Terminal Experiment (4 page)

Peter had known Sarkar Muhammed since they’d both been teenagers. They’d lived on the same street, although Sarkar had gone to a private school. They had perhaps seemed unlikely prospects for friendship. Sarkar was heavily involved in athletics. Peter was on his school’s yearbook and newspaper staffs. Sarkar was devoutly Muslim. Peter wasn’t devoutly anything. But they’d hit it off shortly after Sarkar’s family moved into the neighborhood. Their senses of humor were similar, they both liked to read Agatha Christie, and they were both experts at Star Trek trivia. Also, of course, Peter didn’t drink, and that made Sarkar happy. Although Sarkar would eat in licensed restaurants, he avoided whenever possible sitting at a table with someone who was imbibing alcohol.

Sarkar had gone to the University of Waterloo to study computer science. Peter had studied biomedical engineering at U of T. They’d kept in touch all through university, swapping E-mail letters over the Internet. After a brief stint in Vancouver, Sarkar had ended up back in Toronto, running his own high-tech startup firm doing expert-systems design. Although Sarkar was married and had three children, Peter and he often dined out together, just the two of them.

Incongruously, dinner was always at Sonny Gotlieb’s, a deli at Bathurst and Lawrence, in the heart of Toronto’s Jewish district. Peter couldn’t stand Pakistani cuisine, despite Sarkar’s valiant efforts to broaden his palate, and Sarkar had to eat where he could get food that adhered to Islamic dietary laws — something which most kosher fare managed to do admirably. And so the two of them sat in their usual booth, surrounded by zaydes and bubbehs chatting away in Yiddish, Hebrew, and Russian.

After they had ordered, Sarkar asked Peter what was new. “Not much,” said Peter, his tone guarded. “What about you?”

Sarkar spoke for a couple of minutes about a contract his company had received to do expert-systems for the New Democratic Party of Ontario. They’d only been in power once, in the early 1990s, but were always hoping to make a comeback. Before Canadian socialist governments disappeared completely from living memory, they wanted to capture the knowledge of party members who had actually been in power back then.

Peter half listened to this. Ordinarily, he found Sarkar’s work fascinating, but tonight his mind was a million kilometers away. The waiter returned with a pitcher of Diet Coke for them, and a basket of assorted bagels.

Peter wanted to tell Sarkar about what had happened with Cathy. He opened his mouth a couple of times to say something, but always lost his nerve before the words got out. What would Sarkar think of him if he knew? What would he think of Cathy? He thought at first that he wasn’t telling Sarkar because of his religion; Sarkar’s family was prominent in the Toronto Muslim community and Peter knew that they still practiced arranged marriages. But that wasn’t it. He simply couldn’t bring himself to speak aloud to anyone — anyone — about what had happened.

Although he wasn’t really hungry, Peter took a poppy-seed bagel from the basket and spread a little jam on it.

“How is Catherine?” Sarkar asked, helping himself to a rye bagel.

Peter took advantage of having his mouth full to buy a few seconds to think. Finally, he said, “Fine. She’s fine.”

Sarkar nodded, accepting that.

A little later Sarkar asked, “How’s the second weekend in September sound for our trip up north?”

For six years now, Peter and Sarkar had been going away for a weekend of camping in the Kawarthas. “I — I’ll have to get back to you about that,” said Peter.

Sarkar helped himself to another bagel. “Okay.”

Peter loved those camping weekends. He wasn’t much of an outdoorsperson, but he enjoyed seeing the stars. He’d never really agreed to an annual excursion, but with Sarkar anything done twice instantly became an inviolable tradition.

Getting away would be good, thought Peter. Very good.

But—

He couldn’t go.

Not this year. Maybe not ever.

He couldn’t leave Cathy alone.

He couldn’t, because he couldn’t be sure that she would in fact be alone.

Dammit. God damn it.

“I’ll have to get back to you,” Peter said again.

Sarkar smiled. “You said that.”

