Beautiful Days Read online

  (So agitated did Mrs. E___ become, the prosecutor excused her from further testimony. )

  CONSEQUENTIAL, SEQUENTIAL. WITHOUT TEMPORALITY, i.e., the measured unfolding of time, the human is reduced to something lesser than human.

  J.S. Maada’s first arrest, one day to be conflated with his second arrest, and yet a causal factor in the second arrest, had been in New Brunswick (5/21/15). Subject was waiting for a bus at State Street and Second Ave. at approximately 9:20 P.M. when two New Brunswick PD squad cars braked to a stop and police officers swarmed upon several “black youths” on the sidewalk. Subject demonstrated “suspicious behavior” by running panicked from the scene; after a scuffle, during which subject was thrown to the sidewalk and handcuffed, subject was arrested and taken to precinct with other young men.

  Jailed in the New Brunswick Men’s Detention, subject was ignored for forty-eight hours despite requests for medical attention (broken ribs, lacerated face, possible concussion), then discovered to be an “undocumented alien” from Nigeria whose student visa had expired.

  NOTE: “Undocumented aliens” have no immigration status in the United States and may be arrested at any time and “removal proceedings” initiated. Legal help may provide options but these are temporary. Until individual is issued a green card (providing permanent residence, but not citizenship) or a student visa, he can be deported at any time.

  Marriage with a U.S. citizen automatically confers immunity to deportation by the State Department but does not confer citizenship.

  Distraught subject was visited in the New Brunswick Men’s Detention by a PROJECT JRD officer who explained to him that deportation for undocumented aliens was mandated by the U.S. State Department with one exception: if subject volunteered for a federal medical research program which he successfully completed, he would be issued a new student visa with which to attend “any university of his choice” and he would be eligible for a green card—that is, permanent residence in the U.S.

  Gratefully then, subject Maada agreed to participate in the project, which was explained to him as funded by both the United States Department of Defense and the United States Department of State. Contracts pertaining to Maada’s willingness to waive his rights were signed with a flourish though (strictly speaking) the undocumented alien does not share “rights” with U.S. citizens. The seal of the State of New Jersey lent to these documents an authentic air. Among the test subject’s personal remains, after his death, these documents were found, and reclaimed by the PROJECT.

  According to the S___ family who had taken in the young man in his hour of need, after his expulsion from Harrogate University, Maada seemed certain that his application for U.S. citizenship was being processed by a “special, secret court,” and that he would soon become a citizen, and when he did, he would help the entire S___ family to apply as well. Saidu was a very kind young man, very helpful and loving with the children especially our three-year-old Riki. When he first came to live with us he was not so talkative and suspicious of everyone at the door but then, later, he became nervous and excitable and loud-laughing when there was nothing so funny we could see. With a wink he would say how he would pay us back one hundred times over for he was a “special-mission agent,” one day we would be surprised.

  Maada had enrolled in the engineering program—“One of the Finest Engineering Programs in the World!”—at Harrogate University but his background in mathematics was inadequate and his ability to read and write English was substandard. He had difficulty with all of his first-year courses but particularly Introduction to Computer Engineering in which he was given a grade of D- by a (Pakistani-American) teaching assistant who, he claimed, had taken a “hate” of him and whose heavily accented English Maada could not comprehend. His tuition to Harrogate had been paid by an international non-profit agency and would not be continued after his first year. It was kind of pathetic, these African students they’d recruited from God knows where. They weren’t the age of college freshmen. They could speak English—sort of. Their tongues were just too large for the vowels. They had the look of swimmers flailing and thrashing in water hoping not to drown. They sat together in the dining hall, trying to eat the tasteless food. Their laughter was loud and kind of scary. White girls were particularly frightened of them for the way the Africans stared at them with “strange hungry” smiles, they could feel “intense sexual thoughts” directed toward them especially if they wore shorts and halter tops or tight jeans which (they believed) they had every right to wear and were not going to be “intimidated.”

  Along with several other universities Harrogate has been charged with fraud in soliciting young persons from abroad with “enticing and misrepresentative” brochures, “unethical waivers of basic educational requirements,” and “worthless scholarships”; presidents of these universities travel to Africa, India, Korea and China to proselytize shamelessly for their schools, which attract only a small percentage of (white-skinned, above-average-income) Americans and are not accredited in the U.S. The university does not clearly state that tuition and costs are non-refundable as soon as the term begins and that “undergraduate living fees” are considerable. Harrogate University in Jersey City, NJ, has been several times indicted as perpetrating fraud—yet, even as a half-dozen lawsuits pend, it is still operating in New Jersey.

