Chapter 15

WASHINGTON, D.C.

Infection Date 20, 2200 GMT (6:00 p.m. Local)

The only fireworks in Nielsen’s no-science staff meeting was a bombardment of complaints. One scientist’s house was being watched. Another was being followed. A third had heard strange clicks on his phone. “We’ve got to tell everyone the truth!”

“Anybody else wanta get something off their chest?” Nielsen asked. “No? Okay. If anyone says anything to anyone, you’re going to be in jail when SED gets here.”

“How long do they think they can keep this secret?” a scientist asked angrily.

“How should I know?” Nielsen replied. “But they’ve done a good job so far. There’s the President’s aide,” she said, holding a hand out to Maldonado. “Maybe he hasn’t thought this through and would appreciate your opinions about what he’s doing wrong!” Nielsen quickly covered administrative matters, most curious of which were orders to “keep all records on paper.” When the younger scientists protested, she said, “We may lose power! Learn to live without spell check and Wikipedia. Street! Bug-‘o-the-day?”

“Dinocampus coccinellae, a parasitic wasp that stings ladybugs and leaves behind an egg and a virus. Larvae hatch, eat the ladybug from the inside out and spin a web between the ladybug’s legs. The virus enslaves the ladybug, causing it to stand guard over the cocoon and protect the wasp larvae and virus from predators. The ladybug sometimes survives, but its life is forever circumscribed due to the damage done by the parasite.”

Nielsen heaved a heavy sigh. “Do these stories ever have happy endings?”

Isabel waited until Maldonado filed past. She hadn’t heard anything from the White House since she’d hired Brandon. But Maldonado ignored her.

“Dr. Nielsen wasn’t always this angry,” Street said when they were alone. “Her husband left her for a TA about your age. Pretty, like you. And worse, smart like you. They’d put off having kids but were adopting. Nan told me that not following through with that adoption was the worst mistake of her life. That, and letting her husband get within ten miles of that grad student.” Street headed for the door, but Isabel stopped him.

“Walter, have you ever studied swarm theory?” Street’s face lit up, and he eagerly took a seat beside her. “I wonder if a kind of swarm intelligence might arise among Infecteds?”

“Interesting,” Street said, rocking back, enjoying a discussion that, frankly, terrified Isabel. “Colonies as large as half a million function with no management. People think queens are in charge, but all they do is lay eggs. It’s the colony that solves problems like finding the shortest route to food, efficiently allocating workers and defending the hive.”

He leaned forward. “Pogonomyrex barbatus, red harvester ants, wake up each morning with no plan. Some stumble onto rain damage and repair it. Some bump into trash and take it out. Others wander outside and end up patrolling for food. If they find any, they lug it back while secreting pheromones. Ants that come behind secrete even more. The stronger the scent trail, the more ants that follow it. The collective makes decisions via the cumulative actions of individuals, not any ant leader. Now Linepithema humile, Argentine ants, follow a different approach. They . . .”

Isabel interrupted. “What about violent swarm behavior?”

Street had no problem changing direction. “When colonies of Apis mellifera, honeybees, get too crowded, scouts search for new real estate. Once a quorum of fifteen or so bees forms at a site they like, the queen, some drones and half the colony’s workers fly there. That encourages free competition of ideas, considers a diversity of opinions and efficiently narrows choices.”

“Does this have something to do with my question about violence?” Isabel asked.

“Oh! The best sites for new colonies are normally taken, so the arriving swarm attacks whatever is there. The wars are brutal, can last weeks, and are fought to the last bee. Pigeons exhibit a different type of swarm behavior by using synchronized flight to . . .”

“Are there any examples among larger orders of life than insects and birds?”

“Sure. Rangifer tarandus granti, Porcupine caribou, migrate in vast herds. Each changes direction based not on a plan but on what its neighbors do. When a wolf creeps up, the nearest turn and run, which ripples through the herd until they’re all running even though no individual knows why or where.”

“So is there a general rule applicable to all herds or swarms or flocks or schools?”

Street pondered. “They self-organize and depend on countless interactions that follow simple rules like stay close or move in the group’s average direction. Herd behavior detects predators—a thousand eyes are better than a single pair—finds food, locates mates, follows migration routes. There are actually very few examples of hierarchical species, like humans, who follow leaders. Most decentralize decision-making.”

