Grace stood alone in the semi-darkness of the foyer of the Janus Justice building, waiting for the lift. She stared into space, seeing only Remy’s face, a mask of resentment and betrayal, as the guards had escorted him to a secure room, the soles of his trainers squeaking against the white lino.
Her last words to him had been ‘This is for the best, Remy.’
The responsibility was crushing. If she didn’t make this therapy work – and in the next forty-eight hours – then she would have betrayed him for nothing.
Time was of the essence. It wouldn’t be long before other employees started asking questions and the authorities would find out there was a Tier Four offender in Tier Three.
It wouldn’t be long, she also suspected, before the authorities or the protestors would be banging down the doors of Janus, and it would be game over.
One of the clinic technicians had cleaned and sutured her injured hand. It throbbed beneath the white bandage as she raised her hand to the scanner to call the lift.
When it arrived, she stepped in and the confined space took her back to the small, stuffy office in the library, Bizzy standing in front of her. A wave of rage briefly submerged the trauma, but all too soon it ebbed away, leaving her fear exposed like wet sand, cold and unstable.
Bizzy’s threat had pulled at the sinews of her childhood, causing physical and emotional involuntary reactions, drawing Grace and Gracie ever closer together, and suddenly, all the flight or fight gone, she began to sob. The lift doors opened and she shuffled into the darkness of the clinic and sat with her head on one of the grey work surfaces until she’d cried herself out.
Finally, after a trip to the bathroom to wash her face, she took two bottles of stimulating AltCon from the staffroom fridge and a sandwich someone had left from the previous day, and headed to her workspace. She checked her phone – nearly half three in the morning. Dan hadn’t messaged her.
Turning her attention to her work on the screen – specifically Penny Lithgow’s brain scans – Grace realised that something important, irreversible, had happened in that small room at the library with her would-be attacker. Gracie had fully broken through into her present and had melded with Grace.
With Grace’s knowledge and experience and Gracie’s determination and survival instincts, she had survived Diros – for now. Could she extend those abilities and pit them against psychopathy itself?
Penny’s scans sat side by side in digital clarity. Abigail had been right, something had changed – the empathy centres of the brain had responded – but not enough to make the treatment work. Something else was needed.
Her eyes rested on the screen, but her mind wandered back to the library… I’m going to enjoy this… Bizzy too close, the smell of sweat, the movement of trees blowing in the breeze outside the window… the words of the small, dark-haired man, shouted from the main body of the library as the door behind her began to close…
‘Biz, you don’t have to do this!’
You don’t have to do this…
And then it occurred to her – she’d been looking in the wrong part of the brain.
‘You’re in early,’ Abigail said as she hung her coat in the storeroom.
Grace nodded in reply, not taking her eyes from the screens in front of her.
Abigail came to a standstill next to her and put a hand on the back of her chair. ‘I’m sorry things didn’t work out with Penny,’ she began. Grace felt herself bristle.
‘I’m onto something else, something that will be more effective,’ Grace said, sounding more certain than she felt. Excitement and exhaustion battled within her. Could she actually do this, revolutionise the treatment? Then she wouldn’t have to lie to Conrad about fixing criminal brains. She could keep her job. God, she might even be able to help some of those poor souls in Siberia ward. Not disembodied souls but de-souled bodies, bodies with the core removed, empty shells. Since her visit to that terrible ward, she’d often dreamt of the spirits of the offenders in biostasis, hovering above their former hosts, lost and afraid, wandering in technological nightmares.
Could she save them?
‘What’s the plan?’ Abigail asked, snapping her back to the present.
‘I’m going to activate the empathy switch so that we can control psychopathic impulses.’
Abigail’s expression didn’t change, but Grace felt a shift of energy in the space between their bodies. It caused the hairs on her arms to rise.
‘The empathy switch?’ Abigail asked.
‘It’s a myth that psychopaths can’t feel anything. To some degree they can, they just choose not to. I mean, psychopathy is a spectrum, and we’re dealing with the extreme cases here, but…’
Abigail shook her head very slightly as though she didn’t understand or some part of her was rejecting the idea.
‘Put it this way, psychopaths only feel empathy when they want to. It’s not their default position. It benefits them to, at times, put themselves in someone else’s shoes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they’re highly manipulative and what better way to manipulate their victims than to relate to and emulate their emotions? It means they can show kindness and consideration, which instils confidence and loyalty in their prey.’
Bizzy’s face and words were on the edge of her consciousness. She pushed them away. ‘However, they can choose to shut it down so they don’t let emotions interfere with their… activities.’
