtle.
“Lou is very capable,” Mr. Aldrin says. “We value him highly. I just wanted—”
“To be sure he would get fair treatment. I understand. But it’s up to him.”
They are both looking at me; I feel impaled on their gaze like one of those 
exhibits at the museums. I know Mr. Aldrin wants me to say he should stay, but 
he wants it for the wrong reason and I do not want him to stay. “I will be all 
right,” I say. “I will call you if anything happens.”
“Be sure you do,” he says. He gives Mr. Stacy a long look and then leaves. I can 
hear his footsteps going down the hall and then the scrape of the other chair in 
the kitchenette and the plink and clunk of money going into the drink machine 
and a can of something landing down below. I wonder what he chose. I wonder if 
he will stay there in case I want him.
The policeman closes the door to my office, then sits in the chair Mr. Aldrin 
placed for him. I sit down behind my desk. He is looking around the room.
“You like things that turn around, don’t you?” he says.
“Yes,” I say. I wonder how long he will stay. I will have to make up the time.
“Let me explain about vandals,” he says. “There’s several kinds. The 
person—usually a kid—who just likes to make a little trouble. They may spike a 
tire or break a windshield or steal a stop sign—they do it for the excitement, 
as much as anything, and they don’t know, or care, who they’re doing it to. Then 
there’s what we call spillover. There’s a fight in a bar, and it continues 
outside, and there’s breaking windshields in the parking lot. There’s a crowd in 
the street, someone gets rowdy, and the next thing you know they’re breaking 
windows and stealing stuff. Now some of these people are the kind that aren’t 
usually violent—they shock themselves with how they act in a crowd.” He pauses, 
looking at me, and I nod. I know he wants some response.
“You’re saying that some vandals aren’t doing it to hurt particular people.”
“Exactly. There’s the individual who likes making messes but doesn’t know the 
victim. There’s the individual who doesn’t usually make messes but is involved 
in something else where the violence spills over. Now when we first get an 
example of vandalism—as with your tires—that clearly isn’t spillover, we first 
think of the random individual. That’s the commonest form. If another couple 
cars got their tires slashed in the same neighborhood—or on the same transit 
route—in the next few weeks, we’d just assume we had a bad boy thumbing his nose 
at the cops. Annoying, but not dangerous.”
“Expensive,” I say. “To the people with the cars, anyway.”
“True, which is why it’s a crime. But there’s a third kind of vandal, and that’s 
the dangerous kind. The one who is targeting a particular person. Typically, 
this person starts off with something annoying but not dangerous—like slashing 
tires. Some of these people are satisfied with one act of revenge for whatever 
it was. If they are, they’re not that dangerous. But some aren’t, and these are 
the ones we worry about. What we see in your case is the relatively nonviolent 
tire slashing, followed by the more violent windshield smashing and the still 
more violent placement of a small explosive device where it could do you harm. 
Every incident has escalated. That’s why we’re concerned for your safety.”
I feel as if I am floating in a crystal sphere, unconnected to anything outside. 
I do not feel endangered.
“You may feel safe,” Mr. Stacy says, reading my mind again. “But that doesn’t 
mean you are safe. The only way for you to be safe is for that nutcase who’s 
stalking you to be behind bars.”
He says “nutcase” so easily; I wonder if that is what he thinks of me as well.
Again, he reads my thoughts. “I’m sorry—I shouldn’t have said ‘nutcase.’… You 
probably hear enough of that sort of thing. It just makes me mad: here you are, 
hardworking and decent, and this—this person is after you. What’s his problem?”
“Not autism,” I want to say, but I do not. I do not think any autistic would be 
a stalker, but I do not know all of them and I could be wrong.
“I just want you to know that we take this threat seriously,” he says. “Even if 
we didn’t move fast at first. So, let’s get serious. It has to be aimed at 
you—you know the phrase about three times enemy action?”
“No,” I say.
“Once is accident, twice is coincidence, and third time is enemy action. So if 
something that only might be aimed at you happens three times, then it’s time to 
consider someone’s after you.”
I puzzle over this a moment. “But… if it is enemy action, then it was enemy 
action the first time, too, wasn’t it? Not an accident at all?”
He looks surprised, eyebrows up and mouth rounded. “Actually— yeah—you’re right, 
but the thing is you don’t know about that first one until the others happen and 
then you can put it in the same category.”
“If three real accidents happen, you could think they were enemy action and 
still be wrong,” I say.
He stares at me, shakes his head, and says, “How many ways are there to be wrong 
and how few to be right?”
The calculations run through my head in an instant, patterning the decision 
carpet with the colors of accident (orange), coincidence (green), and enemy 
action (red). Three incidents, each of which can have one of three values, three 
theories of truth, each of which is either true or false by the values assigned 
each action. And there must be some filter on the choice of incidents, rejecting 
for inclusion those that cannot be manipulated by the person who may be the 
enemy of the one whose incidents are used as a test.
It is just such problems I deal with daily, only in far greater complexity.
“There are twenty-seven possibilities,” I say. “Only one is correct if you 
define correctness by all parts of the statement being true—that the first 
incident is in fact accident, the second is in fact coincidence, and the third 
is in fact enemy action. Only one—but a different one—is true if you define 
correctness as all three incidents being in fact enemy action. If you define 
correctness as the third incident being enemy action in all cases, regardless of 
the reality of the first two cases, then the statement will correctly alert you 
to enemy action in nine cases. If, however, the first two cases are not enemy 
action, but the third is, then the choice of related incidents becomes even more 
critical.”
He is staring at me now with his mouth a little open. “You… calculated that? In 
your head?”
“It is not hard,” I say. “It is simply a permutation problem, and the formula 
for permutations is taught in high school.”
“So there’s only one chance in twenty-seven that it is actually true?” he asks. 
“That’s nuts. It wouldn’t be an old saw if it wasn’t truer than that… that’s 
what? About four percent? Something’s wrong.”
The flaw in his mathematical knowledge and his logic is painfully clear. 
“Actually true depends on what your underlying purpose is,” I say. “There is 
only one chance in twenty-seven that all parts of the statement are true: that 
the first incident is an accident, the second incident is a coincidence, and the 
third incident is enemy action. That is three-point-seven percent, giving an 
error rate of ninety-six-point-three for the truth value of the entire 
statement. But there are nine cases—one-third of the total—in which the last 
case is enemy action, which drops the error rate with respect to the final 
incident to sixty-seven percent. And there are nineteen cases in which enemy 
action can occur—as first, second, or last incident or a combination of them. 
Nineteen out of twenty-seven is seventy-point-thirty-seven percent: that is the 
probability that enemy action occurred in at least one of the three incidents. 
Your presumption of enemy action will still be wrong 
twenty-nine-point-sixty-three percent of the time, but that’s less than a third 
of the time. Thus if it is important to be alert to enemy action—if it is worth 
more to you to detect enemy action than to avoid suspecting it when it does not 
exist—it will be profitable to guess that enemy action has occurred when you 
observe three reasonably related incidents.”
“Good God,” he says. “You’re serious.” He shakes his head abruptly. “Sorry. I 
hadn’t—I didn’t know you were a math genius.”
“I am not a math genius,” I say. I start to say again that these calculations 
are simple, within the ability of schoolchildren, but that might be 
inappropriate. If he cannot do them, it could make him feel bad.
“But… what you’re saying is… following that saying means I’m going to be wrong a 
lot of the time anyway?”
“Mathematically, the saying cannot be right more often than that. It is just a 
saying, not a mathematical formula, and only formulae get it right in 
mathematics. In real life, it will depend on your choice of incidents to 
connect.” I try to think how to explain. “Suppose on the way to work on the 
train, I put my hand on something that has just been painted. I did not see the 
WET PAINT sign, or it got knocked off by accident. If I connect the accident of 
paint on my hand to the accident of dropping an egg on the floor and then to 
tripping on a crack in the sidewalk and call that enemy action—”
“When it’s your own carelessness. I see. Tell me, does the percentage of error 
go down as the number of related incidents goes up?”
“Of course, if you pick the right incidents.”
He shakes his head again. “Let’s get back to you and make sure we pick the right 
incidents. Someone slashed the tires on your car sometime Wednesday night two 
weeks ago. Now on Wednesdays, you go over to a friend’s house for… fencing 
practice? Is that sword fighting or something?”
“They’re not real swords,” I say. “Just sport blades.”
“Okay. Do you keep them in your car?”
“No,” I say. “I store my things at Tom’s house. Several people do.”
“So the motive couldn’t have been theft, in the first place. And the following 
week, your windshield was broken while you were at fencing, a drive-by. Again, 
the attack’s on your car, and this time the location of your car makes it clear 
the attacker knew where you went on Wednesdays. And this third attack was 
accomplished on Wednesday night, between the time you got home from your fencing 
group and when you got up in the morning. The timing suggests to me that this is 
connected to your fencing group.”
“Unless it is someone who has only Wednesday night to do things,” I say.
He looks at me a long moment. “It sounds like you don’t want to face the 
possibility that someone in your fencing group—or someone who was in your 
fencing group—has a grudge against you.”
He is right. I do not want to think that people I have been meeting every week 
for years do not like me. That even one of them does not like me. I felt safe 
there. They are my friends. I can see the pattern Mr. Stacy wants me to see—it 
is obvious, a simple temporal association, and I have already seen it—but it is 
impossible. Friends are people who want good things for you and not bad ones.
“I do not…” My throat closes. I feel the pressure in my head that means I will 
not be able to talk easily for a while. “It is not… right… to… to… say… what… 
you are… not sure… is true.” I wish I had not said anything about Don before. I 
feel wrong about it.
“You don’t want to make a false accusation,” he says.
I nod, mute.
He sighs. “Mr. Arrendale, everyone has people that don’t like them. You don’t 
have to be a bad person to have people not like you. And it doesn’t make you a 
bad person to take reasonable precautions not to let other people hurt you. If 
there’s someone in that group who has a grudge against you, fair or unfair, that 
person still may not be the one who did this. I know that. I’m not going to 
throw someone into criminal rehab just because they don’t like you. But I don’t 
want you to get killed because we didn’t take this seriously.”
I still cannot imagine someone—Don—trying to kill me. I have not done anyone 
harm that I know of. People do not kill for trivial reasons.
“My point is,” Mr. Stacy says, “that people kill for all sorts of stupid 
reasons. Trivial reasons.”
“No,” I mutter. Normal people have reasons for what they do, big reasons for big 
things and little reasons for little things.
“Yes,” he says. His voice is firm; he believes what he is saying. “Not everyone, 
of course. But someone who would put that stupid toy in your car, with the 
explosive—that is not a normally sane person, Mr. Arrendale, in my opinion. And 
I am professionally familiar with the kind of people who kill. Fathers who knock 
a child into the wall for taking a piece of bread without permission. Wives and 
husbands who grab for a weapon in the midst of an argument about who forgot what 
at the grocery store. I do not think you are the sort of man who makes idle 
accusations. Trust us to investigate carefully whatever you tell us and give us 
something to work on. This person who is stalking you might stalk someone else 
another time.”
I do not want to talk; my throat is so tight it hurts. But if it could happen to 
someone else…
As I am thinking what to say and how, he says, “Tell me more about this fencing 
group. When did you start going there?”
This is something I can answer, and I do. He asks me to tell him how the 
practice works, when people come, what they do, what time they leave.
I describe the house, the yard, the equipment storage. “My things are always in 
the same place,” I say.
“How many people store their gear at Tom’s, instead of taking it back and 
forth?” he asks.
“Besides me? Two,” I say. “Some of the others do, if they’re going to a 
tournament. But three of us regularly. Don and Sheraton are the others.” There. 
I have mentioned Don without choking.
“Why?” he asks quietly.
“Sheraton travels a lot for work,” I say. “He doesn’t make it every week, and he 
once lost a complete set of blades when his apartment was broken into while he 
was overseas on business. Don—” My throat threatens to close again, but I push 
on. “Don was always forgetting his stuff and borrowing from people, and finally 
Tom told him to leave it there, where he couldn’t forget it.”
“Don. This is the same Don you told me about over the phone?”
“Yes,” I say. All my muscles are tight. It is so much harder when he is here in 
my office, looking at me.
“Was he in the group when you joined it?”
Yes.
“Who are some of your friends in the group?”
I thought they were all my friends. Emmy said it was impossible for them to be 
my friends; they are normal and I am not. But I thought they were. “Tom,” I say. 
“Lucia. Brian. M-Marjory…”
“Lucia is Tom’s wife, right? Who is this Marjory?”
I can feel my face getting hot. “She… she is a person who… who is my friend.”
“A girlfriend? Lover?”
Words fly out of my head faster than light. I can only shake my head, mute 
again.
“Someone you wish was a girlfriend?”
I am seized into rigidity. Do I wish? Of course I wish. Dare I hope? No. I 
cannot shake my head or nod it; I cannot speak. I do not want to see the look on 
Mr. Stacy’s face; I do not want to know what he thinks. I want to escape to some 
quiet place where no one knows me and no one will ask questions.
“Let me suggest something here, Mr. Arrendale,” Mr. Stacy says. His voice sounds 
staccato, chopped into sharp little bits of sound that cut at my ears, at my 
understanding. “Suppose you really like this woman, this Marjory—”
This Marjory as if she were a specimen, not a person. The very thought of her 
face, her hair, her voice, floods me with warmth.
“And you’re kinda shy—okay, that’s normal in a guy who hasn’t had that many 
relationships, which I’m guessing you haven’t. And maybe she likes you, and 
maybe she just enjoys being admired from afar. And this other person—maybe Don, 
maybe not—is pissed that she seems to like you. Maybe he likes her. Maybe he 
just doesn’t like you. Whatever, he sees something he doesn’t like between the 
two of you. Jealousy is a pretty common cause of violent behavior.”
“I… do not… want… him… to be the one…” I say, gasping it out.
“You like him?”
“I… know… think… thought… I know… knew… him…” A sick blackness inside swirls 
around and through the warm feeling about Marjory. I remember the times he 
joked, laughed, smiled.
“Betrayal is never fun,” Mr. Stacy says, like a priest reciting the Ten 
Commandments. He has his pocket set out and is entering commands.
I can sense something dark hovering over Don, like a great thundercloud over a 
sunny landscape. I want to make it go away, but I do not know how.
“When do you get off work?” Mr. Stacy asks.
“I would usually leave at five-thirty,” I say. “But I have lost time today 
because of what happened to my car. I have to make that time up.”
His eyebrows go up again. “You have to make up time that you lost because of 
talking to me?”
“Of course,” I say.
“Your boss didn’t seem that picky,” Mr. Stacy says.
“It is not Mr. Aldrin,” I say. “I would make up the time anyway, but it is Mr. 
Crenshaw who gets angry if he thinks we are not working hard enough.”
“Ah, I see,” he says. His face flushes; he is very shiny now. “I suspect I might 
not like your Mr. Crenshaw.”
“I do not like Mr. Crenshaw,” I say. “But I must do my best anyway. I would make 
up the time even if he did not get angry.”
“I’m sure you would,” he says. “What time do you think you will leave work 
today, Mr. Arrendale?”
I look at the clock and calculate how much time I have to make up. “If I start 
back to work now, I can leave at six fifty-three,” I say. “There is a train 
leaving from the campus station at seven-oh-four, and if I hurry I can make it.”
“You aren’t riding on the train,” he says. “We’ll see that you have transport. 
Didn’t you hear me say we’re worried about your safety? Do you have someone you 
can stay with for a few days? It’s safer if you’re not in your own apartment.”
I shake my head. “I do not know anyone,” I say. I have not stayed at anyone’s 
house since I left home; I have always stayed in my own apartment or a hotel 
room. I do not want to go to a hotel now.
“We’re looking for this Don fellow right now, but he’s not easy to find. His 
employer says he hasn’t been in for several days, and he’s not at his apartment. 
You’ll be all right here for a few hours, I guess, but don’t leave without 
letting us know, okay?”
I nod. It is easier than arguing. I have the feeling that this is happening in a 
movie or show, not in real life. It is not like anything anyone ever told me 
about.
The door opens suddenly; I am startled and jump. It is Mr. Crenshaw. He looks 
angry again.
“Lou! What’s this I hear about you being in trouble with the police?” He glances 
around the office and stiffens when he sees Mr. Stacy.
“I’m Lieutenant Stacy,” the policeman says. “Mr. Arrendale isn’t in trouble. I’m 
investigating a case in which he is the victim. He told you about the slashed 
tires, didn’t he?”
“Yes—” Mr. Crenshaw’s color fades and flushes again. “He did. But is that any 
reason to send a policeman out here?”
“No, it’s not,” Mr. Stacy says. “The two subsequent attacks, including the 
explosive device placed in his automobile, are.”
“Explosive device?” Mr. Crenshaw pales again. “Someone is trying to hurt Lou?”
“We think so, yes,” Mr. Stacy says. “We are concerned about Mr. Arrendale’s 
safety.”
“Who do you think it is?” Mr. Crenshaw asks. He does not wait for an answer but 
goes on talking. “He’s working on some sensitive projects for us; it could be a 
competitor wants to sabotage them—”
“I don’t think so,” Mr. Stacy says. “There is evidence to suggest something 
completely unrelated to his workplace. I’m sure you’re concerned, though, to 
protect a valuable employee—does your company have a guest hostel or someplace 
Mr. Arrendale could stay for a few days?”
“No… I mean, you really think this is a serious threat?”
The policeman’s eyelids droop a little. “Mr. Crenshaw is it? I thought I 
recognized you from Mr. Arrendale’s description. If someone took the battery out 
of your car and replaced it with a device intended to explode when you opened 
the hood of the car, would you consider that a serious threat?”
“My God,” Mr. Crenshaw says. I know he is not calling Mr. Stacy his god. It is 
his way of expressing surprise. He glances at me, and his expression sharpens. 
“What have you been up to, Lou, that someone’s trying to kill you? You know 
company policy; if I find out you’ve been involved with criminal elements—”
“You’re jumping the gun, Mr. Crenshaw,” Mr. Stacy says. “There’s no indication 
whatever that Mr. Arrendale has done anything wrong. We suspect that the 
perpetrator may be someone who is jealous of Mr. Arrendale’s accomplishments—who 
would rather he be less able.”
“Resentful of his privileges?” Mr. Crenshaw says. “That would make sense. I 
always said special treatment for these people would rouse a backlash from those 
who suffer as a consequence. We have workers who see no reason why this section 
should have its own parking lot, gym, music system, and dining facility.”
I look at Mr. Stacy, whose face has stiffened. Something Mr. Crenshaw said has 
made him angry, but what? His voice comes out in a drawl that has an edge to it, 
a tone that I have been taught means some kind of disapproval.
“Ah, yes… Mr. Arrendale told me that you disapproved of supportive measures to 
retain the disabled in the workforce,” he says.
“I wouldn’t put it that way,” Mr. Crenshaw says. “It depends on whether they’re 
really necessary or not. Wheelchair ramps, that sort of thing, but some 
so-called support is nothing but indulgence—”
“And you, being so expert, know which is which, do you?” Mr. Stacy asks. Mr. 
Crenshaw flushes again. I look at Mr. Stacy. He does not look scared at all.
“I know what the balance sheet is,” Mr. Crenshaw says. “There’s no law that can 
compel us to go broke to coddle a few people who think they need foofaraws like… 
like that—” He points at the spin spirals hanging over my desk.
“Cost a whole dollar thirty-eight,” Mr. Stacy says. “Unless you bought ’em from 
a defense contractor.” That is nonsense. Defense contractors do not sell spin 
spirals; they sell missiles and mines and aircraft. Mr. Crenshaw says something 
I do not hear as I try to figure out why Mr. Stacy, who seemed generally 
knowledgeable except about permutations, would suggest buying spin spirals from 
a defense contractor. It is just silly. Could it be some kind of joke?
“… But it is the point,” Mr. Stacy is saying when I catch up to the conversation 
again. “This gym, now: it’s already installed, right? It probably costs diddly 
to maintain it. Now say you kick out this whole section—sixteen, twenty people 
maybe?—and convert it to… there’s nothing I can think of to do in the space 
taken up by even a large gym that will make you as much money as paying 
employer’s share of unemployment for that many people will. Not to mention 
losing your certification as a provider-employer for this disability class, and 
I’m sure you’re getting a tax break that way.”
“What do you know about that?” Mr. Crenshaw asks.
“Our department has disabled employees, too,” Mr. Stacy says. “Some disabled on 
the job and some hired that way. We had one flaming scuzzbucket of a city 
councilman, a few years ago, wanted to cut costs by getting rid of what he 
called freeloaders. I spent way too many off-duty hours working on the stats to 
show that we’d lose money by dumping ’em.”
“You’re tax-supported,” Mr. Crenshaw said. I could see his pulse pounding in one 
of the blood vessels on his red, shiny forehead. “You don’t have to worry about 
profit. We have to make the money to pay your damned salary.”
“Which I’m sure curdles your beer,” Mr. Stacy says. His pulse is pounding, too. 
“Now if you’ll excuse us, I need to talk to Mr. Arrendale—”
“Lou, you’ll make up this wasted time,” Mr. Crenshaw said, and went out, 
slamming the door behind him.
I look at Mr. Stacy, who shakes his head. “Now that’s a real piece of work. I 
had a sergeant like that once, years ago when I was just a patrolman, but he 
transferred to Chicago, thank God. You might want to look for another job, Mr. 
Arrendale. That one’s out to get rid of you.”
“I do not understand it,” I say. “I work—we all work—very hard here. Why does he 
want to get rid of us?” Or make us into someone else… I wonder whether to tell 
Mr. Stacy about the experimental protocol or not.
“He’s a power-hungry SOB,” Mr. Stacy says. “That kind are always out to make 
themselves look good and someone else look bad. You’re sitting there doing a 
good job quietly, no fuss. You look like someone he can kick around safely. 
Unluckily for him, this other thing’s happened to you.”
“It does not feel lucky,” I say. “It feels worse.”
“Probably does,” Mr. Stacy says. “But it’s not. This way, see, your Mr. Crenshaw 
has to deal with me—and he’ll find his arrogance doesn’t go far with the 
police.”
I am not sure I believe this. Mr. Crenshaw is not just Mr. Crenshaw; he is also 
the company, and the company has a lot of influence on city policy.
“Tell you what,” Mr. Stacy says. “Let’s get back to those incidents, so I can 
get out of your hair and you don’t have to stay later. Have you had any other 
interactions with Don, however trivial, that indicated he was upset with you?”
It seems silly, but I tell him about the time Don stood between Marjory and me 
at practice and about Marjory calling him a real heel even though he cannot be 
literally a heel.
“So what I’m hearing is a pattern here of your other friends protecting you from 
Don, making it clear that they don’t like how he treats you, is that right?”
I had not thought of it that way. When he says it, I can see the pattern as 
clearly as any on my computer or in fencing, and I wonder why I did not see it 
before. “He would be unhappy,” I say. “He would see that I am treated 
differently than he is, and—” I stop, struck suddenly by another pattern I have 
not seen before. “It’s like Mr. Crenshaw,” I say. My voice goes up; I can hear 
the tension in it, but it is too exciting. “He does not like it for the same 
reason.” I stop again, trying to think it through. I reach out and flip on my 
fan; the spin spirals help me think when I am excited.
“It is the pattern of people who do not really believe we need supports and 
resent the supports. If I—if we—did worse, they would understand more. It is the 
combination of doing well and having the supports that upsets them. I am too 
normal—” I look back at Mr. Stacy; he is smiling and nodding. “That is silly,” I 
say. “I am not normal. Not now. Not ever.”
“It may not seem that way to you,” he says. “And when you do something like you 
did with that old catchphrase about coincidence and enemy action, you are 
clearly not average… but most of the time you look normal and act normal. You 
know, I even thought—what we were told back in the psych classes we had to take 
was that autistic people were mostly nonverbal, reclusive, rigid.” He grins. I 
do not know what the grin means when he has just said so many bad things about 
us. “And here I find you driving a car, holding down a job, falling in love, 
going to fencing meets—”
“Only one so far,” I say.
“All right, only one so far. But I see a lot of people, Mr. Arrendale, who 
function less well than you and some who look to function at the same level. 
Doing it without supports. Now I see the reason for supports and the economy of 
them. It’s like putting a wedge under the short leg of a table—why not have a 
solid, foursquare table? Why endure a tippy unstable surface when such a little 
thing will make it stable? But people aren’t furniture, and if other people see 
that wedge as a threat to them… they won’t like it.”
“I do not see how I am a threat to Don or to Mr. Crenshaw,” I say.
“You personally may not be. I don’t even think your supports are, to anyone. But 
some people don’t think too well, and it’s easy for them to blame someone else 
for anything that’s wrong in their own lives. Don probably thinks if you weren’t 
getting preferential treatment he’d be successful with that woman.”
I wish he would use her name, Marjory. “That woman” sounds as if she had done 
something wrong.
“She probably wouldn’t like him anyway, but he doesn’t want to face that—he’d 
rather blame you. That is, if he’s the one doing all this.” He glances down at 
his pocket set. “From the information we have on him, he’s had a series of 
low-level jobs, sometimes quitting and sometimes being fired… his credit 
rating’s low… he could see himself as a failure and be looking for someone to 
blame for everything.”
I never thought of normal people as needing to explain their failures. I never 
thought of them as having failures.
“We’ll send someone to pick you up, Mr. Arrendale,” he says. “Call this number 
when you’re ready to leave for home.” He hands me a card. “We aren’t going to 
post a guard here, your corporate security’s good enough, but do believe me—you 
need to be careful.”
It is hard to go back to work when he is gone, but I focus on my project and 
accomplish something before it is time to leave and call for a ride.
PETE ALDRIN TOOK A DEEP BREATH AFTER CRENSHAW LEFT HIS office, in a rage about 
the “stuck-up cop” who had come to interview Lou Arrendale, and picked up the 
phone to call Human Resources. “Bart—” That was the name Paul had suggested in 
Human Resources, a young and inexperienced employee who would certainly ask 
around for directions and help. “Bart, I need to arrange some time off for my 
entire Section A; they’re going to be involved in a research project.”
“Whose?” Bart asked.
“Ours—first human trial of a new product aimed at autistic adults. Mr. Crenshaw 
considers this a top priority in our division, so I’d really appreciate it if 
you’d expedite setting up indefinite leave. I think that’d be best; we don’t 
know how long it will take—”
“For all of them? At once?”
“They may go through the protocol staggered; I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know 
when the consent forms are signed. But it’ll be at least thirty days—”
“I don’t see how—”
“Here’s the authorization code. If you need Mr. Crenshaw’s signature—”
“It’s just not—”
“Thanks,” Aldrin said, and hung up. He could imagine Bart looking puzzled and 
alarmed both, then running off to his supervisor to ask what to do. Aldrin took 
a deep breath, then called Shirley in Accounting.
“I need to arrange for direct deposit of Section A’s salaries into their banks 
while they’re on indefinite leave—”
“Pete, I told you: that’s not how it works. You have to have clearance—”
“Mr. Crenshaw considers it a top priority. I have the project authorization code 
and I can get his signature—”
“But how am I supposed to—”
“Can’t you just say they’re working at a secondary location? That wouldn’t 
require any changes to the existing departmental budgets.”
He could hear her sucking her teeth over the phone. “I could, I guess, if you 
told me where the secondary location was.”
“Building Forty-two, Main Campus.”
A moment’s silence, then, “But that’s the clinic, Pete. What ate you trying to 
pull? Double-dipping for company employees as research subjects?”
“I’m not trying to pull anything,” Aldrin said as huffily as he could. “I’m 
trying to expedite a project Mr. Crenshaw feels strongly about. They won’t be 
double-dipping if they get the salary and not the honoraria.”
“I have my doubts,” Shirley said. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks,” Aldrin said, and hung up again. He was sweating; he could feel it 
running down his ribs. Shirley was no novice; she knew perfectly well that this 
was an outrageous request, and she would sound off about it.
Human Resources, Accounting… Legal and Research had to come next. He rummaged 
through the papers Crenshaw had left until he found the chief scientist’s name 
on the protocol. Liselle Hendricks… not, he noticed, the man who had been sent 
to talk to the volunteers. Dr. Ransome was listed as “physician liaison, 
recruitment” in the list of associated technical staff.
“Dr. Hendricks,” Aldrin said a few minutes later. “I’m Pete Aldrin, over in 
Analysis. I’m in charge of Section A, where your volunteers are coming from. Do 
you have the consent forms ready yet?”
“What are you talking about?” Dr. Hendricks asked. “If you want volunteer 
recruitment, you need Extension three-thirty-seven. I don’t have anything to do 
with it.”
“You are the chief scientist, aren’t you?”
“Yes…” Aldrin could imagine the woman’s puzzled face.
“Well, I’m just wondering when you’ll send over the consent forms for the 
volunteers.”
“Why should I send them to you?” Hendricks asked. “Dr. Ransome is supposed to 
take care of that.”
“Well, they all work here,” Aldrin said. “Might be simpler.”
“All in one section?” Hendricks sounded more surprised than Aldrin expected. “I 
didn’t know that. Isn’t that going to give you some problems?”
“I’ll manage,” Aldrin said, forcing a chuckle. “After all, I’m a manager.” She 
did not respond to the joke, and he went on. “Now the thing is, they haven’t all 
made up their minds. I’m sure they will, what with… one thing and another, but 
anyway—”
Hendricks’s voice sharpened. “What do you mean, with one thing and another? 
You’re not putting pressure on them, are you? It would not be ethical—”
“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that,” Aldrin said. “Of course no one can be forced 
to cooperate, we’re not talking about any kind of coercion, of course, but these 
are difficult times, economically speaking, Mr. Crenshaw says—”
“But… but—” It was almost a splutter.
“So if you could get those forms to me promptly, I’d really appreciate it,” 
Aldrin said, and hung up. Then he quickly dialed Bart, the man Crenshaw had told 
him to contact.
“When are you going to have those consent forms?” he said. “And what kind of 
schedule are we talking about? Have you talked to Accounting about the payroll 
issues? Have you talked to Human Resources?”
“Er… no.” Bart sounded too young to be important, but he was probably a Crenshaw 
appointee. “I just thought, I think Mr. Crenshaw said he—his section—would be 
taking care of the details. All I was supposed to do was make sure they 
qualified for the protocol over here. Consent forms, I’m not sure we have them 
drafted yet—”
Aldrin smiled to himself. Bart’s confusion was a bonus; any manager might easily 
go over the head of such a disorganized little twit. He had his excuse now for 
calling Hendricks; if he was lucky—and he felt lucky—no one would realize which 
one he’d called first.
Now the question was when to go higher. He would prefer to carry the whole tale 
just when rumors were beginning to rise that high, but he had no idea how long 
that took. How long would Shirley or Hendricks sit on the new data he’d given 
them before doing anything? What would they do first? If they went straight 
upstairs, top management would know in a few hours, but if they waited a day or 
so, it might be as long as a week.
His stomach churned; he ate two antacid tablets.



CHAPTER FOURTEEN
« ^ » 
ON FRIDAY, THE POLICE ARRANGED TO HAVE ME PICKED up and taken to work. My car 
was towed to the police station for examination; they say they will bring it 
back by Friday night. Mr. Crenshaw does not come to our section. I make a lot of 
progress on my project.
The police send a car to take me home, but first we go by a store to buy a 
replacement battery for my car and then to the place where the police keep cars. 
It is not the regular police station but a place called an impoundment. That is 
a new word to me. I have to sign papers stating that my car is my car and that I 
am taking custody of it. A mechanic puts the new battery I just bought into my 
car. One of the policemen offers to drive home with me, but I do not think I 
need help. He says that they have put my apartment on a watch list.
The inside of my car is dirty, with pale dust on the surfaces. I want to clean 
it, but first I need to drive home. It is a longer drive than coming straight 
home from work, but I do not get lost. I park my car next to Danny’s and go up 
to my apartment.
I am not supposed to leave my apartment, for my own safety, but it is Friday 
night and I need to do my laundry. The laundry room is in the building. I think 
Mr. Stacy meant I should not leave the building. It will be safe in the 
building, because Danny lives here and he is a policeman. I will not leave the 
building, but I will do my laundry.
I put the dark things into the dark basket and the light things into the light 
basket, balance the detergent on top, and carefully look through the peephole 
before opening the door. No one, of course. I open the door, carry my laundry 
through, relock the door. It is important to lock the door every time.
