Chris Abani - The Secret History of Las Vegas

I would rather have my own psychiatrist come down, someone who has worked with me before on police business. A Dr. Singh.

Nurse Hassiba shrugged. Work that out with Admissions, she said.

Salazar headed off to take care of things.

Alone with the twins, Nurse Hassiba attempted to wrestle what she thought was a wet doll away from Water. Dressed as she was for Halloween, as a vampire, teeth and all, and having been an ER nurse for twenty years in Vegas, she had seen weirder costumes.

Please unhand me, Fire said, his grip unexpectedly firm, all but immobilizing the nurse.

When she realized that this was no costume, and just before she apologized and let go, a primordial look of disgust crossed her face.

Can you fetch the doctor now, Fire asked.

Yes, Nurse Hassiba said, glad for an excuse to leave the examination stall.

While Water stroked Fire’s bald head, Fire rolled his eyes and muttered, Bigot, under his breath. Lost in meditation, the twins waited for the doctor.

Hello.

Sunil started, looking up. Sheila was standing at his door. Dr. Sheila Jackson was a colleague and one of the smartest and most beautiful women he knew. He liked her but there was something about the way she dressed, like a young Pat Benatar with spiky black hair, dark shaded eyes, boxy ’80s tweed jackets with weird lapels, Palestinian neck scarves, and ripped jeans, that made him wary of her. It was Halloween and yet Sheila wasn’t in costume. He’d always thought it was an odd way for a black woman to dress, although if pressed to explain what he meant, he wouldn’t be able to.

Hello, Sheila, he said. You startled me.

She sat opposite him and put her legs up on his desk. Her shoes were shiny.

So, he said, what’s up?

Not much. Just heading out for the day. Thought I’d stop by and warn you to stay out of Brewster’s way.

Bruiser Brewster, as the interns called him. Bad mood, Sunil asked.

Worse than usual, Sheila said. How’s it going, anyway, Sheila asked.

It’s good, he said.

Really, she asked. I’m sorry, Sunil, but all those dead apes and no results can’t be good. She paused at the look on his face. It wasn’t you? I knew it. Is Brewster hijacking your work?

Why would you say that? Has he ever hijacked your work?

My work is not that interesting, I build robotic insects, she said, sitting up and craning her neck to see the images on his screen. How do you tell anything from these MRIs? I mean, how can you even be sure they are meaningful?

Sunil said nothing. He wouldn’t admit it, but Sheila’s question had touched a raw nerve. All this time and he still had nothing to show. Putting the thought out of his head, he turned his attention back to the screen and the MRI images.

There were two groups of MRIs, the test subjects and the controls. All the test subjects were inmates of the same prison and the controls were kids from the same university, a fact that seemed important at the time but in retrospect didn’t matter at all, as it ended up not affecting the process at all. His prison subjects were all serial offenders. They were the perfect study group because while also having committed many small crimes, they usually had one major crime they returned to over and over. It was the pattern of these major crimes and their triggers that held the most promise for his work.

To generate the MRI images that were meaningful in any way, his test subjects were shown different sets of photographs, sometimes concurrently, sometimes consecutively. The sets included photos of flowers and sunsets and children laughing and also horrific and often bloody images: one moment flashing a flower, the next a mutilated human body. The MRI took scans of the brain, and the accompanying computer program tracked what parts of the brain lit up in response to the images. The variances were what Sunil studied.

Sheila finally broke the silence.

Are you happy with these new MRIs?

Yes, he said.

Compared to your test subjects, mine are harmless, Sheila said.

You’re right, Sunil said. My subjects are unsavory and I must admit many people would find this kind of research difficult.

But not you, she asked.

No, he said. That wasn’t entirely true, but he shrugged off the small nag from his subconscious.

Sunil’s research was part psychological, part chemical. He was studying the causes of psychopathic and other violent behavior with the aim of harnessing and controlling that behavior. To turn it off and on at will, as it were, with a serum or drug of some kind.

For Sunil, though, the work at its core was redemptive. He wanted to find cures, ways to help.

Brewster laughed at him when he expressed that sentiment. Redemption is easy, Sunil, he said. Restoration, now, there’s the kicker.

Sunil hated that Brewster was right. Redemption was easy — that momentary flash of conversion, the road-to-Damascus moment. Turning it into a lived thing was what made it restorative and that was hard.

Don’t kid yourself, Sunil, Brewster said. There’s a reason only the U.S. Army will fund your research. This serum you’re developing is to weaponize the condition.

Is that even a word, Sunil thought. He hated words that ended in “ize.” They never led to anything good: weaponize, Africanize, terrorize. Weapons, all of them.

His research, in comparing notes from his control subjects and his prison group, seemed to indicate that at least 5 percent of the general male population of the United States was afflicted with the condition. These were successful psychopaths, successful in the sense that they had found ways to live with the condition, either by sublimating desires or by being smart enough not to get caught.

Like other researchers in the field, Sunil was sure that the condition had its cause in a defect in the paralimbic system, a network of the brain stretching from the orbital frontal cortex to the posterior cingulate cortex. These areas were involved in processing emotion, inhibition, and attention.

The brain scans on his computer were the last step in this new data-collection phase. Next he would have to conduct field studies, which meant triggering the condition in people whose brains showed latent possibilities for it and then waiting to see if the drug he had developed to control the condition was effective.

Two years earlier they had moved into human trials prematurely, with disastrous results. Sunil tried not to think about that time. But he was worried about this new phase of testing.

To be really sure the serum worked, the more advanced stage of testing would have to be conducted outside laboratory conditions — in the real world, so to speak. There was no exit strategy, and neither were there real controls in place to limit the damage. As Brewster said, To see if the product works, we have to see it work.

I’m going away in a few days, Sheila said, changing the subject. This will be my first holiday in five years.

Good for you, Sunil said.

You should get away too, she said.

I do need a break.

Come with me?

You’re going to Cape Town, aren’t you? I have no interest in going back there. There I’m just a black man.

I thought it was here that you were just a black man, Sheila said.

As black as I am, I am also Indian. Not half, not part, but in equal whole measures. In the new South Africa, there is no room for complications like me. I know there’s no real room in the U.S. for the kind of complication I present either, but at least it’s big enough to give the illusion that there is. And you, Sunil asked.

And me what?

How much of you has been tainted and fucked up by the racism here? Is that why you dress like a white soft-rock singer from the eighties, he asked.