Naoki Isogai was his parents’ eldest child, born soon after their marriage. They had met at the university where they both taught; his father lectured in acoustics, his mother in piano. By the time he was enrolled in junior high, Naoki Isogai showed a talent in mathematics and physics that far outstripped that of his peers and even his teachers.
After experiencing difficulties fitting into the Japanese school system, Isogai had transferred to a high school in the U.S. The next year he secured early admission into Yale University to study mathematics and theoretical physics. Before he could graduate, he started on a master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University; before he could complete his master’s thesis, he enrolled in the doctorate course. That last one, he did complete. Because he hadn’t officially graduated from high school or college, his academic record officially showed him becoming a Doctor of Science after graduating from junior high. If he hadn’t finished his doctorate, his highest qualification would have been his junior high school diploma.
He specialized in a wide range of fields including mathematics and theoretical and particle physics. Saeko knew that many people in the States held more than one doctorate, say in chemistry and quantum physics, medicine and theoretical physics, number theory and biology. Isogai was one of those people.
At the age of twenty-four, Isogai had been recruited by a research institute run by the Pentagon. That struck Saeko as being very young, but the file explained that most recruits at such facilities were of the young prodigy sort and that their age upon joining generally ranged from eighteen to twenty-five, putting Isogai at the older end of the scale. He had spent three years working at an underground facility in the middle of the Arizonan desert.
Saeko tried to picture the image of the vast, arid space. She had never visited the deserts of Arizona and New Mexico, of course. The scenery she was imagining was probably based on a movie she’d seen on TV as a kid. She couldn’t remember the name of the movie or even if it had been a classic western or something more contemporary, but one scene had stayed with her: a long-haired Native American sitting on a hill above a barren landscape and blowing into a wind instrument. The camera had taken in the macro view before panning forwards, zooming in to focus on a single man riding horseback through the landscape below. The man rode slowly, silhouetted by the sun setting behind. The camera had continued to zoom in, but the man’s face had been hidden in shadow. No matter how close the camera got, his features remained shrouded. She recalled the gentle, rhythmical sound of hooves on the ground, surrounded by so many cacti.
Underneath all that, hundreds of meters deep, was an enormous underground military research facility — Saeko found it hard to imagine. Such an ultra-modern thing surely didn’t fit with the old, timeless landscape of the westerns she had seen.
But this place must have been a paradise for a young, enthusiastic academic like Isogai. He would have been surrounded by other prodigies, with vast budgets and freedoms accorded to their projects. She imagined room after room of supercomputers lined up in air-conditioned rooms under the desert, lit by an electronic sun, ready to compute whatever the researchers demanded of them. Those years spent living underneath the Arizonan desert must have had an enormous influence on Isogai’s development as a young adult.
Saeko went back to reading the file. At twenty-seven Isogai had been called back to work for Carnegie Mellon while continuing his research for the facility in Arizona. He divided his time between the two places. Then, two years ago — at the age of thirty-three — the university had granted him tenure as an associate professor. At that point he officially terminated his relationship with the Pentagon.
Even so, his military research background seemed to afford Isogai preferential treatment at the university. Despite his associate status he was given the office space of a full professor and granted a high level of freedom in the application of funds. Yet, it was the size of his office space that would come to cost him his position.
Isogai somehow managed to partition the room into two parts using ceiling-height bookshelves, creating an area that was hidden from the view of visitors. He teamed up with a close friend and quantum physicist by the name of Chris Roberts and began to work on illicit experiments there.
During their first experiment, the two men had cut open the skulls of live chimpanzees and stuck electrodes into their brains to monitor the effects of direct electrical currents on brain activity. A colleague acted on his suspicions upon hearing rumors that the two were conducting live experiments, and word of their activities reached the ear of the university’s Committee for Ethical Conduct. An investigation was launched.
They were heavily censured by the committee, which ruled that it was unethical to treat chimpanzees like mindless guinea pigs. But the committee’s reasoning forced Saeko to wonder if the whole scientific community wasn’t mad. The committee had said that the ethical issue could have been nullified if the experiments had been conducted not on animals, but on humans. The crucial difference was that humans could sign an agreement to undergo experiments, whereas chimpanzees could not. Saeko let out a sharp snort of laughter.
What is wrong with these people?!
If consent had been obtained in the form of a signed document, they would have had legs to stand on in court. Using chimpanzees, who could not sign their consent, however, could be interpreted as a violation of the animals’ rights. The issue was whether the chimpanzees had been willing to undergo the experiments. This was unclear.
When the committee handed down its ruling, Isogai apparently remonstrated that the chimps had been willing since they obviously enjoyed the electrical stimulation. It was at that point that the whole debacle was picked up by and lampooned in the mass media. Moreover, it was also revealed that Isogai and Chris were gay lovers. The scandal grew in momentum as the media uncovered scandal after scandal, bringing other unfortunate researchers into the fray.
The media firestorm soon began to cause other problems for Isogai. A Californian animal rights group began protesting outside of Carnegie Mellon as Isogai became the focus for their ire. He heard wind of other, more extreme groups beginning to mobilize in the south and began to fear for his own safety. Given that doctors had been killed for conducting experiments on fetuses, he worried that he might receive death threats for the mistreatment of chimpanzees.
After the trouble with the university and the potential risks to his safety, he became convinced that there was no longer any reason to remain, and Isogai decided to sever his links with the United States and return to Japan. He returned in September and had been unemployed for the three months since.
For some reason, Saeko felt reassured by the file. She hadn’t been sure what to make of Isogai’s strange behavior towards her, and it was somewhat helpful to learn that he was gay and had no interest in women. Moreover, since he was obviously endowed with an extraordinary intellect, she supposed she could allow a certain degree of eccentricity in his behavior.
An exaggerated image flowed into her mind, the outré scene of this man and his lover happily cutting open the heads of chimpanzees. She could see the two of them poking electrodes into the live gray matter, the flesh steaming in response. They would whisper excitedly to each other, sharing their theories with smug self-satisfaction. She noticed that the file Hashiba gave her had no information on what the experiments had actually been for. Saeko couldn’t help but wonder whether the experiment had actually been important, or whether it was just an excuse for two sadistic men to have some fun. In her present malicious state of mind, Saeko was happy to entertain the possibility that it was the latter.