As usual on Friday evening, the apartment building is quiet. I can hear the 
television in someone’s apartment as I go down the stairs. The hall outside the 
laundry room looks the same as usual. I do not see anyone looking in from 
outside. I am early this week, and no one else is in the laundry room. I put the 
dark clothes in the right-hand washing machine and the light clothes in the one 
next to them. When no one is here to watch me, I can put the money in both boxes 
and start both machines at the same time. I have to stretch my arms to do it, 
but it sounds better that way.
I have brought Cego and Clinton, and I sit in one of the plastic chairs by the 
folding table. I would like to take it out into the hall, but there is a sign 
that says: RESIDENTS ARE STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO TAKE CHAIRS OUT OF LAUNDRY AREA. 
I do not like this chair—it is a strange ugly shade of blue-green—but when I am 
sitting in it I do not have to see it. It still feels bad, but it is better than 
no chair.
I have read eight pages when old Miss Kimberly comes in with her laundry. I do 
not look up. I do not want to talk. I will say hello if she speaks to me.
“Hello, Lou,” she says. “Reading?”
“Hello,” I say. I do not answer the question, because she can see that I am 
reading.
“What’s that?” she says, coming closer. I close the book with my finger in my 
place, so that she can see the cover.
“My, my,” she says. “That’s a thick book. I didn’t know you liked to read, Lou.”
I do not understand the rules about interrupting. It is always impolite for me 
to interrupt other people, but other people do not seem to think it is impolite 
for them to interrupt me in circumstances when I should not interrupt them.
“Yes, sometimes,” I say. I do not look up from the book because I hope she will 
understand that I want to read.
“Are you upset with me about something?” she asks.
I am upset now because she will not let me read in peace, but she is an older 
woman and it would not be polite to say so.
“Usually you’re friendly, but you brought in that big fat book; you can’t really 
be reading it—”
“I am,” I say, stung. “I borrowed it from a friend Wednesday night.”
“But it’s—it looks like a very difficult book,” she says. “Are you really 
understanding it?”
She is like Dr. Fornum; she does not think I can really do much.
“Yes,” I say. “I do understand it. I am reading about how the visual processing 
parts of the brain integrate intermittent input, as on a TV monitor, to create a 
stable image.”
“Intermittent input?” she says. “You mean when it flickers?”
“In a way,” I say. “Researchers have identified the area of the brain where the 
flickering images are made smooth.”
“Well, I don’t see the practical use of it,” she says. She takes her clothes out 
of the basket and begins stuffing them into a machine. “I’m quite happy to let 
my insides work without watching them while they do it.” She measures out 
detergent, pours it in, inserts the money, and pauses before pushing START. 
“Lou, I don’t think it’s healthy, too much concern with how the brain works. 
People can go crazy that way, you know.”
I did not know. It never occurred to me that knowing too much about the way my 
brain worked could make me insane. I do not think that is a true statement. She 
pushes the button and the water whooshes into that machine. She comes over to 
the folding table.
“Everybody knows psychiatrists’ and psychologists’ children are crazier than 
average,” she says. “Back in the twentieth century, there was a famous 
psychiatrist who put his own child in a box and kept it there and it went 
crazy.”
I know that is not true. I do not think she will believe me if I tell her it is 
not true. I do not want to explain anything, so I open the book again. She makes 
a sharp blowing sound and I hear her shoes click on the floor as she walks away.
When I was in school, they taught us that the brain is like a computer but not 
so efficient. Computers do not make mistakes if they are correctly built and 
programmed, but brains do. From this I got the idea that any brain—even a normal 
brain, let alone mine—was an inferior sort of computer.
This book makes it clear that brains are a lot more complex than any computer 
and that my brain is normal—that it does function exactly like the normal human 
brain—in many ways. My color vision is normal. My visual acuity is normal. What 
is not normal? Only the slightest things… I think.
I wish I had my medical records from childhood. I do not know if they did all 
the tests on me that this book discusses. I do not know if they tested the 
transmission speed of my sensory neurons, for instance. I remember that my 
mother had a big accordion file, green on the outside and blue on the inside, 
stuffed with papers. I don’t remember seeing it after my parents died, when I 
packed up things from their house. Maybe my mother threw it away when I was 
grown up and living on my own. I know the name of the medical center my parents 
took me to, but I do not know if they would help me, if they even keep records 
of children who are now grown.
The book talks about a variation in the ability to capture brief transitory 
stimuli. I think back to the computer games that helped me hear and then learn 
to say consonants like p and t and d, especially at the ends of words. There 
were eye exercises, too, but I was so little that I don’t remember much of them.
I look at the paired faces in the illustration, which test discrimination of 
facial features by either placement or type. All the faces look much the same to 
me; I can just tell—with the prompting of the text labels—that these two have 
the same eyes, nose, and mouth, but one has them stretched out, farther from the 
other features. If they were moving, as on a real person’s face, I would never 
notice. Supposedly this means something wrong with a specific part of the brain 
involved in facial recognition.
Do normal people really perform all these tasks? If so, it’s no wonder they can 
recognize one another so easily, at such distances, in different clothes.
WE DO NOT HAVE A COMPANY MEETING THIS SATURDAY. I GO to the Center, but the 
assigned counselor is out sick. I look at the number for Legal Aid posted on the 
bulletin board and memorize it. I do not want to call it by myself. I do not 
know what the others think. After a few minutes, I go home again and continue 
reading the book, but I do take the time to clean my apartment and my car to 
make up for last week. I decide to throw away the old fleece seat cover, because 
I can still feel occasional pricks from glass fragments, and buy a new one. The 
new one has a strong leathery smell and feels softer than the old one. On Sunday 
I go to the early service at church, so that I have more time to read.
Monday a memo arrives for all of us, giving the dates and times of preliminary 
tests. PET scan. MRI scan. Complete physical. Psychological interview. 
Psychological testing. The memo says we can take time off from work for these 
tests without penalty. I am relieved; I would not want to make up all the hours 
these tests will take up. The first test is Monday afternoon, a physical exam. 
We all go over to the clinic. I do not like it when strangers touch me, but I 
know how to behave in a clinic. The needle to draw blood doesn’t really hurt, 
but I do not understand what my blood and urine have to do with how my brain 
functions. No one even tries to explain.
On Tuesday, I have a baseline CT scan. The technician keeps telling me it won’t 
hurt and not to be frightened when the machine moves me into the narrow chamber. 
I am not frightened. I am not claustrophobic.
After work, I need to go grocery shopping because last Tuesday I met with the 
others in our group instead. I am supposed to be careful about Don, but I do not 
think he is really going to hurt me, anyway. He is my friend. By now he is 
probably sorry for what he did… if he is the one who did those things. Besides, 
it is my day for shopping. I look around the parking lot when I leave and do not 
see anyone I should not see. The guards at the campus gates would keep out 
intruders.
At the store, I park as near to one of the lights as I can, in case it is dark 
when I come out. It is a lucky space, a prime: eleven out from the end of the 
row. The store is not too busy tonight, so I have time to get everything on my 
list. Even though I do not have a written list, I know what I need, and I do not 
have to double back anywhere to find something I forgot. I have too much for one 
of the express lanes, almost a full basket, so I pick the shortest regular lane.
When I come out it is darker already but not really dark. The air is cool, even 
above the parking lot pavement. I push the basket along, listening to the 
rattling rhythm made by the one wheel that only touches the pavement now and 
then. It is almost like jazz, but less predictable. When I get to the car, I 
unlock the door and start putting the grocery sacks in carefully. Heavy things 
like laundry detergent and juice cans on the floor where they cannot fall off 
and crush something. Bread and eggs on the backseat.
Behind me, the cart suddenly rattles; I turn and do not recognize the face of 
the man in the dark jacket. Not at first, anyway, and then I realize it is Don.
“It’s all your fault. It’s your fault Tom kicked me out,” he says. His face is 
all bunched up, the muscles sticking out in knots. His eyes look scary; because 
I do not want to see them I look at other parts of his face. “It’s your fault 
Marjory told me to go away. It’s sick, the way women fall for that disability 
stuff. You probably have dozens of ’em, perfectly normal women all falling for 
that helpless act you do.” His voice goes high and squeaky and I can tell he is 
quoting someone or pretending to. “ ‘Poor Lou, he can’t help it,’ and, ‘Poor 
Lou, he needs me.’ ” Now his voice is lower again. “Your kind doesn’t need 
normal women,” he says. “Freaks should mate with freaks, if they have to mate at 
all. The very thought of you taking out your—being that way—with a normal woman 
just makes me puke. It’s disgusting.”
I cannot say anything. I think I should be frightened, but what I feel is not 
fear but sadness, sadness so great it is like a heavy weight all over me, dark 
and formless. Don is normal. He could have been—could have done—so much, so 
easily. Why did he give it up to be this way?
“I wrote it all down,” he says. “I can’t take care of all your sort, but they’ll 
know why I did this when they read it.”
“It is not my fault,” I say.
“The hell it’s not,” he says. He moves closer. His sweat has an odd smell. I do 
not know what it is, but I think he ate or drank something that gave it that 
smell. The collar on his shirt is crooked. I glance down. His shoes are scuffed; 
the lace of one is loose. Good grooming is important. It makes a good 
impression. Right now Don is not making a good impression, but no one seems to 
be noticing. From the corner of my eye I see other people walking to their cars, 
walking to the store, ignoring us. “You’re a freak, Lou—you understand what I’m 
saying? You’re a freak and you belong in a zoo.”
I know that Don is not making sense and that what he says is objectively not 
fact, but I feel bruised anyway by the force of his dislike of me. I feel 
stupid, too, that I did not recognize this in him earlier. He was my friend; he 
smiled at me; he tried to help me. How could I know?
He takes his right hand out of his pocket, and I see the black circle of a 
weapon pointing at me. The outside of the barrel gleams a little in the light, 
but the inside is dark as space. The dark rushes toward me.
“All that social-support crap—hell, if it weren’t for you and your kind, the 
rest of the world wouldn’t be sliding into another depression. I’d have the 
career I should have, not this lousy dead-end job I’m stuck in.”
I do not know what kind of work Don does. I should know. I do not think what is 
happening with money is my fault. I do not think he would have the career he 
wants if I were dead. Employers choose people who have good grooming and good 
manners, people who work hard and get along with others. Don is dirty and messy; 
he is rude and he does not work hard.
He moves suddenly, his arm with the weapon jerking toward me. “Get in the car,” 
he says, but I am already moving. His pattern is simple, easy to recognize, and 
he is not as fast or as strong as he thinks. My hand catches his wrist as it 
moves forward, parries it to the side. The noise it makes is not much like the 
noise of weapons on television. It is louder and uglier; it echoes off the front 
of the store. I do not have a blade, but my other hand strikes in the middle of 
his body. He folds around the blow; bad-smelling breath gusts out of him.
“Hey!” someone yells. “Police!” someone else yells. I hear screams. People 
appear from nowhere in a lump and land on Don. I stagger and almost fall as 
people bump into me; someone grabs my arms and whirls me around, pushing me 
against the side of the car.
“Let him go,” another voice says. “He’s the victim.” It is Mr. Stacy. I do not 
know what he is doing here. He scowls at me. “Mr. Arrendale, didn’t we tell you 
to be careful? Why didn’t you go straight home from work? If Dan hadn’t told us 
we should keep an eye on you—”
“I… thought… I was careful,” I say. It is hard to talk with all the noise around 
me. “But I needed groceries; it is my day to get groceries.” Only then do I 
remember that Don knew it was my day to get groceries, that I had seen him here 
before on a Tuesday.
“You’re damned lucky,” Mr. Stacy says.
Don is facedown on the ground, with two men kneeling on him; they have pulled 
his arms back and are putting on restraints. It takes longer and looks messier 
than it does on the news. Don is making a strange noise; it sounds like crying. 
When they pull him up, he is crying. Tears are running down his face, making 
streaks in the dirt. I am sorry. It would feel very bad to be crying in front of 
people like that.
“You bastard!” he says to me when he sees me. “You set me up.”
“I did not set you up,” I say. I want to explain that I did not know the 
policemen were here, that they are upset with me for leaving the apartment, but 
they are taking him away.
“When I say it’s people like you who make our job harder,” Mr. Stacy says, “I do 
not mean autistic people. I mean people who won’t take ordinary precautions.” He 
still sounds angry.
“I needed groceries,” I say again.
“Like you needed to do your laundry last Friday?”
“Yes,” I say. “And it is daylight.”
“You could have let someone get them for you.”
“I do not know who to ask,” I say.
He looks at me strangely and then shakes his head.
I do not know the music that is pounding in my head now. I do not understand the 
feeling. I want to bounce, to steady myself, but there is nowhere here to do 
it—the asphalt, the rows of cars, the transit stop. I do not want to get in the 
car and drive home.
People keep asking me how I feel. Some of them have bright lights they shine in 
my face. They keep suggesting things like “devastated” and “scared.” I do not 
feel devastated. Devastated means “made desolate or ravaged.” I felt desolate 
when my parents died, abandoned, but I do not feel that way now. At the time Don 
was threatening me, I felt scared, but more than that I felt stupid and sad and 
angry.
Now what I feel is very alive and very confused. No one has guessed that I might 
feel very happy and excited. Someone tried to kill me and did not succeed. I am 
still alive. I feel very alive, very aware of the texture of my clothes on my 
skin, of the color of the light, of the feel of the air going in and out of my 
lungs. It would be overwhelming sensory input except that tonight it is not: it 
is a good feeling. I want to run and jump and shout, but I know that is not 
appropriate. I would like to grab Marjory, if she were here, and kiss her, but 
that is very inappropriate.
I wonder if normal people react to not dying by being devastated and sad and 
upset. It is hard to imagine anyone not being happy and relieved instead, but I 
am not sure. Maybe they think my reactions would be different because I am 
autistic; I am not sure, so I do not want to tell them how I really feel.
“I don’t think you should drive home,” Mr. Stacy says. “Let one of our guys 
drive you, why don’t you?”
“I can drive,” I say. “I am not that upset.” I want to be alone in the car, with 
my own music. And there is no more danger; Don can’t hurt me now.
“Mr. Arrendale,” the lieutenant says, putting his head close to mine, “you may 
not think you’re upset, but anyone who’s been through an experience like this is 
upset. You will not drive as safely as usual. You should let someone else 
drive.”
I know I will be safe to drive, so I shake my head. He jerks his shoulders and 
says, “Someone will come by to take your statement later, Mr. Arrendale. Maybe 
me, maybe someone else.” Then he walks off. Gradually the crowd scatters.
The grocery cart is on its side; sacks are split, the food scattered and 
battered on the ground. It looks ugly and my stomach turns for a moment. I 
cannot leave this mess here. I still need groceries; these are spoiled. I cannot 
remember which are in the car, and safe, and which I will need to replace. The 
thought of going back into the noisy store again is too much.
I should pick up the mess. I reach down; it is disgusting, the bread smashed and 
trodden into the dirty pavement, the splattered juice, the dented cans. I do not 
have to like it; I only have to do it. I reach, lift, carry, trying to touch 
things as little as possible. It is a waste of food and wasting food is wrong, 
but I cannot eat dirty bread or spilled juice.
“Are you all right?” someone asks. I jump, and he says, “Sorry… you just didn’t 
look well.”
The police cars are gone. I do not know when they left, but it is dark now. I do 
not know how to explain what happened.
“I am all right,” I say. “The groceries aren’t.”
“Want some help?” he asks. He is a big man, going bald, with curly hair around 
the bald spot. He has on gray slacks and a black T-shirt. I do not know if I 
should let him help or not. I do not know what is appropriate in this situation. 
It is not something we were taught in school. He has already picked up two 
dented cans, one of tomato sauce and one of baked beans. “These are okay,” he 
says. “Just dented.” He reaches out to me, holding them.
“Thank you,” I say. It is always appropriate to say thank you when someone hands 
you something. I do not want the dented cans, but it does not matter if you want 
the present; you must say thank you.
He picks up the flattened box that should have had rice in it and drops it in 
the waste container. When everything we can pick up easily is in the waste 
container or my car, he waves and walks off. I do not know his name.
WHEN I GET HOME, IT is NOT EVEN 7:00 P.M. YET. I DO NOT know when a policeman 
will come. I call Tom to tell him what happened because he knows Don and I do 
not know any other person to call. He says he will come to my apartment. I do 
not need him to come, but he wants to come.
When he arrives, he looks upset. His eyebrows are pulled together and there are 
wrinkles on his forehead. “Lou, are you all right?”
“I am fine,” I say.
“Don really attacked you?” He does not wait for me to answer; he rushes on. “I 
can’t believe—we told that policeman about him—”
“You told Mr. Stacy about Don?”
“After the bomb thing. It was obvious, Lou, that it had to be someone from our 
group. I tried to tell you—”
I remember the time Lucia interrupted us.
“We could see it,” Tom went on. “He was jealous of you with Marjory.”
“He blames me about his job, too,” I say. “He said I was a freak, that it was my 
fault he didn’t have the job he wanted, that people like me should not have 
normal women like Marjory for friends.”
“Jealousy is one thing; breaking things and hurting people is something else,” 
Tom says. “I’m sorry you had to go through this. I thought he was angry with 
me.”
“I am fine,” I say again. “He did not hurt me. I knew he did not like me, so it 
was not as bad as it could have been.”
“Lou, you’re… amazing. I still think it was partly my fault.”
I do not understand this. Don did it. Tom did not tell Don to do it. How could 
it be Tom’s fault, even a little bit?
“If I had seen it coming, if I had handled Don better—”
“Don is a person, not a thing,” I say. “No one can completely control someone 
else and it is wrong to try.”
His face relaxes. “Lou, sometimes I think you are the wisest of all of us. All 
right. It wasn’t my fault. I’m still sorry you had to go through all that. And 
the trial, too—that’s not going to be easy for you. It’s hard on anyone involved 
in a trial.”
“Trial? Why do I need to be on trial?”
“You don’t, but you’ll have to be a witness at Don’s trial, I’m sure. Didn’t 
they tell you?”
“No.” I do not know what a witness at a trial does. I have never wanted to watch 
shows about trials on TV.
“Well, it won’t happen anytime soon, and we can talk about it. Right now—is 
there anything Lucia and I can do for you?”
“No. I am fine. I will come to fencing tomorrow.”
“I’m glad of that. I wouldn’t want you to stay away because you were afraid 
someone else in the group would start acting like Don.”
“I did not think that,” I say. It seems a silly thought, but then I wonder if 
the group needed a Don and someone else would have to step into that role. 
Still, if someone who is normal like Don can hide that kind of anger and 
violence, maybe all normal people have that potential. I do not think I have it.
“Good. If you have the slightest concern about it, though—about anyone—please 
let me know right away. Groups are funny. I’ve been in groups where when someone 
that everybody disliked left we immediately found someone else to dislike and 
they became the outcast.”
“So that is a pattern in groups?”
“It’s one pattern.” He sighs. “I hope it’s not in this group, and I’ll be 
watching for it. Somehow we missed the problem with Don.”
The buzzer goes off. Tom looks around, then at me. “I think it will be a 
policeman,” I say. “Mr. Stacy said someone would come to take my statement.”
“I’ll go on, then,” Tom says.
THE POLICEMAN, MR. STACY, SITS ON MY COUCH. HE is WEARING tan slacks and a 
checked shirt with short sleeves. His shoes are brown, with a pebbly surface. 
When he came in he looked around and I could tell that he was seeing everything. 
Danny looks at things the same way, assessing.
“I have the reports on the earlier vandalism, Mr. Arrendale,” he says. “So if 
you’ll just tell me about what happened this evening…” This is silly. He was 
there. He asked me at the time and I told him then, and he put things in his 
pocket set. I do not understand why he is here again.
“It is my day to go grocery shopping,” I say. “I always go grocery shopping at 
the same store because it is easier to find things in a store when someone has 
been there every week.”
“Do you go at the same time every week?” he asks.
“Yes. I go after work and before fixing supper.”
“And do you make a list?”
“Yes.” I think, Of course, but maybe Mr. Stacy doesn’t think everyone makes a 
list. “I threw the list away when I got home, though.” I wonder if he wants me 
to get it from the trash.
“That’s all right. I just wondered how predictable your movements were.”
“Predictable is good,” I say. I am beginning to sweat. “It is important to have 
routines.”
“Yes, of course,” he says. “But having routines makes it easier for someone who 
wants to hurt you to find you. Remember I warned you about that last week.”
I had not thought of it like that.
“But go on—I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Tell me everything.”
It feels strange to have someone listening so intently to such unimportant 
things as the order in which I buy groceries. But he said to tell him 
everything. I do not know what this has to do with the attack, but I tell him 
anyway, how I organized my shopping and did not have to retrace my steps.
“Then I walked outside,” I say. “It was dusk, not completely dark, but the 
lights in the parking lot were bright. I had parked in the left-hand row, eleven 
spaces out.” I like it when I can park in prime numbers, but I did not tell him 
that. “I had the keys in my hand and unlocked the car. I took the sacks of 
groceries out of the basket and put them in the car.” I do not think he wants to 
hear about putting heavy things on the floor and light things on the seat. “I 
heard the basket move behind me and turned around. That is when Don spoke to 
me.”
I pause, trying to remember the exact words he used and the order. “He sounded 
very angry,” I say. “His voice was hoarse. He said, ‘It’s all your fault. It’s 
your fault Tom kicked me out.’ ” I pause again. He said a lot of words very 
fast, and I am not sure I remember all of them in the right order. It would not 
be right to say it wrong.
Mr. Stacy waits, looking at me.
“I am not sure I remember everything exactly right,” I say.
“That’s okay,” he says. “Just tell me what you do remember.”
“He said, ‘It’s your fault Marjory told me to go away.’ Tom is the person who 
organized the fencing group. Marjory is… I told you about Marjory last week. She 
was never Don’s girlfriend.” I am uncomfortable talking about Marjory. She 
should speak for herself. “Marjory likes me, in a way, but—” I cannot say this. 
I do not know how Marjory likes me, whether it is as acquaintance or friend or… 
or more. If I say “not as a lover” will that make it true? I do not want that to 
be true.
“He said, ‘Freaks should mate with freaks, if they have to mate at all.’ He was 
very angry. He said it is my fault there is a depression and he does not have a 
good job.”
“Um.” Mr. Stacy just makes that faint sound and sits there.
“He told me to get in the car. He moved the weapon toward me. It is not good to 
get in the car with an attacker; that was on a news program last year.”
“It’s on the news every year,” Mr. Stacy says. “But some people do it anyway. 
I’m glad you didn’t.”
“I could see his pattern,” I say. “So I moved—parried his weapon hand and hit 
him in the stomach. I know it is wrong to hit someone, but he wanted to hurt 
me.”
“Saw his pattern?” Mr. Stacy says. “What is that?”
“We have been in the same fencing group for years,” I say. “When he swings his 
right arm forward to thrust, he always moves his right foot with it, and then 
his left to the side, and then he swings his elbow out and his next thrust is 
around far to the right. That is how I knew that if I parried wide and then 
thrust in the middle, I would have a chance to hit him before he hurt me.”
“If he’s been fencing you for years, how come he didn’t see that coming?” Mr. 
Stacy asks.
“I don’t know,” I say. “But I am good at seeing patterns in how other people 
move. It is how I fence. He is not as good at that. I think maybe because I did 
not have a blade, he did not think I would use the same countermove as in 
fencing.”
“Huh. I’d like to see you fence,” Mr. Stacy says. “I always thought of it as a 
sissy excuse for a sport, all that white suit and wires stuff, but you make it 
sound interesting. So—he threatened you with the weapon, you knocked it aside 
and hit him in the stomach, and then what?”
“Then lots of people started yelling and people jumped on him. I guess it was 
policemen, but I had not seen them before.” I stop. Anything else he can find 
out from the police who were there, I think.
“Okay. Let’s just go back over a few things…” He leads me through it again and 
again, and each time I remember another detail. I worry about that—am I really 
remembering all this, or am I filling in the blanks to make him happy? I read 
about this in the book. It feels real to me, but sometimes that is a lie. Lying 
is wrong. I do not want to lie.
He asks me again and again about the fencing group: who liked me and who didn’t. 
Which ones I liked and didn’t. I thought I liked everyone; I thought they liked 
me, or at least tolerated me, until Don. Mr. Stacy seems to want Marjory to be 
my girlfriend or lover; he keeps asking if we’re seeing each other. I am getting 
very sweaty talking about Marjory. I keep telling the truth, which is that I 
like her a lot and think about her, but we are not going out.
Finally he stands up. “Thank you, Mr. Arrendale; that’s all for now. I’ll have 
it written up; you’ll need to come down to the station and sign it, and then 
we’ll be in touch when this comes up for trial.”
“Trial?” I ask.
“Yes. As the victim of this assault, you’ll be a witness for the prosecution. 
Any problem with that?”
“Mr. Crenshaw will be angry if I take too much time off work,” I say. That is 
true if I still have a job by then. What if I do not?
“I’m sure he’ll understand,” Mr. Stacy says.
I am sure he will not, because he will not want to understand.
“There’s a chance that Poiteau’s lawyer will deal with the DA,” Mr. Stacy says. 
“Take a reduced sentence in return for not risking worse in a trial. We’ll let 
you know.” He walks to the door. “Take care, Mr. Arrendale. I’m glad we caught 
this guy and that you weren’t hurt.”
“Thank you for your help,” I say.
When he has gone, I smooth the couch where he sat and put the pillow back where 
it was. I feel unsettled. I do not want to think about Don and the attack 
anymore. I want to forget it. I want it not to have happened at all.
I fix my supper quickly, boiled noodles and vegetables, and eat it, then wash 
the bowl and pot. It is already 8:00 P.M. I pick up the book and start chapter 
17, “Integrating Memory and Attention Control: The Lessons of PTSD and ADHD.”
By now I am finding the long sentences and complicated syntax much easier to 
understand. They are not linear but stacked or radial. I wish someone had taught 
me that in the first place.
The information the authors want to convey is organized logically. It reads like 
something I might have written. It is strange to think that someone like me 
might write a chapter in a book on brain functionality. Do I sound like a 
textbook when I talk? Is that what Dr. Fornum means by “stilted language”? I 
always imagined performers in gaudy costumes on stilts dancing above the crowd 
when she said that. It did not seem reasonable; I am not tall and gaudy. If she 
meant I sounded like a textbook, she could have said so.
By now I know that PTSD is “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” and that it produces 
strange alterations in memory function. It is a matter of complex control and 
feedback mechanisms, inhibition and disinhibition of signal transmission.
It occurs to me that I am now post-traumatic myself, that being attacked by 
someone who wants to kill me is what they mean by trauma, though I do not feel 
very stressed or excited. Maybe normal people do not sit down to read a textbook 
a few hours after nearly being killed, but I find it comforting. The facts are 
still there, still arranged in logical order, set down by someone who took care 
to make them clear. Just as my parents told me the stars shone on, undiminished 
and undamaged by anything that happened to us on this planet. I like it that 
order exists somewhere even if it shatters near me.
What would a normal person feel? I remember a science experiment from middle 
school, when we planted seeds in pots set at angles. The plants grew upward to 
the light, no matter which way their stems had to turn. I remember wondering if 
someone had planted me in a sideways pot, but my teacher said it wasn’t the same 
thing at all.
It still feels the same. I am sideways to the world, feeling happy when other 
people think I should feel devastated. My brain is trying to grow toward the 
light, but it can’t straighten back up when its pot is tipped.
If I understand the textbook, I remember things like what percentage of cars in 
the parking lot are blue because I pay attention to color and number more than 
most people. They don’t notice, so they don’t care. I wonder what they do notice 
when they look at a parking lot. What else is there to see besides the rows of 
vehicles, so many blue and so many tan and so many red? What am I missing, as 
they miss seeing the beautiful numeric relationships?
I remember color and number and pattern and ascending and descending series: 
that is what came most easily through the filter my sensory processing put 
between me and the world. These then became the parameters of my brain’s growth, 
so that I saw everything—from the manufacturing processes for pharmaceuticals to 
the moves of an opposing fencer—in the same way, as expressions of one kind of 
reality.
I glance around my apartment and think of my own reactions, my need for 
regularity, my fascination with repeating phenomena, with series and patterns. 
Everyone needs some regularity; everyone enjoys series and patterns to some 
degree. I have known that for years, but now I understand it better. We 
autistics are on one end of an arc of human behavior and preference, but we are 
connected. My feeling for Marjory is a normal feeling, not a weird feeling. 
Maybe I am more aware of the different colors in her hair or her eyes than 
someone else would be, but the desire to be close to her is a normal desire.
It is almost time for bed. When I step in the shower, I look at my perfectly 
ordinary body—normal skin, normal hair, normal fingernails and toenails, normal 
genitals. Surely there are other people who prefer unscented soap, who like the 
same water temperature, the same texture of washcloth.
I finish the shower, brush my teeth, and rinse out the basin. My face in the 
mirror looks like my face—it is the face I know best. The light rushes into the 
pupil of my eye, carrying with it the information that is within range of my 
vision, carrying with it the world, but what I see when I look at where the 
light goes in is blackness, deep and velvety. Light goes in and darkness looks 
back at me. The image is in my eye and in my brain, as well as in the mirror.
I turn off the light in the bathroom and go to bed, turning off the light beside 
the bed after I am sitting down. The afterimage of light burns in the darkness. 
I close my eyes and see the opposites balanced in space, floating across from 
each other. First the words, and then the images replacing the words.
Light is the opposite of dark. Heavy is the opposite of light. Memory is the 
opposite of forgetting. Attending is the opposite of absence. They are not quite 
the same: the word for the kind of light that is opposite of heavy seems lighter 
than the shiny balloon that comes as an image. Light gleams on the shiny sphere 
as it rises, recedes, vanishes…
I asked my mother once how I could have light in my dreams when my eyes were 
closed in sleep. Why were dreams not all dark, I asked. She did not know. The 
book told me a lot about visual processing in the brain, but it did not tell me 
that.
I wonder why. Surely someone else has asked why dreams can be full of light even 
in the dark. The brain generates images, yes, but where does it come from, the 
light in them? In deep blindness people no longer see light—or it is not thought 
they do, and the brain scans indicate different patterns. So is the light in 
dreams a memory of light or something else?
I remember someone saying, of another child, “He likes baseball so much that if 
you opened his head there’d be a ball field inside…” That was before I knew that 
much of what people said did not mean what the words meant. I wondered what 
would be inside my head if someone opened it. I asked my mother and she said, 
“Your brain, dear,” and showed me a picture of a gray wrinkled thing. I cried 
because I knew I did not like it enough for it to fill my head. I was sure no 
one else had something that ugly inside their head. They would have baseball 
fields or ice cream or picnics.
I know now that everybody does have a gray wrinkled brain inside their head, not 
ball fields or swimming pools or the people they love. Whatever is in the mind 
does not show in the brain. But at the time it seemed proof that I was made 
wrong.
What I have in my head is light and dark and gravity and space and swords and 
groceries and colors and numbers and people and patterns so beautiful I get 
shivers all over. I still do not know why I have those patterns and not others.
The book answers questions other people have thought of. I have thought of 
questions they have not answered. I always thought my questions were wrong 
questions because no one else asked them. Maybe no one thought of them. Maybe 
darkness got there first. Maybe I am the first light touching a gulf of 
ignorance.
Maybe my questions matter.



CHAPTER FIFTEEN
« ^ » 
LIGHT. MORNING LIGHT. I REMEMBER STRANGE DREAMS, but not what they were about, 
only that they were strange. It is a bright, crisp day; when I touch the window 
glass it feels cold.
In the cooler air, I feel wide-awake, almost bouncy. The cereal flakes in the 
bowl have a crisp, ruffled texture; I feel them in my mouth, crunchy and then 
smooth.
When I come outside, the bright sun glints off pebbles in the parking lot 
pavement. It is a day for bright, brisk music. Possibilities surge through my 
mind; I settle on Bizet. I touch my car gingerly, noticing that even though Don 
is in jail my body is remembering that it might be dangerous. Nothing happens. 
The four new tires still smell new. The car starts. On the way to work, the 
music plays in my head, bright as the sunlight. I think of going out to the 
country to look at stars tonight; I should be able to see the space stations, 
too. Then I remember that it is Wednesday and I will go to fencing. I have not 
forgotten that in a long time. Did I mark the calendar this morning? I am not 
sure.
At work, I pull into my usual parking space. Mr. Aldrin is there standing just 
inside the door as if he were waiting for me.
“Lou, I saw it on the news—are you all right?”
“Yes,” I say. I think it should be obvious just from looking at me.
