Syndrome E

23

The chronically jammed Brussels ring road was dumping its last batch of workers into the city’s outskirts. After the strong heat of the previous days, a yellowish haze tarnished the sky, despite various antipollution initiatives. Armed with a GPS, Lucie and her boss easily found their way to the University of Saint-Luc health services, located in a suburb of the Belgian capital. With their tree-lined surroundings and meticulous, linear architecture, the buildings gave off a sense of peace and strength. From what Kashmareck understood, the clinic, in addition to its role as a hospital, also performed specialized research, supported by an up-to-the-minute technological infrastructure. Among other things, it was involved in neuromarketing, the main point of which was to gain a better understanding of consumer behavior by identifying how the brain worked at the time of purchase.

Georges Beckers was waiting for the detectives in the medical imaging department, located on the basement level of the university hospital. Short and stout, the man wore a jovial face, with puffy jowls and a collar of white beard. There was nothing to suggest that he was at the forefront of neuroimaging research, assuming it was possible to have an archetypal researcher. He briefly explained that, between medical consults, his department leased out the scanners for advertising purposes—something that was strictly prohibited in France.

As they walked down the hallway, the police captain steered the conversation toward their case.

“When did you first meet Claude Poignet?”

Beckers answered in a thick Belgian accent:

“It was about ten years ago, at a conference in Brussels on the evolution of imagery since the Age of Enlightenment. Claude was very interested in the way images traveled from generation to generation. In illustrated books, films, photographs, and even collective memory. I’d gone there for science, and he for film. We hit it off immediately. It’s really tragic, what happened to him.”

“Did you get together often?”

“I’d say two or three times a year. But we were in constant touch by e-mail or telephone. He followed my work on the brain closely and he taught me a great deal about how movies work.”

At the end of the corridor, they halted before some wide windows. On the other side lay a cylinder, located in the middle of a white room. Before the scanner stood a kind of table on tracks, fitted with a kind of hoop used to hold the head in place.

“This scanner is one of the most cutting-edge machines in existence. Three teslas of magnetic field, a picture of the brain every demi-second, powerful statistical analysis system… I hope you’re not claustrophobic, Captain?”

“No, why?”

“In that case, you’re the one who’ll go in the scanner, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Kashmareck’s face darkened.

“We came to see about the film. On the phone, it sounded like you’d discovered something.”

“Indeed I did. But explanation works best with demonstration. The machine is free this evening, so we might as well take advantage of it. An MRI in a machine that costs millions of euros is not an opportunity that comes along every day.”

The man was apparently obsessed with science and aching to use his little toys. Like it or not, Kashmareck was going to serve as guinea pig and no doubt feed the statistics that researchers delighted in. Lucie patted her boss’s shoulder and gave him a smile.

“He’s right. Nothing like a good shower of X-rays.”

The captain grunted and gave in. Beckers provided the explanations:

“Have you seen the film?”

“Haven’t had time yet—we’ve just downloaded it onto our servers. But my colleague here described it to me in the car.”

“Perfect. This will give you a chance to see it. But you’re going to do it from inside the scanner. My assistant is waiting. Do you have any dental fillings or body piercings?”

“Uh… yes…”

He looked at Lucie, hesitant.

“Here, on my navel…”

Lucie brought her hand to her mouth to keep from laughing. She turned around and pretended to be inspecting the machines, while the scientist pursued his explanations.

“Take it out. We’ll get you settled and give you glasses that are actually two pixelated screens. During the viewing of the film, the apparatus will record your brain activity. Please…”

Kashmareck sighed. “Jesus, if my wife could only see this!”

The cop moved away and joined a man in a lab coat in the room below. Lucie and the scientist headed to a kind of control room loaded with screens, computers, and colored buttons. It looked like the main deck of the starship Enterprise. While they were settling Kashmareck in, Lucie voiced the question she’d been dying to ask:

“What happens now?”

“We’re going to watch the movie at the same time as him, but directly, inside his brain.”

Beckers took a moment to enjoy the astonishment on her face.

“Today, my dear lieutenant, we’re going to explore important mysteries of the brain, especially with regard to images and sounds. The oldest card trick in the book—divination—is about to be relegated to the attic.”

“How so?”

“If you show your colleague a playing card while he’s in the scanner, I’d be able to guess which it is just by looking at his brain activity.”

In the room below them, the captain lay stretched out on the table, not feeling very reassured. The assistant had just fitted him with strange glasses with square frames and opaque lenses.

“Are you telling me that you can read people’s minds?”