‘Selective empathy? So they can get what they want?’ Abigail’s expression was one of intense concentration now.
‘It’s not exactly a conscious decision, more like something that happens in the brain,’ Grace nodded. ‘But I’m going to make it so that they can’t switch it off, so that they won’t be able to shut it down. So they can’t avoid feeling.’
‘How, though?’ asked Abigail, sounding astonished.
Grace looked down at her notes.
By DEFAULT – in psychopath the region of the brain associated with pain has REDUCED ACTIVITY.
It CAN BE ACTIVATED!
Only when ASKED to imagine the pain of their victims did the MIRROR SYSTEM fire up as it did in control subjects (non-psychopaths) – not sure if they feel the same things as non-psychs.
Use MDMA or other empathy drug and STIMULATE mirror neurons – so that they can actually feel/imagine to SOME DEGREE the pain of their victims.
NEVER going to be able to make them want to HELP victim – just make them want to STOP HURTING THEM.
‘Administer the synthetic empathy drug, as it was useful to some degree. Then I intend to stimulate their mirror neurons and then finally, and this is the big one, use electromagnetic pulses on this part of the brain here…’
Grace pointed to an area just above the ear on Penny’s scan.
‘The temporoparietal junction,’ said Abigail.
‘Yes, I’m going to use electromagnetic therapy to stimulate…’
‘No.’ Abigail shook her head. ‘That’s not going to work. Any disruption of the TPJ is just going to cause adverse effects. All the studies have shown that, if anything, it makes a person less moral. I read about people inducing psychopathic behaviour by disrupting it.’
‘Not if we do it my way,’ Grace said decisively. ‘This treatment needs to reinforce the self-other distinction, and we need the TPJ to do that. This part of the brain is just too important in moral decision-making for us not to try.’ Grace looked back at the screen. She had to keep total faith in the success of her experiment until proved otherwise. ‘The treatment will also stimulate the mirror neurons so that they can relate to the other person’s experience and be more in tune with how it must feel for their victim. If the patient…’
‘Offender,’ said Abigail quickly.
‘Offender… can understand the pain they themselves would feel if this was happening to them…’
‘Then they’d be less likely to do it to others,’ finished Abigail.
Grace nodded. ‘Exactly.’
‘Sounds like psychopathic bromide to me,’ Abigail said and gave one of her rare smiles.
Grace felt relieved. It looked as though Abigail was in her corner.
‘Will they need to stay on the treatment for life, though?’
Grace nodded.
‘And obviously someone will monitor them – like chemical probation?’
‘Yes, although it’s more than just chemical. They’ll need a small implant at the back of the skull to take readings and to send a regular pulse to keep the nano-particles in the brain stimulated.’
‘This sounds like it could actually work,’ said Abigail.
And for a moment, Grace allowed herself to hope.
Two days later, Conrad stood in the clinic, clearly excited by the prospect of launching a cutting-edge technological treatment for offenders and, Grace was certain, the money that would come with it.
She just wanted to patch Remy up and get him somewhere safe.
She’d gone to bed the previous morning at ten o’clock after pulling her all-nighter at the clinic. She hadn’t spoken to Dan – just gone upstairs to the spare room and straight to sleep. Before she’d left the clinic, she’d given Abigail the instructions to organise the necessary kit for the therapy and do preliminary tests on Penny. Grace had slept like the dead, woken at midnight and returned to the clinic. She’d been there ever since. It was nearly two o’clock in the afternoon. There’d be time to be tired later.
Even though she’d been given a strong relaxant, Conrad gave Penny Lithgow a wide berth, skirting around the edge of the clinic wall. Penny sat in the chair, gazing curiously at the other humans in the room as an owl might lazily observe a mouse just after it had eaten.
‘The synthetic empathy just wasn’t effective enough for our needs,’ Grace told him. ‘As you will have read in my report that I sent this morning.’
Conrad nodded.
‘Have you any questions?’ Grace asked.
‘Not at this stage, no. I just want to know that it works.’
Abigail had been quiet so far. Was she annoyed because Grace wanted total control over her own trial, and had therefore taken over most of Abigail’s usual tasks, such as injecting the nano-particles?
‘So here… this is the part of the brain that we’re targeting.’ Grace pointed to the screen and Conrad leaned in a little closer. ‘In a moment or two you should see… ah, there we go.’ A tiny constellation of blue lights appeared on the scan. They watched for a moment as the pinpricks of light positioned themselves. ‘These little beauties are the magnetic nano-particles that, if all goes well, are going to make this therapy successful. Something similar is already used in neurosurgery to help damaged nerves and relieve extreme pain. They’ll not only direct the electrical impulses to this part of the brain, but they’re also scanners and they’ll relay all the information we need back to the computer.’
