What if the person next to you was a psychopath? Or your boss? Even your spouse?
This is the chilling possibility brought forth in QUANTUM NIGHT, bestselling author and science fiction legend Robert J. Sawyer’s newest novel. Following bestsellers such as Flashforward, Hominids, Calculating God, and Red Planet Blues, this is Sawyer’s twenty-third novel and his first in three years.
This brand-new science fiction thriller explores the idea of psychopaths not just being monsters—in fact, anyone devoid of empathy and conscience can fit the bill, and QUANTUM NIGHT suggests that there are as many as two billion psychopaths worldwide. In the book, readers are introduced to Jim Marchuk, an experimental psychologist at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg who develops a flawless technique for identifying psychopaths. Suddenly, however, the finger is pointed towards him, uncovering the fact that not only was he a psychopath twenty years ago, but that he was also responsible for horrific suffering.
After the jump, check out an exclusive excerpt of this exciting new book!
QUANTUM NIGHTby Robert J. Sawyer
“I don’t get it,” said Dominic. “It worked fine on our first two test subjects. Why isn’t it working with this guy?”
Fine was overstating the case, Menno thought. They could indeed now pick up unspoken phonemes from the brain, but they were still having a lot of difficulty distinguishing many of them. Trying to tell a tuh from a duh was proving impossible, although Menno suspected they could write software to figure out which it should be based on the preceding and following phonemes. But telling one phoneme from another was predicated on first actually detecting the phonemes—and that had turned into a nightmare with this student volunteer from Menno’s second-year developmental-psych class.
Dominic and Menno were on the opposite side of a glass wall from the subject, a doughy-looking Ukrainian kid named Jim Marchuk. Menno pressed the intercom button. “Jim, try again. What was that phrase you were thinking? Say it out loud for us.”
“‘Making your way in the world today takes everything you’ve got.’”
“Right, okay. Now, again—but subvocalize, okay? Over and over.”
The headset, Menno knew, was large and uncomfortable, and much too unwieldy for battle. It consisted of a modified football helmet with a dozen electronics packs, each the size of a deck of cards, attached to it, and a thick bundle of cabling heading off to more equipment on a table beside the chair Jim was sitting on. But if they could get it working at all with this prototype, slimming the device down would be a task for the DoD engineers.
Menno and Dominic stared at the oscilloscope display, which was showing the reconstruction of the signal being transmitted by the headset. The trace was thick, running almost the height of the scope; it looked more like white noise than anything meaningful.
Dom had taped printouts from the previous two subjects on the wall above the scope. They each showed a single, distinct line spiking and falling. Underneath, he’d written in red marker the phonemes the patterns represented.
Menno shook his head. “I can’t even tell when he’s finishing one rendition and starting another.”
Dominic reached for the intercom button. “Jim, thanks. Just be quiet for a minute, would you? Don’t say anything and don’t subvocalize. Just sit there, please.”
Jim nodded, and Dominic and Menno turned back to the oscilloscope, which was just as active as before.
“Where do you suppose all that noise is coming from?” Dominic asked.
“I don’t know. You’re certain the equipment isn’t overheating?”
Dominic pointed at a digital readout. “It’s fine.”
“Okay, well, maybe this boy is a freak. Let’s test a few other people.”
#Menno was wearing his heavy winter coat; Dom had on a bright blue ski jacket with a lift ticket attached. It was 3:00 p.m. on a crisp afternoon, and the sun was already well on its way down to the horizon. They were walking along the Memorial Avenue of Elms, a road lined on both sides with trees, leading from the Fort Garry campus to Pembina Highway. Menno liked trees; he hated war. As a psychologist, he understood that this particular part of the university was a physical instantiation of the cognitive dissonance he felt working on a DoD project. The Avenue had been dedicated in 1922 to the men from the Manitoba Agricultural College who had died in the First World War; two and a half years ago, in June 1998, the dedication had been extended to include many who had died during World War II and the Korean War, as well.
“The Pentagon isn’t going to be happy with a microphone that can only be used by half their soldiers,” said Dominic, the words coming out in clouds of condensation. “For whatever reason, it just doesn’t work with some people; why they have all that noise in their auditory cortices is beyond me. I mean, if they were reporting tinnitus, it’d make sense. Or maybe if they’d all listened to super-loud rock music, or something like that. But it seems completely random.”
Menno thought about that as they walked past the block of stone with the dedication plaques. “No,” he said at last. “Not quite random. You’re right that the majority of our sample group doesn’t have the background noise, but if you look at the test subjects who came from my class—Jim, Tatiana, the others—most of them do have the noise, and …”
“Yes?”
Menno continued along, the packed-down snow squeaking underfoot. “Background noise …” he said, slowly pursuing the idea as if it were a rabbit that would flee if startled. “In the auditory cortex …” His heart was pounding. “Preferentially present in those who study psychology.”
“Well, I always said psych students were a little weird.”
“It’s not just that,” Menno replied. “Psych attracts a certain kind of student: kids trying to make sense of themselves. Cheaper than therapy, you know?”
A single puff of chilled air: “So?”
“So, they’re obviously chewing things over, ruminating, wondering.” He felt his eyebrows colliding with the wool of his cap, and he lowered his voice, as if speaking softly would make the idea sound less crazy. “The background stuff. It isn’t noise.” He shook his head. “It’s—my God! It’s inner monologue—stream of consciousness! It’s the constant background of a normal life, all the stuff you’re thinking inside: I wonder what’s for lunch. Jeez, is it Thursday already? Gotta remember to stop by the store on the way home. Those thoughts—those articulated thoughts—are made of phonemes, too. They’re never spoken, they’re never even subvocalized or mouthed. But they’re words all the same, made up of phonemes. And so the question isn’t—”
“The question isn’t,” said Dominic, coming to a dead halt beneath skeletal branches, “why some people do have background noise in their auditory cortices. The question is why most people do not.”