Peter realized the whole evening would be a disaster if he didn’t get his mind on something else. “How’s that new brain scanner my company built for you working out?” Peter asked.

“Great. It’s going to really simplify our neural-net studies. Wonderful machine.”

“Glad to hear it,” said Peter. “I’ve been working on refining it, trying to get a higher level of resolution.”

“The current resolution is more than adequate for the kind of work I do,” said Sarkar. “Why would you want more?”

“Remember when I was doing my practicum at U of T? I told you about that transplant donor who woke up on the operating table?”

“Oh, yes.” Sarkar shivered. “You know my religion is suspicious of transplants. We feel the body should be returned to the Earth whole. Stories like that make me believe that even more.”

“Well, I still have nightmares about it. But I think I’m finally going to be able to put that demon to rest.”

“Oh?”

“That scanner we developed for your work was just a first-stage unit. I really wanted to develop a — a superEEG, if you will, that can detect any electrical activity at all in the brain.”

“Ah,” said Sarkar, his eyebrows lifting, “so you can tell when someone is really dead?”

“Precisely.”

The server arrived with their main courses. Peter had a stack of Montreal smoked meat and rye bread, accompanied by a little carousel rack of various mustards and a side order of latkes — what Sarkar referred to as Peter’s heart-attack kit. Sarkar had gefilte fish.

“That’s right,” said Peter. “I’ve been poking at this for years now, but I’ve finally had the breakthrough I needed. Signal-to-noise-ratio problems were killing me, but while scanning the net I found some algorithms created for radio astronomy that finally let me solve the problem. I’ve now got a working prototype superEEG.”

Sarkar put down his fork. “So you can see the last neural gasp, so to speak?”

“Exactly. You know how a standard EEG works: each of the brain’s billions of neurons is constantly receiving excitatory synaptic input, inhibitory input, or a combination of the two, right? The result is a constantly fluctuating membrane potential for each neuron. EEGs measure that potential.”

Sarkar nodded.

“But in a standard EEC, the sensor wires are much bigger in diameter than individual neurons. So, rather than measuring the membrane potential of any one neuron, they measure the combined potential for all the neurons in the part of the brain beneath the wire.”

“Right,” said Sarkar.

“Well, that coarseness is the source of the problem. If only one neuron, or a few dozen or even a few hundred are reacting to synaptic input, the voltage will be orders of magnitude below what an EEC can read. Even though the EEC shows a flat line, brain activity — and therefore life — may still be continuing.”

“A crisp problem,” said Sarkar. “Crisp” was his favorite word; he used it to mean anything from well-defined to delicate to appealing to complex. “So you say you’ve found the solution?”

“Yes,” said Peter. “Instead of the small number of wires used by a standard EEG, my superEEG uses over one billion nanotech sensors. Each sensor is as tiny as an individual neuron. The sensors blanket the skull, like a bathing cap. Unlike a standard EEG, which picks up the combined signal of all the neurons in a given area, these sensors are highly directional and pick up only the membrane potential from neurons directly beneath them.” Peter held up a hand. “Of course, a straight line drawn through the brain will intersect thousands of neurons, but by cross-referencing the signals from all the sensors, I can isolate the individual electrical activity of each and every neuron in the entire brain.”

Sarkar ate another fish ball. “I see why you were having signal-to-noise problems.”

“Exactly. But I’ve solved that now. With this equipment, I should be able to detect any electrical activity at all in the brain, even if it’s just one lone neuron firing.”

Sarkar looked impressed. “Have you tried it yet?”

Peter sighed. “On animals, yes. A few large dogs — I haven’t been able to make the scanning equipment small enough to use on a rat or rabbit yet.”

“So does this superEEG actually do what you want? Does it show the exact, crisp moment of actual death — the ultimate cessation of brain electrical activity?”

Peter sighed. “I don’t know. I’ve got gigabytes of recordings of Labrador retriever brain waves now, but I can’t get a permit to put any of them to sleep.” He spread some more mustard on his meat. “The only way to test it properly will be with a dying human being.”