Grace lifted Penny’s dark hair to show a miniature bio-chip at the side of her skull.
‘It can be read by any shell or hypernet device with a quick swipe,’ said Grace. ‘The readings will show exactly how effective the treatment is at all times. It also generates and sends the electrical impulses.’
‘That has to be surgically implanted?’ asked Conrad.
‘Yes, but it’s not a big operation,’ said Grace. ‘It’s on the offender at all times and can be scanned by authorities, or even family members who are trying to support the offender’s rehabilitation.’
‘So they can check if the kit’s still working and if the offender poses a threat?’ Abigail asked.
Grace nodded.
‘And, tell me again, how does this work?’ Conrad asked, looking as though he was stirring an imaginary cup of tea with his forefinger.
‘It works by stimulating the empathy switch…’ Grace began.
‘It’s not an actual switch, is it?’ Conrad laughed as though he’d made a joke, but he looked uncertain.
‘No, it’s an activation point in the brain which allows people to understand how it feels when other people are hurt. It seems to be switched off in psychopaths by default, as it is here in Penny’s brain. We’re going to give it constant stimulation, so that she’ll react to other people’s pain and suffering in a more neurotypical way.’
‘And what way is that?’ asked Conrad.
‘She should find it disturbing, as she’ll be able to imagine how that pain would feel if it was being inflicted on her. She’ll suffer vicariously – the feeling of compassion for someone who’s in pain will be spontaneous, as it is in most people, and so hopefully, she won’t want to hurt anyone else. We hope that after this trial, Penny will be back on the mainstream spectrum of empathy.’ Grace took in Penny’s blank expression and, for a brief moment, wondered what it would be like to not feel for others.
‘Okay,’ said Conrad happily.
‘Abigail, do you want to tell Conrad about yesterday?’
Abigail’s expression brightened.
‘I ran a few trials yesterday while Grace was busy and I showed Penny the reel from the first experiment, the one with the dogs. The reactions after this new treatment were much more extreme than with the synthetic empathy alone.’ Abigail brought up more scans on the screens. ‘So this one is after synthemp.’ A faint glow at the brain’s centre showed where the neurons were working hard. ‘But this one is with the new treatment.’
Penny’s brain was lit up like cities on an aerial map at nighttime, showing activity in all the areas that Grace had hoped.
Grace had, of course, seen these scans immediately upon her return to the clinic, but now she wanted to prove it for her own peace of mind. Once could have been a fluke. Now it was time for the final hurdle.
She put on a reel made from footage submitted at Penny’s trial, and simulated hints and suggestions of the sort of unnameable acts that Penny had been involved with and convicted of.
‘I’m not watching this,’ Conrad stated, turning his back to the screen.
‘That’s okay, you don’t need to. I’m not going to either,’ said Grace.
How could Abigail make those kinds of reels without it driving her mad? Those poor police officers who had to go through hours and hours of this sort of footage to find the culprits.
But if Grace wanted to find out whether this offender might ever be safe enough to be in public again, in places where children lived, played – then she had to run this test, and that included playing the reel, however abhorrent it was.
They’d run the reel that morning without the treatment, and Penny and her brain had reacted in the way a psychopath’s would be expected to in the face of children’s suffering – as though she was watching a cartoon.
Abigail placed headphones on Penny to contain the sounds.
‘You’re going to hear a number of beeps indicating markers that I’ve already set up so we can correlate what Penny’s watching with how she’s reacting,’ Abigail told Conrad.
‘So we don’t have to watch the footage,’ Grace explained.
‘This screen here,’ Grace pointed to a set of images on the left, ‘shows the scans from this morning when Penny watched this exact same reel without the treatment. See these numbers here? These correspond with the beeps, so we can map the changes in reaction to the exact same scenes before and after the new treatment.’
The reel was ready, the nano-particles were injected, the synthetic empathy had been administered and the electric currents were live.
All that was left was to dim the lights and hit play.
Grace took a deep breath, pressed Enter on the computer and turned away from the reel so she wouldn’t have those images imprinted on her mind’s eye. She momentarily locked eyes with Abigail, who looked nervous, the first time Grace had ever seen that emotion in her.
Five minutes later, Penny Lithgow began to scream and didn’t stop until the second dose of tranquilliser hit her bloodstream.