Isabel thanked him and headed off lost in thought. According to Emma’s schedule at the nurse’s station, she was free. The observation room was empty. Emma scribbled in her notebook until Isabel cleared the window and she looked up.

“Hi!” Isabel said. “Great news. You scored real high on your GREs. Maybe you’ll get into a top ten school!” Emma, of course, didn’t get Isabel’s joke.

There was a knock on the door. Brandon entered. As always, he was transfixed by the sight of Emma, who waved. Brandon self-consciously waved back.

“What are you doing here?” Isabel asked.

Brandon said, “Ready to go to the White House?”

On the walk to the parking lot, Isabel said, “I don’t understand why they sent you to get me for an NSC meeting. And with no notice? Who called you?”

“Patricia Maldonado.”

“How does she even know who you are?” Brandon gave her a look. In the back of the Secret Service SUV, she said, “Have you been talking to people at the White House?”

“What did you think I’ve been doing these last few days?”

“Working on that model thing?” He frowned at her. “I mean, your model?”

Brandon turned away. On passing the FBI headquarters, Isabel saw black-helmeted agents carrying assault rifles guarding the parking garage entrance. The FBI Director hadn’t called in a while. Isabel couldn’t figure out what she’d done wrong.

At the White House, an agent made a phone call from the guard shack. Isabel asked if everything was okay. “You’re not on the list, ma’am,” he said politely.

She turned to Brandon. “I wasn’t invited?”

“I just thought. . . . It’s just, you sit at that little table in the cafeteria all day.”

“You invited me out of pity!” She searched the lot for their car.

Maldonado arrived wearing a flesh-tone bandage under her wedding ring and cleared Isabel to enter. “I’m not sure we can fit you into the schedule or the room even. You’ll have to stand.” To Brandon, she said, “Browner’s pissed.” Brandon bristled.

In the tomblike underground corridor, the Marine guard snapped to attention. He had switched to wearing full camo and a combat helmet, with a rifle slung over his shoulder.

“Oh, perfect timing,” the president said. “We can’t wait to hear about your work. And Dr. Miller, too! Now, Dr. Plante, do you have answers for General Browner?”

Isabel headed to the far end of the room, where she joined the other wallflowers in the standing-room-only third-class section.

Brandon handed a flash drive to the Air Force technician. “Good to see everyone again.” Really? “My team and I,” God, “modeled the crowd violence in China at the individual level.” A hokey human profile appeared on screen. “Interactions between individuals.” Two profiles with a line between them! “And at the crowd level.” Multiple profiles ingeniously connected by lines. “We created an agent for each Infected and assigned it attributes like age, gender, disabilities.” A short video appeared in which overlying triangles at a bridge attacked in unison with rioters. “I’m happy to report it was a complete success.”

After a long silence, General Browner asked, “How do you define success?”

“Our model now matches Infecteds’ behavior. We can use it predictively, to manage crowds, and forensically, to aid our understanding of Infecteds’ psychology.”

“Marvelous. How can my troops use it?” Browner asked.

Brandon was clearly at a loss. Those slides, model, and video with triangles would have wowed an academic conference. Stoddard said, “Let’s hear him out. What have you concluded, Dr. Plante?”

Brandon caught Isabel’s eye before launching defensively into to a laundry list of generalities. Crowds are complex adaptive systems that seem chaotic, but have an underlying order. They self-assemble in geometric patterns based on interaction with each other and the environment. Infected crowds have no leaders, and engage in no verbal communication. “But while we can’t read facial expressions or see gritted teeth or balled fists at a distance, Infecteds do all face in the direction in which they ultimately attack. That’s a form of communication.”

No one seemed impressed. Brandon said they had observed no cohesive subgroups like families, students or coworkers. Every Infected of either gender and any age exhibited identical behaviors.

“Such as?” Browner prodded.

“Well, they respect each other’s personal space.” Isabel erased her reflexive cringe. “Ever see birds on a wire scoot over when a new bird lands? As a crowd grows, Infecteds don’t jostle, push or shove. They shuffle their feet to reallocate the shrinking space.”

Browner took a moment to compose himself. “Is that it?” he asked ominously.