“If you don’t feel well, you can take the day off,” he says.
“I am fine,” I say. “I can work.”
“Well… if you’re sure.” He pauses, as if he expects me to say something, but I 
cannot think of anything to say. “The newscast said you disarmed the attacker, 
Lou—I didn’t know you knew how to do that.”
“I just did what I do in fencing,” I say. “Even though I didn’t have a blade.”
“Fencing!” His eyes widen; his brows lift up. “You do fencing? Like… with swords 
and things?”
“Yes. I go to fencing class once a week,” I say. I do not know how much to tell 
him.
“I never knew that,” he says. “I don’t know anything about fencing, except they 
wear those white suits and have those wires trailing behind them.”
We do not wear the white suits or use electric scoring, but I do not feel like 
explaining it to Mr. Aldrin. I want to get back to my project, and this 
afternoon we have another meeting with the medical team. Then I remember what 
Mr. Stacy said.
“I may have to go to the police station and sign a statement,” I say.
“That’s fine,” Mr. Aldrin says. “Whatever you need. I’m sure this must have been 
a terrible shock.”
My phone rings. I think it is going to be Mr. Crenshaw, so I do not hurry to 
answer it, but I do answer it.
“Mr. Arrendale?… This is Detective Stacy. Look, can you come down to the station 
this morning?”
I do not think this is a real question. I think it is like when my father said, 
“You pick up that end, okay?” when he meant “Pick up that end.” It may be more 
polite to give commands by asking questions, but it is also more confusing, 
because sometimes they are questions. “I will have to ask my boss,” I say.
“Police business,” Mr. Stacy says. “We need you to sign your statement, some 
other paperwork. Just tell them that.”
“I will call Mr. Aldrin,” I say. “I should call you back?”
“No—just come on down when you can. I’ll be here all morning.” In other words, 
he expects me to come down no matter what Mr. Aldrin says. It was not a real 
question.
I call Mr. Aldrin’s office.
“Yes, Lou,” he says. “How are you?” It is silly; he has already asked me that 
this morning.
“The police want me to go to the station and sign my statement and some other 
paperwork,” I say. “They said come now.”
“But are you all right? Do you need someone to go with you?”
“I am fine,” I say. “But I need to go to the police station.”
“Of course. Take the whole day.”
Outside, I wonder what the guard thinks as I drive out past the checkpoint after 
driving in just a short time ago. I cannot tell anything from his face.
IT IS NOISY IN THE POLICE STATION. AT A LONG, HIGH COUNTER, rows of people stand 
in line. I stand in line, but then Mr. Stacy comes out and sees me. “Come on,” 
he says. He leads me to another noisy room with five desks all covered with 
stuff. His desk—I think it is his desk—has a docking station for his handcomp 
and a large display.
“Home sweet home,” he says, waving me to a chair beside the desk.
The chair is gray metal with a thin green plastic cushion on the seat. I can 
feel the frame through the cushion. I smell stale coffee, cheap candy bars, 
chips, paper, the fried-ink smell of printers and copiers.
“Here’s the hard copy of your statement last night,” he says. “Read through it, 
see if there are any errors, and, if not, sign it.”
The stacked ifs slow me down, but I work through them. I read the statement 
quickly, though it takes me a while to grasp that “complainant” is me and 
“assailant” is Don. Also, I do not know why Don and I are referred to as “males” 
and not “men” and Marjory as a “female” and not a “woman.” I think it is rude 
to, say, call her “a female known to both males in a social context.” There are 
no actual errors, so I sign it.
Then Mr. Stacy tells me I must sign a complaint against Don. I do not know why. 
It is against the law to do the things Don did, and there is evidence he did 
them. It should not matter whether I sign or not. If that is what the law 
requires, though, then I will do it.
“What will happen to Don if he is found guilty?” I ask.
“Serial escalating vandalism ending in a violent assault? He’s not getting out 
without custodial rehab,” Mr. Stacy says. “A PPD—a programmable personality 
determinant brain chip. That’s when they put in a control chip—”
“I know,” I say. It makes me feel squirmy inside; at least I do not have to 
contemplate having a chip inserted in my brain.
“It’s not like it is on the shows,” Mr. Stacy says. “No sparks, no lightning 
flashes—he just won’t be able to do certain things.”
What I heard—what we heard at the Center—is that the PPD overrides the original 
personality and prevents the rehabilitant, the term they like, from doing 
anything but what he is told.
“Couldn’t he just pay for my tires and windshield?” I ask.
“Recidivism,” Mr. Stacy says, pawing through a pile of hard copies. “They do it 
again. It’s been proved. Just like you can’t stop being you, the person who is 
autistic, he can’t stop being him, the person who is jealous and violent. If 
it’d been found when he was an infant, well, then… here we are.” He pulls out 
one particular sheet. “This is the form. Read it carefully, sign on the bottom 
where the X is, and date it.”
I read the form, which has the city’s seal at the top. It says that I, Lou 
Arrendale, make a complaint of a lot of things I never even thought of. I 
thought it would be simple: Don tried to scare me and then tried to hurt me. 
Instead the form says I am complaining of malicious destruction of property, 
theft of property valued at more than $250, manufacturing an explosive device, 
placing an explosive device, assault with intent to murder with an explosive 
device— “That could have killed me?” I ask. “It says here ‘assault with a deadly 
weapon.’ ”
“Explosives are a deadly weapon. It’s true that the way he had it wired up, it 
didn’t go off when it was supposed to, and the amount is marginal: you might 
have lost only part of your hands and your face. But it counts under the law.”
“I did not know that one act, like taking out the battery and putting in the 
jack-in-the-box, could break more than one law,” I say.
“Neither do a lot of criminals,” Mr. Stacy says. “But it’s quite common. Say a 
perp breaks into a house while the owners are gone and steals stuff. There’s a 
law about unlawful entry and another law about theft.”
I did not really complain about Don manufacturing an explosive device because I 
did not know he was doing it. I look at Mr. Stacy; it is clear he has an answer 
for everything and it will not do any good to argue. It does not seem fair that 
so many complaints could come out of one act, but I have heard people talk about 
other things like this, too.
The form goes on to list what Don did in less formal language: the tires, the 
windshield, the theft of a vehicle battery worth $262.37, the placing of the 
explosive device under the hood, and the assault in the parking lot. With it all 
laid out in order, it looks obvious that Don did it all, that he seriously 
intended to hurt me, that the very first incident was a clear warning sign.
It is still hard to grasp. I know what he said, the words he used, but they do 
not make much sense. He is a normal man. He could talk to Marjory easily; he did 
talk to Marjory. Nothing stopped him from becoming friends with her, nothing but 
himself. It is not my fault that she liked me. It is not my fault that she met 
me at the fencing group; I was there first and did not know her until she came.
“I do not know why,” I say.
“What?” Mr. Stacy says.
“I do not know why he got so angry with me,” I say.
He tips his head to one side. “He told you,” he says. “And you told me what he 
said.”
“Yes, but it does not make sense,” I say. “I like Marjory a lot, but she is not 
my girlfriend. I have never taken her out. She has never taken me out. I have 
never done anything to hurt Don.” I do not tell Mr. Stacy that I would like to 
take Marjory out, because he might ask why I haven’t and I do not want to 
answer.
“Maybe it doesn’t make sense to you,” he says, “but it makes sense to me. We see 
lots of this kind of thing, jealousy souring into rage. You didn’t have to do 
anything; it was all about him, all about his insides.”
“He is normal inside,” I say.
“He’s not formally disabled, Lou, but he is not normal. Normal people do not 
wire explosive devices into someone’s car.”
“Do you mean he is insane?”
“That’s for a court to decide,” Mr. Stacy says. He shakes his head. “Lou, why 
are you trying to excuse him?”
“I’m not… I agree what he did is wrong, but having a chip put in his brain to 
make him someone else—”
He rolls his eyes. “Lou, I wish you people—I mean people who aren’t in criminal 
justice—would understand about the PPD. It is not making him into someone else. 
It is making him Don without the compulsion to harm people who annoy him in any 
way. That way we don’t have to keep him locked up for years because he’s likely 
to do it again— he just won’t do it again. To anyone. It’s a lot more humane 
than what we used to do, lock people like this up for years with other vicious 
men in an environment that only made them worse. This doesn’t hurt; it doesn’t 
make him into a robot; he can live a normal life… He just can’t commit violent 
crimes. It’s the only thing we’ve found that works, other than the death 
penalty, which I will agree is a bit extreme for what he did to you.”
“I still don’t like it,” I say. “I would not want anyone putting a chip in my 
brain.”
“There are legitimate medical uses,” he says. I know that; I know about people 
with intractable seizures or Parkinsonism or spinal cord injuries: specific 
chips and bypasses have been developed for them, and that is a good thing. But 
this I am not sure of.
Still, it is the law. There is nothing in the form that is untrue. Don did these 
things. I called the police about them, except the last one, which they 
witnessed. There is a line at the bottom of the form, between the body of the 
text and the line for my signature, and there is a line of text that says that I 
swear everything in the statement is true. It is true as far as I know, and that 
will have to be enough. I sign on the line, date it, and hand it to the police 
officer.
“Thanks, Lou,” he says. “Now the DA wants to meet you and she will explain what 
happens next.”
The district attorney is a middle-aged woman with frizzy black hair mixed with 
gray. The nameplate on her desk says: ASS’T DA BEATRICE HUNSTON. She has skin 
the color of gingerbread. Her office is bigger than mine at work and has shelves 
all around it with books. They are old, tan with black and red squares on the 
spines. They do not look as if anyone ever read them, and I wonder if they are 
real. There is a data plate on her desktop, and the light from it makes the 
underside of her chin a funny color, even though from my side the desktop looks 
plain black.
“I’m glad you’re alive, Mr. Arrendale,” she says. “You were quite lucky. I 
understand you’ve signed the complaint against Mr. Donald Poiteau, is that 
right?”
Yes, I say.
“Well, let me explain what happens next. The law says that Mr. Poiteau is 
entitled to a jury trial if he wants one. We have ample evidence that he is the 
person involved in all the incidents, and we are sure that evidence will stand 
up in court. But most likely his legal adviser will tell him to accept a plea. 
Do you know what that means?”
“No,” I say. I know she wants to tell me.
“If he does not use up state resources by demanding a trial, it will reduce the 
amount of time he must serve, down to that required for implantation and 
adaptation of the PPD, the chip. Otherwise, if convicted, he would face a 
minimum of five years in detention. In the meantime, he’ll be finding out what 
detention is like, and I suspect he’ll agree to the plea.”
“But he might not be convicted,” I say.
The DA smiles at me. “That doesn’t happen anymore,” she says. “Not with the kind 
of evidence we’ve got. You don’t have to worry; he’s not going to be able to 
hurt you anymore.”
I am not worried. Or I was not worried until she said that. Once Don was in 
custody, I did not worry more about him. If he escapes, I will worry again. I am 
not worried now.
“If it does not come to trial, if his attorney accepts a plea bargain, then we 
will not need to call you in again,” she says. “We will know that in a few days. 
If he does demand a trial, then you will appear as a witness for the 
prosecution. This will mean spending time with me or someone in my office 
preparing your testimony and then time in court. Do you understand that?”
I understand what she is saying. What she is not saying and maybe does not know 
is that Mr. Crenshaw will be very angry if I miss time from work. I hope that 
Don and his lawyer do not insist on a trial.
“Yes,” I say.
“Good. The whole procedure’s changed in the past ten years, with the 
availability of the PPD chip; it’s a lot more straightforward. Fewer cases going 
to trial. Not so much time lost by the victims and the witnesses. We’ll be in 
touch, Mr. Arrendale.”
The morning is almost over when I finally leave the Justice Center. Mr. Aldrin 
said I did not have to come in at all today, but I do not want Mr. Crenshaw to 
have any reason to be angry with me, so I go back to the office for the 
afternoon. We have another test, one of those where we are supposed to match 
patterns on a computer screen. We are all very fast at this and finish quickly. 
The other tests are easy, too, but boring. I do not work the time I missed this 
morning, because that was not my fault.
BEFORE I LEAVE FOR FENCING, I WATCH THE SCIENCE NEWS ON TV because it is a 
program on space. A consortium of companies is building another space station. I 
see a logo I recognize; I did not know that the company I work for had an 
interest in space-based operations. The announcer is talking about the billions 
it will cost and the commitment of the various partners.
Maybe this is one reason Mr. Crenshaw insists he needs to cut costs. I think it 
is good that the company wants to invest in space, and I wish I had a chance to 
go out there. Maybe if I were not autistic, I could have been an astronaut or 
space scientist. But even if I change now, with the treatment, it would be too 
late to retrain for that career.
Maybe this is why some people want the LifeTime treatment to extend their lives, 
so they can train for a career they could not have before. It is very expensive, 
though. Not many people can afford it yet.
THREE OTHER CARS ARE PARKED IN FRONT OF TOM AND LUCIA’S when I arrive. Marjory’s 
car is there. My heart is thumping faster. I feel out of breath, but I have not 
been running.
A chill wind blows down the street. When it is cool, it is easier to fence, but 
it is harder to sit out in the back and talk.
Inside, Lucia, Susan, and Marjory are talking. They stop when I come in.
“How are you doing, Lou?” Lucia asks.
“I am fine,” I say. My tongue feels too big.
“I’m so sorry about what Don did,” Marjory says.
“You did not tell him to do it,” I say. “It is not your fault.” She should know 
this.
“I didn’t mean that,” she says. “I just—it’s too bad for you.”
“I am fine,” I say again. “I am here and not—” It is hard to say. “Not in 
detention,” I say, avoiding not dead. “It is hard—they say they will put a chip 
in his brain.”
“I should hope so,” Lucia says. Her face is twisted into a scowl. Susan nods and 
mutters something I can’t quite hear.
“Lou, you look like you don’t want that to happen to him,” Marjory says.
“I think it is very scary,” I say. “He did something wrong, but it is scary that 
they will turn him into someone else.”
“It’s not like that,” Lucia says. She is staring at me now. She should 
understand if anyone can; she knows about the experimental treatment; she knows 
why it would bother me that Don will be compelled to be someone else. “He did 
something wrong—something very bad. He could have killed you, Lou. Would have, 
if he hadn’t been stopped. If they turned him into a bowl of pudding it would be 
fair, but all the chip does is make him unable to do anyone harm.”
It is not that simple. Just as a word can mean one thing in one sentence and 
something else in another or change meaning with a tone, so an act can be 
helpful or harmful depending on the circumstance. The PPD chip doesn’t give 
people better judgment about what is harmful and what is not; it removes the 
volition, the initiative, to perform acts that are more often harmful than not. 
That means it also prevents Don from doing good things sometimes. Even I know 
that and I am sure Lucia knows it, too, but she is ignoring it for some reason.
“To think I trusted him in the group so long!” she says. “I never thought he 
would do anything like this. That scum-sucking viper: I could rip his face off 
myself.”
In one of those inside flashes, I know that Lucia is thinking more about her 
feelings than mine right now. She is hurt because Don fooled her; she feels he 
made her seem stupid and she does not want to be stupid. She is proud of being 
intelligent. She wants him punished because he damaged her—at least her feelings 
about herself.
It is not a very nice way to be, and I did not know Lucia could be like this. 
Should I have known about her, the way she thinks she should have known about 
Don? If normal people expect to know all about one another, all the hidden 
things, how can they stand it? Doesn’t it make them dizzy?
“You can’t read minds, Lucia,” Marjory says.
“I know that!” Lucia moves in little jerky movements, tossing her hair, flicking 
her fingers. “It’s just—damn, I hate to be made a fool of, and that’s what I 
feel he did.” She looks up at me. “Sorry, Lou, I’m being selfish here. What 
really matters is you and how you’re doing.”
It is like watching a crystal forming in a supersaturated solution to see her 
normal personality—her usual personality—return from the angry person she was a 
moment ago. I feel better that she has understood what she was doing and is not 
going to do it again. It is slower than the way she analyzes other people. I 
wonder if it takes normal people longer to look inside themselves and see what 
is really happening than it does autistic people or if our brains work at the 
same speed there. I wonder if she needed what Marjory said to make her capable 
of that self-analysis.
I wonder what Marjory really thinks of me. She is looking at Lucia now, with 
quick glances back at me. Her hair is so beautiful… I find myself analyzing the 
color, the ratio of the different colors of hairs, and then the way the light 
shifts along them as she moves.
I sit on the floor and begin my stretches. After a moment, the women also start 
stretching out. I am a little stiff; it takes me several tries before I can 
touch my forehead to my knees. Marjory still can’t do it; her hair falls 
forward, brushing her knees, but her forehead doesn’t come within four inches.
When I have stretched, I get up and go to the equipment room for my gear. Tom is 
outside with Max and Simon, the referee from the tournament. The ring of lights 
makes a bright area in the middle of the dark yard, with strong shadows 
everywhere else.
“Hey, buddy,” Max says. He calls all the men buddy when they first arrive. It is 
a silly thing to do, but it is how he is. “How are you?”
“I am fine,” I say.
“I hear you used a fencing move on him,” Max says. “Wish I’d seen it.”
I think Max would not have wanted to be there in real life, whatever he thinks 
now.
“Lou, Simon was wondering if he could fence with you,” Tom says. I am glad that 
he does not ask how I am.
“Yes,” I say. “I will put my mask on.”
Simon is not quite as tall as Tom and thinner. He is wearing an old padded 
fencing jacket, just like the white jackets that are used in formal competition 
fencing, but it is a streaky green instead. “Thanks,” he says. And then, as if 
he knew that I was looking at the color of his jacket, he says, “My sister 
wanted a green one for a costume once—and she knew more about fencing than 
dyeing clothes. It looked worse when it had just been done; it’s faded out now.”
“I never saw a green one,” I say.
“Neither had anyone else,” he says. His mask is an ordinary white one that has 
yellowed with age and use. His gloves are brown. I put on my mask.
“What weapons?” I ask.
“What’s your favorite?” he asks.
I do not have a favorite; each weapon and combination has its own patterns of 
skill.
“Try épée and dagger,” Tom says. “That’ll be fun to watch.”
I pick up my épée and dagger and shift them in my hands until they are 
comfortable—I can hardly feel them, which is right. Simon’s épée has a big bell 
guard, but his dagger has a simple ring. If he is not very good with his 
parries, I may be able to get a hit on his hand. I wonder if he will call hits 
or not. He is a referee: surely he will be honest.
He stands relaxed, knees bent, someone who has fenced enough to be comfortable 
with it. We salute; his blade whines through the air on the downstroke of the 
salute. I feel my stomach tighten. I do not know what he will do next. Before I 
can imagine anything, he lunges toward me, something we almost never do in this 
yard, his arm fully extended and his back leg straight. I twist away, flicking 
my dagger down and out for the parry and aiming a thrust over his dagger—but he 
is fast, as fast as Tom, and he has that arm up, ready to parry. He recovers 
from the lunge so quickly I cannot take advantage of that momentary lack of 
mobility and gives me a nod as he returns to the neutral guard position. “Good 
parry,” he says.
My stomach tightens even more, and I realize it is not fear but excitement. He 
may be better than Tom. He will win, but I will learn. He moves sideways, and I 
follow. He makes several more attacks, all fast, and I manage to parry them all, 
though I do not attack. I want to see his pattern, and it is very different. 
Again, again. Low high high low low high low low low high high: anticipating the 
next, I launch my own attack as his comes low again, and this time he does not 
quite parry mine and I get a light glancing touch on his shoulder.
“Good,” he says, stepping back. “Excellent.” I glance at Tom, who nods and 
grins. Max clenches his hands together over his head; he is grinning, too. I 
feel a little sick. In the moment of contact, I saw Don’s face and felt the blow 
I gave and saw him fold over when I hit him. I shake my head.
“Are you all right?” Tom asks. I do not want to say anything. I do not know if I 
want to go on.
“I could use a break,” Simon says, though we have only fenced a couple of 
minutes. I feel stupid; I know he is doing it for me, and I should not be upset, 
but I am upset. Now it comes again and again, the feel in my hand, the smell of 
Don’s breath whooshing out, the sound and sight and feel all together. Part of 
my mind remembers the book, the discussion of memory and stress and trauma, but 
most of it is simply misery, a tight spiral of sadness and fear and anger all 
tied together.
I struggle, blinking, and a phrase of music ripples through my mind; the spiral 
opens out again and lifts away. “I… am… all… right…” I say. It is still hard to 
talk, but already I feel better. I lift my blade; Simon steps back and lifts 
his.
We salute again. This time his attack is just as fast but different; I cannot 
read his pattern at all and decide to attack anyway. His blade gets past my 
parry and hits low on the left abdomen. “Good,” I say.
“You are making me work entirely too hard,” Simon says. I can hear that he is 
breathing hard; I know I am. “You almost got me four times.”
“I missed that parry,” I say. “It wasn’t strong enough—”
“Let’s see if you make that mistake again,” he says. He salutes, and this time I 
am the one to attack first. I do not get a touch, and his attacks seem to be 
faster than mine; I must parry two or three times before I can see an opening. 
Before I get a touch, he has made one on my right shoulder.
“Definitely too hard,” he says. “Lou, you are quite a fencer. I thought so at 
the tournament; first-timers never win and you had some first-timer problems, 
but it was clear you knew what you were doing. Did you ever consider taking up 
classical fencing?”
“No,” I say. “I just know Tom and Lucia—”
“You should think about it. Tom and Lucia are better trainers than most backyard 
fencers—” Simon grins at Tom, who makes a face back at him. “But some classical 
technique would improve your footwork. What got you that last time wasn’t speed 
but the extra reach that came from my knowing exactly how to place my foot for 
the best extension with the least exposure.” Simon takes off his mask, hangs his 
épée on the outdoor rack, and holds out his hand to me. “Thanks, Lou, for a good 
round. When I catch my breath, maybe we can fight again.”
“Thank you,” I say, and shake his hand. Simon’s grasp is firmer than Tom’s. I am 
out of breath; I hang up my blade and put my mask under an empty chair and sit 
down. I wonder if Simon really likes me or if he will be like Don and hate me 
later. I wonder if Tom has told him I am autistic.



CHAPTER SIXTEEN
« ^ » 
I’M SORRY, ” LUCIA SAYS; SHE HAS COME OUTSIDE WITH HER GEAR and sits beside me 
on my right. “I should not have blown up like that.”
“I am not upset,” I say. I am not, now that I know she knows what was wrong and 
is not doing it.
“Good. Look… I know that you like Marjory and she likes you. Don’t let this mess 
with Don ruin it for you, okay?”
“I do not know if Marjory likes me in a special way,” I say. “Don said she does, 
but she has not said she does.”
“I know. It’s difficult. Grownups are not as direct as preschoolers and make a 
lot of trouble for themselves that way.”
Marjory comes out of the house, zipping up her fencing jacket. She grins at me 
or at Lucia—I am not sure of the direction of her grin—as the zipper jams. “I 
have been eating too many doughnuts,” she says. “Or not walking enough or 
something.”
“Here—” Lucia holds out her hand, and Marjory comes over so that Lucia can unjam 
the zipper and help her. I did not know that holding out a hand was a signal for 
offering help. I thought holding out a hand was a signal for asking help. Maybe 
it only goes with “here.”
“Do you want to fence, Lou?” Marjory asks me.
“Yes,” I say. I can feel my face getting hot. I put my mask on and pick up my 
épée. “Do you want to use épée and dagger?”
“Sure,” Marjory says. She puts her mask on and I cannot see her face, only the 
gleam of her eyes and her teeth when she speaks. I can see the shape of her 
under the fencing jacket, though. I would like to touch that shape, but that is 
not appropriate. Only boyfriends with their girlfriends.
Marjory salutes. She has a simpler pattern than Tom’s and I could make a touch, 
but then it would be over. I parry, thrust short, parry again. When our blades 
touch, I can feel her hand through the connection; we are touching without 
touching. She circles, reverses, moves back and forth, and I move with her. It 
is like some kinds of dance, a pattern of movement, except for not having music. 
I sort through the music I remember, trying to find the right music for this 
dance. It gives me a strange feeling to match my pattern to hers, not to defeat 
her but just to feel that connection, that touch-and-touch of blades to hands 
and back.
Paganini. The First Violin Concerto in D Major, Opus 6, the third movement. It 
is not exactly right, but it is closer than anything else I can think of. 
Stately but quick, with the little breaks where Marjory does not keep an exact 
rhythm changing directions. In my mind, I speed up or slow the music to stay 
with our movements.
I wonder what Marjory hears. I wonder if she can hear the music I hear. If we 
were both thinking of the same music, would we hear it the same way? Would we be 
in phase or out? I hear the sounds as color on dark; she might hear the sounds 
as dark lines on light, as music is printed.
If we put the two together, would they cancel out sight, dark on light and light 
on dark? Or…
Marjory’s touch breaks the chain of thought. “Good,” I say, and step back. She 
nods, and we salute again.
I read something once where thinking was described as light and not thinking as 
dark. I am thinking about other things while we fence, and Marjory was faster to 
make a touch than I was. So if she is not thinking about other things, did this 
not-thinking make her faster, and is that dark faster than the light of my 
not-thinking?
I do not know what the speed of thought is. I do not know if the speed of 
thought is the same for everyone. Is it thinking faster or thinking further that 
makes different thinking different?
The violin rises up in a spiraling pattern and Marjory’s pattern falls apart and 
I sweep forward in the dance that is now a solo dance and make my touch on her.
“Good,” she says, and steps back. Her body is moving with the deep breaths she’s 
taking. “You wore me out, Lou; that was a long one.”
“How about me?” Simon says. I would like to be with Marjory more, but I liked 
fencing Simon before and want to do that, too.
This time the music starts when we do, different music. Sarasate’s Carmen 
Fantasy… perfect for the feline prowl that is Simon circling me, looking for an 
opening, and for my intense concentration. I never thought I could dance 
before—it was a social thing, and I always got stiff and clumsy. Now—with a 
blade in hand—it feels right to move to the internal music.
Simon is better than I am, but it does not bother me. I am eager to see what he 
can do, what I can do. He gets a touch, another one, but then I get another one 
on him. “Best of five?” he asks. I nod, breathless. This time neither of us gets 
a touch right away; this time we fight on and on, until I finally make another 
touch, more by luck than skill. We are even now. The others are quiet, watching. 
I can feel their interest, a warm space on my back as I circle. Forward, 
sideways, around, back. Simon knows and counters every move I make; I am just 
able to counter his. Finally he does something I do not even see—his blade 
reappears just where I thought I had parried it away, and he gets the final 
touch of the match.
I am dripping with sweat even though it is a cool night. I am sure I smell bad, 
and I am surprised when Marjory comes up to me and touches my arm.
“That was gorgeous, Lou,” she says. I take off my mask. Her eyes are gleaming; 
the smile on her face goes all the way to her hair.
“I am sweaty,” I say.
“So you should be, after that,” she says. “Wow again. I didn’t know you could 
fence like that.”
“Neither did I,” I say.
“Now that we know,” Tom said, “we’ve got to get you to more tournaments. What do 
you think, Simon?”
“He’s more than ready. The top fencers in the state can take him, but once he 
gets over tournament nerves, they’ll have to work at it.”
“So, would you like to come with us to another tournament, Lou?” Tom asks.
I feel cold all the way through. I think they mean to do something nice for me, 
but Don got mad at me because of the tournament. What if someone gets mad at me 
every tournament and because of me one after another have to have a PDD chip?
“It is all day Saturday,” I say.
“Yes, and sometimes all day Sunday as well,” Lucia says. “Is that a problem?”
“It—I go to church on Sunday,” I say.
Marjory looks at me. “I didn’t know you went to church, Lou,” she says. “Well, 
you could just go on Saturday… What’s the problem with Saturdays, Lou?”
I have no answer ready. I do not think they will understand if I tell them about 
Don. They are all looking at me, and I feel myself folding together inside. I do 
not want them to be angry.
“The next tournament nearby is after Thanksgiving,” Simon says. “No need to 
decide tonight.” He is looking at me curiously. “Are you worried about someone 
not counting hits again, Lou?”
“No…” I feel my throat closing up. I close my eyes to steady myself. “It is 
Don,” I say. “He was angry at the tournament. I think that is why he… got so 
upset. I do not want that to happen to anyone else.”
“It is not your fault,” Lucia says. But she sounds angry. This is what happens, 
I think. People get angry about me even when they are not angry with me. It does 
not have to be my fault for me to cause it.
“I see your point,” Marjory says. “You don’t want to make trouble, is that it?”
“Yes.”
“And you cannot be sure that no one will be angry with you.”
“Yes.”
“But—Lou—people get mad at other people for no reason, too. Don was angry with 
Tom. Other people may have been angry with Simon; I know people have been angry 
with me. That just happens. As long as people aren’t doing anything wrong, they 
can’t stop and think all the time if it is making someone else angry.”
“Maybe it does not bother you as much,” I say.
She gives me a look that I can tell is supposed to mean something, but I cannot 
tell what. Would I know if I were normal? How do normal people learn what these 
looks mean?
“Maybe it doesn’t,” she says. “I used to think it was always my fault. I used to 
worry about it more. But that is—” She pauses and I can tell she is searching 
for a polite word. I know that because so often I am slow speaking when I am 
searching for a polite word. “It is hard to know how much to worry about it,” 
she says finally.
“Yes,” I say.
“People who want you to think everything is your fault are the problem,” Lucia 
says. “They always blame other people for their feelings, especially anger.”
“But some anger is justified,” Marjory says. “I don’t mean with Lou and Don; Lou 
didn’t do anything wrong. That was all Don’s jealousy getting the better of him. 
But I see what Lou means, that he doesn’t want to be the cause of someone else’s 
getting in trouble.”
“He won’t,” Lucia says. “He’s not the type.” She gives me a look, a different 
look than Marjory gave me. I am not sure what this look means, either.
“Lucia, why don’t you fight Simon,” Tom says. Everyone stops and looks at him.
Lucia’s mouth is a little open. Then she closes it with a little snap. “Fine,” 
she says. “It’s been a long time. Simon?”
“My pleasure,” he says, smiling.
I watch Lucia and Simon. He is better than she is, but he is not making as many 
points as he could. I can tell that he is fighting at the edge of her level, not 
using everything he could. That is very polite. I am aware of Marjory beside me, 
of the smell of the dry leaves that have drifted against the stone edging, of 
the chilly breeze on the back of my neck. It feels good.
BY NINE IT IS MORE THAN CHILLY; IT IS COLD. WE ALL GO INSIDE, and Lucia fixes a 
kettle of hot chocolate. It is the first time this year. The others are all 
talking; I sit with my back against the green leather hassock and try to listen 
while I watch Marjory. She uses her hands a lot when she talks. A couple of 
times, she flaps them in the way that I was told was a sign of autism. I have 
seen other people do that, too, and always wondered if they were autistic or 
partly autistic.
They are talking about tournaments now—ones they remember from the past, who won 
and who lost and who was the referee and how people behaved. Nobody mentions 
Don. I lose track of the names; I do not know the people. I cannot understand 
why “Bart is such a toad” from what they say about Bart, and I am sure they do 
not mean that Bart is actually an amphibian with warty skin, any more than Don 
was an actual heel. My gaze shifts from Marjory to Simon to Tom to Lucia to Max 
to Susan and back, trying to keep up with who is speaking when, but I cannot 
anticipate when one is going to stop and another is going to start, or which. 
Sometimes there is a break of two or three seconds between speakers, and 
sometimes one starts while another is still talking.
It is fascinating, in its way. It is like watching almost-patterns in a chaotic 
system. Like watching molecules break apart and re-form as a solutions balance 
shifts this way and that. I keep feeling that I almost understand it, and then 
something happens I did not anticipate. I do not know how they can participate 
and keep track of it at the same time.
Gradually I am able to notice that everyone pauses if Simon speaks and lets him 
into the conversation. He does not interrupt often, but no one interrupts him. 
One of my teachers said that the person who is speaking indicates who he expects 
to speak next by glancing at them. At that time I usually could not tell where 
someone was looking unless they looked there a long time. Now I can follow most 
glances. Simon glances at different people. Max and Susan always glance first at 
Simon, giving him priority. Tom glances at Simon about half the time. Lucia 
glances at Simon about a third of the time. Simon does not always speak again 
when someone glances at him; that person then glances at someone else.
But it is so fast: how can they see it all? And why does Tom glance at Simon 
some of the time and not the rest of the time? What tells him when to glance at 
Simon?
