so I do just that.

10

DORSOLATERAL PREFRONTAL CORTEX: UNTRUTHS

“I’M GOING TO switch off your speech center, now.”

Guy looks up from under his eyelashes with a defeated sigh. “Man, I hate it when people do that.”

I laugh. Guy’s the third astronaut I’ve tested this morning. He works on BLINK, so we weren’t originally planning to map his brain, but someone pulled out of the pilot group last minute. Brain stimulation is tricky business: it’s complicated to predict how neurons will respond, and even harder in people who have a history of epilepsy or electric misfiring. Just drinking a cup of strong coffee can mess up brain chemistry enough to make a wellconsolidated stimulation protocol dangerous. When we found out that one of the astronauts we selected had a history of seizures, we decided to give his spot to Guy. Guy was ecstatic.

“I’m going to target your Broca’s area,” I tell him.

“Ah, yes. The famed Broca’s area.” He nods knowingly.

I smile. “That would be your left posterior-inferior frontal gyrus. I’ll stimulate it with trains up to twenty-five hertz.”

“Without even buying me dinner first?” He clucks his tongue.

“To see whether it’s working, I’ll need you to talk. You can recite a poem, free-style it, doesn’t matter.” The other astronauts I tested today chose a Shakespeare sonnet and the Pledge of Allegiance.

“Whatever I want?”

I position the stimulation coil one inch from his ear.

“Yep.”

“Very well, then.” He clears his throat. “My loneliness is killing me and I, I must confess I still believe—”

I laugh, like everyone else in the room. Including Levi, who appears to be fairly close to Guy. It speaks highly of him (Guy, not Levi; I refuse to speak highly of Levi), considering he probably should have been BLINK’s leader.

Guy doesn’t seem to mind, at least judging by the chummy chat they had over some sportsball game’s lineup while I was setting up my equipment.

“. . . my loneliness is killing me and I, I must c—” Guy frowns. “Sorry, I must c—” He frowns harder. “Must c—” he sputters one last time, blinking fast. I turn to Rocío, who’s taking notes. “Speech arrest at MNI coordinates minus thirty-eight, sixteen, fifty.”

The ensuing applause is unnecessary, but a tiny bit welcome. Earlier this morning, when the entire engineering team dragged their feet to the neurostimulation lab to observe my first brain mapping session, it was obvious that they’d rather be pretty much anywhere else. It was equally obvious that Levi had instructed them not to say so much as a peep about their total lack of interest.

They’re good guys. They tried to fake it. Sadly, there’s a reason that in high school, engineers tend to gravitate toward the robotics shop instead of drama club.

Thankfully, neuroscience has a way of defending her own honor. I just had to pick up my coil and show a few tricks. With stimulation at the right spot and frequency, decorated astronauts with IQs well into the triple digits and drawers full of graduate diplomas can temporarily forget how to count (“Woah! Is that for real?”), or move their fingers (“Freaky!”), or recognize the faces of people they work with every day (“Bee, how are you even doing that?”), and, of course, how to speak (“This is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in my entire damn life.”). Brain stimulation kicks ass, and anyone who says otherwise shall know her wrath. Which is why the lab is still crammed. The engineers were supposed to leave after the first demonstration but decided to stick around . . . indefinitely, it seems.

It’s nice to convert a bunch of skeptics to the wonders of neuroscience. I wonder if Dr. Curie felt the same when she shared her love for ionizing radiation. Of course in her case, long-term unshielded exposure to unstable isotopes eventually led to chronic aplastic anemia and death in a sanatorium, but . . . you get my point. Which is that when I say, “I think I got all I need from Guy. We’re done for today,” the room erupts into a disappointed groan. Levi and I exchange an amused look.

