K-PAX

Session Three

THE testing took all morning and half the afternoon of May twenty-third. I had other pressing duties much of that time, not the least of which was an emergency facilities committee meeting to approve the purchase of a new linen dryer for the laundry room following the irreversible breakdown of one of the two old ones. Betty McAllister served very well in my place, however.

At the time, Betty had been with us for eleven years, the last two in the capacity of head nurse. She was the only person I had ever met who had read all of Taylor Caldwell's novels, and as long as I had known her had been trying to get pregnant. Although she had resorted to almost every known scientific and folk remedy, she eschewed the so-called fertility pills because, as she put it, "I only want the one, not a whole menagerie." None of this affected her work, however, and she consistently performed her duties cheerfully and well.

According to Betty's report, prot was extremely cooperative throughout the examination period. Indeed, the eagerness with which he attacked the tests and questionnaires supported my earlier speculation of an academic background. How far he had progressed with his education was still a matter of conjecture, but it seemed quite likely, based on his confident demeanor and articulateness, that he had at least attended college and possibly even a graduate or professional school.

It took a few days to process the data, and I must confess that my curiosity was such that I let lapse some things I had planned to do at home in order to come in on Saturday to finish what Betty had not completed by Friday afternoon. The final results, though generally unremarkable (as I had expected), were nonetheless interesting. They are summarized as follows:

IQ 154 (well above average, though not in genius category)

Psychological tests (left/right, mazes, mirror tests, etc.-addnl. to std. admission exam) normal

Neurological tests normal

EEG (performed by Dr Chakraborty) normal

Short-term memory excellent

Reading skill very good

Artistic ability/eidetic imagery variable

Musical ability below average

General knowledge (history, geography, languages, the arts) broad and impressive

Math and science (particularly physics and astronomy) outstanding

Knowledge of sports minimal

General physical strength above average

Hearing, taste, smell, tactile acuities highly sensitive

"Special senses" (ability to 'feel' colors, sense the presence of other people, etc.) questionable

Vision

1. Sensitivity to white light marked!

2. Range can detect light at 300-400 A (UV)!

Aptitude could do almost anything; particular affinity for natural history and physical sciences

As can be seen, the only unusual finding was the patient's ability to see light at wavelengths well into the ultraviolet range. His apparent sensitivity to visible light could have been due to a genetic defect; in any case there was no obvious retinal damage (nevertheless, I made a note to call Dr. Rappaport, our ophthalmologist, first thing on Tuesday, Monday being Memorial Day). Otherwise there was no suggestion of any special alien talents.

The patient's knowledge of languages, incidentally, was not as broad as he pretended. Although he spoke and read a little of most of the common ones, his understanding was limited to everyday phrases and idioms, the types found in books for travelers. Another thing that caught my eye was some information the patient volunteered about the stars in the constellation Lyra-their distances from Earth, types, etc.-nothing that required space travel to obtain, certainly, but I decided to check this out as well.

Driving home that afternoon to the accompaniment of Gounod's Faust, I marveled once again, as I bellowed along, at what the human mind can do. There are well documented cases of superhuman strength arising from a desperate need or fit of madness, of astounding performances far beyond the normal capabilities of athletes or rescue workers, of people who can go into trancelike states or "hibernation," of extraordinary endurance exhibited by victims of natural or man-made disasters, accounts of paralyzed people who get up and walk, of cancer patients who almost seem to cure themselves or, by force of will alone, manage to hang on until a birthday or favorite holiday. No less striking, perhaps, is the case of the unattractive woman who comes across as beautiful merely because she thinks she is. An individual with little talent who becomes a Broadway star on the basis of self confidence and energy alone. I have personally encountered many patients who have done amazing things they could not do before they became ill. And here we have a man who believes he comes from a planet where people are a little more light sensitive than we are, and by God he is. At times like these one wonders what the limits of the human mind really are.