I realize that Marjory is watching me and feel my face and neck go hot. The 
voices of the others blur; my vision clouds. I want to hide in the shadows, but 
there are no shadows. I look down. I listen for her voice, but she is not 
talking much.
Then they start on equipment: steel blades versus composites, old steel versus 
new steel. Everyone seems to prefer steel, but Simon talks about a recent formal 
match he saw in which composite blades had a chip in the grip to emit a 
steel-like sound when the blades touched. It was weird, he says.
Then he says he has to go and stands up. Tom stands up, too, and Max. I stand 
up. Simon shakes Tom’s hand and says, “It was fun— thanks for the invitation.”
Tom says, “Anytime.”
Max puts out his hand and says, “Thanks for coming; it was an honor.”
Simon shakes his hand and says, “Anytime.”
I do not know whether to put out my hand or not, but Simon quickly offers his so 
I shake it even though I do not like to shake hands—it seems so pointless—and 
then he says, “Thanks, Lou; I enjoyed it.”
“Anytime,” I say. There is a moment’s tension in the room, and I am worried that 
I said something inappropriate—even though I was copying Tom and Max—and then 
Simon taps my arm with his finger.
“I hope you change your mind about tournaments,” he says. “It was a pleasure.”
“Thank you,” I say.
While Simon goes out the door, Max says, “I have to leave, too,” and Susan 
uncoils from the floor. It is time to leave. I look around; all the faces look 
friendly, but I thought Don’s face looked friendly. If one of them is angry with 
me, how would I know?
ON THURSDAY WE HAVE THE FIRST OF THE MEDICAL BRIEFINGS where we have been able 
to ask the doctors questions. There are two doctors, Dr. Ransome, with the curly 
gray hair, and Dr. Handsel, who has straight dark hair that looks as if it had 
been glued onto his head.
“It is reversible?” Linda asks.
“Well… no. Whatever it does, it does.”
“So if we don’t like it, we can’t go back to being our normal selves?”
Our selves are not normal to start with, but I do not say that aloud. Linda 
knows it as well as I do. She is making a joke.
“Er… no, you can’t. Probably. But I don’t see why—”
“I’d want to?” Cameron says. His face is tense. “I like who I am now. I do not 
know if I will like who I become.”
“It shouldn’t be that different,” Dr. Ransome says.
But every difference is a difference. I am not the same person as before Don 
began to stalk me. Not only what he did but meeting those police officers has 
changed me. I know about something I didn’t know before, and knowledge changes 
people. I raise my hand.
“Yes, Lou,” Dr. Ransome says.
“I do not understand how it can not change us,” I say. “If it normalizes our 
sensory processing, that will change the rate and kind of data input, and that 
will change our perceptions, and our processing—”
“Yes, but you—your personality—will be the same, or much the same. You will like 
the same things; you will react the same—”
“Then what’s the change for?” Linda asks. She sounds angry; I know she is more 
worried than angry. “They tell us they want us to change, to not need the 
supports we need—but if we do not need them, then that means our likes and 
dislikes have changed… doesn’t it?”
“I’ve spent so much time learning to tolerate overload,” Dale says. “What if 
that means I suddenly don’t pick up on things I should?” His left eye flickers, 
ticcing wildly.
“We don’t think any of that will happen,” the doctor says again. “The 
primatologists found only positive changes in social interaction—”
“I’m not a fucking chimp!” Dale slams his hand down on the table. For a moment 
his left eye stays open; then it starts ticcing again.
The doctor looks shocked. Why should he be surprised that Dale is upset? Would 
he like to have his behavior presumed on the basis of a primatologist’s studies 
of chimpanzees? Or is this something normals do? Do they see themselves as just 
like other primates? I can’t believe that.
“No one’s suggesting you are,” the doctor says, in a slightly disapproving 
voice. “It’s just that… they’re the best model we have. And they had 
recognizable personalities after treatment, with only the social deficits 
changed…”
All the chimps in the world now live in protected environments, zoos, or 
research establishments. Once they lived wild, in the forests of Africa. I 
wonder if the autistic-like chimpanzees would have been that way in the wild or 
if the stress of living as prisoners has changed them.
A slide lights up the screen. “This is the normal brain’s activity pattern when 
picking a known face from a photograph of several faces,” he says. There is a 
gray outline of a brain, with little glowing green spots. Thanks to my reading, 
I recognize some of the locations… no, I recognize the slide. It is illustration 
l6-43.d, from chapter 16 of Brain Functionality. “And here—” The slide changes. 
“This is the autistic brain’s activity pattern during the same task.” Another 
gray outline with little glowing green spots. Illustration 16-43.C from the same 
chapter.
I try to remember the captions in the book. I do not think that the text said 
the first was normal brain activity when picking a known face from a 
photographed group. I think it was normal brain activity when viewing a familiar 
face. A composite of… yes, I remember. Nine healthy male volunteers recruited 
from college students according to a protocol approved by the human ethics 
research committee…
Another slide is already showing. Another gray outline, another set of colored 
splotches, these blue. The doctor’s voice drones on. This is another slide I 
recognize. I struggle to remember what the book said and hear what he is saying, 
but I cannot. The words are tangling.
I raise my hand. He stops and says, “Yes, Lou?”
“Can we have a copy of this, to look at later? It is hard to take in all at 
once.”
He frowns. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, Lou. This is still 
proprietary—very confidential. If you want to know more, you can ask me or your 
counselor questions and you can look at the slides again, though”—he chuckles—“I 
don’t think they’ll mean much since you’re not a neurologist.”
“I’ve read some,” I say.
“Really…” His voice softens to a drawl. “What have you read, Lou?”
“Some books,” I say. Suddenly I do not want to tell him what book I have been 
reading, and I do not know why.
“About the brain?” he asks.
“Yes—I wanted to understand how it worked before you did anything with the 
treatment.”
“And… did you understand it?”
“It’s very complicated,” I say. “Like a parallel-processing computer, only more 
so.”
“You’re right; it’s very complicated,” he says. He sounds satisfied. I think he 
is glad I did not say I understood it. I wonder what he would say if I told him 
that I recognize those illustrations.
Cameron and Dale are looking at me. Even Bailey gives me a quick glance and 
looks away. They want to know what I know. I do not know if I should tell them, 
partly because I do not yet know what I know— what it means in this context.
I put aside thoughts of the book and just listen, meanwhile memorizing the 
slides as they come and go. I do not take in information as well this way—none 
of us do—but I think I can retain enough to compare it to the book later.
Eventually the slides change from gray outlines of brains with colored spots to 
molecules. I do not recognize them; they are not anything in the organic 
chemistry book. But I do recognize a hydroxy group here, an amino group there.
“This enzyme regulates gene expression of neural growth factor eleven,” the 
doctor says. “In normal brains, this is part of a feedback loop that interacts 
with attention control mechanisms to build in preferential processing of 
socially important signals—that’s one of the things you people have a problem 
with.”
He has given up any pretense that we are anything but cases.
“It’s also part of the treatment package for autistic newborns, those who 
weren’t identified and treated in utero, or for the children who suffer certain 
childhood infections that interfere with normal brain development. What our new 
treatment does is modify it—because it functions like this only in the first 
three years of development—so that it can affect the neural growth of the adult 
brain.“
“So—it makes us pay attention to other people?” Linda asks.
“No, no—we know you already do that. We’re not like those idiots back in the 
mid-twentieth century who thought autistics were just ignoring people. What it 
does is help you attend to social signals—facial expression, vocal tone, 
gesture, that kind of thing.”
Dale makes a rude gesture; the doctor does not attend to it. I wonder if he 
really did not see or he chose to ignore it.
“But don’t people have to be trained—like blind people were—to interpret new 
data?”
“Of course. That’s why there’s a training phase built into the treatment. 
Simulated social encounters, using computer-generated faces—” Another slide, 
this one of a chimpanzee with its upper lip curled and its lower lip pouted out. 
We all break into roars of laughter, uncontrollable. The doctor flushes angrily. 
“Sorry—that’s the wrong slide. Of course it’s the wrong slide. Human faces, I 
mean, and practice in human social interactions. We’ll do a baseline assessment 
and then you’ll have two to four months of post-treatment training—”
“Looking at monkey faces!” Linda says, laughing so hard she’s almost crying. We 
are all giggling.
“I said it was a mistake,” the doctor says. “We have trained psychotherapists to 
lead the intervention… It’s a serious matter.”
The chimpanzee’s face has been replaced by a picture of a group of people 
sitting in a circle; one is talking and the others are listening intently. 
Another slide, this time of someone in a clothing store talking to a 
salesperson. Another, of a busy office with someone on a phone. It all looks 
very normal and very boring. He does not show a picture of someone in a fencing 
tournament or someone talking to the police after a mugging in a parking lot. 
The only picture with a policeman in it could be titled Asking Directions. The 
policeman, with a stiff smile on his face, has one arm outstretched, pointing; 
the other person has a funny hat, a little backpack, and a book that says 
Tourist Guidebook on the cover.
It looks posed. All the pictures look posed, and the people may not even be real 
people. They could be—probably are—computer composites. We are supposed to 
become normal, real people, but they expect us to learn from these unreal, 
imaginary people in contrived, posed situations. The doctor and his associates 
assume they know the situations we deal with or will need to deal with and they 
will teach us how to deal with those. It reminds me of those therapists in the 
last century who thought they knew what words someone needed to know and taught 
an “essential” vocabulary. Some of them even told parents not to let children 
learn other words, lest it impede their learning of the essential vocabulary.
Such people do not know what they do not know. My mother used to recite a little 
verse that I did not understand until I was almost twelve, and one line of it 
went: “Those who know not, and know not they know not, are fools…” The doctor 
does not know that I needed to be able to deal with the man at the tournament 
who would not call hits and the jealous would-be lover in the fencing group and 
the various police officers who took reports on vandalism and threats.
Now the doctor is talking about the generalization of social skills. He says 
that after the treatment and training our social skills should generalize to all 
situations in everyday life. I wonder what he would have thought of Don’s social 
skills.
I glance at the clock. The seconds flick over, one after another; the two hours 
are nearly done. The doctor asks if there are any questions. I look down. The 
questions I want to ask are not appropriate in a meeting like this, and I do not 
think he will answer them anyway.
“When do you think you would start?” Cameron asks.
“We would like to start with the first subject—uh, patient—as soon as possible. 
We could have everything in place by next week.”
“How many at once?” asks Bailey.
“Two. We would like to do two at a time, three days apart—this ensures that the 
primary medical team can concentrate on those during the first few critical 
days.”
“What about waiting after the first two until they complete treatment to see if 
it works?” Bailey asks.
The doctor shakes his head. “No, it’s better to have the whole cohort close in 
time.”
“Makes it faster to publication,” I hear myself say.
“What?” the doctor asks.
The others are looking at me. I look at my lap.
“If we all do it fairly quickly and together, then you can write it up and get 
it published faster. Otherwise it would be a year or more.” I glance quickly at 
his face; his cheeks are red and shiny again.
“That’s not the reason,” he says, a little loudly. “It’s just that the data are 
more comparable if the subjects—if you—are all close in time. I mean, suppose 
something happened that changed things between the time the first two started 
and finished… something that affected the rest of you—”
“Like what, a bolt from the blue that makes us normal?” Dale asks. “You’re 
afraid we’ll get galloping normality and be unsuitable subjects?”
“No, no,” the doctor says. “More like something political that changes 
attitudes…”
I wonder what the government is thinking. Do governments think? The chapter in 
Brain Functionality on the politics of research protocols comes to mind. Is 
something about to happen, some regulation or change in policy, which would make 
this research impossible in a few months?
That is something I can find out when I get home. If I ask this man, I do not 
think he will give me an honest answer.
When we leave, we walk at angles, all out of rhythm with one another. We used to 
have a way of merging, accommodating one another’s peculiarities, so that we 
moved as a group. Now we move without harmony. I can sense the confusion, the 
anger. No one talks. I do not talk. I do not want to talk with them, who have 
been my closest associates for so long.
When we are back in our own building, we go quickly into our individual offices. 
I sit down and start to reach for the fan. I stop myself, and then I wonder why 
I stopped myself.
I do not want to work. I want to think about what it is they want to do to my 
brain and think about what it means. It means more than they say; everything 
they say means more than it says. Beyond the words is the tone; beyond the tone 
is the context; beyond the context is the unexplored territory of normal 
socialization, vast and dark as night, lit by the few pinpricks of similar 
experience, like stars.
Starlight, one writer said, perfuses the entire universe: the whole thing glows. 
The dark is an illusion, that writer said. If that is so, then Lucia was right 
and there is no speed of dark.
But there is simple ignorance, not knowing, and willful ignorance that refuses 
to know, that covers the light of knowledge with the dark blanket of bias. So I 
think there may be positive darkness, and I think dark can have a speed.
The books tell me that my brain works very well, even as it is, and that it is 
much easier to derange the functions of the brain than to repair them. If normal 
people really can do all the things that are claimed for them, it would be 
helpful to have that ability… but I am not sure they do.
They do not always understand why other people act as they do. That is obvious 
when they argue about their reasons, their motives. I have heard someone tell a 
child, “You are only doing that to annoy me,” when it is clear to me that the 
child was doing it because the child enjoyed the act itself… was oblivious to 
its effect on the adult. I have been oblivious like that, so I recognize it in 
others.
My phone buzzes. I pick it up. “Lou it is Cameron. Do you want to go to supper 
and have pizza?” His voice runs the words together, mechanically.
“It is Thursday,” I say. “Hi-I’m-Jean is there.”
“Chuy and Bailey and I are going anyway, so we can talk. And you, if you come. 
Linda is not coming. Dale is not coming.”
“I do not know if I want to come,” I say. “I will think about it. You will go 
when?”
“As soon as it is five,” he says.
“There are places it is not a good idea to talk about this,” I say.
“The pizza place is not one of those places,” Cameron says.
“Many people know we go there,” I say.
“Surveillance?” Cameron says.
“Yes. But it is a good thing to go there, because we go there. Then meet 
somewhere else.”
“The Center.”
“No,” I say, thinking of Emmy. “I do not want to go to the Center.”
“Emmy likes you,” Cameron says. “She is not very intelligent, but she likes 
you.”
“We are not talking about Emmy,” I say.
“We are talking about the treatment, after pizza,” Cameron says. “I do not know 
where to go except the Center.”
I think of places, but they are all public places. We should not talk about this 
in public places. Finally I say, “You could come to my apartment.” I have never 
invited Cameron to my apartment. I have never invited anyone to my apartment.
He is silent a long moment. He has never invited me to his home, either. Finally 
he says, “I will come. I do not know about the others.”
“I will come to eat supper with you,” I say.
I cannot get to work. I turn on the fan and the spin spirals and pin-wheels 
turn, but the dancing colored reflections do not soothe me. All I can think 
about is the project looming over us. It is like the picture of an ocean wave 
towering over sorneone on a surfboard. The skillful surfer can survive, but the 
one who is less skilled will be smashed. How can we ride this wave?
I write and print out my address and the directions from the pizza place to my 
apartment. I have to stop and look at the city map to be sure the directions are 
right. I am not used to giving directions to other drivers.
At five, I turn off the fan, get up, and leave my office. I have done nothing 
useful for hours. I feel dull and thick, the internal music like Mahler’s First 
Symphony, ponderous and heavy. Outside, it is cool, and I shiver. I get into my 
car, comforted by all four whole tires, a whole windshield, and an engine that 
starts when I turn the key. I have sent my insurance company a copy of the 
police report, as the police suggested.
At the pizza place, our usual table is empty; I am earlier than usual. I sit 
down. Hi-I’m-Jean glances at me and looks away. A moment later Cameron comes in, 
then Chuy and Bailey and Eric. The table feels unbalanced with only five of us. 
Chuy moves his chair to the end, and the rest of us shift a little: now it is 
symmetrical.
I can see the beer sign easily, with its blinking pattern. Tonight it annoys me; 
I turn a little away. Everyone is twitchy; I am having to bounce my fingers on 
my legs, and Chuy is twisting his neck back and forth, back and forth. Cameron’s 
arm moves; he is bouncing his plastic dice in his pocket. As soon as we have 
ordered, Eric takes out his multicolored pen and starts drawing his patterns.
I wish Dale and Linda were here, too. It feels odd to be without them. When our 
food comes we eat, almost in silence. Chuy is making a little rhythmic “hunh” 
between bites, and Bailey is clicking his tongue. When most of the food is gone, 
I clear my throat. Everyone looks at me quickly, then away.
“Sometimes people need a place to talk,” I say. “Sometimes it can be at 
someone’s place.”
“It could be at your place?” Chuy asks.
“It could,” I say.
“Not everyone knows where you live,” Cameron says. I know he does not know, 
either. It is strange how we have to talk about something.
“Here are directions,” I say. I take out the papers and put them on the table. 
One at a time, the others take the sheets. They do not look at them right away.
“Some people have to get up early,” Bailey says.
“It is not late now,” I say.
“Some people will have to leave before others if others are staying late.”
“I know that,” I say.



CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
« ^ » 
THERE ARE ONLY TWO VISITOR SLOTS IN THE PARKING LOT, but I know there is room 
for my visitors’ cars; most of the residents do not keep cars. This apartment 
building was built back when everyone had at least one car.
I wait in the parking lot until the others have arrived. Then I lead them 
upstairs. All those feet sound loud on the stairs. I did not know it would be 
this loud. Danny opens his door.
“Oh—hi, Lou. I wondered what was happening.”
“It is my friends,” I say.
“Good, good,” Danny says. He does not close his door. I do not know what he 
wants. The others follow me to my door, and I unlock it and let them in.
It feels very strange to have other people in the apartment. Cameron walks 
around and finally disappears into the bathroom. I can hear him in there. It is 
like when I lived in a group residence. I did not like that much. Some things 
should be private; it is not nice to hear someone else in the bathroom. Cameron 
flushes the toilet, and I hear the water running in the basin, and then he comes 
out. Chuy looks at me, and I nod. He goes into the bathroom, too. Bailey is 
looking at my computer.
“I do not have a desk model at home,” he says. “I use my handheld to work 
through the computer at work.”
“I like having this one,” I say.
Chuy comes back to the living room. “So—what now?”
Cameron looks at me. “Lou, you have been reading about this, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” I get Brain Functionality off the shelf where I put it. “My—a friend 
loaned me this book. She said it was the best place to start.”
“Is it the woman Emmy talks about?”
“No, someone else. She is a doctor; she is married to a man I know.”
“Is she a brain doctor?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why did she give you the book? Did you ask her about the project?”
“I asked her for a book on brain function. I want to know what they are going to 
do to our brains.”
“People who have not studied do not know anything about how the brain works,” 
Bailey says.
“I did not know until I started reading,” I say. “Only what they taught us in 
school, and that was not a lot. I wanted to learn because of this.”
“Did you?” Cameron asks.
“It takes a long time to learn everything that is known about brains,” I say, “I 
know more than I did, but I do not know if I know enough. I want to know what 
they think it will do and what can go wrong.”
“It is complicated,” Chuy says.
“You know about brain function?” I ask.
“Not much. My older sister was a doctor, before she died. I tried to read some 
of her books when she was in medical school. That is when I lived at home with 
my family. I was only fifteen, though.”
“I want to know if you think they can do what they say they can do,” Cameron 
says.
“I do not know,” I say. “I wanted to see what the doctor was saying today. I am 
not sure he is right. Those pictures they showed are like ones in this book—” I 
pat the book. “He said they meant something different. This is not a new book, 
and things change. I need to find new pictures.”
“Show us the pictures,” Bailey says.
I turn to the page with the pictures of brain activitation and lay the book on 
the low table. They all look. “It says here this shows brain activation when 
someone sees a human face,” I say. “I think it looks exactly like the picture 
the doctor said showed looking at a familiar face in a crowd.
“It is the same,” Bailey says, after a moment. “The ratio of line width to 
overall size is exactly the same. The colored spots are in the same place. If it 
is not the same illustration, it is a copy.”
“Maybe for normal brains the activation pattern is the same,” Chuy says.
I had not thought of that.
“He said the second picture was of an autistic brain looking at a familiar 
face,” Cameron says. “But the book says it is the activation pattern for looking 
at a composite unknown face.”
“I do not understand composite unknown,” Eric says.
“It is a computer-generated face using features of several real faces,” I say.
“If it is true that the activation pattern for autistic brains looking at a 
familiar face is the same as normal brains looking at an unfamiliar face, then 
what is the autistic pattern for looking at an unfamiliar face?” Bailey asks.
“I always had trouble recognizing people I was supposed to know,” Chuy says. “It 
still takes me longer to learn people’s faces.”
“Yes, but you do,” Bailey says. “You recognize all of us, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Chuy says. “But it took a long time, and I knew you first by your voices 
and size and things.”
“The thing is, you do now, and that’s what matters. If your brain is doing it a 
different way, at least it’s doing it.”
“They told me that the brain can make different pathways to do the same thing,” 
Cameron says. “Like if someone is injured, they give them that drug—I don’t 
remember what it is—and some training, and they can relearn how to do things but 
use a different part of the brain.”
“They told me that, too,” I say. “I asked them why they didn’t give me the drug 
and they said it wouldn’t work for me. They did not say why.”
“Does this book?” Cameron asks.
“I don’t know. I haven’t read that far,” I say.
“Is it hard?” Bailey asks.
“In some places, but not as hard as I thought it would be,” I say. “I started 
reading some other stuff first. That helped.”
“What other?” Eric asks.
“I read through some of the courses on the Internet,” I say. “Biology, anatomy, 
organic chemistry, biochemistry.” He is staring at me; I look down. “It is not 
as hard as it sounds.”
No one says anything for several minutes. I can hear them breathe; they can hear 
me breathe. We can all hear all the noises, smell all the smells. It is not like 
being with my friends at fencing, where I have to be careful what I notice.
“I’m going to do it,” Cameron says suddenly. “I want to.”
“Why?” Bailey asks.
“I want to be normal,” Cameron says. “I always did. I hate being different. It 
is too hard, and it is too hard to pretend to be like everyone else when I am 
not. I am tired of that.”
“ ‘But aren’t you proud of who you are?’ ” Bailey’s tone makes it clear he is 
quoting the slogan from the Center: We are proud of who we are.
“No,” Cameron says. “I pretended to be. But really—what is there to be proud of? 
I know what you’re going to say, Lou—” He looks at me. He is wrong. I was not 
going to say anything. “You’ll say that normal people do what we do, only in 
smaller amounts. Lots of people self-stim, but they don’t even realize it. They 
tap their feet or twirl their hair or touch their faces. Yes, but they’re normal 
and no one makes them stop. Other people don’t make good eye contact, but 
they’re normal and no one nags them to make eye contact. They have something 
else to make up for the tiny bit of themselves that acts autistic. That’s what I 
want. I want—I want not to have to try so hard to look normal. I just want to be 
normal.”
“ ‘Normal’ is a dryer setting,” Bailey says.
“Normal is other people.” Cameron’s arm twitches and he shrugs violently; 
sometimes that stops it. “This—this stupid arm… I’m tired of trying to hide 
what’s wrong. I want it to be right.” His voice has gotten loud, and I do not 
know if he will be angrier if I ask him to be quieter. I wish I had not brought 
them here. “Anyway,” Cameron says, slightly softer, “I’m going to do it, and you 
can’t stop me.”
“I am not trying to stop you,” I say.
“Are you going to?” he asks. He looks at each of us in turn.
“I do not know. I am not ready to say.”
“Linda won’t,” Bailey says. “She says she will quit her job.”
“I do not know why the patterns would be the same,” Eric says. He is looking at 
the book. “It does not make sense.”
“A familiar face is a familiar face?”
“The task is finding familiar in different. The activation pattern should be 
more similar to finding a familiar nonface in different unfaces. Do they have 
that picture in this book?”
“It is on the next page,” I say. “It says the activation pattern is the same 
except that the face task activates the facial recognition area.”
“They care more about facial recognition,” Eric says.
“Normal people care about normal people,” Cameron says. “That is why I want to 
be normal.”
“Autistic people care about autistic people,” Eric says.
“Not the same,” Cameron says. He looks around the group. “Look at us. Eric is 
making patterns with his finger. Bailey is chewing on his lip, Lou is trying so 
hard to sit still that he looks like a piece of wood, and I’m bouncing whether I 
want to or not. You accept it that I bounce, you accept it that I have dice in 
my pocket, but you do not care about me. When I had flu last spring, you did not 
call or bring food.”
I do not say anything. There is nothing to say. I did not call or bring food 
because I did not know Cameron wanted me to do that. I think it is unfair of him 
to complain now. I am not sure that normal people always call and bring food 
when someone is sick. I glance at the others. They are all looking away from 
Cameron, as I am. I like Cameron; I am used to Cameron. What is the difference 
between liking and being used to? I am not sure. I do not like not being sure.
“You don’t, either,” Eric says finally. “You have not been to any meetings of 
the society in over a year.”
“I guess not,” Cameron’s voice is soft now. “I kept seeing—I can’t say it—the 
older ones, worse than we are. No young ones; they’re all cured at birth or 
before. When I was twenty it was a lot of help. But now… we are the only ones 
like us. The older autistics, the ones who didn’t get the good early training—I 
do not like to be around them. They make me afraid that I could go back to that, 
being like them. And there is no one for us to help, because there are no young 
ones.“
“Tony,” Bailey says, looking at his knees.
“Tony is the youngest and he is… what, twenty-seven? He’s the only one under 
thirty. All the rest of the younger people at the Center are… different.”
“Emmy likes Lou,” Eric says. I look at him; I do not know what he means by that.
“If I’m normal, I will never have to go to a psychiatrist again,” Cameron says. 
I think of Dr. Fornum and think that not seeing her is almost enough reason to 
risk the treatment. “I can marry without a certificate of stability. Have 
children.”
“You want to get married,” Bailey says.
“Yes,” Cameron says. His voice is louder again, but only a little louder, and 
his face is red. “I want to get married. I want to have children. I want to live 
in an ordinary house in an ordinary neighborhood and take the ordinary public 
transportation and live the rest of my life as a normal person.”
“Even if you aren’t the same person?” Eric asks.
“Of course I’ll be the same person,” Cameron says. “Just normal.”
I am not sure this is possible. When I think of the ways in which I am not 
normal, I cannot imagine being normal and being the same person. The whole point 
of this is to change us, make us something else, and surely that involves the 
personality, the self, as well.
“I will do it by myself if no one else will,” Cameron says.
“It is your decision,” Chuy says, in his quoting voice.
“Yes.” Cameron’s voice drops. “Yes.”
“I will miss you,” Bailey says.
“You could come, too,” Cameron says.
“No. Not yet, anyway. I want to know more.”
“I am going home,” Cameron says. “I will tell them tomorrow.” He stands up, and 
I can see his hand in his pocket, jiggling the dice, up and down, up and down.
We do not say good-bye. We do not need to do that with each other. Cameron walks 
out and shuts the door quietly behind him. The others look at me and then away.
“Some people do not like who they are,” Bailey says.
“Some people are different than other people think,” Chuy says.
“Cameron was in love with a woman who did not love him,” Eric says. “She said it 
would never work. It was when he was in college.” I wonder how Eric knows that.
“Emmy says Lou is in love with a normal woman who is going to ruin his life,” 
Chuy says.
“Emmy does not know what she is talking about,” I say. “Emmy should mind her own 
business.”
“Does Cameron think this woman will love him if he is normal?” Bailey asks.
“She married someone else,” Eric says. “He thinks he might love someone who 
would love him back. I think that is why he wants the treatment.”
“I would not do it for a woman,” Bailey says. “If I do it, I need a reason for 
me.” I wonder what he would say if he knew Marjory. If I knew it would make 
Marjory love me, would I do it? It is an uncomfortable thought; I put it aside.
“I do not know what normal would feel like. Normal people do not all look happy. 
Maybe it feels bad to be normal, as bad as being autistic.” Chuy’s head is 
twisting up and around, back and down.
“I would like to try it,” Eric says. “But I would like to be able to get back to 
this self if it didn’t work.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I say. “Remember what Dr. Ransome said to Linda? 
Once the connections are formed between neurons, they stay formed unless an 
accident or something breaks the connection.”
“Is that what they will do, make new connections?”
“What about the old ones? Won’t there be”—Bailey waves his arms—“like when 
things collide? Confusion? Static? Chaos?”
“I do not know,” I say. All at once I feel swallowed by my ignorance, so vast an 
unknowing. Out of that vastness so many bad things might come. Then an image of 
a photograph taken by one of the space-based telescopes comes to mind: that vast 
darkness lit by stars. Beauty, too, may be in that unknown.
“I would think they would have to turn off the circuits that are working now, 
build new circuits, and then turn on the new ones. That way only the good 
connections would be working.”
“That is not what they told us,” Chuy says.
“No one would agree to having their brain destroyed to build a new one,” Eric 
says.
“Cameron—” Chuy says.
“He does not think that is what will happen,” Eric says. “If he knew…” He 
pauses, his eyes closed, and we wait. “He might do it anyway if he is unhappy 
enough. It is no worse than suicide. Better, if he comes back the person he 
wants to be.”
“What about memories?” Chuy asks. “Would they remove the memories?”
“How?” Bailey asks.
“Memories are stored in the brain. If they turn everything off, the memories 
will go away.”
“Maybe not. I have not read the chapters on memory yet,” I say. “I will read 
them; they are next.” Some parts of memory have already been discussed in the 
book, but I do not understand all of it yet and I do not want to talk about it. 
“Besides,” I say, “when you turn off a computer not all the memory is lost.”
“People are not conscious in surgery, but they do not lose all their memories,” 
Eric says.
“But they do not remember the surgery, and there are those drugs that interfere 
with memory formation,” Chuy says. “If they can interfere with memory formation, 
maybe they can remove old memories.”
“That is something we can look up on-line,” Eric says. “I will do that.”
“Moving connections and making new ones is like hardware,” Bailey says. 
“Learning to use the new connections is like software. It was hard enough to 
learn language the first time; I do not want to go through that again.”
“Normal kids learn it faster,” Eric says.
“It still takes years,” Bailey says. “They’re talking about six to eight weeks 
of rehab. Maybe that’s enough for a chimpanzee, but chimps don’t talk.”
“It is not like they never made mistakes before,” Chuy says. “They used to think 
all sorts of wrong things about us. This could be wrong, too.”
“More is known about brain functions,” I say. “But not everything.”
“I do not like doing something without knowing what will happen,” Bailey says.
Chuy and Eric say nothing: they agree. I agree, too. It is important to know the 
consequences before acting. Sometimes the consequences are not obvious.
The consequences of not acting are also not obvious. If I do not take the 
treatment, things will still not stay the same. Don proved that, in his attacks 
on my car and then on me. No matter what I do, no matter how predictable I try 
to make my life, it will not be any more predictable than the rest of the world. 
Which is chaotic.
“I am thirsty,” Eric says suddenly. He stands up. I stand up, too, and go to the 
kitchen. I get out a glass and fill it with water. He makes a face when he 
tastes the water; I remember then that he drinks bottled water. I do not have 
the brand he likes.
“I am thirsty, too,” Chuy says. Bailey says nothing.
“Do you want water?” I ask. “It is all I have except one bottle of fruit drink.” 
I hope he will not ask for the fruit drink. It is what I like for breakfast.
“I want water,” he says. Bailey puts his hand up. I fill two more glasses with 
water and bring them into the living room. At Tom and Lucia’s house, they ask if 
I want something to drink even when I don’t. It makes more sense to wait until 
people say they want something, but probably normal people ask first.
It feels very strange to have people here in my apartment. The space seems 
smaller. The air seems thicker. The colors change a little because of the colors 
they are wearing and the colors they are. They take up space and breathe.
I wonder suddenly how it would be if Marjory and I lived together— how it would 
be to have her taking up space here in the living room, in the bathroom, in the 
bedroom. I did not like the group home I used to live in, when I first left 
home. The bathroom smelled of other people, even though we cleaned it every day. 
Five different toothpastes. Five different preferences in shampoo and soap and 
deodorant.
“Lou! Are you all right?” Bailey looks concerned.
“I was thinking about… something,” I say. I do not want to think about not 
liking Marjory in my apartment, that it might not be good, that it might feel 
crowded or noisy or smelly.
CAMERON IS NOT AT WORK. CAMERON IS WHEREVER THEY TOLD him to go to start the 
procedure. Linda is not at work. I do not know where she is. I would rather 
wonder where Linda is than think about what is happening to Cameron. I know 
Cameron the way he is now— the way he was two diys ago. Will I know the person 
with Cameron’s face who comes out of this?