To be clear: we’re not friends or anything. One dinner together, one night sleeping in a room that happens to contain three-quarters of my favorite books, and one yawny car ride to Noah Moore’s grave, during which he politely respected that I’m not a morning person and remained blissfully quiet, did not make Levi and me friends. We still dislike each other, rue the day we met, wish the pox on the other’s house, etc., etc. But it’s like last week, over vegan tacos, we managed to form an uneasy, rudimentary alliance. I help him do his thing, and he helps me do mine.

It almost feels like we’re actually collaborating. Crazy, huh?

For lunch, I heat up my ever-so-sad Lean Cuisine, grab a stack of academic articles I’ve been meaning to read, and make my way to the picnic tables behind the building. I’ve been nibbling on chickpeas for about five minutes when I hear a familiar voice.

“Bee!” Guy and Levi are walking toward me, holding paper cups and sandwich bags. “Mind if we join you?” Guy asks.

I do a little, since this paper on electrotherapy isn’t going to read itself, but I shake my head. I shoot Levi an apologetic look (Sorry you’re stuck eating with me because Guy doesn’t know that we’re archenemies), but he doesn’t seem to get it and takes a seat across from me, smiling faintly as though he doesn’t mind. I watch the play of muscles under his shirt, and a frisson of warmth licks down my spine.

Hmm. Weird.

Guy sits next to me with a grin, and I think to myself, not for the first time, that he’s wholesome, charming, and truly a Cute Guy™.

This is incredibly objectifying and reductive, and if you tell anyone I’ll flatly deny it, but back in grad school Annie told me that there are three types of attractive men. I don’t know if she came up with this taxonomy herself, if Aphrodite announced it to her in a dream, or if she stole it from Teen Vogue, but here they are:

There is the cute type, which consists of guys who are attractive in a nonthreatening, accessible way, as a combination of their nice looks and captivating personalities. Tim falls into this group, just like Guy and most male scientists—including, I suspect, Pierre Curie. Come to think of it, all the guys who ever hit on me do, perhaps because I’m small, and dress quirky, and try to be friendly. If I were a dude, I’d be a Cute Guy™; Cute Guys™

recognize that at some elemental level, and they make passes at me.

Then there’s the handsome type. According to Annie, this category is a bit of a waste. The Handsome Guy™ has the kind of face you see in movie trailers and perfume ads, geometrically perfect and objectively amazing, but there’s something inaccessible about him. Those guys are so dreamy, they’re almost abstract. They need something to anchor them to reality—a personality quirk, a flaw, a circumscribed interest—otherwise they’ll float away in a bubble of boredom. Of course, society doesn’t exactly encourage Handsome Guys™ to develop brilliant personalities, so I tend to concur with Annie: they’re useless.

Last but not least, the Sexy Guys™. Annie would go on and on about how Levi is the epitome of the Sexy Guy™, but I’d like to formally object. In fact, I don’t even acknowledge the existence of this category. It’s preposterous, the idea that there are men you can’t help yourself from being attracted to.

Men who give you the tingles, men you can’t stop thinking about, men who pop up in your brain like flashes of light after stimulation of the occipital cortex. Men who are physical, elemental, primordial. Masculine. Present.

Solid. Sounds fake, right?

“Hit me,” Guy tells me with a Cute Guy™ smile. “What’s wrong with my brain?”

“Nothing, as far as I can tell.”

“Amazing news. Could you help me convince my ex-wife that I’m certifiably sane?”

“I’ll write you a note.”

“Nice.” He winks at me. He winks at me a lot, I’m noticing. “So, how are you liking Houston?”

“I haven’t really seen much yet. Besides the Space Center.”

“And a cemetery,” Levi interjects. I give him a dirty look and steal a cluster of his grapes in revenge. He lets me with a small smile.

“I could help you out,” Guy offers.

“Sure,” I say distractedly, busy glaring at Levi and making a show of chewing on his grapes.

“Really?”

“Uh-huh.”

Levi lifts one eyebrow and bites into his sandwich. It feels a lot like a challenge, so I steal a strawberry, too.

“Maybe we could go to dinner,” Guy says. “Are you free tomorrow night?”