Peter knocked, then quietly entered the private room in the chronic-care facility. A frail woman about ninety years old was sitting up, the bed’s back raised to a forty-five-degree angle. Two IV bags of clear liquid hung on poles beside her bed. A tiny TV was mounted on a swing arm at the bed’s right.

“Hello, Mrs. Fennell,” Peter said softly.

“Hello, young man,” said the woman, her voice thin and hoarse. “Are you a doctor?”

“No — at least, not a medical doctor. I’m an engineer.”

“Where’s your train?”

“Not that kind of engineer. I’m—”

“I was kidding, son.”

“Sorry. Dr. Chong said you had a good attitude.”

She shrugged amiably, the movement of her shoulders taking in the hospital room, the drip bags, and more. “I try.”

Peter looked around. No flowers. No get-well cards. It seemed Mrs. Fennell was all alone in the world. He wondered how she could be so cheerful. “I, ah, have a favor to ask you,” he said. “I need your help with an experiment.”

Her voice was like dry leaves crumbling. “What kind of experiment?”

“It won’t hurt at all. I’d simply like you to wear a special piece of headgear that has a series of tiny electrodes in it.”

Leaves crumbled in a way that might have been a chuckle. Mrs. Fennell indicated the tubes going into her arm. “A couple more connections won’t hurt, I guess. How long do you want me to wear this?”

“Until, ah, until—”

“Until I die, is that it?”

Peter felt his cheeks grow flush. “Yes, ma’am.”

“What are the electrodes for?”

“My company makes biomedical monitoring equipment. We’ve developed a prototype for a new hypersensitive electroencephalogram. Do you know what an EEC is?”

“A brain-wave monitor.” Mrs. Fennell’s face seemed to be immobile; Chong had said she’d suffered a series of small strokes. But her eyes smiled. “You don’t spend as much time in hospitals as I have without picking up something.”

Peter chuckled. “This special brain-wave monitor is a lot more discerning than the standard ones they’ve got here. I’d like to record, well…”

“You’d like to record my death, is that it?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be insensitive.”

“You’re not. Why do you want to record my death?”

“Well, you see, right now, there’s no one-hundred-percent accurate way of determining when the brain has permanently ceased to function. This new device should be able to indicate the exact moment of death.”

“Why should anyone care about that? I have no relatives.”

“Well, in many cases bodies are kept on life-support simply because we don’t know whether the person is really dead or not. I’m trying to come up with a definition for death that isn’t just legal but is actually — an unequivocal test that can prove whether someone is dead or alive.”

“And how will this help people?” she said. Her tone made it clear that to her this was what mattered most.

“It’ll help with organ transplants,” Peter said.

She cocked her head. “No one would want my organs.”

Peter smiled. “Perhaps not, but someday my equipment may ensure that we don’t accidentally take organs from people who aren’t yet truly dead. It’ll also be useful in emergency rooms and at accident scenes, to make sure attempts to save a patient aren’t halted too soon.”

Mrs. Fennell digested this for a moment, then: “You don’t really need my permission, do you? You could have just had the equipment hooked up. Just say it was for routine tests. Half the time they don’t explain what they’re doing anyway.”

Peter nodded. “I suppose that’s true. But I thought it would be polite to ask.”

Mrs. Fennell’s eyes smiled again. “You’re a very nice young man, Doctor…?”

“Hobson. But, please, call me Peter.”

“Peter.” Her eyes crinkled. “I’ve been here for months, and not one of the doctors has volunteered that I could call them by their first name. They’ve prodded every part of my body, but they still think keeping emotional distance is part of their job.” She paused. “I like you, Peter.”

Peter smiled. “And I like you, Mrs. Fennell.”

She did manage an unequivocal laugh this time. “Call me Peggy.” She paused, and reflection further creased her wrinkled face. “You know, that’s the only time I’ve heard my own first name since I was admitted here. So, Peter, are you really interested in what happens at the moment of death?”