The more I think about it, the more it seems like those science fiction films 
where someone’s brain is transplanted into another person or another personality 
is inserted in the same brain. The same face, but not the same person. It is 
scary. Who would live behind my face? Would he like fencing? Would he like good 
music? Would he like Marjory? Would she like him?
Today they’re tellirg us more about the procedure.
“The baseline PET scans let us map your individual brain function,” the doctor 
says. “We’ll have tasks for you to do during the scans that identify how your 
brain processes information. When we compare that to the normal brain, then 
we’ll know how to modify yours—”
“Not all normal brains are exactly alike,” I say.
“Close enough,” he says. “The differences between yours and the average of 
several normal brains are what we want to modify.”
“What effect will this have on my basic intelligence?” I ask.
“Shouldn’t have any, really. That whole notion of a central IQ was pretty much 
exploded last century with the discovery of the modularity of processing—it’s 
what makes generalization so difficult—and it’s you people, autistic people, who 
sort of proved that it’s possible to be very intelligent in math, say, and way 
below the curve in expressive language.”
Shouldn’t have any is not the same thing as won’t have any. I do not really know 
what my intelligence is—they would not give us our own IQ scores, and I’ve never 
bothered to take any of the publicly available ones—but I know I am not stupid, 
and I do not want to be.
“If you’re concerned about your pattern-analysis skills,” he says, “that’s not 
the part of the brain that the treatment will affect. It’s more like giving that 
part of your brain access to new data—socially important data—without your 
having to struggle for it.”
“Like facial expressions,” I say.
“Yes, that sort of thing. Facial recognition, facial expressions, tonal nuance 
in language—a little tweak to the attention control area so it’s easier for you 
to notice them and it’s pleasurable to do so.”
“Pleasure—you’re tying this to the intrinsic endorphin releasers?”
He turns red suddenly. “If you mean are you going to get high on being around 
people, certainly not. But autistics do not find social interaction rewarding, 
and this will make it at least less threatening.” I am not good at interpreting 
tonal nuances, but I know he is not telling the whole truth.
If they can control the amount of pleasure we get from social interaction, then 
they could control the amount normal people get from it. I think of teachers in 
school, being able to control the pleasure students get from other students… 
making them all autistic to the extent that they would rather study than talk. I 
think of Mr. Crenshaw, with a section full of workers who ignore everything but 
work.
My stomach is knotted; a sour taste comes into my mouth. If I say that I see 
these possibilities, what will happen to me? Two months ago, I would have 
blurted out what I saw, what I worried about; now I am more cautious. Mr. 
Crenshaw and Don have given me that wisdom.
“You mustn’t get paranoid, Lou,” the doctor says. “It’s a constant temptation to 
anyone outside the social mainstream to think people are plotting something 
dire, but it’s not a healthy way to think.”
I say nothing. I am thinking about Dr. Fornum and Mr. Crenshaw and Don. These 
people do not like me or people like me. Sometimes people who do not like me or 
people like me may try to do me real harm. Would it have been paranoia if I had 
suspected from the first that Don slashed my tires? I do not think so. I would 
have correctly identified a danger. Correctly identifying danger is not 
paranoia.
“You must trust us, Lou, for this to work. I can give you something to calm 
you—”
“I am not upset,” I say. I am not upset. I am pleased with myself for thinking 
through what he is saying and finding the hidden meaning, but I am not upset, 
even though that hidden meaning is that he is manipulating me. If I know it, 
then it is not really manipulation. “I am trying to understand, but I am not 
upset.”
He relaxes. The muscles in his face release a little, especially around his eyes 
and in his forehead. “You know, Lou, this is a very complicated subject. You’re 
an intelligent man, but it’s not really your field. It takes years of study to 
really understand it all. Just a short lecture and maybe looking at a few sites 
on the ’net aren’t enough to bring you up to speed. You’ll only confuse and 
worry yourself if you try. Just as I wouldn’t be able to do what you do. Why not 
just let us do our work and you do yours:
Because it is my brain and my self that you are changing. Because you have not 
told the whole truth and I am not sure you have my best interest—or even my 
interest at all—in mind.
“Who I am is important to me,” I say.
“You mean you like being autistic?” Scorn edges his voice; he cannot imagine 
anyone wanting to be like me.
“I like being me,” I say. “Autism is part of who I am; it is not the whole 
thing.” I hope that is true, that I am more than my diagnosis.
“So—if we get rid of the autism, you’ll be the same person, only not autistic.”
He hopes this is true; he may think he thinks it is true; he does not believe 
absolutely that it is true. His fear that it is not true wafts from him like the 
sour stink of physical fear. His face crinkles into an expression that is 
supposed to convince me he believes it, but false sincerity is an expression I 
know from childhood. Every therapist, every teacher, every counselor has had 
that expression in their repertoire, the worried/ caring look.
What frightens me most is that they may—surely they will—tinker with memory, not 
just current connections. They must know as well as I do that my entire past 
experience is from this autistic perspective. Changing the connections will not 
change that, and that has made me who I am. Yet if I lose the memory of what 
this is like, who I am, then I will have lost everything I’ve worked on for 
thirty-five years. I do not want to lose that. I do not want to remember things 
only the way I remember what I read in books; I do not want Marjory to be like 
someone seen on a video screen. I want to keep the feelings that go with the 
memories.



CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
« ^ » 
ON SUNDAYS, THE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION DOES NOT run on the usual workday 
schedule, even though Sunday is a holy day for only a minority of people. If I 
do not drive to church, then I get there either very early or a little late. It 
is rude to be late, and being rude to God is ruder than other kinds of rude.
It is very quiet when I arrive. The church I go to has a very early service, 
with no music, and a 10:30 service, with music. I like to come early and sit in 
the dim quiet, watching the light move through the colored glass of the windows. 
Now once more I sit in the dim quiet of the church and think about Don and 
Marjory.
I am not supposed to think about Don and Marjory but about God. Fix your mind on 
God, said a priest who used to be here, and you will not go far wrong. It is 
hard to fix your mind on God when the image in my mind is that of the open end 
of the barrel of Don’s gun. Round and dark like a black hole. I could feel the 
attraction of it, the pull as if the hole, the opening, had mass that wanted to 
pull me into itself, into permanent blackness. Death. Nothingness.
I do not know what comes after death. Scripture tells me one thing here and 
another there. Some people emphasize that all the virtuous will be saved and go 
to heaven, and others say that you have to be Elect. I do not imagine it is 
anything we can describe. When I try to think of it, up to now, it always looks 
like a pattern of light, intricate and beautiful, like the pictures astronomers 
take or create from space-telescope images, each color for a different 
wavelength.
But now, in the aftermath of Don’s attack, I see dark, faster than light, racing 
out of the barrel of the gun to draw me into it, beyond the speed of light, 
forever.
Yet I am here, in this seat, in this church, still alive. Light pours in through 
the old stained-glass window over the altar, rich glowing color that stains the 
altar linens, the wood itself, the carpet. This early, the light reaches farther 
into the church than during the service, angling to the left because of the 
season.
I take a breath, smelling candle wax and the faintest hint of smoke from the 
early service, the smell of books—our church still uses paper prayer books and 
hymnals—and the cleaning compounds used on wood and fabric and floor.
I am alive. I am in the light. The darkness was not, this time, faster than the 
light. But I feel unsettled, as if it were chasing me, coming nearer and nearer 
behind me, where I can’t see.
I am sitting at the back of the church, but behind me is an open space, more 
unknown. Usually it does not bother me, but today I wish there were a wall 
there.
I try to focus on the light, on the slow movement of the colored bars down and 
across as the sun rises higher. In an hour, the light moves a distance that 
anyone could see, but it is not the light moving: it is the planet moving. I 
forget that and use the common phrasing just like everyone else and get that 
shock of joy each time I remember, again, that the earth does move.
We are always spinning into the light and out of it again. It is our speed, not 
the light’s speed or the dark’s speed, that makes our days and nights. Was it my 
speed, and not Don’s speed, that brought us into the dark space where he wanted 
to hurt me? Was it my speed that saved me?
I try again to concentrate on God, and the light recedes enough to pick out the 
brass cross on its wooden stand. The glint of yellow metal against the purple 
shadows behind it is so striking that my breath catches for a moment.
In this place, light is always faster than dark; the speed of dark does not 
matter.
“Here you are, Lou!”
The voice startles me. I flinch but manage not to say anything, and even smile 
at the gray-haired woman holding out a service leaflet. Usually I am more aware 
of the time passing, people arriving, so that I am not surprised. She is 
smiling.
“I didn’t mean to startle you,” she says.
“It’s all right,” I say. “I was just thinking.”
She nods and goes back to greet other arrivals without saying anything more. She 
has a name tag on, Cynthia Kressman. I see her every third week handing out 
service leaflets, and on other Sundays she usually sits across the center aisle 
and four rows ahead of me.
I am alert now and notice people coming in. The old man with two canes, who 
totters down the aisle to the very front. He used to come with his wife, but she 
died four years ago. The three old women who always come in together except when 
one is sick and sit in the third row on the left. One and two and three, four 
and two and one and one, people trickle in. I see the organist’s head lift over 
the top of the organ console and drop back down. Then a soft “mmph” and the 
music begins.
My mother said it was wrong to go to church just for the music. That is not the 
only reason I go to church. I go to church to learn how to be a better person. 
But the music is one reason I go to this church. Today it is Bach again—our 
organist likes Bach—and my mind effortlessly picks up the many strands of the 
pattern and follows them as she plays them.
Hearing music like this, all around in real life, is different from hearing a 
recording. It makes me more aware of the space I am in; I can hear the sound 
bouncing off the walls, forming harmonies unique to this place. I have heard 
Bach in other churches, and somehow it always makes harmonies, not disharmonies. 
This is a great mystery.
The music stops. I can hear a soft murmur behind me as the choir and clergy line 
up. I pick up the hymnal and find the number for the processional hymn. The 
organ starts again, playing the melody once, and then behind me the loud voices 
ring out. Someone is a little flat and slides up to each pitch a moment behind 
the others. It is easy to pick out who it is, but it would be rude to say 
anything about it. I bow my head as the crucifer leads the procession, and then 
the choir comes past me. They walk by, in their dark-red robes with the white 
cottas over them, the women first and then the men, and I hear each individual 
voice. I read the words and sing as best I can. I like it best when the last two 
men come by; they both have very deep voices, and the sound they make trembles 
in my chest.
After the hymn, there is a prayer, which we all say together. I know the words 
by heart. I have known the words by heart since I was a boy. Another reason 
besides the music that I go to this church is the predictable order of service. 
I can say the familiar words without stumbling over them. I can be ready to sit 
or stand or kneel, speak or sing or listen, and do not feel clumsy and slow. 
When I visit other churches I am more worried about whether I am doing the right 
thing at the right time than about God. Here the routines make it easier to 
listen to what God wants me to do.
Today, Cynthia Kressman is one of the readers. She reads the Old Testament 
lesson. I read along in the service leaflet. It is hard to understand everything 
just listening or just reading; both together work better. At home I read the 
lessons ahead of time, from the calendar the church hands out every year. That 
also helps me know what is coming. I enjoy it when we read the Psalm 
responsively; it makes a pattern like a conversation.
When I look past the lessons and the Psalm to the Gospel reading, it is not what 
I expect. Instead of a reading from Matthew, it is a reading from John. I read 
intently as the priest reads aloud. It is the story of the man lying by the pool 
of Siloam, who wanted healing but had no one to lower him into the pool. Jesus 
asked him if he really wanted to be healed.
It always seemed a silly question to me. Why would the man be by the healing 
pool if he did not want to be healed? Why would he complain about not having 
someone to lower him into the water if he did not want to be healed?
God does not ask silly questions. It must not be a silly question, but if it is 
not silly, what does it mean? It would be silly if I said it or if a doctor said 
it when I went to get medicine for an illness, but what does it mean here?
Our priest begins the sermon. I am still trying to puzzle out how a seemingly 
silly question could be meaningful when his voice echoes my thought.
“Why does Jesus ask the man if he wants to be healed? Isn’t that kind of silly? 
He’s lying there waiting for his chance at healing… Surely he wants to be 
healed.”
Exactly, I think.
“If God isn’t playing games with us, being silly, what then does this question 
mean, Do you want to be healed? Look at where we find this man: by the pool 
known for its healing powers, where ‘an angel comes and stirs the water at 
intervals…’ and the sick have to get into the water while it’s seething. Where, 
in other words, the sick are patient patients, waiting for the cure to appear. 
They know—they’ve been told—that the way to be cured is to get in the water 
while it seethes. They aren’t looking for anything else… They are in that place, 
at that time, looking for not just healing, but healing by that particular 
method.
“In today’s world, we might say they are like the person who believes that one 
particular doctor—one world-famous specialist—can cure him of his cancer. He 
goes to the hospital where that doctor is, he wants to see that doctor and no 
one else, because he is sure that only that method will restore him to health.
“So the paralyzed man focuses on the healing pool, sure that the help he needs 
is someone to carry him into the water at the right time.
“Jesus’s question, then, challenges him to consider whether he wants to be well 
or he wants that particular experience, of being in the pool. If he can be 
healed without it, will he accept that healing?
“Some preachers have discussed this story as an example of self-inflicted 
paralysis, hysterical paralysis—if the man wants to stay paralyzed, he will. 
It’s about mental illness, not physical illness. But I think the question Jesus 
asks has to do with a cognitive problem, not an emotional problem. Can the man 
see outside the box? Can he accept healing that is not what he’s used to? That 
will go beyond fixing his legs and back and start working on him from the inside 
out, from the spirit to the mind to the body?”
I wonder what the man would say if he were not paralyzed but autistic. Would he 
even go to the pool for healing? Cameron would. I close my eyes and see Cameron 
lowering himself into bubbling water, in a shimmer of light. Then he disappears. 
Linda insists we do not need healing, that there is nothing wrong with us the 
way we are, just something wrong with others for not accepting us. I can imagine 
Linda pushing her way through the crowd, headed away from the pool.
I do not think I need to be healed, not of autism. Other people want me to be 
healed, not me myself. I wonder if the man had a family, a family tired of 
carrying him around on his litter. I wonder if he had parents who said, “The 
least you could do is try to be healed,” or a wife who said, “Go on, try it; it 
can’t hurt,” or children teased by other children because their father couldn’t 
work. I wonder if some of the people who came did not come because they wanted 
to be healed, themselves, but because other people wanted them to do it, to be 
less of a burden.
Since my parents died, I am not anyone’s burden. Mr. Crenshaw thinks I am a 
burden to the company, but I do not believe this is true. I am not lying beside 
a pool begging people to carry me into it. I am trying to keep them from 
throwing me into it. I do not believe it is a healing pool anyway.
“… so the question for us today is, Do we want the power of the Holy Spirit in 
our own lives, or are we just pretending?” The priest has said a lot I have not 
heard. This I hear, and I shiver.
“Are we sitting here beside the pool, waiting for an angel to come trouble the 
water, waiting patiently but passively, while beside us the living God stands 
ready to give us life everlasting, abundant life, if only we will open our hands 
and hearts and take that gift?
“I believe many of us are. I believe all of us are like that at one time or 
another, but right now, still, many of us sit and wait and lament that there is 
no one to lower us into the water when the angel comes.” He pauses and looks 
around the church; I see people flinch and others relax when his gaze touches 
them. “Look around you, every day, in every place, into the eyes of everyone you 
meet. Important as this church may be in your life, God should be greater—and He 
is everywhere, every-when, in everyone and everything. Ask yourself, ‘Do I want 
to be healed?’ and—if you can’t answer yes—start asking why not. For I am sure 
that He stands beside each of you, asking that question in the depths of your 
soul, ready to heal you of all things as soon as you are ready to be healed.”
I stare at him and almost forget to stand up and say the words of the Nicene 
Creed, which is what comes next.
I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth and of all things seen 
and unseen. I believe God is important and does not make mistakes. My mother 
used to joke about God making mistakes, but I do not think if He is God He makes 
mistakes. So it is not a silly question.
Do I want to be healed? And of what?
The only self I know is this self, the person I am now, the autistic 
bioinformatics specialist fencer lover of Marjory.
And I believe in his only begotten son, Jesus Christ, who actually in the flesh 
asked that question of the man by the pool. The man who perhaps—the story does 
not say—had gone there because people were tired of him being sick and disabled, 
who perhaps had been content to lie down all day, but he got in the way.
What would Jesus have done if the man had said, “No, I don’t want to be healed; 
I am quite content as I am”? If he had said, “There is nothing wrong with me, 
but my relatives and neighbors insisted I come”?
I say the words automatically, smoothly, while my mind wrestles with the 
reading, the sermon, the words. I remember another student, back in my hometown, 
who found out I went to church and asked, “Do you really believe that stuff or 
is it just a habit?”
If it is just habit, like going to the healing pool when you are sick, does that 
mean there is no belief? If the man had told Jesus that he didn’t really want to 
be healed, but his relatives insisted, Jesus might still think the man needed to 
be able to get up and walk.
Maybe God thinks I would be better if I weren’t autistic. Maybe God wants me to 
take the treatment.
I am cold suddenly. Here I have felt accepted—accepted by God, accepted by the 
priest and the people, or most of them. God does not spurn the blind, the deaf, 
the paralyzed, the crazy. That is what I have been taught and what I believe. 
What if I was wrong? What if God wants me to be something other than I am?
I sit through the rest of the service. I do not go up for Communion. One of the 
ushers asks if I am all right, and I nod. He looks worried but lets me alone. 
After the recessional, I wait where I am until the others have left, and then I 
go out the door. The priest is still standing there, chatting with one of the 
ushers. He smiles at me.
“Hello, Lou. How are you?” He gives my hand one firm, quick shake, because he 
knows that I do not like long handshakes.
“I do not know if I want to be healed,” I say.
His face contracts into a worried look. “Lou, I wasn’t talking about you—about 
people like you. I’m sorry if you think that—I was talking about spiritual 
healing. You know we accept you as you are—”
“You do,” I say, “but God?”
“God loves you as you are and as you will become,” the priest says. “I’m sorry 
if something I said hurt you—”
“I am not hurt,” I say. “I just do not know—”
“Do you want to talk about it?” he asks.
“Not now,” I say. I do not know what I think yet, so I will not ask until I am 
sure.
“You did not come up for Communion,” he says. I am surprised; I did not expect 
him to notice. “Please, Lou—don’t let anything I said get between you and God.”
“It won’t,” I say. “It is just—I need to think.” I turn away and he lets me go. 
This is another good thing about my church. It is there, but it is not always 
grabbing. For a while when I was in school I went to a church where everyone 
wanted to be in everyone’s life all the time. If I had a cold and missed a 
service, someone would call to find out why. They said they were concerned and 
caring, but I felt smothered. They said I was cold and needed to develop a fiery 
spirituality; they did not understand about me, and they would not listen.
I turn back to the priest; his eyebrows go up, but he waits for me to speak.
“I do not know why you talked about that Scripture this week,” I say. “It is not 
on the schedule.”
“Ah,” he says. His face relaxes. “Did you know that the Gospel of John is not 
ever on the schedule? It’s like a kind of secret weapon we priests can pull out 
when we think a congregation needs it.”
I had noticed that, but I had never asked why.
“I chose that Scripture for this particular day because—Lou, how involved are 
you in parish business?”
When someone starts an answer and then turns it into something else it is hard 
to understand, but I try. “I go to church,” I say. “Almost every Sunday—”
“Do you have other friends in the congregation?” he asks. “I mean, people you 
spend time with outside of church and maybe talk with about how the church is 
getting along?”
“No,” I say. Ever since that one church, I have not wanted to get too close to 
the people in church.
“Well, then, you may not be aware that there’s been a lot of argument about some 
things. We’ve had a lot of new people join—most of them have come from another 
church where there was a big fight, and they left.”
“A fight in church?” I can feel my stomach tighten; it would be very wrong to 
fight in church.
“These people were angry and upset when they came,” the priest says. “I knew it 
would take time for them to settle down and heal from that injury. I gave them 
time. But they are still angry and still arguing— with the people at their old 
church, and here they’ve started arguments with people who have always gotten 
along.” He is looking at me over the top of his glasses. Most people have 
surgery when their eyes start to go bad, but he wears old-fashioned glasses.
I puzzle through what he has said. “So… you talked about wanting to be healed 
because they are still angry?”
“Yes. They needed the challenge, I thought. I want them to realize that sticking 
in the same rut, having the same old arguments, staying angry with the people 
they left behind, is not the way to let God work in their lives for healing.” He 
shakes his head, looks down for a moment and then back at me. “Lou, you look a 
little upset still. Are you sure that you can’t tell me what it is?”
I do not want to talk to him about the treatment right now, but it is worse not 
to tell the truth here in church than anywhere else.
“Yes,” I say. “You said God loved us, accepted us, as we are. But then you said 
people should change, should accept healing. Only, if we are accepted as we are, 
then maybe that is what we should be. And if we should change, then it would be 
wrong to be accepted as we are.”
He nods. I do not know if that means he agrees that I said it correctly or that 
we should change. “I truly did not aim that arrow at you, Lou, and I’m sorry it 
hit you. I always thought of you as someone who had adapted very well—who was 
content within the limits God had put on his life.”
“I don’t think it was God,” I say. “My parents said it was an accident, that 
some people are just born that way. But if it was God, it would be wrong to 
change, wouldn’t it?”
He looks surprised.
“But everyone has always wanted me to change as much as I could, be as normal as 
I could, and if that is a correct demand, then they cannot believe that the 
limits—the autism—come from God. That is what I cannot figure out. I need to 
know which it is.”
“Hmmm…” He rocks back and forth, heel to toe, looking past me for a long moment. 
“I never thought of it that way, Lou. Indeed, if people think of disabilities as 
literally God-given, then waiting by the pool is the only reasonable response. 
You don’t throw away something God gives you. But actually—I agree with you. I 
can’t really see God wanting people born with disabilities.”
“So I should want to be cured of it, even if there is no cure?”
“I think what we are supposed to want is what God wants, and the tricky thing is 
that much of the time we don’t know what that is,” he says.
“You know,” I say.
“I know part of it. God wants us to be honest, kind, helpful to one another. But 
whether God wants us to pursue every hint of a cure of conditions we have or 
acquire… I don’t know that. Only if it doesn’t interfere with who we are as 
God’s children, I suppose. And some things are beyond human power to cure, so we 
must do the best we can to cope with them. Good heavens, Lou, you come up with 
difficult ideas!” He is smiling at me, and it looks like a real smile, eyes and 
mouth and whole face. “You’d have made a very interesting seminary student.”
“I could not go to seminary,” I say. “I could not ever learn the languages.”
“I’m not so sure,” he says. “I’ll be thinking more about what you said, Lou. If 
you ever want to talk…”
It is a signal that he does not want to talk more now. I do not know why normal 
people cannot just say, “I do not want to talk more now,” and go. I say, 
“Good-bye,” quickly and turn away. I know some of the signals, but I wish they 
were more reasonable.
The after-church bus is late, so I have not missed it. I stand on the corner 
waiting, thinking about the sermon. Few people ride the bus on Sunday, so I find 
a seat by myself, and look out at the trees, all bronze and coppery in the 
autumn light. When I was little, the trees still turned red and gold, but those 
trees all died from the heat, and now the trees that turn color at all are 
duller.
At the apartment, I start reading. I would like to finish Cego and Clinton by 
the morning. I am sure that they will summon me to talk about the treatment and 
make a decision. I am not ready to make a decision.
“PETE, ” THE VOICE SAID. ALDRIN DIDN’T RECOGNIZE IT. “This is John Slazik.” 
Aldrin’s mind froze; his heart stumbled and then raced. Gen. John L. Slazik, 
USAF, Ret. Currently CEO of the company.
Aldrin gulped, then steadied his voice. “Yes, Mr. Slazik.” A second later, he 
thought maybe he should have said, “Yes, General,” but it was too late. He 
didn’t know, anyway, if retired generals used their rank in civilian settings.
“Listen, I’m just wondering what you can tell me about this little project of 
Gene Crenshaw’s.” Slazik’s voice was deep, warm, smooth as good brandy, and 
about as potent.
Aldrin could feel the fire creeping along his veins. “Yes, sir.” He tried to 
organize his thoughts. He had not expected a call from the CEO himself. He 
rattled off an explanation that included the research, the autistic unit, the 
need to cut costs, his concern that Crenshaw’s plan would have negative 
consequences for the company as well as the autistic employees.
“I see,” Slazik said. Aldrin held his breath. “You know, Pete,” Slazik said, in 
the same relaxed drawl, “I’m a little concerned that you didn’t come to me in 
the first place. Granted, I’m new around here, but I really like to know what’s 
going on before the hot potato hits me in the face.”
“Sorry, sir,” Aldrin said. “I didn’t know. I was trying to work within the chain 
of command—”
“Um.” A long and obvious indrawn breath. “Well, now, I see your point, but the 
thing is, there’s a time—rare, but it exists—when you’ve tried going up and got 
stymied and you need to know how to hop a link. And this was one of the times it 
sure would’ve been helpful— to me.”
“Sorry, sir,” Aldrin said again. His heart was pounding.
“Well, I think we caught it in time,” Slazik said. “So far it’s not out in the 
media, at least. I was pleased to hear that you had a concern for your people, 
as well as the company. I hope you realize, Pete, that I would not condone any 
illegal or unethical actions taken toward our employees or any research 
subjects. I am more than a little surprised and disappointed that one of my 
subordinates tried to screw around that way.” For the length of that last 
sentence the drawl hardened into something more like saw-edged steel; Aldrin 
shivered involuntarily.
Then the drawl returned. “But that’s not your problem. Pete, we’ve got a 
situation with those people of yours. They’ve been promised a treatment and 
threatened with loss of their jobs, and you’re going to have to straighten that 
out. Legal is going to send someone to explain the situation, but I want you to 
prepare them.”
“What—what is the situation now, sir?” Aldrin asked.
“Obviously their jobs are safe, if they want to keep them,” Slazik said. “We 
don’t coerce volunteers; this isn’t the military, and I understand that even if… 
someone doesn’t. They have rights. They don’t have to agree to the treatment. On 
the other hand, if they want to volunteer, that’s fine; they’ve already been 
through the preliminary tests. Full pay, no loss of seniority—it’s a special 
case.”
Aldrin wanted to ask what would happen to Crenshaw and himself, but he was 
afraid that asking would make whatever it was worse.
“I’m going to be calling Mr. Crenshaw in for an interview,” Slazik said. “Don’t 
talk about this, except to reassure your people that they’re not in jeopardy. 
Can I trust you for that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“No gossiping with Shirley in Accounting or Bart in Human Resources or any of 
your other contacts?”
Aldrin felt faint. How much did Slazik know? “No, sir, I won’t talk to anyone.”
“Crenshaw may call you—he should be fairly steamed with you— but don’t worry 
about it.”
“No, sir.”
“I’ll have to meet you personally, Pete, when this settles down a bit.”
“Yes, sir.”
“If you can learn to work a little better with the system, your dedication to 
both company goals and personnel—and your awareness of the public-relations 
aspects of such things—could be a real asset to us.” Slazik hung up before 
Aldrin could say anything. Aldrin took a long breath—it felt like the first in a 
long time—and sat staring at the clock until he realized the numbers on it were 
still changing.
Then he headed over to Section A, before Crenshaw—who must have heard by 
now—could blow up at him on the phone. He felt fragile, vulnerable. He hoped his 
team would make the announcement easy.
I HAVE NOT SEEN CAMERON SINCE HE LEFT LAST WEEK. I DO not know when I will see 
Cameron again. I do not like not having his car to park my car facing into. I do 
not like not knowing where he is or whether he is all right or not.
The symbols on the screen I watch are shifting in and out of reality, patterns 
forming and dissolving, and this is not something that had happened before. I 
turn on my fan. The whirling of the spin spirals, the movements of reflected 
light, make my eyes hurt. I turn the fan off.
I read another book last night. I wish I had not read it.
What we were taught about ourselves, as autistic children, was only part of what 
the people who taught us believed to be true. Later I found out some of that, 
but some I never really wanted to know. I thought it was hard enough coping with 
the world without knowing everything other people thought was wrong with me. I 
thought making my outward behavior fit in was enough. That is what I was taught: 
act normal, and you will be normal enough.
If the chip they will implant in Don’s brain makes him act normal, does does 
this mean he is normal enough? Is it normal to have a chip in your brain? To 
have a brain that needs a chip to make it able to govern normal behavior?
If I can seem normal without a chip and Don needs a chip, does that mean I am 
normal, more normal than he is?
The book said that autistics tend to ruminate excessively on abstract 
philosophical questions like these, in much the same way that psychotics 
sometimes do. It referred to older books that speculated that autistic persons 
had no real sense of personal identity, of self. It said they do have 
self-definition, but of a limited and rule-dictated sort.
It makes me feel queasy to think about this, and about Don’s custodial 
rehabilitation, and about what is happening with Cameron.
If my self-definition is limited and rule-dictated, at least it is my 
self-definition, and not someone else’s. I like peppers on pizza and I do not 
like anchovies on pizza. If someone changes me, will I still like peppers and 
not anchovies on pizza? What if the someone who changes me wants me to want 
anchovies… can they change that?
The book on brain functionality said that expressed preferences were the result 
of the interaction of innate sensory processing and social conditioning. If the 
person who wants me to like anchovies has not been successful with social 
conditioning and has access to my sensory processing, then that person can make 
me like anchovies.
Will I even remember that I don’t like anchovies—that I didn’t like anchovies?
The Lou who does not like anchovies will be gone, and the new Lou who likes 
anchovies will exist without a past. But who I am is my past as well as whether 
I like anchovies now or not.
If my wants are supplied, does it matter what they are? Is there any difference 
between being a person who likes anchovies and being a person who does not like 
anchovies? If everyone liked anchovies or everyone didn’t like anchovies, what 
difference would it make?
To the anchovies a lot. If everyone liked anchovies, more anchovies would die. 
To the person selling anchovies a lot. If everyone liked anchovies, that person 
would make more money selling them. But to me, the me I am now or the me I will 
be later? Would I be healthier or less healthy, kinder or less kind, smarter or 
less smart, if I liked anchovies? Other people I have seen who eat or do not eat 
anchovies seem much the same. For many things I think it does not matter what 
people like: what colors, what flavors, what music.
Asking if I want to be healed is like asking if I want to like anchovies. I 
cannot imagine what liking anchovies would feel like, what taste they would have 
in my mouth. People who like anchovies tell me they taste good; people who are 
normal tell me being normal feels good. They cannot describe the taste or the 
feeling in a way that makes sense to me.
Do I need to be healed? Who does it hurt if I am not healed? Myself, but only if 
I feel bad the way I am, and I do not feel bad except when people say that I am 
not one of them, not normal. Supposedly autistic persons do not care what others 
think of them, but this is not true. I do care, and it hurts when people do not 
like me because I am autistic.
Even refugees who flee with nothing but their clothes are not forbidden their 
memories. Bewildered and frightened as they may be, they have themselves for a 
comparison. Maybe they can never taste their favorite food again, but they can 
remember that they liked it. They may not see the land they knew again, but they 
can remember that they lived there. They can judge if their life is better or 
worse by comparing it to their memories.
I want to know if Cameron remembers the Cameron he was, if he thinks the country 
he has come to is better than the country he left behind.
This afternoon we are to meet with the treatment advisers again. I will ask 
about this.
I look at the clock. It is 10:37:18, and I have accomplished nothing this 
morning. I do not want to accomplish anything in my project. It is the anchovy 
seller’s project and not my project.



CHAPTER NINETEEN
« ^ » 
MR. ALDRIN COMES INTO OUR BUILDING. HE KNOCKS on my door and says, “Please come 
out; I want to talk to you in the gym.” My stomach knots up. I hear him knocking 
on the others’ doors. They come out, Linda and Bailey and Chuy and Eric and all, 
and we file into the gym, all with tight faces. It is big enough to hold all of 
us. I try not to worry, but I can feel myself starting to sweat. Are they going 
to start the treatment right away? No matter what we decide?
“This is complicated,” Mr. Aldrin says. “Other people are going to explain it to 
you again, but I want to tell you right away.” He looks excited and not as sad 
as he did a few days ago. “You remember that I said at the beginning I thought 
it was wrong for them to try to force you to take the treatment? When I called 
you on the phone?”
