A Scanner Darkly

“We know you were one of the people in that group,” the seated medical deputy said. “It doesn’t matter which one. None of you could look at the bike and perceive the simple mathematical operation involved in determining the number of its very small system of gear ratios.” In the deputy’s voice Fred heard a certain compassion, a measure of being kind. “An operation like that constitutes a junior high school aptitude test. Were you all stoned?”

“No,” Fred said.

“They give aptitude tests like that to children,” the other medical deputy said.

“So what was wrong, Fred?” the first deputy asked.

“I forget,” Fred said. He shut up now. And then he said, “It sounds to me like a cognitive fuckup, rather than perceptive. Isn’t abstract thinking involved in a thing like that? Not—”

“You might imagine so,” the seated deputy said. “But tests show that the cognitive system fails because it isn’t receiving accurate data. In other words, the inputs are distorting in such a fashion that when you go to reason about what you see you reason wrongly because you don’t—” The deputy gestured, trying to find a way to express it.

“But a ten-speed bike has seven gears,” Fred said. “What we saw was accurate. Two in front, five in back.”

“But you didn’t perceive, any of you, how they interact: five in back with each of the two in front, as the black told you. Was he a highly educated man?”

“Probably not,” Fred said.

“What the black saw,” the standing deputy said, “was different from what all of you saw. He saw two separate connecting lines between the rear gear system and the front, two simultaneous different lines perceptible to him between the gears in front running to each of the five back ones in turn. … What you saw was one connective to all back ones.”

“But that would make six gears, then,” Fred said. “Two front gears but one connective.”

“Which is inaccurate perception. Nobody taught that black boy that; what they taught him to do, if anyone taught him at all, was to figure out, cognitively, what the meaning of those two connectives were. You missed one of them entirely, all of you. What you did was that although you counted two front gears, you perceived them as a homogeneity.”

“I’ll do better next time,” Fred said.

“Next time what? When you buy a ripped-off ten-speed bike? Or abstracting all daily percept input?”

Fred remained silent.

“Let’s continue the test,” the seated deputy said. “What do you see in this one, Fred?”

“Plastic dog shit,” Fred said. “Like they sell here in the Los Angeles area. Can I go now?” It was the Lions Club speech all over again.

Both deputies, however, laughed.

“You know, Fred,” the seated one said, “if you can keep your sense of humor like you do you’ll perhaps make it.”

“Make it?” Fred echoed. “Make what? The team? The chick? Make good? Make do? Make out? Make sense? Make money? Make time? Define your terms. The Latin for ‘make’ is facere, which always reminds me of fuckere, which is Latin for ‘to fuck,’ and I haven’t …

The brain of the higher animals, including man, is a double organ, consisting of right and left hemispheres connected by an isthmus of nerve tissue called the corpus callosum. Some 15 years ago Ronald E. Myers and R. W. Sperry, then at the University of Chicago, made a surprising discovery: when this connection between the two halves of the cerebrum was cut, each hemisphere functioned independently as if it were a complete brain.

… been getting it on worth jack shit lately, plastic shit or otherwise, any kind of shit. If you boys are psychologist types and you’ve been listening to my endless debriefings with Hank, what the hell is Donna’s handle? How do I get next to her? I mean, how is it done? With that kind of sweet, unique, stubborn little chick?”

“Each girl is different,” the seated deputy said.

“I mean approach her ethically,” Fred said. “Not cram her with reds and booze and then stick it into her while she’s lying on the living-room floor.”

“Buy her flowers,” the standing deputy said.

“What?” Fred said, his suit-filtered eyes opening wide.

“This time of year you can get little spring flowers. At the nursery departments of, say, Penney’s on K Mart. Or an azalea.”

“Flowers,” Fred murmured. “You mean plastic flowers or real flowers? Real ones, I guess.”

“The plastic ones are no good,” the seated deputy said. “They look like they’re … well, fake. Somehow fake.”

“Can I leave now?” Fred asked.