  After being asked to leave Harrogate Maada was deeply shamed and disconsolate. With several other ex-engineering African students he made his way to Edison, NJ, where he lived with the S___ family, fellow Nigerians who took pity on him and made room for him in their small, cramped apartment on Ewing Street. In Edison Maada looked for employment wherever he could find it. He was paid in cash, and took pride in paying the S___s whenever he could; they did not know details of Maada’s personal life but registered surprise that Maada had been released from men’s detention so quickly after his arrest, with no charges against him. Not only was Maada spared a prison sentence but he was guaranteed payment from the U.S. government each month, in cash, that, combined with the cash he received from his numerous jobs, allowed him to pay the S___s usually on time, and even to send money back to his family in Nigeria.

  By a 2012 mandate of the Department of Defense payments received by all participants in (classified) research projects throughout the United States are to be “at least one and a half times” the wages earned by the participant in his primary civilian job; this has been emphasized, for PROJECT JRD has committed to “zero tolerance” of exploitation of any of its subjects domestic or foreign.

  LOST IN SPACE

  As stated at the outset of this report, the destabilization of spatial functions of cognition in test subject #293199/Joseph Saidu Maada as a consequence of neurotransmitter Microchips inserted in his cerebral cortex did not appear to be so extreme as the subject’s temporal destabilization, though it was frequently a contribution to his general “disorientation.”

  Essentially, subject did not know “where” he was in the basic ontological sense of the term. He had exhibited some natural curiosity before leaving his homeland to fly (to Newark International Airport) and then to take ground transportation (bus) to Jersey City, New Jersey, to the campus of Harrogate University; but, if examined, he could not have said where these destinations were in relationship to one another let alone to his homeland or, indeed, to any other points on the map; nor did Maada, like many, or most, foreign visitors, have anything like a clear vision of how vast the United States is and of how staggeringly long it would require (for instance) to drive across the continent. Maada had no idea of his proximate position in the universe—he had no idea of the universe. When it was revealed to him via the Commandant (NTM) that he was a native of a distant planet (Ganymede, one of the moons of Jupiter) sent to Earth on a mission that involved amnesia (no memory of Ganymede) and “surrogate identity” (quasi-memory of Nigeria), he was initially eager to be shown photographs of Ganymede and Jupiter but soon became discouraged by the distant and impersonal nature of the images pro
vided him at the Institute. For—where did the people live?—Maada wondered. All you could see was strangely colored rock and blank, black space that was very beautiful but did not appear to be habitable.

  Before this, Maada had had frequent difficulty with his physical/spatial surroundings in his “adopted” country. He could not begin to comprehend the New Jersey Turnpike with its many lanes and exits that seemed to repeat endlessly and to no purpose; if he was obliged to ride in a vehicle on the Turnpike, being driven by Adolpho to a work-site, he shut his eyes and hunched his head between his shoulders and waited to be told that he had arrived. Even on the Harrogate campus he was easily confused. Not only did the blank, buff-colored factory-like buildings closely resemble one another but walkways and “quads” appeared to be identical. Many of the (multi-ethnic) individuals whom he encountered at the university appeared to be identical. Often he became lost looking for a classroom; by the time he arrived, the class had ended, or perhaps it had never existed. Tests were administered like slaps to the head—he could not grasp what was being demanded of him, and he did not like the way his professors and TA’s (“teaching assistants”—a term new to him) smiled at him in scorn, derision, and pity. For amid so many dusky-skinned persons, Joseph Saidu Maada was decidedly black.

  Somehow then, it happened that he was barred from the dour asphalt dormitory to which he’d been assigned, to share a “suite” with several other first-year engineering students from scattered parts of the globe. He was served a warrant: a notice of expulsion signed by the chancellor of Harrogate University and affixed with the university’s gold-gilt seal. African-American security officers, taller than he by several inches, burly, uniformed and armed with billy clubs, arrived to forcibly escort him off campus with a warning that if he dared return he would be arrested and deported. His student visa had been revoked, his scholarship had been terminated. So quickly this happened, Maada had difficulty comprehending that he was no longer a student with much promise enrolled in one of the great engineering programs in the world but an individual designated as undocumented, illegal who was shortly to be deported.

  In “New Jersey” there was nowhere to go on foot. You could not use instinct. Blows to the test subject’s head caused by the booted feet of enraged New Brunswick police officers contributed to his diminished sense of place and direction. In an apartment of three cramped rooms Maada could become hopelessly lost; as in a hallucination he might encounter his own self emerging through a doorway. A dingy mirror or reflecting surface told him what he already dreaded to know—there was “another” on the farther side of a glass whose intentions could not be known.

  Later, the Commandant would quell such fears. You are one of many, and you are many of one.

  Since Maada had no idea where the Institute was, how many miles from the apartment he shared with the S___s in Edison, there was a kind of comfort in not-knowing and in the certitude of not-being-able-to-know where he was taken. No one could possibly expect Maada to draw a map of where he was taken—he had virtually no idea where he was, before he was taken. Each Thursday, according to schedule, and in fulfillment of his contract, Maada was picked up by an (unmarked) van, to bring him to the Institute for approximately twelve hours of neurophysiological experiments; soon after the onset of the TNM insertions in the parietal lobe of his brain, Maada had but the vaguest sense of direction, like a child on a fun house ride who is dazed and dazzled and frightened and yet strangely comforted that the ride was after all a ride, prescribed by adults whose wisdom far surpassed his own.