I remember that, and I remember that he did not do anything to help us and later 
told us we should agree for our own good.
“The company has decided that Mr. Crenshaw acted wrongly,” Mr. Aldrin says. 
“They want you to know that your jobs are completely safe, whatever you decide. 
You can stay just as you are, and you can work here, with the same supports you 
have now.”
I have to close my eyes; it is too much to bear. Against the dark lids dancing 
shapes form, bright-colored and glowing with joy. I do not have to do this. If 
they are not going to do the treatment, I do not even have to decide if I want 
it or not.
“What about Cameron?” Bailey asks.
Mr. Aldrin shakes his head. “I understand that he has already begun the 
treatment,” he says. “I don’t think they can stop at this point. But he will be 
fully compensated—”
I think this is a silly thing to say. How can you compensate someone for 
changing his brain?
“Now for the rest of you,” Mr. Aldrin says, “if you want the treatment, of 
course it will still be available, as promised.”
It was not promised but threatened. I do not say this.
“You will receive full pay for the duration of treatment and rehab, and you will 
continue to receive any pay raises or promotions that you would have received 
otherwise; your seniority will not be affected. The company’s legal department 
is in contact with the Legal Aid organization familiar with your Center, and 
representatives of both will be available to explain the legal aspects to you 
and help you with any legal paperwork that’s necessary. For instance, if you 
choose to participate you will need to make arrangements to have bills paid 
directly out of your accounts, and so on.”
“So… it’s completely voluntary? Really voluntary?” Linda asks, looking down.
“Yes. Completely.”
“I do not understand the reason Mr. Crenshaw would change his mind,” she says.
“It wasn’t exactly Mr. Crenshaw,” Mr. Aldrin says. “Someone— people—higher up 
decided Mr. Crenshaw had made a mistake.”
“What will happen to Mr. Crenshaw?” Dale asks.
“I don’t know,” Mr. Aldrin says. “I am not supposed to talk to anyone about what 
might happen, and they didn’t tell me anyway.”
I think that if Mr. Crenshaw works for this company he will find a way to cause 
us trouble. If the company can turn around so far in this direction, it could 
always turn back the other way, with a different person in charge, just as a car 
can go any direction depending on the driver.
“Your meeting this afternoon with the medical team will also be attended by 
representatives of our legal department and Legal Aid,” Mr. Aldrin says. “And 
probably a few other people as well. You will not have to make a decision right 
away, though.” He smiles suddenly, and it is a complete smile, mouth and eyes 
and cheeks and forehead, all the lines working the same way to show that he is 
really happy and more relaxed. “I’m very relieved,” he says. “I’m happy for 
you.”
This is another expression that makes no literal sense. I can be happy or sad or 
angry or scared, but I cannot have a feeling that someone else should have 
instead of that person having it. Mr. Aldrin cannot really be happy for me; I 
have to be happy for myself, or it isn’t real. Unless he means that he is happy 
because he thinks we will be happier if we are not feeling forced into treatment 
and “I’m happy for you” means “I’m happy because of circumstances that benefit 
you.”
Mr. Aldrin’s beeper goes off, and he excuses himself. A moment later he puts his 
head back into the gym and says, “I have to go—see you this afternoon.”
THE MEETING HAS BEEN MOVED TO A LARGER ROOM. MR. ALDRIN is at the door when we 
arrive, and other men and women in suits are inside the room, milling around the 
table. This one also has wood paneling that does not look as fake and a green 
carpet. The chairs are the same kind, but the fabric on the padding is dull gold 
with green flecks shaped like little daisies. At the front is a big table, with 
groups of chairs to either side, and a big viewscreen hanging on the wall. There 
are two stacks of folders on the table. One has five folders, and the other has 
enough for each of us to have one.
As before, we take our seats, and the others slowly take theirs. Dr. Ransome I 
know; Dr. Handsel is not here. There is another doctor, an older woman; she has 
a name tag with L. HENDRICKS on it. She is the one who stands up first. She 
tells us her name is Hendricks; she tells us she is heading the research team 
and that she wants only willing participants. She sits down. A man in a dark 
suit stands up and tells us his name is Godfrey Arakeen, an attorney from the 
company’s legal division, and we have nothing to worry about.
I am not worried yet.
He talks about the regulations that govern hiring and firing of handicapped 
employees. I did not know that the company got a tax credit for hiring us, 
dependent on the percentage of disabled workers by division and specialty. He 
makes it seem that our value to the company is that we are a tax credit, not the 
work we do. He says that Mr. Crenshaw should have informed us of our right to 
talk to a company ombudsman. I do not know what an ombudsman is, but Mr. Arakeen 
is already explaining the word. He introduces another man in a suit; Mr. 
Vanagli, it sounds like. I am not sure how to spell his name, and it is not easy 
to hear all the sounds in it. Mr. Vanagli says if we have any concerns about 
anything at work we should come talk to him.
His eyes are closer together than Mr. Arakeen’s eyes, and the pattern on his tie 
is distracting, gold and blue in little diamond shapes arranged like steps going 
up or down. I do not think I could tell him about my concerns. He does not stay, 
anyway, but leaves after telling us to come to him anytime in office hours.
Then a woman in a dark suit tells us that she is the lawyer from Legal Aid who 
normally works with our Center and that she is there to protect our rights. Her 
name is Sharon Beasley. Her name makes me think of weasels, but she has a broad, 
friendly face that does not look like a weasel at all. Her hair is soft and 
curly and hangs down to her shoulders. It is not as shiny as Marjory’s hair. She 
has on earrings with four concentric circles; each one has a different-colored 
piece of glass in it: blue, red, green, purple. She tells us that Mr. Arakeen is 
there to protect the company and that although she has no doubt of his honesty 
and sincerity—I see Mr. Arakeen shift in his seat and his mouth tighten, as if 
he is getting angry—still we need to have someone on our side, and she is that 
person.
“We need to make clear what the situation is now, regarding you and this 
research protocol,” Mr. Arakeen says, when she sits down again. “One of your 
group has already begun the procedure; the rest of you have been promised a 
chance at this experimental treatment.” I think again that it was a threat, not 
a promise, but I do not interrupt. “The company stands by that promise, so that 
any of you who decide to take part in the experimental protocol can do so. You 
will receive full pay, but not the stipend for research subjects, if you choose 
to do so. You will be considered as employed at another site, with the 
employment being participation in this research. The company is prepared to 
cover all medical expenses arising from the treatment, even though this would 
not normally be covered by your health care policy.” He pauses and nods to Mr. 
Aldrin. “Pete, why don’t you hand out those folders now.”
The folders each have a name on the cover, on a little sticker, and another 
little sticker that says: PRIVATE AND CONFIDENTIAL: NOT TO BE REMOVED FROM THIS 
BUILDING.
“As you’ll see,” Mr. Arakeen says: “these folders describe in detail what the 
company is prepared to do for you, whether you choose to participate in this 
research or not.” He turns and hands one to Ms. Beasley. She opens hers quickly 
and starts reading. I open mine.
“Now, if you choose not to participate, you will see—on page seven, paragraph 
one—that there will be no repercussions whatsoever on your terms of employment 
here. You will not lose your job; you will not lose seniority; you will not lose 
your special status. You will simply continue as you are, with the same 
necessary supportive work environment—”
I wonder about that. What if Mr. Crenshaw was right and there really are 
computers that can do what we do and do it better and faster? Someday the 
company could decide to change, even if they do not change now. Other people 
lose their jobs. Don had lost jobs. I could lose my job. It would not be easy to 
find another.
“Are you saying that we have a job for life?” Bailey asks.
Mr. Arakeen has a strange expression on his face. “I… did not say that,” he 
says.
“So if the company finds out we do not make enough money for them in a few 
years, we could still lose our jobs.”
“The situation could require reevaluation in light of later economic conditions, 
yes,” Mr. Arakeen says. “But we do not anticipate any such situation at this 
time.”
I wonder how long “at this time” will last. My parents lost their jobs in the 
economic upheavals of the early aughts, and my mother told me once that she had 
thought, in the late nineties, that they were set for life. Life throws curves, 
she said, and it’s your job to catch them anyway.
Ms. Beasley sits up straight. “I think a minimum period of safe employment might 
be specified,” she says. “In light of our clients’ concerns and the previous 
illegal threats of your manager.”
“Threats which higher management had no knowledge of,” Mr. Arakeen says. “I 
don’t see that we could be expected to—”
“Ten years,” she says.
Ten years is a long time, not a minimum time. Mr. Arakeen’s face reddens. “I 
don’t think—”
“So you are planning termination in the long term?” she asks.
“I didn’t say that,” he says. “But who can foresee what might happen? And ten 
years is far too long a period. No one could make a promise like that.”
“Seven,” she says.
“Four,” he says.
“Six.”
“Five.”
“Five with a good severance package,” she says.
His hands come up, palms forward. I do not know what this gesture means. “All 
right,” he says. “We can discuss the details later, can’t we?”
“Of course,” she says. She smiles at him with her lips, but her eyes are not 
smiling. She touches the hair on the left side of her neck, pats it, and pushes 
it back a little.
“Well, then,” Mr. Arakeen says. He turns his head one way and another, as if to 
ease his collar. “You are guaranteed employment under the same conditions, for 
at least five years, whether you choose to participate in the protocol or not.” 
He glances at Ms. Beasley, then looks at us again. “So you see, you do not lose 
by a decision either way, as far as your job security is concerned. It’s 
entirely up to you. You’ve all qualified medically for the protocol, however.”
He pauses, but no one says anything. I think about it. In five years, I will 
still be in my forties. It would be hard to find a job when I am over forty, but 
retirement would not start for a long time. He gives a short nod and goes on. 
“Now, we’ll give you a little time to review the material in your folders. As 
you can see, these folders are not to be removed from the building for legal 
reasons. Meanwhile, Ms. Beasley and I will confer on some of the legal details, 
but we’ll be here to answer your questions. After that, Dr. Hendricks and Dr. 
Ransome will continue with the planned medical briefing for today, though of 
course no decision will be expected from you today on whether or not to 
participate.”
I read the material in the folder. At the end is a sheet of paper with a space 
on it for my signature. It says that I have read and understood everything in 
the folder and that I have agreed not to talk about it to anyone outside the 
section except the ombudsman and the Center Legal Aid lawyer. I do not sign it 
yet.
Dr. Ransome gets up and again introduces Dr. Hendricks. She begins to tell us 
what we have already heard before. It is hard to pay attention because I know 
that part already. What I want to know comes later, when she starts talking 
about what will actually happen to our brains.
“Without enlarging your heads, we can’t just pack new neurons in,” she says. “We 
have to keep adjusting the number, so there is the right amount of neural tissue 
making the right connections. The brain does this itself, during normal 
maturation: you lose a lot of the neurons you started with, when they don’t make 
connections—and it would be chaos if they did.”
I raise my hand and she nods at me. “Adjust—does this mean that you take some 
tissue out, to make room for the new?”
“Not physically take out; it’s a biological mechanism, actually, resorption—”
Cego and Clinton described resorption during development: redundant neurons 
disappear, resorbed by the body, a process controlled by feedback control 
mechanisms using sensory data in part. As an intellectual model, it is 
fascinating; I was not upset to learn that so many of my neurons had disappeared 
when I knew that it happened to everyone. But if she is not quite saying what I 
think she is not quite saying, they are proposing to resorb some of the neurons 
I have now, as an adult. That is different. The neurons I have now all do 
something useful for me. I raise my hand again.
“Yes, Lou?” This time it is Dr. Ransome who speaks. His voice sounds a little 
tense. I think he thinks I ask too many questions.
“So… you are going to destroy some of our neurons to make room for the new 
growth?”
“Not exactly destroy,” he says. “It’s quite a complicated thing, Lou; I’m not 
sure you’ll understand.” Dr. Hendricks glances at him, then away.
“We aren’t stupid,” mutters Bailey.
“I know what resorption means,” Dale says. “It means that tissue goes away and 
is replaced by other tissue. My sister had cancer and they programmed her body 
to resorb the tumor. If you resorb neurons, they’re gone.”
“I suppose you could look at it that way,” Dr. Ransome says, looking more tense. 
He glares at me; he blames me for starting it, I think.
“But that’s right,” Dr. Hendricks says. She does not look tense but excited, 
like someone waiting to ride on a favorite carnival ride. “We resorb the neurons 
that have made bad connections and grow neurons which will make good 
connections.”
“Gone is gone,” Dale says. “That is the truth. Tell the truth.” He is getting 
upset; his eye is flickering very fast. “When some is gone, the right kind may 
not grow anyway.”
“No!” Linda says loudly. “No, no, no! Not my brain. Not taking apart. Not good, 
not good.” She puts her head down, refusing eye contact, refusing to listen.
“It is not taking anyone’s brain apart,” Dr. Hendricks says. “It is not like 
that at all… It is just adjustment—the new neural attachments grow, and 
nothing’s changed.”
“Except we aren’t autistic,” I say. “If it works right.”
“Exactly.” Now Dr. Hendrick smiles as if I had just said exactly the right 
thing. “You will be just as you are, but not autistic.”
“But autistic is who I am,” Chuy says. “I do not know how to be someone else, 
someone who is not. I have to start over, a baby, and grow up again, to be 
someone else.”
“Well, not exactly,” the doctor says. “Many of the neurons aren’t affected, only 
a few at a time, so you have that past to draw on. Of course there is some 
relearning, some rehabilitation, to be done—that’s in the consent package; your 
personal counselor will explain it to you—but it’s all covered by the company. 
You don’t have to pay for any of it.”
“Lifetime,” Dale says.
“I beg your pardon?” the doctor says.
“If I have to start over, I want more time to be that other person. To live.” 
Dale is the oldest of us, ten years older than I am. He does not look old. His 
hair is still all dark, and thick on top. “I want LifeTime,” he says, and I 
realize that he is not just talking about something lasting a lifetime but about 
the commercial antiaging treatment LifeTime.
“But… but that’s absurd,” Mr. Arakeen says, before the doctors can say anything. 
“It would add… a lot of money to the expense of the project.” He glances at the 
other company people sitting to one side at the front of the room. None of them 
look at him.
Dale closes his eyes tightly; I can see the lid of the left eye flickering even 
so. “If this relearning takes longer than you think. Years even. I want to have 
time to live as a normal person. As many years as I have lived autistic. More.” 
He pauses, his face squeezing together with effort. “It will be more data,” he 
says. “Longer follow-up.” His face relaxes and he opens his eyes. “Add LifeTime 
and I do it. No LifeTime, I go away.”
I glance around. Everyone is staring at Dale, even Linda. Cameron might do 
something like this, but not Dale. He has already changed. I know I have already 
changed. We are autistic, but we change. Maybe we do not need the treatment, 
even to change more, even to be—not just seem—normal.
But as I think about that and how long it might take, paragraphs from the book 
come back to me. “No,” I say. Dale turns and looks at me. His face is immobile. 
“It is not a good idea,” I say. “This treatment does things to the neurons and 
so does LifeTime. This one is experimental; nobody knows if it will work at 
all.”
“We know it works,” Dr. Hendricks puts in. “It’s just—”
“You don’t know for sure how it works on humans,” I say, interrupting her even 
though interrupting is rude. She interrupted me first.
“That is why you need us, or people like us. It is not a good idea to do both. 
In science, you change one variable at a time.”
Mr. Arakeen looks relieved; Dale says nothing, but his eyelids droop. I do not 
know what he is thinking. I know how I feel, shaky inside.
“I want to live longer,” Linda says. Her hand flings out as if it had a life of 
its own. “I want to live longer and not change.”
“I do not know if I want to live longer or not,” I say. The words come slowly 
but even Dr. Hendricks does not interrupt. “What if I become someone I don’t 
like and am stuck living longer like that? First I want to know who I would be, 
before I can decide about living longer.”
Dale nods slowly.
“I think we should decide on the basis of this treatment alone. They are not 
trying to force us. We can think about it.”
“But—but—” Mr. Arakeen seems caught on the word, jerking it out, then makes a 
twisting movement with his head and goes on. “You’re saying you will think… How 
long will that take?”
“As long as they want,” Ms. Beasley says. “You’ve already got one subject 
undergoing treatment; it would be prudent to space them out anyway, see how it 
goes.”
“I don’t say I’ll do it,” Chuy says. “But I would think about it more… more in 
favor… if LifeTime is part of it. Maybe not at the same time, but later.”
“I will think about it,” Linda says. She is pale and her eyes are moving around 
the way they do before she shuts down, but she says it. “I will think about it, 
and living longer would make it better, but I do not really want it.”
“Me, either,” Eric says. “I do not want someone changing my brain. Criminals 
have their brains changed and I am not a criminal. Autistic is different, not 
bad. It is not wrong to be different. Sometimes it is hard, but it is not 
wrong.”
I do not say anything. I am not sure what I want to say. It is too fast. How can 
I decide? How can I choose to be someone else I do not know and cannot predict. 
Change comes anyway, but it is not my fault if I did not choose it.
“I want it,” Bailey says. He squeezes his eyes shut and speaks that way, with 
his eyes shut and his voice very tense. “It is this to exchange for that—for Mr. 
Crenshaw threatening us and the risk it has of not working and making things 
worse. It is this I need to make a balance.”
I look at Dr. Hendricks and Dr. Ransome; they are whispering to each other, 
moving their hands. I think they are already thinking how the two treatments 
might interact.
“It is too dangerous,” Dr. Ransome says, looking up. “We can’t possibly do them 
at the same time.” He glances at me. “Lou was right. Even if you get a life 
extension treatment later, it can’t be done at the same time.”
Linda shrugs and looks down. Her shoulders are tense; her hands are fisted in 
her lap. I think she will not take the treatment without the promise of longer 
life. If I do it and she does not, we may not see each other again. I feel 
strange about that; she was in this unit before I was. I have seen her every 
working day for years.
“I will talk to the board about this,” Mr. Arakeen says, more calmly. “We’ll 
have to get more legal and medical advice. But if I understand you, some of you 
are demanding life extension treatment as part of the package, at some time in 
the future, as a condition of participation, is that right?”
“Yes,” Bailey says. Linda nods.
Mr. Arakeen stands there, his body swaying a little as he shifts from foot to 
foot. The light catches on his name tag, moving with his motion. One button on 
his coat disappears and reappears behind the podium as he rocks back and forth. 
Finally he stops and gives a sharp nod.
“All right. I will ask the board. I think they will say no, but I will ask 
them.”
“Keep in mind,” Ms. Beasley says, “that these employees have not agreed to the 
procedure, only to think about it.”
“All right.” Mr. Arakeen nods and then twists his neck again. “But I expect you 
all to keep your word. Really think about it.”
“I do not lie,” Dale says. “Do not lie to me.” He gets up, unfolding a bit 
stiffly as he does. “Come on,” he says to the rest of us. “Work to do.”
None of them say anything, not the lawyers nor the doctors, nor Mr. Aldrin. 
Slowly, we get up; I feel uncertain, almost shaky. Is it all right to just walk 
away? But when I am moving, walking, I start to feel better. Stronger. I am 
scared, but I am also happy. I feel lighter, as if gravity were less.
Out in the corridor, we turn left to go to the elevators. When we get to the 
place where the hall widens out for the elevators, Mr. Crenshaw is standing 
there, holding a cardboard box in both hands. It is full of things, but I can’t 
see all of them. Balanced on top is a pair of running shoes, an expensive brand 
I remember seeing in the sporting goods catalog. I wonder how fast Mr. Crenshaw 
runs. Two men in the light-blue shirts of company security stand beside him, one 
on each side. His eyes widen when he sees us.
“What are you doing here?” he says to Dale, who is slightly ahead of the rest of 
us. He turns toward him, taking a step, and the two men in uniform put their 
hands on his arms. He stops. “You’re supposed to be in G-Twenty-eight until four 
P.M.; this isn’t even the right building.”
Dale does not slow down; he walks on by without saying a word.
Mr. Crenshaw’s head turns like a robot’s and then swings back. He glares at me. 
“Lou! What is going on here?”
I want to know what he is doing with a box in his hands, with a security guard 
escort, but I am not rude enough to ask. Mr. Aldrin said we did not have to 
worry about Mr. Crenshaw anymore, so I do not have to answer him when he is rude 
to me. “I have a lot of work to do, Mr. Crenshaw,” I say. His hands jerk, as if 
he wants to drop the box and reach out to me, but he does not, and I am past 
him, following Dale.
When we are back in our own building, Dale speaks. “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,” he 
says. And louder, “YES, YES, YES!”
“I am not bad,” Linda says. “I am not bad person.”
“You are not a bad person,” I agree.
Her eyes fill with tears. “It is bad to be autistic person. It is bad to be 
angry to be autistic person. It is bad to want not be—not want be— autistic 
person. All bad ways. No right way.”
“It is stupid,” Chuy says. “Tell us to want to be normal, and then tell us to 
love ourselves as we are. If people want to change it means they do not like 
something about how they are now. That other— impossible.”
Dale is smiling, a wide, tight smile I have not seen him use before. “When 
someone says something impossible, someone is wrong.”
“Yes,” I say. “It is a mistake.”
“Mistake,” Dale says. “And mistake to believe impossible wrong.”
“Yes,” I say. I can feel myself tensing up, afraid Dale will start talking about 
religion.
“So if normal people tell us to do something impossible, then we do not have to 
think everything normal people say is true.”
“Not all lies,” Linda says.
“Not all lies does not mean all true,” Dale says.
That is obvious, but I had not thought before that it was really impossible for 
people to want to change and at the same time be happy with who they were before 
the change. I do not think any of us thought that way until Chuy and Dale said 
it.
“I started thinking at your place,” Dale said. “I could not say it all then. But 
that helped.”
“If it goes wrong,” Eric said, “it will be even more expensive for them to take 
care of… what happens. If it lasts longer.”
“I do not know how Cameron is doing,” Linda says.
“He wanted to be first,” Chuy says.
“It would be better if we could go one at a time and see what happens to the 
others,” Eric says.
“The speed of dark would be slower,” I say. They look at me. I remember that I 
have not told them about the speed of dark and the speed of light. “The speed of 
light in a vacuum is one hundred and eighty-six thousand miles per second,” I 
say.
“I know that,” Dale says.
“What I wonder,” Linda says, “is, since things fall faster as they get nearer 
the ground and that is gravity, does light go faster near a lot of gravity, like 
a black hole?”
I never knew Linda was interested in the speed of light at all. “I do not know,” 
I say. “But the books do not say anything about the speed of dark. Some people 
told me it does not have a speed, that it is just not light, where light is not, 
but I think it had to get there.”
They are all silent a moment. Dale says, “If LifeTime can make time longer for 
us, maybe something can make light faster.”
Chuy says, “Cameron wanted to be first. Cameron will be normal first. That is 
faster than us.”
Eric says, “I am going to the gym.” He turns away.
Lindas face has tightened, a ridged furrow on her forehead. “Light has a speed. 
Dark should have a speed. Opposites share everything but direction.”
I do not understand that. I wait.
“Positive and negative numbers are alike except for direction,” Linda goes on, 
slowly. “Large and small are both size, but in different directions. To and from 
mean the same path, but in different directions. So light and dark are opposite, 
but alike just in the same direction.” She throws her arms out suddenly. “What I 
like about astronomy,” she says. “So much out there, so many stars, so many 
distances. Everything from nothing to everything, altogether.”
I did not know Linda liked astronomy. She has always seemed the most remote of 
us, the most autistic. I know what she means, though. I also like the series 
from small to large, from near to far, from the photon of light that enters my 
eye, closer than close, to where it came from, light-years away across the 
universe.
“I like stars,” she says. “I want—I wanted—to work with stars. They said no. 
They said, ‘Your mind does not work the right way. Only a few people can do 
that.’ I knew it was math. I knew I was good in math, but I had to take adaptive 
math even though I always made hundreds, and when I finally got into the good 
classes they said it was too late. At college they said take applied math and 
study computers. There are jobs in computers. They said astronomy was not 
practical. If I live longer, it will not be too late anymore.”
This is the most I have ever heard Linda talk. Her face is pinker on the cheeks 
now; her eyes wander less.
“I did not know you liked stars,” I say.
“Stars are far apart from each other,” she says. “They do not have to touch to 
know each other. They shine at each other from far away.”
I start to say that stars do not know each other, that stars are not alive, but 
something stops me. I read that in a book, that stars are incandescent gas, and 
in another book that gas is inanimate matter. Maybe the book was wrong. Maybe 
they are incandescent gas and alive.
Linda looks at me, actually makes eye contact. “Lou — do you like stars?
“Yes,” I say. “And gravity and light and space and — ”
“Betelgeuse,” she says. She grins, and it is suddenly lighter in the hall. I did 
not know it was dark before. The dark was there first, but the light caught up. 
“Rigel. Antares. Light and all colors. Wavelengths…” Her hands ripple in the 
air, and I know she means the pattern that wavelength and frequency make.
“Binaries,” I say. “Brown dwarfs.”
Her face twists and relaxes. “Oh, that’s old,” she says. “Chu and Sanderly have 
reclassified a lot of those — ” She stops. “Lou — I thought you spent all your 
time with normals. Playing normal.”
“I go to church,” I say. “I go to fencing club.”
“Fencing?”
“Swords,” I say. Her worried look does not change. “It’s… a kind of game,” I 
say. “We try to poke each other.”
“Why?” She still looks puzzled. “If you like stars — ”
“I like fencing, too,” I say.
“With normal people,” she says.
“Yes, I like them.”
“It’s hard…” she says. “I go to the planetarium. I try to talk to the scientists 
who come, but… the words tangle. I can tell they do not want to talk to me. They 
act like I am stupid or crazy.”
“The people I know, they are not too bad,” I say. I feel guilty as I say it, 
because Marjory is more than “not too bad.” Tom and Lucia are better than “not 
too bad.” “Except for the one who tried to kill me.”
“Tried to kill you?” Linda says. I am surprised that she did not know but 
remember that I never told her. Maybe she does not watch the news.
“He was angry with me,” I say.
“Because you are autistic?”
“Not exactly… well… yes.” What was the core of Don’s anger, after all, but the 
fact that I, a mere incomplete, a false-person, was succeeding in his world?
“That is sick,” Linda says, with emphasis. She gives a great shrug and turns 
away. “Stars,” she says.
I go into my office, thinking of light and dark and stars and the space between 
them that is full of light they pour out. How can there be any dark in space 
with all the stars in it? If we can see the stars, that means there is light. 
And our instruments that see other than visible light, they detect it in a great 
blur—it is everywhere.
I do not understand why people speak of space as cold and dark, unwelcoming. It 
is as if they never went out in the night and looked up. Wherever real dark is, 
it is beyond the range of our instruments, far on the edge of the universe, 
where dark came first. But the light catches up.
Before I was born, people thought even more wrong things about autistic 
children. I have read about it. Darker than dark.
I did not know Linda liked stars. I did not know she wanted to work in 
astronomy. Maybe she even wanted to go into space, the way I did. Do. Do still. 
If the treatment works, maybe I can—the very thought holds me motionless, frozen 
in delight, and then I have to move. I stand up and stretch, but it is not 
enough.
Eric is just getting off the trampoline as I come into the gym. He has been 
bouncing to Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, but it is too strong for what I want to 
think about. Eric nods at me, and I change the music, scrolling through the 
possibilities until something feels right. Carmen. The orchestral suite. Yes.
I need that excitement. I need that explosive quality. I bounce higher and 
higher, feeling the wonderful openness of free fall before I feel the equally 
wonderful compression, joints squeezing, muscles working to push me to a higher 
bounce. Opposites are the same thing in different directions. Action and 
reaction. Gravity—I do not know an opposite for gravity, but the elasticity of 
the trampoline creates one. Numbers and patterns race through my mind, forming, 
breaking up, re-forming.
I remember being afraid of water, the unstable, unpredictable shifts and wobbles 
in it as it touched me. I remember the explosive joy of finally swimming, the 
realization that even though it was unstable, even though I could not predict 
the changing pressure in the pool, I could still stay afloat and move in the 
direction I chose to go. I remember being afraid of the bicycle, of its wobbly 
unpredictability, and the same joy when I figured out how to ride out that 
unpredictability, how to use my will to overcome its innate chaos. Again I am 
afraid, more afraid because I understand more—I could lose all the adaptations I 
have made and have nothing—but if I can ride this wave, this biological bicycle, 
then I will have incomparably more.
As my legs tire, I bounce lower, lower, lower, and finally stop.
They do not want us stupid and helpless. They do not want to destroy our minds; 
they want to use them.
I do not want to be used. I want to use my own mind, myself, for what I want to 
do.
I think I may want to try this treatment. I do not have to. I do not need to: I 
am all right as I am. But I think I am beginning to want to because maybe, if I 
change, and if it is my idea and not theirs, then maybe I can learn what I want 
to learn and do what I want to do. It is not any one thing; it is all the things 
at once, all the possibilities. “I will not be the same,” I say, letting go of 
the comfortable gravity, flying up out of that certainly into the uncertainty of 
free fall.
When I walk out, I feel light in both ways, still in less than normal gravity 
and still full of more light than darkness. But gravity returns when I think of 
telling my friends what I am doing. I think they will not like it any better 
than the Center’s lawyer.



CHAPTER TWENTY
« ^ » 
MR. ALDRIN COMES BY TO TELL US THAT THE COMPANY will not agree to provide 
LifeTime treatments at this time, though they may—he emphasizes that it is only 
a possibility—assist those of us who want to have LifeTime treatments after the 
other treatment, if it is successful. “It is too dangerous to do them together,” 
he says. “It increases the risk, and then if something does go wrong it would 
last longer.”
I think he should say it plainly: if the treatment causes more damage, we would 
be worse off and the company would have to support us for longer. But I know 
that normal people do not say things plainly.
We do not talk among ourselves after he leaves. The others all look at me, but 
they do not say anything. I hope Linda takes the treatment anyway. I want to 
talk to her more about stars and gravity and the speed of light and dark.
In my own office, I call Ms. Beasley at Legal Aid and tell her that I have 
decided to agree to the treatment. She asks me if I am sure. I am not sure, but 
I am sure enough. Then I call Mr. Aldrin and tell him. He also asks if I am 
sure. “Yes,” I say, and then I ask, “Is your brother going to do it?” I have 
been wondering about his brother.
“Jeremy?” He sounds surprised that I asked. I think it is a reasonable question. 
“I don’t know, Lou. It depends on the size of the group. If they open it up to 
outsiders, I’ll consider asking him. If he could live on his own, if he could be 
happier…”
“He is not happy?” I ask.
Mr. Aldrin sighs. “I… don’t talk about him much,” he says. I wait. Not talking 
about something much does not mean someone doesn’t want to talk about it. Mr. 
Aldrin clears his throat and then goes on. “No, Lou, he’s not happy. He’s… very 
impaired. The doctors then… my parents… he’s on a lot of medication, and he 
never learned to talk very well.” I think I understand what he is not saying. 
His brother was born too early, before the treatments that helped me and the 
others. Maybe he didn’t get the best treatment, even of those available at the 
time. I think of the descriptions in the books; I imagine Jeremy being stuck 
where I was as a young child.
“I hope the new treatment works,” I say. “I hope it works for him, too.”
Mr. Aldrin makes a sound I do not understand; his voice is hoarse when he speaks 
again. “Thank you, Lou,” he says. “You’re—you’re a good man.”
I am not a good man. I am just a man, like he is, but I like it that he thinks I 
am good.
TOM AND LUCIA AND MARJORY ARE ALL IN THE LIVING ROOM when I arrive. They are 
talking about the next tournament. Tom looks up at me.
“Lou—have you decided?”
“Yes,” I say. “I will do it.”
“Good. You’ll need to fill out this entry form—”
“Not that,” I say. I realize that he would not know I meant something else. “I 
will not fight in this tournament—” Will I ever fight in another tournament? 
Will the future me want to fence? Can you fence in space? I think it would be 
very hard in free fall.
“But you said,” Lucia says; then her face changes, seems to flatten out with 
surprise. “Oh—you mean… you’re going through with the treatment?”
“Yes,” I say. I glance at Marjory. She is looking at Lucia, and then at me, and 
then back. I do not remember if I talked to Marjory about the treatment.
“When?” asks Lucia before I have time to think about how to explain to Marjory.
“It will start Monday,” I say. “I have a lot to do. I have to move into the 
clinic.”
“Are you sick?” Marjory says; her face is pale now. “Is something wrong?”
“I am not sick,” I say to Marjory. “There is an experimental treatment that may 
make me normal.”
