Distress

"Maybe the first crucial role for Lament's area was to help make deception possible—to learn how to hide your own true motives, by understanding how others perceive you. If you know how to appear to be servile or cooperative—whatever's really on your mind—you have a better chance of stealing food, or a quick fuck with someone else's partner. But then… natural selection would have upped the ante, and favored those who could see through the ruse. Once lying had been invented, there was no turning back. Development would have snowballed."

I said, "So the fully autistic can't lie—or judge someone else to be lying. But the partially autistic…?"

"Some can, some can't. It depends on the specific damage. We're not all identical."

"Okay. But what about relationships?"

Rourke averted his gaze, as if the subject was unbearably painful—but he continued without hesitation, sounding like a fluent public speaker delivering a familiar lecture. "Modeling other people successfully can aid cooperation, as well as deception. Empathy can act to improve social cohesion at every level. But as early humans evolved a greater degree of monogamy—at least, compared to their immediate ancestors—the whole cluster of mental processes involved in pair-bonding would have become entangled. Empathy for your breeding partner attained a special status: their life could be, in some circumstances, as crucial to the passing on of your genes as your own.

"Of course, most animals will instinctively protect their young, or their mates, at a cost to themselves; altruism is an ancient behavioral strategy. But how could instinctive altruism be made compatible with human self-awareness? Once there was a burgeoning ego, a growing sense of self in the foreground of every action, how was it prevented from overshadowing everything else?

"The answer is, evolution invented intimacy. Intimacy makes it possible to attach some, or all, of the compelling qualities associated with the ego—the model of the self—to models of other people. And not just possible—pleasurable. A pleasure reinforced by sex, but not restricted to the act, like orgasm. And not even restricted to sexual partners, in humans. Intimacy is just the belief—rewarded by the brain—that you know the people you love in almost the same fashion as you know yourself."

The word "love" had come as a shock, in the middle of all that socio-biology. But he'd used it without a hint of irony or self-consciousness—as if he'd seamlessly merged the vocabularies of emotion and evolution into a single language.

I said, "And even partial autism makes that impossible? Because you can't model anyone well enough to really know them at all?"

Rourke didn't believe in yes-or-no answers. "Again, we're not all identical. Sometimes the modeling is accurate enough—as accurate as anyone's—but it's not rewarded: the parts of Laments area which make most people feel good about intimacy, and actively seek it out, are missing. Those people are considered to be 'cold,' 'aloof.' And sometimes the reverse is true: people are driven to seek intimacy, but their modeling is so poor that they can never hope to find it. They might lack the social skills to form lasting sexual relationships—or even if they're intelligent and resourceful enough to circumvent the social problems, the brain itself might judge the model to be faulty, and refuse to reward it. So the drive is never satisfied—because it's physically impossible for it to be satisfied."

I said, "Sexual relationships are difficult for everyone. It has been suggested that you've merely invented a neurological syndrome which allows you to abdicate responsibility for problems which everyone faces, as a matter of course."

Rourke stared down at the floor and smiled indulgently. "And we should just pull ourselves together, and try harder?"

"Either that, or have autografts to correct the damage." A small number of neurons and glial cells could be removed from the brain without harm, regressed to an embryonic state, multiplied in tissue culture, then reinjected into the damaged region. Artificially maintained gradients of embryonic marker hormones could fool the cells into thinking that they were back in the developing brain, and guide them through a fresh attempt to build the necessary synaptic connections. The success rate was unimpressive for the fully autistic—but for people with relatively small lesions, it was close to forty percent.

"The Voluntary Autists don't oppose that option. All we're campaigning for is the legalization of the alternative."

"Enlargement of the lesion?"

"Yes. Up to and including the complete excision of Lament's area."

"Why?"

"Again, that's a complicated question. Everyone has a different reason. For a start, I'd say that as a matter of principle, we should have the widest possible range of choices. Like transsexuals."