Griffin also seemed quite unaware she’d had part of her brain removed. The team had tried showing her the scar on her forehead in a mirror. But as with the other candidates, she didn’t identify with the mirror image any more than a dog or a cat would. Even when she was shown her consent form and other documentation she’d signed before the operation, she still didn’t accept that any procedure had actually been done.
This inability of recruits to grasp that they’d had the brain surgery was actually quite fortunate. Dupont’s team, as yet, knew no way of reversing the procedure if certain things went wrong — as they were bound to do in an area so new. While it was now relatively simple to take the designated bit of brain out, it was quite impossible to stuff it back in and reconnect it to the tissue in exactly the right place and start the conscience up again. But even after the procedure, the team was curious to find out if, perhaps, another part of the brain might eventually take over the functions of conscience, morality, and related matters. Only time would tell.
Another peculiar result of the procedure was that the volunteers no longer responded to their actual names. Griffin’s real name was Winifred Burke, but now she wouldn’t answer to that. She insisted on being called “Griffin” because that was the name of the hero in H.G. Wells’s The Invisible Man, which she’d read in high school. Experience with the other volunteers, however, suggested that she wouldn’t stick long with that first choice. They tended to change their names as frequently as once a month. The team thought this fickleness might mean that the volunteers had lost any overwhelming sense of themselves as unique individuals.
The phenomena of the odd smell and the torn newspapers in Griffin’s room were also common to all those who’d undergone the procedure. If the janitorial staff tidied up their rooms or sprayed deodorant around, the volunteers became very unhappy, like animals whose dens or natural smells are tampered with.
Griffin herself had become violent with a janitor who tried to clean her room, to the extent that the guard had to rush in and restrain her — and remember, Dupont pointed out, she’s a sociopath, so who knows what she might be capable of? In the end, the cleaning effort had to be abandoned and more newspapers were made available to her. She immediately began tearing them up and spreading them around. As for the smell, she preferred fresh water for grooming but absolutely refused to use soap.
One last noteworthy characteristic of the volunteers was their preference for staying awake at night. The research team at first thought this might be insomnia brought on by the surgery. Now it was believed that the operation somehow released a primitive hunting instinct and turned the volunteers into night creatures. Like the others, Griffin would prowl restlessly around her room in the darkness, but sleep on and off during the day, just like a cat.
4
The institute’s van was negotiating a series of small hills and curves. Dupont had to pay attention and was silent for a moment. Then he went on with his description of the Griffin case.
“When she leaves us, she’ll be sent to one of our facilities in the South,” he said. “There, in addition to daily interrogations by a number of distinguished anthropologists, she’ll be put through a rigorous program to correct her little post-surgical eccentricities. Naturally, someone who tears up newspaper to make a den and won’t use soap will have trouble fitting into society again, which is our hope. Indeed, with her gift of virtual invisibility, she’ll be an ideal observer of how our society appears to a pre-human primate — in a way, she’ll be an anthropologist in reverse. Her reports should be groundbreaking in the field.
“Isn’t it curious that, if she can be taught just to act like a normal human being, no one will be able to tell the difference between her and the rest of the world? We can only judge other people by what they say and what they do. We’ve absolutely no certainty about what’s going on in their heads — even the people who are closest to us don’t know that. Fortunately, in the case of Griffin, we’re well aware she’s a manufactured sociopath, so we’ll be keeping a close eye on her for the first few years at least, just in case something goes badly wrong.”
DUPONT COULD TELL that I was taken aback by all these revelations. He began to defend himself before I could ask any questions.
“Now, Harry, you’re probably surprised that this is the kind of work I do,” he said. “For some people, it doesn’t quite fit with the ethics of the medical profession. For that very reason, our team from academia and industry had to be chosen very carefully— hence the secrecy agreement in advance, for we knew some of them might be reluctant to be involved in research of this nature and might even try to have it stopped.
“Let me assure you, we always adhere strictly to protocol regarding the volunteers who are about to undergo the procedure. I make doubly and even triply sure they do so willingly and with full knowledge of the consequences. It’s an odd thing, but without exception they don’t mind at all the prospect of having part of their brains excised. Some of them, like Griffin, have suffered so much in their lives they’re actually keen on having the procedure done on them for their own sakes — and for the advancement of science.
“In that I believe they’re right,” Dupont said, in conclusion. “Our procedure isn’t just revolutionary in terms of surgical and anthropological research. In my opinion, philosophy and psychology will also be its major beneficiaries. Because of what we’re doing at Institute 77, for the first time in recorded history researchers will be on a scientific path to finding out what actually leads to the development of the human mind.”
OUR VAN HAD BEEN labouring up what seemed like an endless hill as Dupont offered this defence of his work. His claim — that he was advancing knowledge by deliberately dehumanizing others — was the traditional argument used to support questionable scientific experiments. Ironically, the more he tried to make it sound rational and logical, the more immoral it seemed. Claiming human superiority over other life forms, while using one of our great intellectual achievements — advanced science— in such a perverted way, was patently absurd. Surely that was evident to him.
But I kept silent. I couldn’t help wondering: was it possible that after witnessing so much cruelty and inhumanity in the course of his work in some of the most unstable and brutal areas of the world, he’d become infected by them — had himself become a monster? When I first knew him he’d never pretended to be a great humanitarian, even though he’d imperilled his life practising his profession in those dangerous places. His efforts back then just happened to have a more benevolent purpose. But he’d made no bones about his love of adventure and the exotic.
Indeed, in my eyes at that time, the very fact that he didn’t pass himself off as some kind of saint made him all the more human and likable. Also, he’d been a friend to me — a good, reliable one at that.
Even now, after telling me about this dubious scientific experiment, he still seemed essentially no different from the Dupont of old. And anyway, who was I to judge anyone else? What did I have to brag about on the matter of ethics? I’d married for reasons that had little or nothing to do with love. I’d profited for more than twenty years from industries that wreaked havoc on the earth and damaged the lives of countless innocent people. Whereas at least Dupont’s victims had “volunteered” to be damaged.