“Normal! But, Lou, you’re fine the way you are. I like the way you are. You 
don’t have to be like everybody else. Who has been telling you that?” She sounds 
angry. I do not know if she is angry with me or with someone she thinks told me 
I needed to change. I do not know if I should tell her the whole story or part 
of it. I will tell her everything.
“It started because Mr. Crenshaw at work wanted to eliminate our unit,” I say. 
“He knew about this treatment. He said it will save money.”
“But that’s—that’s coercion. It’s wrong. It’s against the law. He can’t do 
that—”
She is really angry now, the color coming and going on her cheeks. It makes me 
want to grab her and hug her. That is not appropriate.
“That is how it started,” I say. “But you are right; he could not do what he 
said he would do. Mr. Aldrin, our supervisor, found a way to stop him.” I am 
still surprised by this. I was sure Mr. Aldrin had changed his mind and would 
not help us. I still do not understand what Mr. Aldrin did that stopped Mr. 
Crenshaw and caused him to lose his job and be escorted out by security guards 
with his things in a box. I tell them what Mr. Aldrin said and then what the 
lawyers said in the meeting. “But now I want to change,” I say, at the end.
She takes a deep breath. I like to watch her take deep breaths; the front of her 
clothes pulls tight. “Why?” she asks in a quieter voice. “It isn’t because of… 
because of… us, is it? Me?”
“No,” I say. “It is not about you. It is about me.”
Her shoulders sag. I do not know if it is relief or sadness. “Then was it Don? 
Did he make you do this, convince you that you weren’t all right as you were?”
“It was not Don… not only Don…” It is obvious, I think, and I do not know why 
she cannot see it. She was there when the security man at the airport stopped me 
and my words stuck and she had to help me. She was there when I needed to talk 
to the police officer and my words stuck and Tom had to help me. I do not like 
being the one who always needs help. “It is about me,” I say again. “I want not 
to have problems at the airport and sometimes with other people when it is hard 
to talk and have people looking at me. I want to go places and learn things I 
did not know I could learn…”
Her faces changes again, smoothing out, and her voice loses some of its 
emotional tone. “What is the treatment like, Lou? What will happen?”
I open the packet I have brought. We are not supposed to discuss the treatment 
since it is proprietary and experimental, but I think this is a bad idea. If 
things go wrong, someone outside should know. I did not tell anyone I was taking 
my packet out, and they did not stop me.
I begin to read. Almost at once, Lucia stops me.
“Lou—do you understand this stuff now?”
“Yes. I think so. After Cego and Clinton, I could read the on-line journals 
pretty easily.”
“Why don’t you let me read that, then? I can understand it better if I see the 
words. Then we can talk about it.”
There is nothing to talk about, really. I am going to do it. But I hand Lucia 
the packet, because it is always easier to do what Lucia says. Marjory scoots 
closer to her and they both begin to read. I look at Tom. He raises his eyebrows 
and shakes his head.
“You’re a brave man, Lou. I knew that, but this—! I don’t know if I’d have the 
guts to let someone mess with my brain.”
“You don’t need to,” I say. “You are normal. You have a job with tenure. You 
have Lucia and this house.” I cannot say the rest that I think, that he is easy 
in his body, that he sees and hears and tastes and smells and feels what others 
do, so his reality matches theirs.
“Will you come back to us, do you think?” Tom asks. He looks sad.
“I do not know,” I say. “I hope that I will still like to fence, because it is 
fun, but I do not know.”
“Do you have time to stay tonight?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say.
“Then let’s go on out.” He gets up and leads the way to the equipment room. 
Lucia and Marjory stay behind, reading. When we get to the equipment room, he 
turns to me. “Lou, are you sure you aren’t doing this because you’re in love 
with Marjory? Because you want to be a normal man for her? That would be a noble 
thing to do, but—”
I feel myself going hot all over. “It is not about her. I like her. I want to 
touch her and hold her and… things that are not appropriate. But this is…” I 
reach out and touch the upright end of the stand that holds the blades, because 
suddenly I am trembling and afraid I might fall. “Things do not stay the same,” 
I say. “I am not the same. I cannot not change. This is just… faster change. But 
I choose it.”
“ ‘Fear change, and it will destroy you; embrace change, and it will enlarge 
you,’ ” Tom says, in the voice he uses for quotes. I do not know what he is 
quoting from. Then in his normal voice, with a little joking voice added, he 
says, “Choose your weapon, then: if you aren’t going to be here for a while, I 
want to be sure to get my licks in tonight.”
I take my blades and my mask and have put on my leather before I remember that I 
did not stretch. I sit down on the patio and begin the stretches. It is colder 
out here; the flagstones are hard and cold under me.
Tom sits across from me. “I’ve done mine, but more never hurts as I get older,” 
he says. I can see, when he bends to put his face on his knee, that the hair on 
the top of his head is thinning, and there is gray in it. He puts one arm over 
his head and pulls on it with the other arm. “What will you do when you’re 
through the treatment?”
“I would like to go into space,” I say.
“You—? Lou, you never cease to amaze me.” He puts the other arm on top of his 
head now and pulls on the elbow. “I didn’t know you wanted to go into space. 
When did that start?”
“When I was little,” I say. “But I knew I could not do it. I knew it was not 
appropriate.”
“When I think of the waste—!” Tom says, bending his head now to his other knee. 
“Lou, as much as I worried about this before, I think you’re right now. You have 
too much potential to be locked up in a diagnosis the rest of your life. Though 
it’s going to hurt Marjory when you grow away from her.”
“I do not want to hurt Marjory,” I say, “I do not think I will grow away from 
her.” It is a strange expression; I am sure it cannot be literal. If two things 
close to each other both grow, they will get closer together, not apart.
“I know that. You like her a lot—no, you love her. That’s clear. But, Lou—she’s 
a nice woman, but as you say, you’re about to make a big change. You won’t be 
the same person.”
“I will always like—love—her,” I say. I had not thought that becoming normal 
would make that harder or impossible. I do not understand why Tom thinks so. “I 
do not think she pretended to like me just to do research on me, whatever Emmy 
says.”
“Good heavens, who thought that up? Who’s Emmy?”
“Someone at the Center,” I say. I do not want to talk about Emmy, so I hurry 
through it. “Emmy said Marjory was a researcher and just talked to me as a 
subject, not a friend. Marjory told me that her research was on neuromuscular 
disorders, so I knew Emmy was wrong.”
Tom stands up, and I scramble up, too. “But for you—it’s a great opportunity.”
“I know,” I say. “I wanted—I thought once—I almost asked her out, but I don’t 
know how.”
“Do you think the treatment will help?”
“Maybe.” I put on my mask. “But if it does not help with that, it will help with 
other things, I think. And I will always like her.”
“I’m sure you will, but it won’t be the same. Can’t be. It’s like any system, 
Lou. If I lost a foot, I might still fence, but my patterns would be different, 
right?”
I do not like thinking of Tom losing a foot, but I can understand what he means. 
I nod.
“So if you make a big change in who you are, then you and Marjory will be in a 
different pattern. You may be closer, or you may be further apart.”
Now I know what I did not know a few minutes ago, that I had had a deep and 
hidden thought about Marjory and the treatment and me. I did think it would be 
easier. I did have a hope that if I were normal, we might be normal together, 
might marry and have children and a normal life.
“It won’t be the same, Lou,” Tom says again from behind his mask. I can see the 
glitter of his eyes. “It can’t be.”
Fencing is the same and it is not the same. Tom’s patterns are clearer now each 
time I fence with him, but my pattern slides in and out of focus. My attention 
wavers. Will Marjory come outside? Will she fence? What are she and Lucia saying 
about the consent packet? When I concentrate, I can make touches on him, but 
then I lose track of where he is in his pattern and he makes touches on me. It 
is three touches to five when Marjory and Lucia come out, and Tom and I have 
just stopped for breath. Even though it is a cool night, we are sweaty.
“Well,” Lucia says. I wait. She says nothing more.
“It looks dangerous to me,” Marjory says. “Mucking about with neural 
reabsorption and then regeneration. But I haven’t read the original research.”
“Too many places it can go wrong,” Lucia says. “Viral insertion of genetic 
material, that’s old hat, a proven technology. Nanotech cartilage repair, blood 
vessel maintenance, inflammation management, fine. Programmable chips for spinal 
cord injuries, okay. But tinkering with gene switches—they haven’t got all the 
bugs out of that yet. That mess with marrow in bone regeneration—of course 
that’s not nerves and it was in children, but still.”
I do not know what she is talking about, but I do not want another reason to be 
scared.
“What bothers me most is that it’s all in-house with your employer, an 
incestuous mess if ever I saw one. Anything goes wrong, you have no patient 
advocate to speak up for you. Your Legal Aid person doesn’t have the medical 
expertise… But it’s your decision.”
“Yes,” I say. I look at Marjory. I cannot help it.
“Lou…” Then she shakes her head, and I know she is not going to say what she was 
going to say. “Want to fence?” she asks.
I do not want to fence. I want to sit with her. I want to touch her. I want to 
eat dinner with her and lie in bed with her. But that is something I cannot do, 
not yet. I stand up and put on my mask.
What I feel when her blade touches mine I cannot describe. It is stronger than 
before. I feel my body tightening, reacting, in a way that is not appropriate 
but is wonderful. I want this to go on and I want to stop and grab her. I slow 
down, so that I do not make a touch too quickly, and so that this will last.
I could still ask her if she will have dinner with me. I could do it before or 
after treatment. Maybe.
THURSDAY MORNING. IT IS CHILLY, WINDY, WITH GRAY CLOUDS scudding across the sky. 
I am hearing Beethoven’s Mass in C. The light looks heavy and slow, though the 
wind is moving fast. Dale, Bailey, and Eric are already here—or their cars are. 
Linda’s car is not in place yet; neither is Chuy’s. As I walk from the parking 
lot to the building, the wind blows my slacks against my legs; I can feel the 
rippling of the fabric against my skin; it feels like many little fingers. I 
remember begging my mother to cut the tags out of my T-shirts when I was little, 
until I was old enough to do it myself. Will I still notice that afterward?
I hear a car behind me and turn. It is Linda’s car. She parks in her usual 
place. She gets out without looking at me.
At the door, I insert my card, put my thumb on the plate, and the door lock 
clicks and clunks to release. I push the door open and wait for Linda. She has 
opened her car’s trunk and is taking out a box. It is like the box Mr. Crenshaw 
had, but it has no markings on the side.
I did not think to bring a box to put things in. I wonder if I can find a box 
during lunch hour. I wonder if Linda bringing a box means she has decided to 
take the treatment.
She holds the box under one arm. She walks fast, the wind blowing her hair back. 
She usually has it tied up; I did not know it would ripple like that in the 
wind. Her face looks different, uncluttered and spare, as if it were a carving 
without any fear or worry.
She walks past me holding the box and I follow her inside. I remember to touch 
the screen for two people entering on one card. Bailey is in the hall.
“You have a box,” he says to Linda.
“I thought someone might need it,” Linda says. “I brought it in case.
“I will bring a box tomorrow,” Bailey says. “Lou, are you leaving today or 
tomorrow?”
“Today,” I say. Linda looks at me and holds the box. “I could use the box,” I 
say, and she hands it to me without meeting my eyes.
I go into my office. It looks strange already, like someone else’s office. If I 
left it alone, would it look strange like this when I come back afterward? But 
since it looks strange now, does that mean that already I am living partly in 
afterward?
I move the little fan that makes the spin spirals and whirligigs turn, and then 
I move it back. I sit in my chair and look again. It is the same office. I am 
not the same person.
I look in the drawers of my desk and see nothing but the same old stack of 
manuals. Down at the bottom—though I have not looked at it in a long time—is the 
Employees’ Manual. On top are the different system upgrade manuals. These are 
not supposed to be printed out, but it is still easier to read things on paper 
where the letters are absolutely still. Everyone uses my manuals. I do not want 
to leave these illicit copies here while I am in treatment. I pull them all out 
and turn the stack upside down so the Employees’ Manual is on top. I do not know 
what to do with them.
In the bottom drawer is an old mobile that I used to have hanging here until the 
biggest fish got bent. Now the shiny surface of the fishes has little black 
spots. I pull it out, wincing at the jingly noise it makes, and rub at one of 
the black spots. It doesn’t come off. It looks sick. I put it in the 
wastebasket, wincing again at the noise.
In the flat drawer above the kneehole I keep colored pens and a little plastic 
container with some change for the soda machine. I put the container in my 
pocket and put the pens on top of the desk. I look at the shelving. All that is 
project information, files, things the company owns. I do not have to clean off 
the shelves. I take down the spin spirals that are not my favorites first, the 
yellow and silver and the orange and red.
I hear Mr. Aldrin’s voice in the hall, speaking to someone. He opens my door.
“Lou—I forgot to remind everyone not to take any project work off-campus. If you 
want to store any project-related materials, you can stack them with a label 
explaining that they must go in secured storage.”
“Yes, Mr. Aldrin,” I say. I feel uneasy about those system update printouts in 
the box, but they are not project-related.
“Will you be on-campus at all tomorrow?”
“I do not think so,” I say. “I do not want to start something and leave it 
unfinished, and I will have everything cleared out today.”
“Fine. You did get my list of recommended preparations?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Good, then. I—” He looks back over his shoulder and then comes into my office 
and shuts the door. I feel myself tensing; my stomach churns. “Lou—” He 
hesitates, clears his throat, and looks away. “Lou, I—I want to tell you I’m 
sorry this all happened.”
I do not know what answer he expects. I do not say anything.
“I never wanted… if it had been up to me, things wouldn’t have changed—”
He is wrong. Things would have changed. Don would still have been angry with me. 
I would still have fallen in love with Marjory. I am not sure why he is saying 
this; he must know that things do change, whether people want them to or not. A 
man can lie beside the pool for weeks, for years, thinking about the angel 
coming down, before someone stops to ask him if he wants to be healed.
The look on Mr. Aldrin’s face reminds me of how I have felt so often. He is 
scared, I realize. He is usually scared of something. It hurts to be scared for 
a long time; I know that hurt. I wish he did not have that look, because it 
makes me feel I should do something about it and I do not know what to do.
“It is not your fault,” I say. His face relaxes. That was the right thing to 
say. It is too easy. I can say it, but does that make it true? Words can be 
wrong. Ideas can be wrong.
“I want to be sure you really are—you really do want the treatment,” he says. 
“There’s absolutely no pressure—”
He is wrong again, though he may be right that there is no pressure from the 
company right now. Now that I know change will come, now that I know this change 
is possible, the pressure grows in me, as air fills a balloon or light fills 
space. Light is not passive; light itself presses on whatever it touches.
“It is my decision,” I say. I mean, whether it is right or wrong, it is what I 
decided. I can be wrong, too.
“Thanks, Lou,” he says. “You—you all—you mean a lot to me.”
I do not know what “mean a lot” means. Literally it would mean that we have a 
lot of meaning in us, which he can take, and I do not think that is what Mr. 
Aldrin is saying. I do not ask. I am still uncomfortable when I think about the 
times he talked to us. I do not say anything. After 9.3 seconds, he nods and 
turns to go. “Take care,” he says. “Good luck.”
I understand “Be careful,” but I do not think “Take care” is as clear. Care is 
not something you can take and walk around with, like a box. I do not say that, 
either. Afterward I may not even think about that. I should start now to think 
what afterward is like.
I notice he does not say, “I hope you are cured.” I do not know if he is being 
tactful and polite or thinks it will not go well. I do not ask. His pocket 
tagger bleeps, and he backs out into the hall. He does not shut my door. It is 
wrong to listen to other people’s conversation, but it is not polite to shut the 
door on someone in authority. I cannot help hearing what he says, though I 
cannot hear what the other person says. “Yes, sir, I’ll be there.”
His footsteps move away. I relax, taking a deep breath. I take down my favorite 
spin spirals and take the whirligigs off their stands. The room looks bare, but 
my desk looks cluttered. I cannot tell if it will all fit in Linda’s box. Maybe 
I can find another box. Soon begun, soonest done. When I get into the hall, Chuy 
is at the door, struggling to hold it open and carry in several boxes. I hold 
the door wide for him.
“I brought one for everybody,” he says. “It will save time.”
“Linda brought a box I am using,” I say.
“Maybe someone will need two,” he says. He drops the boxes in the hall. “You can 
have one if you need one.”
“I need one,” I say. “Thanks.”
I pick up a box that is bigger than the one Linda brought and go back to my 
office. I put the manuals in the bottom because they are heavy. The colored pens 
fit between the manuals and the side of the box. I put the whirligigs and spin 
spirals on top and then remember the fan. I take them out and put the fan on top 
of the manuals. Now there will not be room for everything else. I look at the 
box. I do not need the Employees’ Manual, and no one will be angry with me for 
having a copy in my office. I take it out and leave it on the desk. I put the 
fan in, and then the spin spirals and whirligigs. They just fit. I think of the 
wind outside. They are lightweight and might blow out.
In the last drawer, I find the towel I use to dry off my head when it is raining 
and I have walked in from the car in the rain. That will fit on top of the spin 
spirals and whirligigs and keep them from blowing away. I fold the towel on top 
of the things in the box and pick up the box. Now I am doing what Mr. Crenshaw 
was doing, carrying a box of my things out of an office. Maybe I would look like 
Mr. Crenshaw to someone watching, except that no security guards stand beside 
me. We are not alike. This is my choice; I do not think his leaving was his 
choice. When I get near the door, Dale is coming out of his office; he opens the 
door for me.
Outside, the clouds are thicker and the day seems darker, colder, fuzzy around 
the edges. It may rain in a little while. I like the cold. The wind is behind 
me, and I can feel it pushing on my back. I put the box down on the front of my 
car, and the towel starts to blow off. I put my hand on it. It will be hard to 
unlock the door while holding the towel down. I move the box to the passenger 
side of the car and rest my foot on the edge. Now I can unlock the door.
A first drop of icy rain flicks my cheek. I put the box on the passenger seat, 
then close the door and lock it. I think about going back inside, but I am sure 
I got everything. I do not want to put current project work in a stack for 
special storage. I do not want to see that project again.
I do want to see Dale and Bailey and Chuy and Eric and Linda again, though. 
Another flick of rain. The cold wind feels good. I shake my head and go back to 
the door, insert my card, and enter my thumb-print. All the others are in the 
hall, some with full boxes and some just standing.
“Want to get something to eat?” Dale says. The others look around.
“It is only ten-twelve,” says Chuy. “It is not time for lunch. I am still 
working.” He does not have a box. Linda does not have a box. It seems odd that 
the people who are not leaving brought boxes. Did they want the rest of us to 
leave?
“We could go for pizza later,” says Dale. We look at each other. I do not know 
what they are thinking, but I am thinking it will not be the same and also too 
much the same. It is pretending.
“We could go somewhere else later,” Chuy says.
“Pizza,” says Linda.
We leave it at that. I think I will not come.
It feels very odd to be driving around in the daylight on a weekday. I drive 
home and park in the space nearest the door. I carry the box upstairs. The 
apartment building is very quiet. I put the box in my closet, behind my shoes.
The apartment is quiet and neat. I washed the breakfast dishes before I left; I 
always do. I take the container of coins out of my pocket and put it on top of 
the clothes baskets.
They told us to bring three changes of clothes. I can pack those now. I do not 
know what the weather will be or if we will need outside clothes as well as 
inside clothes. I take my suitcase from the closet and take the first three knit 
shirts on top of the stack in my second drawer. Three sets of underwear. Three 
pairs of socks. Two pairs of tan slacks and a pair of blue slacks. My blue 
sweatshirt, in case it is cold.
I have an extra toothbrush, comb, and brush that I keep for emergencies. I have 
never had an emergency. This is not an emergency, but if I pack them now I will 
not have to think about it again. I put the toothbrush, a new tube of 
toothpaste, the comb, brush, razor, shaving cream, and a nail clipper in the 
little zipper bag that fits into my suitcase and put it in. I look again at the 
list they gave us. That is everything. I tighten the straps in the suitcase, 
then zip it shut and put it away.
Mr. Aldrin said to contact the bank, the apartment manager, and any friends who 
might be worried. He gave us a statement to give to the bank and apartment 
manager, explaining that we would be gone on a temporary assignment for the 
company, our paychecks would continue to be paid into the bank, and the bank 
should continue to make all automatic payments. I bounce the statement to my 
branch manager.
Downstairs, the apartment manager’s door is shut, but I can hear a vacuum 
cleaner moaning inside. When I was little, I was afraid of the vacuum cleaner 
because it sounded like it was crying, “Ohhhh… noooooo… oohhhh… nooooo,” when my 
mother pulled it back and forth. It roared and whined and moaned. Now it is just 
annoying. I push the button. The moaning stops. I do not hear footsteps, but the 
door opens.
“Mr. Arrendale!” Ms. Tomasz, the manager, sounds surprised. She would not expect 
to see me in midmorning on a weekday. “Are you sick? Do you need something?”
“I am going on a project for the company I work for,” I say. I have rehearsed 
saying this smoothly. I hand her the statement Mr. Aldrin gave us. “I have told 
the bank to make the payments for my rent. You can contact the company if it 
does not.”
“Oh!” She glances down at the paper, and before she has time to read all of it, 
she looks up at me. “But… how long will you be gone?”
“I am not sure,” I say. “But I will come back.” I do not know that for sure, but 
I do not want her to worry.
“You aren’t leaving because that man cut your tires in our parking lot? Tried to 
hurt you?”
“No,” I say. I do not know why she would think that. “It is a special 
assignment.”
“I worried about you; I really did,” Ms. Tomasz says. “I almost came up and 
spoke to you, to express—to say I was sorry—but you know you do keep to 
yourself, pretty much.” <
“I am all right,” I say.
“We’ll miss you,” she says. I do not understand how that can be true if she does 
not even see me most of the time. “Take care of yourself,” she says. I do not 
tell her that I cannot do that, because my brain will be changing.
When I get back upstairs, the bank’s automatic reply has come through, saying 
that the message has been received and the manager will make a specific reply 
very soon and thank you for your patronage. Underneath it says: “Safety Tip #21: 
Never leave the key of your safe-deposit box in your home when you leave for a 
vacation.” I do not have a safe-deposit box so I do not have to worry about it.
I decide to walk down to the little bakery for lunch—I saw the sign about 
sandwiches to order when I bought bread there. It is not crowded, but I do not 
like the music on the radio. It is loud and banging. I order a ham sandwich made 
with ham from pigs fed a vegetarian diet and butchered under close supervision 
and the freshest ingredients and take it away. It is too cold to stop and eat 
outside, so I walk back to the apartment with it and eat it in my kitchenette.
I could call Marjory. I could take her to dinner tonight, or tomorrow night, or 
Saturday night, if she would come. I know her work number and her home number. 
One is almost a prime, and one is a nested multiple of pleasing symmetry. I hang 
the spin spirals in my apartment where they twirl in the air leaking past the 
old windows. The flash of colored light across the walls is restful and helps me 
think.
If I call her and she goes with me to dinner, why would that be? Maybe she likes 
me, and maybe she is worried about me, and maybe she feels sorry for me. I do 
not know for sure it would be because she likes me. For it to be the same in 
opposite directions, she would have to like me as I like her. Anything else 
would not make a good pattern.
What would we talk about? She does not know any more about brain functionality 
than I do now. It is not her field. We both fence, but I do not think we could 
talk about fencing the whole time. I do not think she is interested in space; 
like Mr. Aldrin she seems to think it is a waste of money.
If I come back—if the treatment works and I am like other men in the brain as 
well as in the body—will I like her the way I do now?
Is she another case of the pool with the angel—do I love her because I think she 
is the only one I can love?
I get up and put on Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D. The music builds a complex 
landscape, mountains and valleys and great gulfs of cool, windy air. Will I 
still like Bach when I come back, if I come back?
For a moment, fear seizes my whole being and I am falling through blackness, 
faster than any light could ever be, but the music rises under me, lifts me up 
like an ocean wave, and I am no longer afraid.
FRIDAY MORNING. I WOULD GO TO WORK, BUT THERE is NOTHING in my office to do, and 
there is nothing in my apartment to do, either. The confirmation from the bank 
manager was in my stack this morning. I could do my laundry now, but I do my 
laundry on Friday nights. It occurs to me that if I do my laundry tonight as 
usual and then sleep on the sheets tonight and Saturday night and Sunday night, 
I will have dirty sheets on the bed and dirty towels in the bathroom when I 
check into the clinic. I do not know what to do about that. I do not want to 
leave dirty things behind me, but otherwise I will have to get up early Monday 
morning and do a wash then.
I think about contacting the others, but I decide not to. I do not want to talk 
to them, really. I am not used to having a day like this, apart from planned 
vacation, and I do not know what to do with it. I could go see a movie or read 
books, but my stomach is too tight for that. I could go to the Center, but I do 
not want to do that, either.
I wash the breakfast dishes and stack them. The apartment is too quiet, too big 
and empty suddenly. I do not know where I will go, but I have to go somewhere. I 
put my wallet and keys in my pocket and leave. It is only five minutes later 
than I usually leave.
Danny is going downstairs, too. He says, “Hi, Lou, howyadoin’,” in a rush. I 
think that means he is in a hurry and does not want to talk. I say “hi” and 
nothing more.
Outside, it is cloudy and cold but not raining right now. It is not as windy as 
yesterday. I walk over to my car and get in. I do not turn the engine on yet, 
because I do not know where I will go. It is a waste to run the engine 
unnecessarily. I take the road map book out of the glove compartment and open 
it. I could go to the state park upriver and look at the waterfalls. Most people 
hike there in summer, but I think the park is open in the daytime in winter, 
too.
A shadow darkens my window. It is Danny. I open the window.
“Are you all right?” he asks. “Is something wrong?”
“I am not going to work today,” I say. “I am deciding where to go.”
“Okay,” he says. I am surprised; I did not think he was that interested. If he 
is that interested, maybe he would want to know that I am going away.
“I am going away,” I say.
His face changes expression. “Moving? Was it that stalker? He won’t hurt you 
again, Lou.”
It is interesting that both he and the apartment manager assumed I might be 
leaving because of Don.
“No,” I say. “I am not moving, but I am going to be gone several weeks at least. 
There is a new experimental treatment; my company wants me to take it.”
He looks worried. “Your company—do you want it? Are they pressuring you?”
“It is my decision,” I say. “I decided to do it.”
“Well… okay. I hope you got some good advice,” he says.
“Yes,” I say. I do not say from where.
“So—you have the day off? Or you’re leaving today? Where is this treatment going 
to be given?”
“I do not have to work today. I cleaned out my desk yesterday,” I say. “The 
treatment will be given at the research clinic, at the campus where I work but 
in a different building. It starts Monday. Today I have nothing—I think I may go 
up to Harper Falls.”
“Ah. Well, you take care, Lou. I hope it works out for you.” He thumps the roof 
of my car and walks away.
I am not sure what it is he hopes will work out for me: The trip to Harper 
Falls? The treatment? I do not know why he thumped the roof of my car, either. I 
do know that he doesn’t scare me anymore, another change that I made on my own.
AT THE PARK, I PAY THE ENTRANCE FEE AND STOP MY CAR IN the empty parking lot. 
Signs point to different trails: TO THE FALLS, 290.3 METERS. BUTTERCUP MEADOW, 
1.7 KM. JUNIOR NATURE TRAIL, 1.3 KM. The Junior Nature Trail and the Fully 
Accessible Trail are both asphalt-surfaced, but the trail to the falls is 
crushed stone between metal strips. I walk down this trail, my shoes 
scritch-scritching on the surface. No one else is here. The only sounds are 
natural sounds. Far away I can hear the steady humming roar of the interstate 
but closer at hand only the higher whine of the generator that powers the park 
office.
Soon even that fades away; I am below a ledge of rock that blocks the highway 
sound as well. Most of the leaves have fallen from the trees and are sodden from 
yesterday’s rain. Below me, I can see red leaves glowing even in this dull 
light, on maples that survive here, in the coolest areas.
I can feel myself relaxing. Trees do not care if I am normal or not. Rocks and 
moss do not care. They cannot tell the difference between one human and another. 
That is restful. I do not have to think about myself at all.
I stop to sit on a rock and let my legs hang down. My parents took me to a park 
near where we lived when I was a child. It, too, had a stream with a waterfall, 
narrower than this one. The rock there was darker, and most of the rocks that 
stuck out were narrow and pointed on top. But there was one that had fallen over 
so the flatter side was on top, and I used to stand or sit on that rock. It felt 
friendly, because it did not do anything. My parents didn’t understand that.
If someone told the last maples that they could change and live happily in the 
warmer climate, would they choose to do it? What if it meant losing their 
translucent leaves that turn such beautiful colors every year?
I draw in a deep breath and smell the wet leaves, the moss on the rock, the 
lichens, the rock itself, the soil… Some of the articles said autistic persons 
are too sensitive to smells, but no one minds that in a dog or cat.
I listen to the little noises of the woods, the tiny noises even today, with the 
wet leaves mostly flat and silent on the ground. A few still hang and twirl a 
little in the wind, tip-tapping on a nearby twig. The squirrel’s feet, as it 
bounds away, scritch on the bark as it catches and releases its footholds. Wings 
whirr, and then I hear a thin zzeeet-zzzeeet from a bird I never actually see. 
Some articles say that autistic persons are too sensitive to small sounds, but 
no one minds that in animals.
No one who minds is here. I have today to enjoy my excessive and unregulated 
senses, in case they are gone by this time next week. I hope I will enjoy 
whatever senses I have then.
I lean over and taste the stone, the moss, the lichen, touching my tongue to 
them and then, sliding off the stone, to the wet leaves at its base. The bark of 
an oak (bitter, astringent), the bark of a poplar (tasteless at first, then 
faintly sweet). I fling my arms out, whirl in the path, my feet crunching now 
the crushed stone (no one to notice and be upset, no one to reprimand me, no one 
to shake a cautionary head). The colors whirl around me with my whirling; when I 
stop they do not stop at first, but only gradually.
Down and down—I find a fern to touch with my tongue, only one frond still green. 
It has no flavor. The bark of other trees, most I do not know but I can tell 
they are different by their patterns. Each has a slightly different, 
indescribable flavor, a slightly different smell, a different pattern of bark 
that is rougher or smoother under my fingers. The waterfall noise, at first a 
soft roar, dissolves into its many component sounds: boom of the main fall 
hitting the rocks below, the echoes of that blur that boom into a roar, the 
trickles and splatters of spray, of the little falls, the quiet drip of 
individual drops off the frost-seared fern fronds.
I watch the water falling, trying to see each part of it, the apparent masses 
that flow smoothly to the lip and then come apart on the way down… What would a 
drop feel as it slid over that last rock, as it fell into nothingness? Water has 
no mind, water cannot think, but people— normal people—do write about raging 
rivers and angry floodwaters as if they did not believe in that inability.
A swirl of wind brings spray to my face; some drops defied gravity and rose on 
the wind, but not to return to where they were.
I almost think about the decision, about the unknown, about not being able to go 
back, but I do not want to think today. I want to feel everything I can feel and 
have that to remember, if I have memories in that unknown future. I concentrate 
on the water, seeing its pattern, the order in chaos and chaos in order.
MONDAY. NINE TWENTY-NINE. I AM IN THE CLINICAL RESEARCH , facility on the far 
side of the campus from Section A. I am sitting in a row of chairs between Dale 
and Bailey.
The chairs are pale-gray plastic with blue and green and pink tweedy cushions on 
the back and seat. Across the room is another row of chairs; I can see the 
subtle humps and hollows where people have sat on those chairs. The walls have a 
stripy textured covering in two shades of gray below a pale-gray rail and an 
off-white pebbly covering above that. Even though the bottom pattern is in 
stripes, the texture is the same pebbly feel as the one above. Across the room 
there are two pictures on the wall, one a landscape with a hill in the distance 
and green fields nearby and the other one of a bunch of red poppies in a copper 
jug. At the end of the room is a door. I do not know what is beyond the door. I 
do not know if that is the door we will go through. In front of us is a low 
coffee table with two neat stacks of personal viewers and a box of disks 
labeled: “Patient Information: Understand Your Project.” The label on the disk I 
can see reads: “Understanding Your Stomach.”
My stomach is a cold lump inside a vast hollow space. My skin feels as if 
someone had pulled it too tight. I have not looked to see if there is a disk 
labeled: “Understanding Your Brain.” I do not want to read it if there is one.
