Flowers for Algernon: Progress Reports 12-13

I slipped behind the huge outcropping of a rock and a screen of bramble and dropped flat on my stomach.

I owe this progress report to Burt who had the bright idea that I could dictate this on a transistor tape recorder and have a public stenographer in Chicago type it up.

First there will have to be physical and mental tests to determine the causes of the pathology.

There will be enough time later to talk of prognosis.

“The results are always more significant if the patient and I are alone when the psychosubstantiation tests are performed. External distractions have a deleterious effect on the ramified scores.”

We don’t know exactly what causes the type of phenylketonuria that Charlie was suffering from as a child—some unusual biochemical or genetic situation, possibly ionizing radiation or natural radiation or even a virus attack on the fetus—whatever it was resulted in a defective gene which produces a, shall we say, ‘maverick enzyme’ that creates defective biochemical reactions.

“Just a minute, Professor Nemur,” I said, interrupting him at the height of his peroration.

It was the first inkling of the revelations that were in store for me this weekend.

It’s paradoxical that an ordinary man like Nemur presumes to devote himself to making other people geniuses.

When it was time for the meeting, Nemur steered us through the gigantic lobby with its heavy baroque furnishings and huge curving marble staircases, and we moved through the thickening knots of handshakers, nodders, and smilers.

A group from Alaska showed how stimulation of various portions of the brain caused a significant development in learning ability, and a group from New Zealand had mapped out those portions of the brain that controlled perception and retention of stimuli.

It is possible that both the increased intelligence and the erratic behavior at this level were created by the original surgery, instead of one being a function of the other. It’s also possible that this erratic behavior is unique to Algernon.

Photographs (I didn’t know they had been taken) were passed around and commented on, and I could see by the nods and smiles that most people there agreed with him that the “dull, vacuous facial expression” had been transformed into an "alert, intelligent appearance.”

The constant juxtaposition of “Algernon and Charlie,” and “Charlie and Algernon,” made it clear that they thought of both of us as a couple of experimental animals who had no existence outside the laboratory.

At first, he was lost against the damask tablecloth, a blur of white on white, until a woman at the table screamed, knocking her chair backwards as she leaped to her feet.