“Let’s say it’s no longer a fantasy. Today, we’re able to project simple visual thoughts onscreen. When you see a specific image, thousands of tiny areas of the visual cortex, which we call voxels, light up in an almost unique way and identify the relevant image. Thanks to complex mathematical treatments, we can then associate an image with a cerebral cartography, and we record all of it in a database. Thus, at any given moment, we could use the system in the opposite direction: to each group of voxels visualized by the MRI, there corresponds an image, at least in theory. If the image is in our database, we can reconstruct it, and thus display your thoughts.”

“That’s astounding.”

“Isn’t it? Unfortunately, the voxel, our smallest unit, measures fifty cubic millimeters and already contains around five million neurons. Despite the power of our scanner, it’s like seeing the outline of a city from up in the sky, without being able to make out the pattern of the streets or the architecture of its buildings. But it’s already a giant step. Ever since one brilliant scientist had the idea, a few years ago, to make people drink Coke and Pepsi in a scanner, the possibilities have become limitless. They were blindfolded and asked which soft drink they preferred before tasting it. Most answered Coke. But in the blind test, the same people said they preferred the taste of Pepsi. The scanner showed that an area in the brain, called putamen, reacted more strongly for Pepsi than for Coke. Putamen is the seat of immediate, instinctive pleasures.”

“So the ad campaign for Coke claims that people prefer it, while in reality their bodies prefer Pepsi.”

“Precisely. Today all the big advertising firms are clamoring for our scanners. Neuromarketing allows them to increase brand preference, maximize the impact of an advertising slogan, and optimize its memorization. We’ve been able to highlight areas of the brain involved in the purchasing process, like the insula, which is the site of pain and pricing, as well as the median prefrontal cortex, the putamen, and the cuneus. Soon all an ad will have to do is enter your visual or auditory field to have an impact. Even if your eyes and ears aren’t paying attention, it will be studied so as to stimulate the memory circuits and the purchasing process.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“It’s the future. What do you do when you’re tired, my dear lieutenant? Life is increasingly demanding and exhausting, so to relax you settle in at home, in front of your screens. You open your mind to images like a faucet, with your awareness lowered, almost asleep. And at that moment you become the perfect target, and they inject whatever they want into your head.”

It was both staggering and horrible. A world governed by images and the control of the subconscious, in which the barriers of rationality were bypassed. Could one still speak of free will? Seeing all these perfected tools working on the brain, Lucie was reminded of the fantasy of the optogram: they were in the heart of the matter, and it wasn’t so fantastic after all.

“So I’m not entirely off the mark if I say that an image can leave an imprint in the brain?”

“That’s exactly right—you’ve understood the basis of our work. You study fingerprints; we study brain prints. Every action leaves a trace, whatever it might be. The whole trick lies in knowing how to detect it, and having the tools that let you exploit it.”

Lucie thought of all the investigative techniques the crime lab used when dealing with a case. Here they did the same thing, but with gray matter.

“Obviously, we’re still in the Middle Ages of technology, but in a few years we’ll probably have machines that will allow you to visualize dreams. Do you know that in the United States they’re already talking about installing scanners in courtrooms? Imagine those machines projecting a defendant’s memories. No more lies; verdicts that are always reliable… And I’m not even talking about other fields, like medicine, psychiatry, or business. There’s also neuropolitics, which offers the possibility of accessing voters’ deep-seated feelings toward a given candidate.”

Lucie recalled the film Minority Report. It was a dizzying prospect, but this was the reality of tomorrow. A rape of consciousness. The director from 1955, with his subliminal images, was already part of the process. Perhaps he had understood, well before his time, the function of certain areas of the brain.

On the other side of the glass, the poor captain disappeared into the magnetic tunnel. Lucie was pleased to have avoided that bit of pure anxiety. Watching the film was already trying enough.

“What do you think of the film from 1955?” she asked.

“Impressive, on all fronts. I don’t know who the director was, but he was a genius, an innovator. With his use of subliminal imagery and multiple exposures, he was already acting on areas of the primitive brain. Pleasure, fear, the desire to confront taboos. In 1955, such a process was completely unheard of. Even advertisers came to it later on. And the man who can beat advertising to the punch is hands down a genius.”

The same words had come out of Claude Poignet’s mouth.

“And what about the mutilated woman and the bull? Special effects?”

“No idea. That’s not really my specialty—I was more interested in how the film was put together, not its content… Excuse me a moment, my assistant is signaling that all’s ready.”

Beckers turned toward the monitors. On the screen Lucie saw what was supposed to be her boss’s brain. A throbbing ball, the seat of emotions, memory, character, and lived experience. On another screen, Lucie could see the first image from the digitized film, set on PAUSE. The scientist made several adjustments.

“Let’s get started… The principle is simple. Once activated, neurons consume oxygen. The MRI simply colors this consumption.”

The film progressed. The captain’s brain activity was haloed with colors; the organ seemed to be gliding over a rainbow that veered from blue to red. Certain areas lit up, faded, moved around like fluids in translucent tubes.