“Yes, Peggy, I am.”

“Then why don’t you have a seat, make yourself comfortable, and I’ll tell you.” She lowered her voice. “You see, I’ve already died once before.”

“I beg your pardon?” She had seemed so lucid…

“Don’t look at me like that, Peter. I’m not insane. Sit down. Go ahead, sit. I’ll tell you what happened.” Peter cocked his head slightly, noncommittal, and found a vinyl-covered chair. He pulled it close to the bed.

“It happened forty years ago,” said Mrs. Fennell, turning her crab-apple head to face Peter. “I’d recently been diagnosed with diabetes. I was insulin dependent, but hadn’t yet realized how careful I had to be. My husband Kevin had gone shopping. I’d had my morning insulin injection, but hadn’t eaten yet. The phone rang. It was a woman I knew who nattered on endlessly, or so it seemed. I found myself sweating and getting a headache, but I didn’t want to say anything. I realized my heart was pounding and my arm was trembling and my vision was blurring. I was about to say something to the woman, to beg off and go gel something to eat when, all of a sudden, I collapsed. I was having an insulin reaction. Hypoglycemia.”

Although her face was impassive, deadened by strokes, her voice became increasingly animated. “Suddenly,” she said, “I found myself outside of my body. I could see myself as if from above, lying there on the kitchen floor. I kept rising higher and higher until everything sort of collapsed into a tunnel, a long, spiraling tunnel. And at the end of this tunnel, there was a beautiful, pure, bright white light. It was very bright, but it didn’t hurt at all to look at it. This feeling of calm, of peace, came over me. It was absolutely wonderful, an unconditional acceptance, a feeling of love. I found myself moving toward the light.”

Peter tilted his head. He didn’t know what to say Mrs. Fennell went on. “From out of the edges of the light a figure appeared. I didn’t recognize it at first but then suddenly I saw that it was me. Except it wasn’t me; it was someone who looked a lot like me, but wasn’t me. I’d been born a twin, but my twin sister Mary had died a few days after we were born. I realized that this was Mary, come to greet me. She floated closer and took my hand, and we drifted down the tunnel together, toward that light.

“And then I started seeing images from my life, as though they were on movie film, pictures of me and my parents, me and my husband, me at work, at play. And Mary and I were reviewing each of these scenes, where I’d done right and where I’d done wrong. There was no sense that I was being judged, but it seemed important that I understand everything, realize the effect my actions had on others. I saw myself playing in a schoolyard, and cheating on an exam, and working as a candy striper in a hospital, and oh so many other things, vividly, with unbelievable clarity. And all the while we were growing closer to that beautiful, beautiful light.

“Then, suddenly, it was over. I felt myself being pulled backward and downward. I didn’t want to let go of Mary’s hand — I’d lost her once, after all, had never really had the chance to know her — but my fingers slipped from hers and I drifted backward, away from the light, and then, suddenly, I was back in my body. I could tell there were other people there. Soon my eyes opened, and I saw a man in a uniform. A paramedic. He had a syringe in his hand. He’d given me an injection of glucagon. ‘You’re going to be all right,’ he was saying. ‘Everything’s going to be all right.’

“The woman I’d been talking to on the phone — her name was Mary, by coincidence — had finally realized that I’d fainted and had hung up and called for an ambulance. The paramedics had had to break down my front door. If they’d arrived a few minutes later, I’d have been gone for good.

“So, Peter, I know what death is like. And I don’t fear it. It changed my whole attitude toward life, that experience. I learned to see everything with perspective, take everything in stride. And although I know I’ve only got a few days left now, I’m not afraid. I know my Kevin will be waiting for me in that light. And Mary, too.”

Peter had listened intently to the whole thing. He’d heard of such stories before, of course, and had even read part of Moody’s famous book Life After Life when he’d been trapped at a relative’s cottage and the choice was that or a book on how sun signs supposedly affected your love life. He didn’t know what to make of such stories then, and was even more uncertain now.