“Uhm, we do have a preliminary working hypothesis,” Isabel winced, “that rising density charges a crowd per Gay-Lussac’s law.” Hey! Isabel thought. That was my idea. “Gas pressure P divided by temperature T equals a constant k. So the math says that, as crowd density P increases, its potential for violence, T, has to rise proportionally.”

Browner said, “That’s if your ‘preliminary working hypothesis’ is correct?”

“What the general means,” President Stoddard said, “is we’re racing the clock.”

“We might,” Brandon ventured, “develop software to estimate crowd density from imagery and warn how close they are to boiling over. Ten square meters holds a maximum of eighty-four standing people. I’d guess any time density exceeds twenty Infecteds per ten squares, they could get violent. At forty, they’re at the brink. But that software will take some time.”

The president said, “MIT and Chicago estimate that we only have a few weeks. As does, I might add, Professor Miller’s sister. So, what have you concluded definitively?”

Brandon said they had noted scaling in motion-capture data: the actions of an individual being amplified by crowd reaction. And herding behavior: Infecteds at the rear, who had no contact with a trigger, joined in the attack. Infecteds didn’t form demonstrating crowds addressing an issue, expressive crowds at an emotional event, or spectating or escaping crowds. They were casual crowds, emerging spontaneously, having no larger purpose and little interaction with each other.

“The key is that casual crowds have no established norms of behavior to restrain excesses and can morph, in an instant, into violent mobs when a physical crowd, unconnected by common cause, becomes a psychological crowd, united by a shared social identity. That tipping point happens when crowds become deindividualized by the environment.”

Browner organized his workspace, drew a deep breath, and turned to the president. “Sir, I need something useful from these scientists. All I’ve gotten so far, out of MIT, is,” he read, “‘Target annihilation by diffusing particles in inhomogeneous geometries.’”

“What the hell does that mean?” the president asked.

“Well, apparently, you’ve got better odds hiding in a large, complex environment like an office building than in a wide-open field. Aside from the fact that that’s obvious, I intend for my men to fight, sir, not hide. And I don’t care about Infecteds’ personal space. I need practical advice on how to defeat them militarily.”

Stoddard asked Brandon, “When does this deindividualization tipping point occur?”

Brandon waxed academic. “A psychologist named Le Bon,” off we go, “tried to figure out how people could’ve behaved so cruelly during the French Revolution and proposed that the crowd itself caused violence. In doing so, Le Bon not only anticipated the tragedies of the twentieth century, like the Holocaust, but actually contributed to them.”

“How?” Browner challenged, his patience wearing thinner by the comment.

“Le Bon thought that, as crowds expand and the risk of punishment declines, people descend into hypnotic anonymity and begin to feel invincible. We now call that ‘charged.’ Their individuality is submerged into the mass and they become subject to the contagion of any passing emotion. We now call that ‘suggestible.’ If the crowd says it’s your solemn duty to kill evil noblemen, you commit unthinkable crimes—the universality phenomenon—which is the subconscious excuse of looters everywhere that if everyone is doing it, it must be okay. Later, Freud proposed his primitive horde theory that we built our civilized nature atop barbarism inherited from aboriginal man, and that mobs sweep aside our modern veneer and expose those underlying primitive behaviors.”

“So,” Browner interrupted, “I get how Le Bon anticipated mass crimes against humanity. But how did he contribute to them?”

“Le Bon prescribed rules to control crowd behavior. Simplify, substitute exaggeration and shouted, responsive affirmation for proof, repeat points over and over.”

“Sounds like a good stump speech to me,” Stoddard remarked to muted chuckles. Eying the fuming general, he quickly said, “Anything else?” before Browner could speak.

Brandon rummaged through his idea hamper. “Well, people in a crisis tend to behave normally until long after they should have panicked. Look at video of people calmly departing the Twin Towers just before the first collapsed. They walk when they should run. Duck when they should drop. During unfamiliar events like an emergency, people follow a schema, or script: a pattern of behavior deeply ingrained and remarkably resistant to change. They want everything to be okay, so they believe anything consistent with that hope and disregard inconsistencies until long after they should’ve known better.”

The president said, “I presume that might explain why the public is, to a surprising degree, largely ignoring the approaching threat?”

Brandon replied, “I think Le Bon would’ve approved of your handling of the crisis, sir.” Isabel recoiled from his ass-kissing and caught Browner’s eye. Brandon said, “Le Bon suggested that regular communications, strong leadership, and a good information campaign will do wonders in . . . well, in . . .”