ON Memorial Day my oldest daughter and her husband and their two little boys drove up from Princeton for a cookout. Abigail is the reverse of the unattractive woman I mentioned above-she was always a very pretty girl who never realized it. I don't think she has ever used makeup, doesn't do anything with her hair, pays no attention to what she wears. From the beginning she has had a mind of her own. When I think of Abby I see a kid of eight or nine marching with a bunch of others two or three times her age, all with long hair and flared pants, flashing her peace sign and yelling her slogans, serious as a kiss. Now, as a nonpracticing lawyer, she's active in any. number of women's/gay/environmental/civil/animal rights groups. How did she turn out this way? Who knows? All of our children are as different from each other as the colors of the rainbow.

Fred, for instance, is the most sensitive of the four. As a boy he always had his nose in a book, and an ear for music as well. In fact, he still has an enormous collection of recordings of Broadway shows. We always thought he would become an artist of some kind, and were quite amazed when he ended up in aeronautics.

Jennifer is very different still. Slim, beautiful, not as serious as Abigail or as quiet as Fred, she is the only one of the four who has showed any interest in following her old man's footsteps. As a girl she loved biology (and slumber parties and chocolate-chip cookies), and she is now a third year medical student at Stanford.

Will (Chip) is the youngest, eight years younger than Jenny. Probably the brightest of the bunch, he is a star athlete in school, active, popular. Like Abby before him, and unlike Fred and Jenny, he is hardly ever home, preferring instead to spend his time with his friends rather than with his grizzled parents. He hasn't the foggiest idea what he wants to do with his life.

All of which leads to the question: Is the shape of the individual personality due primarily to genetic or to environmental factors? After a great deal of experimentation and debate on this critical issue, the answer is far from clear. All I know is that, despite similar backgrounds and genetic makeup, my four kids are as different from each other as is night from day, winter from summer.

Abby's husband Steve is a professor of astronomy, and while the steaks were sizzling on the grill I mentioned to him that there was a patient at the hospital who seemed to know something about his field. I showed him prot's figures on the constellation Lyra and the double star system Agape and Satori, around which traveled a putative planet the patient called "K-PAX." Steve studied the information, scratched his reddish beard, and grunted, as he often does when he is thinking. Suddenly he looked up with a_ ferocious grin and drawled, "Charlie put you up to this, didn't he?"

I assured him that he hadn't, that I didn't even know who "Charlie" was.

He said, "Terrific joke. Ah love it." My grandson Rain was banging him with a Frisbee now, trying to get him to play, after failing to coax Shasta Daisy, our neurotic Dalmatian, out from under the porch.

I swore it was no joke and asked him why he thought so. I don't recall his exact words, but they went something like: "This is somethin' Charlie Flynn and his students have been workin' on for quite a while. It involves a double star in the constellation Lyra. This double shows certain perturbations in its rotation pattern that indicate the possibility of a large dark body, prob'ly a planet, as part of the system. Like your alleged patient said, this planet appears to travel around them in an unusual pattern-Charlie thinks it's a figure eight. Do you see what Ah'm sayin'? This is unpublished work! Except for one or two colleagues, Charlie hasn't told anybody about this yet; he was planmn' to report it at the Astrophysics meeting next month. Where does this 'patient' of yours come from? How long has he been at the hospital? His name id'n 'Charlie,' is it?" He stuffed his mouth with a handful of potato chips.

We drank beer and chatted about astronomy and psychiatry most of the afternoon, Abby and her mother nagging us not to talk shop and to pay some attention to our sons/grandsons, who kept throwing food at Shasta and each other. One thing I wanted to know was his opinion on the possibility of light travel. "It's not," he stated flatly, still not convinced, I think, that I wasn't pulling his leg. But when I asked if he would be willing to help me prove to my new patient that "K-PAX" was a figment of his imagination, he said, "Shore." Before they left I gave him a list of questions to ask Dr. Flynn about the double star system-the types of stars they were, their actual sizes and brightnesses, their rotation period, the duration of a "year" on the putative planet, even something about what the night sky would look like from such a world. He promised to call me with whatever information he could dig up.