“Did you tell any of your doctors here about this?” Peter asked.

Peggy Fennell snorted. “Those guys come through here like they’re marathon runners and my chart is the baton. Why in God’s name would I share my most intimate experiences with them?”

Peter nodded.

“Anyway,” said Mrs. Fennell, “that’s what death’s like, Peter.”

“I — ah, I’d—”

“You’d still like to do your experiment, though, wouldn’t you?”

“Well, yes.”

Mrs. Fennell moved her head slightly, the closest thing to a nod she could manage. “Very well,” she said at last. “I trust you, Peter. You seem a good man, and I thank you for listening to me. Go get your equipment.”

It had been one hell of a week since Cathy had made her announcement. They weren’t talking much, and when they did talk, it was about things such as Peter’s experiment with the superEEG. Nothing personal, nothing directly related to them. Just safe topics to fill some of the long, melancholy silences.

Now, on Saturday afternoon, Peter sat on the living-room couch, reading. No electronic book this time, though: instead, he was reading an honest-to-goodness paperback.

Peter had only recently discovered Robert B. Parker’s old Spenser novels. There was something appealing about the absolute, unequivocal trust shared by Spenser and Hawk, and a wonderful honesty in the relationship between Spenser and Susan Silverman. Parker had never given Spenser a first name, but Peter thought his own — meaning “rock” — would have been a fine choice. Certainly, Spenser was more rock-stable than Peter Hobson was.

On the wall behind him was a framed print of an Alex Colville painting. Peter had originally thought Colville static, but, over the years, his work had grown on him, and he found this particular painting — a man sitting on a cottage porch, an old hound dog lying at his feet — very appealing. Peter had finally realized that the lack of movement in Colville’s art was designed to convey permanence: these are the things that last, these are the things that matter.

Peter still didn’t know what to make of it all, didn’t know what future he and Cathy might have. He realized he’d just read a funny scene — Spenser deflecting Quirk’s questions with a series of vintage quips, Hawk standing motionless nearby, a grin splitting his features — but it hadn’t amused Peter the way it should have. He slipped a bookmark into the paperback and set it down beside him.

Cathy came down the stairs. She was wearing her hair down and was dressed in snug blue jeans and a loose-fitting white blouse with the top two buttons undone — attire, Peter realized, that could be viewed as either sexy or neutrally practical. She clearly was as confused as Peter, carefully trying to send signals that hopefully would be correct regardless of what mood he was in. “May I join you?” she said, her voice a feather fluttering in a breeze.

Peter nodded.

The couch consisted of three large cushions. Peter was sitting on the leftmost. Cathy sat on the border between the middle one and the rightmost, again trying for both closeness and distance simultaneously.

They sat together for a long time, saying nothing.

Peter kept moving his head slowly back and forth. He felt warm. His eyes weren’t focusing properly. Not enough sleep, he guessed. But then, suddenly, he realized that he was about to start crying. He took a deep breath, trying to forestall it. He remembered the last time he’d really cried: he’d been twelve years old. He’d been ashamed then, thinking he was too old to cry, but he’d had a frightening shock from an electrical outlet. In the thirty intervening years, he’d maintained his stoic face no matter what, but now, welling up within him…

He had to leave, get somewhere private, away from Cathy, away from everyone…

But it was too late. His body convulsed. His cheeks were wet. He found himself shuddering again and again. Cathy raised a hand from her lap, as if to touch him, but apparently thought better. Peter cried for several minutes. One fat drop fell on the edge of the Spenser paperback and was slowly absorbed into the newsprint.

Peter wanted to stop, but couldn’t. It just came and came. His nose was running now; he snorted between the shuddering convulsions that brought out the tears. It had been too much, held in too long. Finally, he was able to force out a few feeble, quiet words. “You’ve hurt me,” was all he said.

Cathy was biting her lower lip. She nodded slightly, her eyes batting up and down, holding in her own tears. “I know.”