“Do you think Szpilman did the same thing with your former director two years ago?” Lucie asked. “Use the machines to dissect the film?”

“Most likely, yes. As I told your boss on the phone, the director had talked a little about the experiment at the time. And about a very strange film. But I really hadn’t thought much more about it.”

Beckers returned to his screen and began commenting in real time:

“Every image that enters your visual field is extremely complex. It’s first treated by the retina, then transformed into a nerve impulse that the optic nerve carries to the back of your brain, to the visual cortex. At that stage, multiple specialized zones analyze the various properties of the image. Its colors, forms, movement, and also its nature: violent, comic, neutral, sad. What you see there certainly does not allow us to guess what image the witness is observing, but the data do allow us to identify some of the parameters I just mentioned. These days, experts in neuroimagery have fun guessing the nature of a film just by analyzing these masses of colors. Comedy, drama, suspense…”

“And how would you analyze this film?”

“Overall, extreme violence. Concentrate on those areas…”

He pointed his finger to certain places on the electronic depiction of the brain.

“They’re lighting up on and off,” Lucie noticed. “Is that the subliminal imagery?”

“Yes. I timed their appearances. A hidden image always corresponds to when those areas light up. For the moment, it’s just the pleasure centers. You can easily guess why. The actress, nude, in risqué postures. Those gloved hands stroking her.”

Lucie felt embarrassed at penetrating, to some degree, her hierarchical superior’s deepest intimacy. The captain had no idea he was seeing, at that very moment, subliminal images of the actress in his simpler device. He had even less idea that his brain was getting off on them and risked setting off an embarrassing physical reaction.

The digitized film continued to advance. Lucie recalled what Claude Poignet had shown her on the viewer. They were getting close to the other kind of image: the actress’s mangled body on the grass with the large eye sliced into her belly. Beckers moved his finger on the screen.

“This is it. Activation of the median prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortex, as well as of the temporoparietal junction. The really shocking images have just started occurring, hidden behind apparently tranquil scenes. Up until now, everything is coherent. But hang on a bit…”

The black-and-white film was three-quarters of the way through. The little girl was petting a cat, sitting in the grass, still framed by that strange, drooling fog and a black sky. A neutral scene, which in principle should elicit no emotion.

“Here we go… The signals in the brain get excited, even independent of the precise moments when the subliminal images occur. Same thing for the amygdala and parts of the anterior cingulate cortex. The organism is steeling itself for a violent reaction. You must have felt the same disturbance when you watched the film—a desire to run away, perhaps, or turn it off.”

It was well before the scene with the bull that the colors exploded in Kashmareck’s brain. They were lighting up on all sides. A few moments later, his brain activity returned to more normal levels. Beckers shook his notes.

“At precisely eleven minutes, three seconds you see the brain activity reacting to violent images, which lasts for a minute. But this part of the film contains none of the subliminal images that were inserted in the original. Not the naked woman, not the mutilations. Not a thing.”

“So what is it, then?”

“A complicated process of hidden imagery, using superimposition, contrast, and light. I believe both the subliminal images and that white circle at the upper right are just red herrings. They’re the visible element that allowed the film to mask the real hidden message. Unconsciously, the eye is constantly drawn by that distracting spot, which keeps you from concentrating too much on other parts of the image and noticing what’s really going on. The filmmaker took care to thwart even the most observant viewers.”

Lucie could no longer keep still. The film was drawing her in; it possessed her.

“Show me those hidden images.”

“Let’s first let your captain join us.”

Lucie couldn’t help watching the scene with the bull once again, while Beckers sat down at another computer. It gave her gooseflesh, especially when the camera zoomed in on the girl’s eyes: cold and devoid of all feeling. The eyes of an ancient statue.

A few minutes later, Kashmareck returned. He was as white as the shell of the scanner.

“Weird goddamn movie” were his only words. He too had been turned inside out, manipulated, shocked, and was trying to figure out why he felt so strange. Beckers briefly recapped what he’d just said to Lucie, tapping on his keyboard. Video processing software came up. The scientist opened the digitized film and moved the progress bar to eleven minutes and three seconds. Nearly identical images appeared one behind the other, as if on a filmstrip viewed under a lightbulb. With his mouse, Beckers pointed out an area in the first image, at lower left.

“It’s always in the low-contrast areas that this happens. In fog, the black sky, very dark zones, omnipresent at this point in the film. Visual tricks that allowed our filmmaker to express his secret language.”

With his mouse, he rolled the cursor rapidly over the screen, using it to underscore his explanations.

“If you look at this image just as it is, what do you see? A girl sitting in the grass and petting a cat. Around her there’s this fog, and these large dark flat areas, on the sides and in the sky. If you don’t know there’s anything to find, you’ll pass right by it. That’s what happened to Claude, who was concentrating entirely on the subliminal images, which were straightforward and clearly distinct from the rest of the film.”

