“Guess?” Seymour says. “They were still guessing.”
“Of course. And they were wrong most of the time. But I quickly noticed that there would be a certain shape the group would lean toward with any one card. For example, when the woman was staring at a square, often a hundred people in my array would guess a square.”
“The other three hundred would be wrong?” Seymour asks.
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t seem to prove anything.”
“You’re not thinking this through!” Sharp snaps. “According to the laws of chance, only eighty people should have guessed a square. A hundred people guessing it correctly was very significant. Ninety people guessing it correctly was significant. Eighty-five guessing correctly was also significant.”
“Come on,” Seymour grumbles. “How can you say eighty-five people getting it right meant anything? They could have done that by chance.”
“In any one trial, chance was always a factor. But I performed hundreds of trials with each test subject. And my array of four hundred students would lean toward the correct answer one quarter of the time.”
Seymour struggles to be diplomatic but he is stuck on this point. “By chance they would have gotten the right answer one fifth of the time. I’m sorry, I’m still not impressed.”
“I’m not offended. That was the identical response I received from my colleagues when I showed them my results. But with the help of my grad students—five of whom were close to me—I began to experiment with my array. I soon discovered that kids were accurate more often than adults. I also learned that concentration didn’t improve accuracy. Kids did better when they relaxed and answered with whatever popped into their minds. Finally, and this was a big key, I discovered that the ESP signal was still weak in the most psychic person I could find. The bottom line was, I had to use a giant array to get accurate results. It was only when I began to use three thousand kids that I was able to create a workable array.”
“How accurate was that group?” Seymour asks.
“They would lean toward the correct answer almost every time.”
“The word ‘lean’ is ambiguous. How many of the three thousand kids would get the correct answer?” Seymour persists.
I feel I must interrupt and defend what Sharp is saying.
“It doesn’t matter, Seymour. All that matters is he was able to create a group that had a tendency toward accuracy. That not only proved that ESP existed, it created a situation where it could be tapped for other purposes.”
Sharp nods. “Thank you, Teri.”
Seymour is wary. “What do you mean for other purposes?”
I turn to Sharp. “I assume you began to use your array to see things other than the shapes on the cards.”
“Yes,” Sharp says. “At the urging of my graduate students, I tried to see if my array could predict swings in the stock market.”
“Of all the things the kids could predict.” Paula jumps in suddenly. “Why did you have them focus on the stock market?”
“It wasn’t my idea. It was Cynthia’s. But her reasons must be obvious. She wanted to see if the kids could help make money.”
“Up until this point your research had an innocent quality to it,” Paula says. “You were a scientist seeking the truth. But when you allowed your group of kids to be exploited to make money, didn’t it worry you that such an intent would distort your experiments?”
“We never told the kids what they were predicting. We wanted them to remain innocent, as you say. We just fed them stock symbols and asked if they felt “positive” or “negative” about them. Understand, none of these kids recognized the symbols. I didn’t recognize them. They were from obscure stocks. Cynthia was the only one who knew what companies they belonged to.”
“Professor,” Paula says, “I don’t wish to hurt your feelings but you’re avoiding my question. The intent of your experiments was controlled at the top. It was you and Cynthia and the other grad students who were in charge. All of you knew you were using the kids for personal gain.”
Sharp is offended. “Never in my life have I put money at the top of my list of what’s important in life. Look at the path I chose. I could have made a substantial salary as a practicing psychiatrist. With wealth, I could have purchased a large home and attracted a beautiful wife. But I stayed in an academic environment, and remained single, so I could devote my life to teaching others what I knew, and continue with my research. How dare you accuse me of exploiting my subjects for selfish purposes.”
“I apologize,” Paula says. “The fact you didn’t exploit the kids is admirable. Still, you knew your graduate students weren’t as altruistic. I get the impression you did little to rein this Cynthia in.”
Sharp snorts. “You don’t know the woman. No one told her what to do.”
Paula persists. “You still haven’t answered my question. Weren’t you concerned that the intent to make money on the stock market would distort your results?”
Sharp is a long time answering. The left side of his face, the injured part, seems to tremble. “At that time, I didn’t realize that intention was important in this work.”
“But later?” Paula asks.
Sharp holds up a hand. “I’ll get to that later. For now, the main point is we’d made a major scientific discovery. In my mind the most important discovery of our time. My array was not only able to prove the existence of telepathy, it was able to show that people could actually predict the future.”
“Were you able to publish your research?” I ask.
Sharp’s shoulders sag and the life goes out of his voice. “No. The fools. I had in hand absolute proof of a force of nature that had been under our noses since we first lived in caves, and no one wanted to hear about it. I should say, no one in the scientific community. Sure, there were fringe groups that were willing to publish my work, but you have to understand that given my position with the university, I couldn’t be seen as avoiding the scrutiny of my peers. Yet they wouldn’t even look at what I had discovered! They joked about me behind my back. I was no longer Professor Sharp but Professor Dull.”
“Was Cynthia upset your work wasn’t accepted?” I ask.
He hesitates. “I suppose.”
“I don’t think so. I think once she and the others saw what you had stumbled upon, they were anxious to keep it quiet. Come on, Professor, isn’t that the truth?”
He’s still lost in the past, in his anger over the rejection of his years of research. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mumbles.
I give the others a look telling them that I want to take control of the questioning. I especially don’t want Shanti to speak up and admit she’s recently been a member of Cynthia’s Array. For all I know it might make the old man clam up with fear.
Seymour nods, indicating he doesn’t have a good feel for the subject matter. Yet Paula frowns. She’s worried about something I’m missing. That’s fine, she can question him when I’m done.
“Professor Sharp, please look at me,” I say and he raises his head. “You’ve done a wonderful job of explaining the theory behind your work and how the original arrays first came to be. But you’ve told us almost nothing about your grad students who went on to found the IIC. They’re the reason we’re here. They’re dangerous. You know that as well as we do. Isn’t that true?”
He blinks as if shaken but his eyes come back into focus.
“They’re more dangerous than you can imagine,” he says.
I smile. “I think you’re going to discover that I have a pretty vivid imagination. Help us take a close look at the players involved here. I get the impression Cynthia was the boss when it came to this group?”
“I was in charge. I taught them everything they knew.”
“That might have been true in an academic sense. But already you’ve admitted it was Cynthia who came up with the idea to use the large group of kids to predict changes in the stock market.”
Sharp nods reluctantly. “Cindy was the smartest of the lot, the most driven. She was the first to grasp the implications of my work. She helped me a lot when it came to tinkering with the arrays, improving how the kids did. In the beginning, we were very close.”
“Did you have a falling out later?” I ask.
He shrugs and lowers his head. “It wasn’t that way. I got a stroke, I got sick. I was in bed for over a year. The university forced me to retire, although I think they used my illness as an excuse. They never appreciated my work.”
“Was Cindy married to Thomas Brutran at the time?” I ask.
“To Tom? No, they got together later. When I met Cindy, she was with Fredrick Wild. You must have seen his name listed online. He was on the original IIC board.” Sharp smiles wistfully as he recalls the good old days. “We used to call him Freddy or Fried Freddy. He was a huge devotee of LSD, mushrooms, and other mind-expanding drugs. He used to worry me, I was scared he would damage his brain. He was the exact opposite of Cindy. They were an odd couple, to be sure. But she loved him. I never saw a girl so much in love. And boy she was jealous! If Freddy so much as looked at another girl she went on the warpath.”