When I try to imagine the future—the rest of this day, tomorrow, next week, the 
rest of my life—it is like looking into the pupil of my eye, and only the black 
looks back at me. The dark that is there already when the light speeds in, 
unknown and unknowable until the light arrives.
Not knowing arrives before knowing; the future arrives before the present. From 
this moment, past and future are the same in different directions, but I am 
going that way and not this way.
When I get there, the speed of light and the speed of dark will be the same.



CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
« ^ » 
LIGHT. DARK. LIGHT. DARK. LIGHT AND DARK. EDGE OF light on dark. Movement. 
Noise. Noise again. Movement. Cold and warm and hot and light and dark and rough 
and smooth, cold, TOO COLD and PAIN and warm and dark and no pain. Light again. 
Movement. Noise and louder noise and TOO LOUD COW MOOING. Movement, shapes 
against the light, sting, warm back to dark.
LIGHT is DAY. DARK is NIGHT. DAY is GET UP NOW IT is TIME to get up. Night is 
lie down be quiet sleep.
Get up now, sit up, hold out arms. Cold air. Warm touch. Get up now, stand up. 
Cold on feet. Come on now walk. Walk to place is shiny is cold smells scary. 
Place for making wet or dirty, place for making clean. Hold out arms, feel 
sliding on skin. Sliding on legs. Cold air all over. Get in shower, hold on 
rail. Rail cold. Scary noise, scary noise. Don’t be silly. Stand still. Things 
hitting, many things hitting, wet sliding, too cold then warm then too hot. All 
right, it’s all right. Not all right. Yes, yes, stand still. Slurpy feeling, 
sliding all over. Clean. Now clean. More wet. Time come out, stand. Rubbing all 
over, skin warm now. Put on clothes. Put on pants, put on shirt, put on 
slippers. Time to walk. Hold this. Walk.
Place to eat. Bowl. Food in bowl. Pick up spoon. Spoon in food. Spoon in mouth. 
No, hold spoon right. Food all gone. Food fall. Hold still. Try again. Try 
again. Try again. Spoon in mouth, food in mouth. Food taste bad. Wet on chin. 
No, don’t spit out. Try again. Try again. Try again.
SHAPES MOVING PEOPLE. PEOPLE ALIVE. SHAPES NOT MOVING not alive. Walking, shapes 
change. Not alive shapes change little. Alive shapes change a lot. People shapes 
have blank place at top. People say put on clothes, put on clothes, get good. 
Good is sweet. Good is warm. Good is shiny pretty. Good is smile, is name for 
face pieces move this way. Good is happy voice, is name for sound like this. 
Sound like this is name talking. Talking tells what to do. People laugh, is best 
sound. Good for you, good for you. Good food is good for you. Clothes is good 
for you. Talking is good for you.
People more than one. People is names. Use names is good for you, happy voice, 
shiny pretty, even sweet. One is Jim, good morning time to get up and get 
dressed. Jim is dark face, shiny on top head, warm hands, loud talking. More 
than one two is Sally, now here’s breakfast you can do it isn’t it good? Sally 
is pale face, white hair on top head, not loud talking. Amber is pale face, dark 
hair on top head, not loud as Jim louder than Sally.
Hi Jim. Hi Sally. Hi Amber.
JIM SAY GET UP. Hi JIM. JIM SMILE. JIM HAPPY I SAY Hi JIM. Get up, go to 
bathroom, use toilet, take off clothes, go in shower. Reach for wheel thing. Jim 
say Good for you and shut door. Turn wheel thing. Water. Soap. Water. Feel good. 
All feel good. Open door. Jim smile. Jim happy I take shower by self. Jim hold 
towel. Take towel. Rub all over. Dry. Dry feel good. Wet feel good. Morning feel 
good.
Put on clothes, walk to breakfast. Sit at table with Sally. Hi Sally. Sally 
smile. Sally happy I say Hi Sally. Look around Sally say. Look around. More 
tables. Other people. Know Sally. Know Amber. Know Jim. Not know other people. 
Sally ask Are you hungry. Say yes. Sally smile. Sally happy I say yes. Bowl. 
Food in bowl cereal. Sweet on top is fruit. Eat sweet on top, eat cereal, say 
Good, good. Sally smile. Sally happy I say Good. Happy because Sally happy. 
Happy because sweet is good.
Amber say time to go. Hi Amber. Amber smile. Amber happy I say Hi Amber. Amber 
walk to working room. I walk to working room. Amber say sit there. I sit there. 
Table in front. Amber sit other side. Amber say time to play game. Amber put 
thing on table. What is this, Amber ask. It is blue. I say blue. Amber say That 
is color, what is thing? I want to touch. Amber say no touch, just look. Thing 
is funny shape, wrinkly. Blue. I sad. Not know is not good, no good for you, no 
sweet, no shiny pretty.
Don’t be upset, Amber say. Okay, okay. Amber touch Amber box. Then say You can 
touch. I touch. It is part of clothes. It is shirt. It is too small for me. Too 
small. Amber laugh. Good for you, here sweet, it is a shirt and it is way too 
small for you. Shirt for doll. Amber take shirt for doll and put down another 
thing. Also funny shape, wrinkly black. Not touch, just look. If wrinkly blue 
thing shirt for doll, wrinkly black thing something for doll? Amber touch. Thing 
lies flatter. Two things stick out bottom, one thing at top. Pants. I say Pants 
for doll. Amber makes big smile. Good for you, really good. Sweet thing for you. 
Touches Amber box.
Lunchtime. Lunch is food in day between breakfast and supper. Hi Sally. It looks 
good Sally. Sally is happy I say that. Food is gooey between bread slices and 
fruit and water to drink. Food feels good in mouth. This is good Sally. Sally is 
happy I say that. Sally smile. More Good for you and good for you. Like Sally. 
Sally nice.
After lunch is Amber and crawl on floor follow line, or stand on floor one foot 
up then other foot up. Amber crawl too. Amber stand on one foot, fall over. 
Laugh. Laugh feel good like shaking all over. Amber laugh. More good for you. 
Like Amber.
After crawl on floor is more game on table. Amber put things on table. Not know 
names. No names, Amber say. See this: Amber touches black thing. Find another 
one, Amber say. Look at things. One other thing same. Touch. Amber smile. Good 
for you. Amber put black thing and white thing together. Do like that, Amber 
say. Scary. Not know. Okay, okay, Amber say. Okay to not know. Amber not smile. 
Not okay. Find black thing. Look. Find white thing. Put together. Amber smile 
now. Good for you.
Amber put three things togetüer. Do like that, Amber say. I look. One thing is 
black, one is white with black place, one is red with yellow place. Look. Put 
down black thing. Find white thing with black place, put down. Then find red 
with yellow place, put down. Amber touch Amber box. Then Amber touch Amber 
things: red in middle, Amber say. Look. Did wrong. Red on end. Move. Good for 
you, Amber say. Really good work. Happy. Like make Amber happy. Good happy 
together.
Other people come. One in white coat, see before, not know name except Doctor. 
One man in sweater with many colors and tan pants.
Amber say Hi Doctor to one in white coat. Doctor talk to Amber, say This is 
friend of his, on the list. Amber look at me, then at other man. Man look at me. 
Not look happy, even with smile.
Man say Hi Lou I’m Tom.
Hi, Tom, I say. He does not say Good for you. You are doctor, I say.
Not a medical doctor, Tom say. Not know what not a medical doctor means.
Amber say Tom is on your list, for visiting. You knew him before.
Before what? Tom not look happy. Tom look very sad.
Not know Tom, I say. Look at Amber. Is wrong to not know Tom?
Have you forgotten everything from before? Tom ask.
Before what? Question bothers me. What I know is now. Jim, Sally, Amber, Doctor, 
where is bedroom, where is bathroom, where is place to eat, where is workroom.
It’s okay, Amber says. We’ll explain later. It’s okay. You’re doing fine.
Better go now, says Doctor. Tom and Doctor turn away.
Before WHAT?
Amber puts down another row and says Do what I did.
“I TOLD YOU IT WAS TOO SOON, ” DR. HENDRICKS SAID, ONCE they were back in the 
corridor. “I told you he wouldn’t remember you.”
Tom Fennell glanced back through the one-way window. Lou—or what had been 
Lou—smiled at the therapist who was working with him and picked up a block to 
add to the pattern he was copying. Grief and rage washed over Torn at the memory 
of Lou’s blank look, the meaningless little smile that had gone with, “Hi, Tom.”
“It would only distress him to try to explain things now,” Hendricks said. “He 
couldn’t possibly understand.”
Tom found his voice again, though it didn’t sound like his own. “You—do you have 
the slightest idea what you’ve done?” He held himself still with great effort; 
he wanted to strangle this person who had destroyed his friend.
“Yes. He’s really doing well.” Hendricks sounded indecently happy with herself. 
“Last week he couldn’t do what he’s doing now.”
Doing well. Sitting there copying block patterns was not Tom’s definition of 
doing well. Not when he remembered Lou’s startling abilities. “But… but pattern 
analysis and pattern generation was his special gift-”
“There have been profound changes in the structure of his brain,” Dr. Hendricks 
said. “Changes are still going on. It’s as if his brain reversed in age, became 
an infant brain again in some ways. Great plasticity, great adaptive ability.”
Her smug tone grated on him; she clearly had no doubts about what she had done. 
“How long is this going to take?” he asked.
Hendricks did not shrug, but the pause might have been one. “We do not know. We 
thought—we hoped, perhaps I should say—that with the combination of genetic and 
nanotechnology, with accelerated neural growth, the recovery phase would be 
shorter, more like that seen in the animal model. The human brain is, however, 
immeasurably more complex—”
“You should have known that going in,” Tom said. He didn’t care that his tone 
was accusatory. He wondered how the others were doing, tried to remember how 
many there’d been. Only two other men had been in the room, working with other 
therapists. Were the others all right or not? He didn’t even know their names.
“Yes.” Her mild acceptance irritated him even more.
“What were you thinking—”
“To help. Only to help. Look—” She pointed at the window and Tom looked.
The man with Lou’s face—but not his expression—set aside the completed pattern 
and looked up with a smile to the therapist across the table. She spoke—Tom 
could not hear the words through the glass, but he could see Lou’s reaction, a 
relaxed laugh and a slight shake of the head. It was so unlike Lou, so strangely 
normal, that Tom felt his breath come short.
“His social interactions are already more normal. He’s easily motivated by 
social cues; he enjoys being with people. A very pleasant personality, even 
though still infantile at this point. His sensory processing seems to have 
normalized; his preferred range of temperatures, textures, flavors, and so on is 
now within normal limits. His language use improves daily. We’ve been lowering 
the doses of anxiolytics as function improves.”
“But his memories—”
“No way to tell yet. Our experience with restoring lost memories in the 
psychotic population suggests that both the techniques we’ll be using work to a 
degree. We made multisensory recordings, you know, and those will be reinserted. 
For the present we’ve blocked access with a specific biochemical 
agent—proprietary, so don’t even ask—which we’ll be filtering out in the next 
few weeks. We want to be sure we have a completely stable substrate of sensory 
processing and integration before we do that.”
“So you don’t know if you’ll be able to give him back his previous life?”
“No, but we’re certainly hopeful. And he won’t be worse off than someone who 
loses memory through trauma.” What they’d done to Lou could be called trauma, 
Tom thought. Hendricks went on. “After all, people can adapt and live 
independently without any memory of their past, as long as they can relearn 
necessary daily living and community living skills.”
“What about cognitive?” Tom managed to say in a level voice. “He seems pretty 
impaired right now, and he was near genius level before.”
“Hardly that, I think,” Dr. Hendricks said. “According to our tests, he was 
safely above average, so even if he lost ten or twenty points, it wasn’t going 
to put his ability to live independently in jeopardy. But he wasn’t a genius, by 
any means.” The prim certainty in her voice, the cool dismissal of the Lou he 
had known, seemed worse than deliberate cruelty.
“Did you know him—or any of them—before?” Tom asked.
“No, of course not. I met them once, but it would have been inappropriate for me 
to know them personally. I have their test results, and the interviews and 
memory recordings are all held by the rehab team psychologists.”
“He was an extraordinary man,” Tom said. He looked at her face and saw nothing 
but pride in what she was doing and impatience at having been interrupted. “I 
hope he will be again.”
“He will, at least, not be autistic,” she said, as if that justified everything 
else.
Tom opened his mouth to say autistic wasn’t that bad and shut it again. No use 
arguing with someone like her, at least not here and now, and it was too late 
for Lou anyway. She was Lou’s best hope of recovery—the thought made him shiver 
involuntarily.
“You should come back when he’s better,” Dr. Hendricks said. “Then you can 
better appreciate what we’ve accomplished. We’ll call you.” His stomach churned 
at the thought, but he owed Lou that much.
Outside, Tom zipped up his coat and pulled on his gloves. Did Lou even know it 
was winter? He had seen no exterior windows anywhere in the unit. The gray 
afternoon, closing in to dark, with dirty slush underfoot, matched his mood.
He cursed medical research all the way home.
I AM SITTING AT A TABLE, FACING A STRANGER, A WOMAN IN A white coat. I have the 
feeling that I have been here a long time, but I do not know why. It is like 
thinking about something else while driving and suddenly being ten miles down 
the road without knowing what really happened between.
It is like waking up from a daze. I am not sure where I am or what I am supposed 
to be doing.
“I’m sorry,” I say. “I must’ve lost track for a moment. Could you say that 
again?”
She looks at me, puzzled; then her eyes widen slightly.
“Lou? Do you feel okay?”
“I feel fine,” I say. “Maybe a little foggy…”
“Do you know who you are?”
“Of course,” I say. “I’m Lou Arrendale.” I don’t know why she thinks I wouldn’t 
know my own name.
“Do you know where you are?” she asks.
I look around. She has a white coat; the room looks vaguely like a clinic or 
school. I’m not really sure.
“Not exactly,” I say. “Some kind of clinic?”
“Yes,” she says. “Do you know what day it is?”
I suddenly realize that I don’t know what day it is. There is a calendar on the 
wall, and a big clock, but although the month on display is February, that does 
not feel right. The last I remember is something in the fall.
“I don’t,” I say. I am beginning to feel scared. “What happened? Did I get sick 
or have an accident or something?”
“You had brain surgery,” she says. “Do you remember anything about it?”
I don’t. There is a dense fog when I try to think about it, dark and heavy. I 
reach up to feel my head. It does not hurt. I do not feel any scars. My hair 
feels like hair.
“How do you feel?” she asks.
“Scared,” I say. “I want to know what happened.”
I HAVE BEEN STANDING AND WALKING, THEY TELL ME, FOR A couple of weeks, going 
where I am told, sitting where I am told. Now I am aware of that; I remember 
yesterday, though the days before are fuzzy.
In the afternoons, I have physical therapy. I was in bed for weeks, not able to 
walk, and that made me weak. Now I am getting stronger.
It’s boring, walking up and down the gym. There’s a set of steps with a railing, 
to practice going up and down steps, but that is soon boring, too. Missy, my 
physical therapist, suggests that we play a ball game. I don’t remember how to 
play, but she hands me a ball and asks me to throw it to her. She is sitting 
only a few feet away. I toss her the ball, and she tosses it back. It’s easy. I 
back up and toss the ball again. That’s easy, too. She shows me a target that 
will chime if I hit it. It is easy to hit from ten feet away; at twenty feet I 
miss a few times, then hit it every time.
Even though I don’t remember much of the past, I don’t think I spent my time 
tossing a ball back and forth with someone. Real ball games, if real people play 
them, must be more complicated than this.
THIS MORNING I WOKE UP FEELING RESTED AND STRONGER. I remembered yesterday and 
the day before and something from the day before that. I was dressed before the 
orderly, Jim, came to check on me, and walked down to the dining room without 
needing directions. Breakfast is boring; they have only hot and cold cereal, 
bananas, and oranges. When you’ve had hot with bananas, hot with oranges, cold 
with bananas, and cold with oranges, that’s it. When I looked around, I 
recognized several people though it took me a minute to think of their names. 
Dale. Eric. Cameron. I knew them before. They were also in the treatment group. 
There were more; I wondered where they are.
“Man, I’d love some waffles,” Eric said when I sat down at the table. “I am so 
tired of the same old thing.”
“I suppose we could ask,” Dale said. He meant “but it won’t do any good.”
“It’s probably healthy,” Eric said. He was being sarcastic; we all laughed.
I wasn’t sure what I wanted, but it was not the same old cereal and fruit. Vague 
memories of foods I’d liked wafted through my head. I wondered what the others 
remembered; I knew that I knew them in some way, but not how.
We all have various therapies in the morning: speech, cognitive, skills of daily 
living. I remembered, though not clearly, that I’d been doing this every morning 
for a long time.
This morning, it seemed incredibly boring. Questions and directions, over and 
over. Lou, what is this? A bowl, a glass, a plate, a pitcher, a box… Lou, put 
the blue glass in the yellow basket—or the green bow on the red box, or stack 
the blocks, or something equally useless. The therapist had a form, which she 
made marks on. I tried to read the title of it, but its hard to read upside down 
like that. I think I used to do that easily. I read the labels on the boxes 
instead: DIAGNOSTIC MANIPULATIVES: SET 1, DAILY LIVING SKILLS MANIPULATIVES: SET 
2.
I look around the room. We weren’t all doing the same thing, but we were all 
working one-on-one with a therapist. All the therapists have white coats on. All 
of them have colored clothes underneath the white coats. Four computers sit on 
desks across the room. I wonder why we never use them. I remember now what 
computers are, sort of, and what I can do with them. They are boxes full of 
words and numbers and pictures, and you can make them answer questions. I would 
rather have a machine answer questions than me answer questions.
“Can I use the computer?” I ask Janis, my speech therapist.
She looks startled. “Use the computer? Why?”
“This is boring,” I say. “You keep asking silly questions and telling me to do 
silly things; it’s easy.”
“Lou, it’s to help you. We need to check your understanding—” She looks at me as 
if I were a child or not very bright.
“I know ordinary words; is that what you want to know?”
“Yes, but you didn’t when you first woke up,” she says. “Look, I can switch to a 
higher level—” She pulls out another test booklet. “Let’s see if you’re ready 
for this, but if it’s too hard don’t worry about it…”
I’m supposed to match words to the right pictures. She reads the words; I look 
at the pictures. It is very easy; I finish in just a couple of minutes. “If you 
let me read the words, it’ll be faster,” I say.
She looks surprised again. “You can read the words?”
“Of course,” I say, surprised at her surprise. I am an adult; adults can read. I 
feel something uneasy inside, a vague memory of not being able to read the 
words, of letters making no sense, being only shapes like any other shapes. 
“Didn’t I read, before?”
“Yes, but you didn’t read right away after,” she says. She hands me another list 
and the page of pictures. The words are short and simple: tree, doll, truck, 
house, car, train. She hands me another list, this one of animals, and then one 
of tools. They are all easy.
“So my memory is coming back,” I say. “I remember these words and these things…”
“Looks like it,” she says. “Want to try some reading comprehension?”
“Sure,” I say.
She hands me a thin booklet. The first paragraph is a story about two boys 
playing ball. The words are easy; I am reading it aloud, as she asked me to do, 
when I suddenly feel like two people reading the same words and getting a 
different message. I stop between “base” and “ball.”
“What?” she asks when I have said nothing for a moment.
“I—don’t know,” I say. “It feels funny.” I don’t mean funny ha-ha, but funny 
peculiar. One self understands that Tim is angry because Bill broke his bat and 
won’t admit it; the other self understands that Tim is angry because his father 
gave him the bat. The question below asks why Tim is angry. I do not know the 
answer. Not for sure.
I try to explain it to the therapist. “Tim didn’t want a bat for his birthday; 
he wanted a bicycle. So he could be angry about that, or he could be angry 
because Bill broke the bat his father gave him. I don’t know which he is; the 
story doesn’t give me enough information.”
She looks at the booklet. “Hmm. The scoring page says that C is the right 
answer, but I understand your dilemma. That’s good, Lou. You picked up on social 
nuances. Try another.”
I shake my head. “I want to think about this,” I say. “I don’t know which self 
is the new self.”
“But, Lou—” she says.
“Excuse me.” I push back from the table and stand. I know it is rude to do that; 
I know it is necessary to do that. For an instant, the room seems brighter, 
every edge outlined sharply with a glowing line. It is hard to judge depth; I 
bump into the corner of the table. The light dims; edges turn fuzzy. I feel 
uneven, unbalanced… and then I am crouching on the floor, holding onto the 
table.
The table edge is solid under my hand; it is some composite with a fake 
wood-grain top. My eyes can see the wood grain, and my hand can feel the nonwood 
texture. I can hear air rushing through the room vents, and the air whooshing in 
my own airway, and my heart beating, and the cilia in my ears—how do I know they 
are cilia?—shifting in the streams of sound. Smells assault me: my own acrid 
sweat, the cleaning compound used on the floor, Janis’s sweet-scented cosmetics.
It was like this when I first woke up. I remember now: waking up, flooded in 
sensory data, drowning in it, unable to find any stability, any freedom from the 
overload. I remember struggling, hour by hour, to make sense of the patterns of 
light and dark and color and pitch and resonance and scents and tastes and 
textures…
It is vinyl tile flooring, pale gray with speckles of darker gray; it is a table 
of composite with wood-grain finish; it is my shoe that I am staring at, 
blinking away the seductive pattern of the woven canvas and seeing it as shoe, 
with a floor under it. I am in the therapy room. I am Lou Arrendale, who used to 
be Lou Arrendale the autistic and am now Lou Arrendale the unknown. My foot in 
my shoe is on the floor is on the foundation is on the ground is on the surface 
of a planet is in the solar system is in the galaxy is in the universe is in the 
mind of God.
I look up and see the floor stretching away to the wall; it wavers and steadies 
again, lying as flat as the contractors made it but not perfectly flat, but that 
does not matter; it is called flat by convention. I make it look flat. That is 
what flat is. Flat is not an absolute, a plane: flat is flat enough.
“Are you all right? Lou, please… answer me!”
I am all right enough. “I’m okay,” I say to Janis. Okay means “all right 
enough,” not “perfectly all right.” She looks scared. I scared her. I didn’t 
mean to scare her. When you scare someone, you should reassure them. “Sorry,” I 
say. “Just one of those moments.”
She relaxes a little. I sit up, then stand. The walls are not quite straight, 
but they are straight enough.
I am Lou enough. Lou-before and Lou-now, Lou-before lending me all his years of 
experience, experience he could not always understand, and Lou-now assessing, 
interpreting, reassessing. I have both— am both.
“I need to be alone for a while,” I tell Janis. She looks worried again. I know 
she’s worried about me; I know she doesn’t approve, for some reason.
“You need the human interaction,” she says.
“I know,” I say. “But I have hours of it a day. Right now I need to be alone and 
figure out what just happened.”
“Talk to me about it, Lou,” she says. “Tell me what happened.”
“I can’t,” I say. “I need time…” I take a step toward the door. The table 
changes shape as I walk past it; Janis’s body changes shape; the wall and door 
lurch toward me like drunken men in a comedy—where did I see that? How do I 
know? How can I remember that and also cope with the floor that is only flat 
enough, not flat? With an effort, I make the walls and door flat again; the 
elastic table springs back to the rectangular shape I should see.
“But, Lou, if you’re having sensory problems, they may need to adjust the 
dosage—”
“I’ll be fine,” I say, not looking back. “I just need a break.” The final 
argument: “I need to use the bathroom.”
I know—I remember, from somewhere—that what has happened involves sensory 
integration and visual processing. Walking is strange. I know I am walking; I 
can feel my legs moving smoothly. But what I see is jerky, one abrupt position 
after another. What I hear is footsteps and echoes of footsteps and reechoes of 
footsteps.
Lou-before tells me this is not how it was, not since he was tiny. Lou-before 
helps me focus on the door to the men’s toilets and get through it, while 
Lou-now rummages madly through memories of conversations overheard and books 
read trying to find something that will help.
The men’s toilet is quieter; no one else is there. Gleams of light race at my 
eyes from the smooth curving white porcelain fixtures, the shiny metal knobs and 
pipes. There are two cubicles at the far end; I go into one and close the door.
Lou-before notices the floor tiles and the wall tiles and wants to calculate the 
volume of the room. Lou-now wants to climb into a soft, dark place and not come 
out until morning.
It is morning. It is still morning and we—I—have not had lunch. Object 
permanence. What I need is object permanence. What Lou-before read about it in a 
book—a book he read, a book I do not quite remember but also do remember—comes 
back to me. Babies don’t have it; grownups do. People blind from birth, whose 
sight is restored, can’t learn it: they see a table morphing from one shape to 
another as they walk by.
I was not blind from birth. Lou-before had object permanence in his visual 
processing. I can have it, too. I had it, until I tried to read the story…
I can feel the pounding of my heart slow down, sink below awareness. I lean 
over, looking at the tiles of the floor. I don’t really care what size they are 
or about calculating the area of the floor or the volume of the room. I might do 
it if I were trapped here and bored, but at the moment I’m not bored. I’m 
confused and worried.
I do not know what happened. Brain surgery? I have no scars, no uneven hair 
growth. Some medical emergency?
Emotion floods me: fear and then anger, and with it a peculiar sensation that I 
am swelling and then shrinking. When I am angry, I feel taller and other things 
look smaller. When I am scared, I feel small and other things look bigger. I 
play with these feelings, and it is very strange to feel that the tiny cubicle 
around me is changing size. It can’t really be changing size. But how would I 
know if it were?
Music floods my mind suddenly, piano music. Gentle, flowing, organized sound… I 
squeeze my eyes shut, relaxing again. The name comes to me: Chopin. An etude. An 
etude is a study… no, let the music flow; don’t think.
I run my hands up and down my arms, feeling the texture of my skin, the 
springiness of the hairs. It is soothing, but I do not need to keep doing it.
“Lou! Are you in here? Are you all right?” It is Jim, the orderly who has taken 
care of me most days. The music fades, but I can feel it rippling under my skin, 
soothing.
“I’m fine,” I say. I can tell that my voice sounds relaxed. “I just needed a 
break, is all.”
“Better come out, buddy,” he says. “They’re startin’ to freak out here.”
Sighing, I stand up and unlatch the door. Object permanence retains its shape as 
I walk out; the walls and floor stay as flat as they should; the gleam of light 
off shiny surfaces doesn’t bother me. Jim grins at me. “You’re okay then, 
buddy?”
“Fine,” I say again. Lou-before liked music. Lou-before used music to steady 
him… I wonder how much of Lou-before’s music I could still remember.
Janis and Dr. Hendricks are waiting in the hall. I smile at them. “I’m fine,” I 
say. “I really did just need to go to the bathroom.”
“But Janis says you fell,” Dr. Hendricks says.
“Just a glitch,” I say. “Something about the confusion while reading sort of… 
made a confusion in the senses, but it’s gone now.” I look down the hall both 
ways to be sure. Everything seems fine. “I want to talk to you about what 
actually happened,” I say to Dr. Hendricks. “They said brain surgery, but I 
don’t have any scars that I can see. And I need to understand what’s going on in 
my brain.”
She purses her lips, then nods. “All right. One of the counselors will explain 
it to you. I can tell you that the kind of surgery we do now doesn’t involve 
cutting big holes in your head. Janis, set up an appointment for him.” Then she 
walks away.
I don’t think I like her very much. I sense that she is a person who keeps 
secrets.
WHEN MY COUNSELOR, A CHEERFUL YOUNG MAN WITH A BRIGHT red beard, explains what 
they did, I am almost in shock. Why did Lou-before agree to this? How could he 
risk so much? I would like to grab him and shake him, but he is me now. I am his 
future, as he is my past. I am the light flung out into the universe, and he is 
the explosion from which I came. I do not say this to the counselor, who is very 
matter-of-fact and would probably think that is crazy. He keeps assuring me that 
I am safe and will be taken care of; he wants me to be calm and quiet. I am calm 
and quiet on the outside. Inside I am split between Lou-before, who is figuring 
out how that pattern on his tie was woven, and my current self, who wants to 
shake Lou-before and laugh in the counselor’s face and tell him that I do not 
want to be safe and taken care of. I am past that now. It is too late to be safe 
in the way he means safe, and I will take care of myself.
I AM LYING IN BED WITH MY EYES CLOSED, THINKING ABOUT the day. Suddenly I am 
suspended in space, in darkness. Far off tiny chips of light, many-colored. I 
know they are stars and the blurry ones are probably galaxies. Music starts, 
Chopin again. It is slow, thoughtful, almost sad. Something in E minor. Then 
some other music comes in, with a different feel: more texture, more strength, 
rising up under me like a wave on the ocean, only this wave is light.
Colors shift: I know, without analyzing it, that I am racing toward those 
distant stars, faster and faster, until the wave of light tosses me off and I 
fly faster yet, a dark perception, toward the center of space and time.
When I wake up, I am happier than I have ever been, and I do not know why.
THE NEXT TIME TOM COMES, I RECOGNIZE HIM AND REMEMBER that he has been here 
before. I have so much to tell him, so much to ask him. Lou-before thinks Tom 
knew him better than just about anybody. If I could I would let Lou-before greet 
him, but that doesn’t work anymore. “We’ll be out in a few days,” I say. “I’ve 
already talked to my apartment manager; she’ll turn the power back on and get 
things ready.”
“You’re feeling all right?” he asks.
“Fine,” I say. “Thanks for coming all these times; I’m sorry I didn’t recognize 
you at first.”
He looks down; I can see tears in his eyes; he is embarrassed by them. “It’s not 
your fault, Lou.”
“No, but I know you worried,” I say. Lou-before might not have known that, but I 
do. I can see that Tom is a man who cares deeply about others; I can imagine how 
he felt when I didn’t know his face.
“Do you know what you’re going to do?” he asks.
“I wanted to ask you about signing up for night school,” I say. “I want to go 
back to college.”
“Good idea,” he says. “I can certainly help you with the admissions process. 
What are you going to study?”
“Astronomy,” I say. “Or astrophysics. I’m not sure which, but something like 
that. I’d like to go into space.”
Now he looks a little sad, and I can see he is forcing the smile that comes 
after. “I hope you get what you want,” he says. Then, as if he doesn’t want to 
be pushy, “Night school won’t give you much time for fencing,” he says.
“No,” I say. “I’ll just have to see how it works out. But I’ll come visit, if 
that’s okay.”
He looks relieved. “Of course, Lou. I don’t want to lose track of you.”
“I’ll be fine,” I say.
He cocks his head sideways, then shakes it once. “You know, I think you will. I 
really think you will.”



EPILOGUE
« ^ 
I CAN HARDLY BELIEVE IT, EVEN THOUGH EVERYTHING I’VE done for the past seven 
years has been aimed at exactly this. I am sitting here at a desk entering my 
notes, and the desk is in a ship and the ship is in space, and space is full of 
light. Lou-before hugs the series to him, dancing inside me like a joyous child. 
I feign more sobriety, in my workaday coverall, though I can feel a smile 
tugging at the corner of my mouth. We both hear the same music.
The identifier code on my ID gives my academic degree, my blood type, my 
security clearance… no mention there that I spent almost forty years of my life 
defined as a disabled person, an autist. Some people know, of course: the 
publicity surrounding the company’s unsuccessful attempt to market an 
attention-control treatment to employers brought us all more notoriety than we 
wanted. Bailey, in particular, made a juicy tidbit for the media. I didn’t know 
how badly it went for him until I saw the news archives; they never let us see 
him.
I miss Bailey. It wasn’t fair, what happened to him, and I used to feel guilty, 
even though it wasn’t my fault. I miss Linda and Chuy; I hoped they would take 
the treatment when they saw how it worked for me, but Linda didn’t until after I 
finished my doctorate last year. She is still in rehab. Chuy never did. The last 
time I saw him, he said he was still happy the way he was. I miss Tom and Lucia 
and Marjory and my other friends from fencing, who helped me so much in the 
early years of recovery. I know Lou-before loved Marjory, but nothing happened 
inside when I looked at her afterward. I had to choose, and—like Lou-before—I 
chose to go on, to risk success, to find new friends, to be who I am now.
Out there is the dark: the dark we don’t know about yet. It is always there 
waiting; it is, in that sense, always ahead of the light. It bothered Lou-before 
that the speed of dark was greater than the speed of light. Now I am glad of it, 
because it means I will never come to the end, chasing the light.
Now I get to ask the questions.
—«»—«»—«»—
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[October 09, 2003—v1 html proofed and formatted by BarbaraS for the 3S group]