Lucie came closer, her brows knit.

“Now that I’m looking, I’d almost say there were… faces, lost in the fog. And… and in all those dark patches around the image.”

“Faces, that’s right. A crowd of children’s faces.”

The scene was odd; barely perceptible faces surrounded the little girl, like malevolent succubae. The more Lucie’s eye became acclimated, the more details she made out. Small feet shoved into socks; matching outfits, like hospital pajamas; a uniform floor that looked like linoleum. A parallel, latent world slowly took shape. Lucie thought of optical illusions—the image of a vase, for instance, that turns into a couple making love after you’ve stared at it for a moment.

In the drop-down menu, Beckers selected the brightness and contrast option and opened a dialogue box on which he could play with the settings.

“Let’s suppose it’s 1955 and we’re in a movie theater. And we add a filter over the lens of the projector. A filter that heightens contrast. Then we also increase the brightness. I’m re-creating these manipulations by applying different values, which I’ve already tested. Now watch…”

He hit APPLY, and something strange happened to the image. What was initially invisible came to the fore, while the more obvious scene bleached into white light.

“Because of the increased brightness, the main image—the girl petting the cat—becomes overexposed and fades out. But the image in the darker areas, which at first was underexposed, now emerges fully.”

The two combined images produced a bizarre effect, but this time one could clearly make out a group of children, all standing, and rabbits huddled in a corner.

Lucie swallowed hard. This was it: the rabbits and the children. On the phone, the Canadian had said everything started from there.

Kashmareck mopped his brow.

“This is incredible. How did the filmmaker pull off something like that?”

“Hard for me to explain the precise technical procedure, but I think he mainly played with double exposures, using a series of adjustable masks over the camera lens. There’s one basic characteristic of film—photo or movie—which is that it remains impressionable as long as you haven’t run it through fixative in a darkroom. Basically, you could shoot several movies on the same roll of film; you just have to rewind without opening the magazine. If you do it randomly, it just becomes a jumble and you won’t see a thing. But with a lot of technical know-how and a good knowledge of lighting, composition, and framing, you can get remarkable results. Claude Poignet admired Méliès. He once told me Méliès had used up to nine successive superimpositions to build certain special effects. The work of a magician and a fine jeweler all at once. I have no doubt this film here is of the same caliber, and that your director could easily rival Méliès.”

Lucie cautiously analyzed the faces onscreen. Little girls of seven or eight, with severe expressions and pinched mouths. None of them was laughing—on the contrary, they seemed to be prey to sheer terror. What were they afraid of?

Her heart leaped. She pointed her finger at the screen.

“That one, a bit in front. She looks like the girl on the swing.”

“That’s right.”

The room the girls were in appeared cramped, windowless. Beckers rubbed his thick lips with a sigh.

“Our filmmaker didn’t simply want to hide weird images in his film, he wanted to conceal a whole other film, a parallel film, completely insane. A monstrosity.”

“A film within a film that no eye could see?”

“Yes. Directly injected into the brain, without the slightest conscious censorship. Without the possibility of turning away. Look carefully.”

He made the next fifty frames go by slowly, which in reality constituted only a second of film time.

“The superimposed images appear only every ten frames. Which means that for every second of projection time, you get five superimposed frames, each spaced two-tenths of a second apart. It’s too little, in the midst of all those images, for the eye to notice anything, but almost enough to give the sense of movement. Movement that gets imprinted on the brain… It’s your brain that sees the film, not your eyes.”

Lucie struggled to understand. This was probably what had determined the choice of fifty images per second. He wanted to slip in the maximum number of hidden images without the viewer’s eye noticing them.

“Now you’re going to imagine something else,” Beckers continued. “So here we have our movie projector, with its filter and strong light that lets the invisible images be seen.”

With a click, he opened a window to adjust the settings for film projection.

“Now imagine that you regulated the projector’s shutter at the rate of five frames a second, as most of those old machines could do, while your reel was still running at fifty frames a second. That means that the only images being projected onscreen are the ones we’re interested in; the others are blocked by the baffle.”

Beckers got up and turned off the lights. All that remained were the flickering screens on which danced various sectional views of the brain.

“The film we’re about to see will be jumpy, since it’s being shown at five frames a second, whereas the illusion of continuous movement doesn’t really kick in until around ten or twelve. But it’s still enough”—his voice was toneless—“to get the picture. I think your man understood things about the brain well before the rest of the world.”

He halted his hand over the mouse and looked his visitors in the eye. His face was serious.

“Do me a favor, please. If someday you get to the bottom of all this, be sure to tell me. I wouldn’t want these images rattling around in my head with no explanation for the rest of my life.”

The film began.

Camera. Action.