There are two rows of chairs with metal legs and padded seats and backs covered with rose-colored fabric with little flecks of green in it facing one end of the room. Someone I don’t know, a young woman, stands by the door. She is holding a pasteboard box with name tags in it. She has a list with little photographs, and she looks at me,then says my name. “Here’s yours,” she says, handing me a name tag. It has a little metal clip on it. I hold it in my hand. “Put it on,” she says. I do not like this kind of clip; it makes my shirt pull. I clip it on anyway and go in.
The others are sitting in chairs; each empty chair has a folder with a name on it, one for each of us. I find my seat. I do not like it; I am in the front row on the right-hand side. It might not be polite to move. I glance along the row and see that we have been put in alphabetical order, from the point of view of a speaker facing us.
I am seven minutes early. If I had brought a printout of the text I have been reading, I could read now.
Instead, I think about what I have read. So far everything makes sense.
When all of us are in the room, we sit in silence, waiting, for two minutes and forty seconds. Then I hear Mr. Aldrin’s voice. “Are they all here?” he asks the woman at the door. She says yes.
He comes in. He looks tired but otherwise normal. He is wearing a knit shirt and tan slacks and loafers.
He smiles at us, but it is not a whole smile.
“I’m glad to see you all here,” he says. “In just a few minutes, Dr. Ransome will explain to prospective volunteers what this project is about. In your folders are questionnaires about your general health history; please fill those out while you’re waiting. And sign the nondisclosure agreement.”
The questionnaires are simple, multiple-choice rather than fill-in-the-blank. I am almost finished with mine (it takes little time to check the “no” box for heart disease, chest pain, shortness of breath, kidney disease, difficulty in urination…) when the door opens and a man in a white coat comes in. His coat has Dr. Ransome embroidered on the pocket. He has curly gray hair and bright blue eyes; his face looks too young to have gray hair. He, too, smiles at us, with eyes and mouth both.
“Welcome,” he says. “I’m glad to meet you. I understand you’re all interested in this clinical trial?” He does not wait for the answer we do not give. “This will be brief,” he says. “Today, anyway, is just a chance for you to hear what this is about, the projected schedule of preliminary tests and so on. First, let me give a little history.”
He talks very fast, reading from a notebook, rattling off a history of the research on autism, starting around the turn of the century with the discovery of two genes associated with autistic spectrum disorders. By the time he turns on a projector and shows us a picture of the brain, my mind is numb, overloaded. He points to different areas with a light pen, still talking fast. Finally he gets to the current project, again starting at the beginning, with the original researcher’s early work on primate social organization and communication, leading—in the end—to this possible treatment.
“That’s just some background,” he says. “It’s probably too much for you, but you’ll have to excuse my enthusiasm. There’s a simplified version in your folders, including diagrams. Essentially what we’re going to do is normalize the autistic brain, and then train it in an enhanced and faster version of infant sensory integration, so the new architecture works properly.” He pauses, sips from a glass of water, and goes on.
“Now that’s about it for this meeting; you’ll be scheduled for tests—it’s all in your folders—and there will be more meetings with the medical teams, of course. Just hand in your questionnaires and other paperwork to the girl at the door, and you’ll be notified if you are accepted onto the protocol.” He turns away and is gone before I can think of anything to say. Neither does anyone else.
Mr. Aldrin stands up and turns to us. “Just hand me your finished questionnaires and the signed nondisclosure—and don’t worry; you will all be accepted onto the protocol.”