“In pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes?” Stoddard said. “I know that’s what you’re all thinking. I agonize constantly over keeping SED secret. But for me to go down in history as a criminal, there’ll have to be a history. Survival is what I’m focused on. As General Browner points out at least twice a day, that justifies hard decisions. What if I told the truth; everyone quit work; millions died from treatable diseases, crime, riots, starvation; and we cured SED before it even arrives? Did telling the truth make me a better man?”

No one dared an answer. Into the silence, Browner boomed, “Professor Miller?” The wallflowers turned to her. “Does any of this stuff make neuroscientific sense?”

Not really, she thought. But she said, “Most complex behaviors are associated with the cerebral cortex—the outermost, centimeter-thick layer of the cerebrum. Cortex means ‘bark,’ like on a tree. It’s not needed for biological survival. Some species, like birds, don’t have one, and others survive after theirs are removed. But it’s where a lot of our higher mental functions occur. If severely damaged in humans, behavior becomes stereotyped, like Infecteds. In extreme cases, you’re left with only the motor controls of the limbic system and a reduced amount of memory function, which sounds like some of the WHO reports about low-functioning Infecteds.”

“But what about,” Browner said, “these theories about crowd behavior?”

Brandon clearly waited for her either to rescue him, or emasculate him, as he’d once described her public rebuttal in a seminar. She tried a third way. “Well, Jung’s collective unconscious theory competed with Freud’s primitive horde theory and is explainable by commonalities in the subcortical thalamus and limbic system.”

That answer upset everyone—Brandon for lack of support, Browner for theoretical bullshit, and the impatient president for droning on. She decided to try an honest answer. “Infecteds don’t need crowds to become deindividualized. Their brain damage does that. Humans normally experience cognitive dissonance. They subconsciously question whether every action they take was something I would do? A good person feels guilt, for instance, in the case of the private self, over pocketing a blind man’s wallet, and embarrassment, in the case of the public self, at having been seen doing so. But Infecteds have no sense that they’re good because there is no they. No self. With no cognitive dissonance, there is no ethics, morality, shame, embarrassment or mortification.”

“So they commit atrocities without compunction,” Browner summarized.

Isabel had to agree. “Le Bon, Freud, and Jung all described how freeing people from social norms increases the likelihood of violence. People become ruled by urge, instinct, and impulse—their animal passions. One of those is the instinct of struggle, a desire to eliminate anything standing in the way of satisfying their other urges. Each of the Infecteds in these riot videos was headed somewhere. Maybe grocery shopping, fleeing a threat or hooking up with a girlfriend. Those troops were literally standing in their way.”

“And that same brain damage explains the crowd violence too?” Browner asked.

“Yes. Normal, introspective minds get lost in thought, oblivious to the outside world. Infecteds are the opposite. They have no meaningful inner life, so they’re entirely focused on external stimuli, heightening their responsiveness to environmental cues. If you sit totally still next to an Infected, their attention will drift away. But scratch your nose and they’ll notice. In a crowd, all their cues come from the behavior of the crowd around them. They are so absorbed by that environment they lose the ability even to differentiate themselves from the crowd. They are the crowd and go with the flow to a degree impossible for people with intact self-identities. If your or my passions were so roused that we joined a riot, we’d still feel an inner eye watching us, judging us. Not so the Infecteds.”

Stoddard said, “So your conclusion is that Infecteds have no sense of self, and that’s why they throw their lives away in riots? And you’re sure about that science?”

Brandon’s gaze bore into her. “I have a source at the WHO,” she said, “who confirmed that their autopsies will conclude that SED damages the insular and medial prefrontal cortices. That could obliterate self-awareness and produce a kind of ‘self-amnesia,’ destroying even memories of what consciousness had been like.”

General Browner said, “I would think the opposite would happen. If someone lost their sense of self, they wouldn’t give a crap about what some crowd wanted.”

“I agree it’s paradoxical,” Isabel replied. “Membership in a group is typically derived from an individual’s self-concept. But put them in a crowd, and their lack of separate identity allows for total immersion. They throw their lives away because they’ve lost even the concept of their own individuality. They bond to the mob’s goals, which include elimination of threats to the mob. Sufferers of this type of brain damage have been known to commit horrendous violence against members of other groups in conflict with theirs.”