  On a typical Thursday, the test subject was instructed to wait in the early morning at a designated place, usually in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant on Route 1, though sometimes in the parking lot of a discount store on Route 27; there was a busy intersection near the campus of Edison Community College on Route 27 which was a convenient place for Maada to await the van, for here he could easily blend in with other young men like himself, drawn to the college with a hope of bettering their lives and being granted U.S. citizenship as a reward. Maada had been warned never to speak of waiting to be picked up by any vehicle. So zealous to obey the Commandant, he did not speak to anyone at all, gesturing at his throat and shaking his head bemusedly to indicate that (possibly) he had a sore throat, laryngitis, if anyone tried to initiate a conversation with him. It was a continual surprise to the subject to glance around and discover the (unmarked) van gliding to the curb beside him like a vehicle in a space film, and braking silently to a stop. The driver, only just distinguishable through a tinted windshield, wore dark glasses, and gave no sign to Maada that Maada should make his way with seeming casualness to the rear of the van, where the doors would be opened for him, quickly, and quickly shut behind him.

  It was with a sense of excitement and exhilaration that Maada climbed so trustingly into the van, to be borne however many miles to the Institute, in the company of mostly dark-skinned men of about his age, sometimes younger, rarely older; these were individuals dressed like himself, in nondescript dark hoodies provided by the PROJECT and good-quality running shoes; at a glance you saw that their wrists were not cuffed and their ankles not shackled, for they were here voluntarily, as J.S. Maada was here voluntarily. There was little need to warn these men (they were all men) to remain silent, and to keep to themselves, for each believed the others to be spies who would report them to the CIA. Also, each knew that a surveillance camera was trained on the interior of the van, for (they knew) all U.S. citizens were under surveillance at all times. The van was windowless, of course. There was no way to look out. The driver took the silent, slightly apprehensive men who avoided eye contact with one another on an ever-shifting, improvised circuit that might have taken them twenty miles from their pickup site, or five hundred yards. Their destination was the Institute for Independent Neurophysiological Research on Route 1, Princeton, NJ—a windowless three-floor rectangle that looked as if it were covered in aluminum foil, blindingly reflecting the sun—but of course none of the men ever saw the exterior of the Institute, and those (of us) who toiled there had ceased to see it almost immediately after beginning to work there.

  (It is only with effort that I summon a vision of the exterior of the Institute, not as I’d glimpsed it today, or in recent months, but rather when I’d first seen it, approximately twenty months ago, when I’d come directly from Cambridge, MA, with my newly granted Ph.D. in neurophysiology to be interviewed by Dr. Lehrman for one of the highly coveted post-doc positions with the PROJECT.)

  The van passed into an underground garage and came to a halt. The rear doors were unlocked by unseen, deft hands. As Maada and the others disembarked, always very polite with one another, and maintaining their discreet eye-evasion, PROJECT assistants were waiting to check their IDs (eyes, fingerprints) and to take them to their assigned laboratories. They had not a moment to glance about, to “get their bearings”—indeed, in the dim-lighted interior of the garage, that smelled of nothing more ominous than motor oil, there were no bearings to get.

  Inevitably, the test subjects had no way of exercising any residue of a natural sense of space and direction for they had no more information about where they were than blindfolded children forced to turn in circles until they were dizzy and in danger of fainting might have.

  Joseph Saidu Maada was usually eager to cooperate with researchers. He was boyish, even energetic. He laughed often, if nervously. At the Institute it was said of him that he resembled the youthful Muhammad Ali—so tall, so handsome, and so good-natured!—but that was at the start of his participation in the PROJECT.

  After disembarking from the van the test subjects were quickly taken to individual examination rooms in the Institute. Their blood was drawn, and lab tests run. Some, like J.S. Maada, often volunteered to give more blood, for which they were rewarded with cash bonuses; but this was not required.

  (Of course, after several months, when our research team began to replace Maada’s blood with an experimental chemical solution
mimicking the molecular structure of the blood, it was not “blood” drawn from his arm but a surrogate material designated as *blood [patent pending] in the reports. See also *plasma, *bone marrow, *nerves, *ganglia.)

  From the examination room the subject was brought to Dr. Lehrman’s laboratory where the staff awaited him. Assiduous lab notes were kept by all, to be subsequently conflated; each session was videotaped, and copies sent at once to PROJECT JRD headquarters.

  One of the consequences of the initial brain (Microchip) insertions was a flattening of vision, so that to the subject much of the world looked like “walls”—“wallpaper.” A three-dimensional world is a visual habit that can be broken readily in the human brain, if one knows how. Maada was more perplexed by this phenomenon than disturbed, for there was, in line with the simplification of images, a cartoon-like simplification of “depth”—you could feel that “depth” was missing from your visual field but you could not comprehend that it was “depth” that was missing.