Browner nodded slowly and said, “Kudos, Dr. Miller. That all makes sense.”

The president said, “Could we get Dr. Miller a chair?” Maldonado rose to look for one, but a mid-level naval officer stood and gave his to Isabel, who smiled in thanks, sat at the table and cast a worried look at Brandon, who wouldn’t return it.

“Sir,” Browner said to the president, “I’m hearing that our principal tactic to slow the spread of the disease, blocking migration, will also result in the most extreme violence. We need practical advice for our unit commanders.”

Isabel blurted out, “I’m sure Dr. Plante has some crowd control advice.” I hope.

Everyone turned to Brandon. “Well,” he said before remembering to stand, “we could use stewards to monitor the crowd and report in if they seem to be growing agitated.”

The Homeland Security secretary said, “You mean undercover agents?” Brandon preferred the term “stewards.” “Don’t you think a guy in HazMat gear might stick out?”

Brandon looked at Isabel for help. “There’s no reason,” he said, “that you couldn’t recruit Infecteds to keep you apprised of any trouble brewing in a crowd of other Infecteds.”

Isabel’s eyes darted from face to face. She imagined figurative crickets chirping.

The president seemed far away when he asked, “Where does this all end? What kind of society has no constraints of morality and ethics, ruled by primitive urges, excited by animal passions?” Isabel belatedly realized the president was addressing her.

“Maybe we should hire a philosopher?” Isabel suggested in earnest.

The faint hint of a smile penetrated the president’s despair. “You’re as close as we’ve got. Give it a shot. Will Infecteds be able to organize a functioning society?”

Everyone waited. How should I know? she thought. “Well, sir, Thomas Hobbes, in Leviathan, defined social contract theory—citizens trading individual rights for something of value. ‘I agree not to kill you in exchange for you agreeing not to kill me.’”

“And thus,” Stoddard said, “government arose. Can Infecteds abide by contracts?”

“I honestly don’t know. But if they can’t, they will live, as Hobbes described, in a state of nature, and their lives will be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’.”

The distant president took a deep breath, which he let out noisily, and finally said, “On that, meeting adjourned.” Everyone rose and filed out, Brandon among them.

Browner tapped her shoulder. “Oh, hi.” Brandon was whispering to Maldonado.

“I take it there’s history between you and Dr. Plante?” Browner suggested. Isabel made a Where’d-you-get-that? face. “Do you play poker?” he asked. Isabel shook her head. Brandon exited the room. “Well, the advice of this ‘particularly intimidating son-of-a-bitch,’ is that I wouldn’t take it up if I were you. Not your game.”

She turned, but Browner was gone. She needed to guard her expressions better . . . and watch what she said in the observation room. She ran after Brandon, but had to wait on the next elevator. She called out to him across the parking lot. He climbed into their SUV. Out of breath, she joined him there. “Didn’t you hear me?” The car sped away. “You’re not pissed about that, are you?” He ignored her. “Please! Would you grow up?”

“I’ve been working on this for five days! But hey, crowd theory must be pretty simple since you have no problem expressing definitive professional opinions about it!”

“Oh, every psych major studies crowd fucking theory, Brandon!” Okay, that was cruel. “I don’t mean . . .”

“I know what you mean.”

She knew she should keep her mouth shut. “And I’ve had all of, what, eleven days? With my brain-damaged sister? But no pressure, right? Just give your best guesses to the president, the Pentagon, attorney general, Homeland Security, the FBI . . .”

Brandon said, “I thought the FBI was on the outs.” Isabel froze, like a deer. “When I was getting my security badge, Maldonado warned me that the FBI was trying to worm their way in. You’ve been talking to them, haven’t you?” Isabel focused on her poker face. “Jeez, Iz. You’re gonna get in big fucking trouble.”

“Why are they keeping the FBI out of the loop anyway?” she whispered. “I mean, the rest of the alphabet is there. DOD, CIA, NSA, DHS, TSA, CDC, NIH . . .”

“Stoddard fucking hates the FBI director. Still don’t watch the news? The guy investigated the president’s wife for financial improprieties during the last campaign! Just be careful.” She was about to thank Brandon when he said, “And I never should’ve invited you to this meeting. From now on, just stay the fuck out of my area!”