The Fast Road

Soren did not think the fear machine would work on him.

That was what he called it in his head, though the sign at the space museum said THREAT DETECTION AND THE ASTRONAUT BRAIN. The sign showed a smiling astronaut floating beside a silver glove covered in tiny wires.

Soren liked the glove. He liked wires that admitted what they were doing.

The lab assistant at the table had a marker tucked behind one ear and a half-eaten granola bar in her hand. She was trying to restart a headset with her elbow.

"Put your fingers on the pads," she said. "When an image appears, press snake, stick, face, or none. Only press when you know what you saw. The sensors may be jumpy today. We had six birthday parties come through. Lots of juice-box hands."

Soren placed his fingertips on the metal pads. A thin green line crawled across the small screen beside him. Under it, a red line lay almost flat.

"What does red measure?" he asked.

"Skin conductance mostly," said the lab assistant. "Sweat changes how electricity moves across your skin. It is not a lie detector, no matter what movies say. It just means your body is doing something."

"Before or after I decide?"

She looked at the headset, not at him. "Usually during. Try not to overthink it."

Soren had never found try not to overthink it useful advice. It was like saying try not to have elbows.

He put his left hand on the response buttons. The screen went gray.

A picture flashed.

His shoulders tightened.

His fingers pressed snake.

The picture sharpened into a coil of brown rope on a white floor.

The machine made a soft chime for wrong.

Soren looked at his hand. It had moved very fast, faster than the word rope had arrived. On the little graph, the red line rose in a steep hill. The hill began before the black dot that marked his button press.

"The timing is wrong," he said.

The lab assistant blew a strand of hair off her forehead. "Probably the sensor. I can recalibrate after this group clears."

There was no group. There was Soren, three empty stools, and a model Mars rover watching from behind a rope barrier with one dusty wheel raised as if it wanted to ask a question.

Soren lifted his fingers. The red line fell slowly.

"Can I run it again?"

"As long as you do not unplug anything," she said. Then the headset in her hands beeped angrily, and she turned away. "Why are you angry? You are a headset."

Soren ran it again.

Gray screen. Flash.

His throat closed a little.

He pressed snake.

It was a black garden hose.

Wrong chime.

Red hill first. Button dot after.

He ran the next one with his finger held above none, ready to be sensible.

The picture flashed.

His wrist jerked anyway.

Snake.

A curved handle of a jump rope.

Wrong.

He took his hand off the buttons and wiped his palm on his pants, not because of juice-box hands. The metal pads waited.

At school, when a teacher asked what everyone had seen in a video, Soren often asked, "What counts as seen?" Usually there was a tiny pause after that. Not a mean pause. Worse. A pause like he had put a chair where a hallway was supposed to be.

Here, the machine had drawn the pause.

Green line, red line, black dot.

Body. Body. Answer.

He leaned closer.

The program had a menu at the bottom. The lab assistant had left it open. There were practice sets labeled COILS, FACES, TOOLS, CRATERS, MIXED.

Soren chose CRATERS.

The first image flashed. A round dark pit on the Moon.

He pressed crater.

The red line barely stirred.

Another crater. Another almost-flat line.

A crater with a long shadow, like an open mouth.

The red line climbed a little. His finger waited. He pressed crater.

He chose TOOLS.

Wrench. None of the body hills.

Screwdriver. Nothing.

A black cable curled under a workbench.

The red line jumped.

His mouth went dry, which was rude of it, since he was looking at a cable.

He did not press yet. He made himself wait until the picture sharpened. Cable. He pressed none.

The black dot appeared after the red hill again.

"It is not broken," Soren said.

The lab assistant had the headset upside down now. "Wonderful news for someone."

"No," Soren said. "This one. The timing. It is doing it before I know."

That made her look over.

Soren pointed at the graph without touching the screen. "Coils make the red hill. Craters do not, unless the shadow is mouth-shaped. Tools do not, unless they curl. My button is when I can say the answer. The red is earlier."

The lab assistant came behind him. She still held the headset, but it hung forgotten from one hand.

"Run another mixed set," she said.

Soren did.

A pale oval flashed.

His chest tightened.

Face, he pressed.

It sharpened into a surprised face, eyes wide, mouth open.

The red line had already started up.

A blue cup.

No hill.

A stick across sand.

No hill.

A stick half-hidden in grass, curved at one end.

His fingers tingled.

Snake, he pressed.

Stick.

Wrong chime.

The lab assistant made a quiet sound, not a teacher sound, not a congratulations sound. More like she had found a key in a coat pocket after thinking it was lost.

"Fast road," she said.

Soren kept looking at the graph.

"Your eyes send rough information inward," she said. "Some of it can reach the amygdala very quickly. The amygdala is one of the brain areas that helps judge threat. It does not wait for the careful seeing parts of the cortex to finish the whole report."

"It guesses," Soren said.

"Roughly. Loudly. Sometimes wrong."

On the screen, the red hill from the stick-in-grass trial was still sliding down.

"So when I think I am seeing," Soren said, "something already saw enough."

The lab assistant set the headset on the table. "Enough to get your body ready. Not enough to know."

Outside the lab booth, a family hurried past toward the rocket engine display. The youngest child wore a silver cape and made whooshing noises. Soren watched the cape flash in the corner of his eye. For half a blink, his shoulders rose. Then silver cape arrived.

He turned back to the screen.

The lab assistant reached for the keyboard. "I should add a note. People keep thinking the sensors are faulty because the line rises before the answer."

Soren put one finger on the edge of the keyboard. Not pressing. Just there.

"Do not tell them first," he said.

She paused.

"Let them see the hill," he said. "Then tell them. Otherwise they will think they knew already."

The lab assistant looked at him, then at the screen, then at the empty stools.

"How would you set it up?"

Soren looked at the menu. COILS, FACES, TOOLS, CRATERS, MIXED. The order was wrong. It started with the answer and then showed the question.

He dragged MIXED to the top. Then CRATERS. Then COILS. Then the graph, enlarged, with the button dots turned bright black.

"First they should be wrong," he said. "Not forever. Just long enough."

The lab assistant laughed once. "That is going on the evaluation form."

Soren did not ask which evaluation form. He was busy moving the labels so they would appear only after each trial.

The next visitor would see a gray screen, a flash, a hill, a dot, and only then the word. The visitor would have to sit for one second with the fact that the body had answered a question the mind had not finished reading.

The lab assistant watched him save the new sequence.

"You know," she said, "astronauts train for this. Pilots too. Not to erase the fast road. To notice what it does before deciding what to do next."

Soren looked toward the Mars rover. Its camera mast pointed slightly downward, as if it were examining the floor for tracks.

"What about places with no snakes?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Mars. The Moon. A station under the ocean. The fast road learned old Earth. Grass. Teeth. Eyes. Coils." He tapped the side of the monitor. "What happens when the shadows are new?"

The lab assistant did not answer right away.

That was the best kind of not answering.

She opened a folder labeled ANALOG MISSIONS. Inside were practice images from caves, deserts, underwater habitats, and dark metal tunnels where astronauts trained for places they had not yet gone.

"We are not supposed to use these for the public set," she said.

"Can we use one?"

She glanced toward the front desk. The marker behind her ear slipped and fell to the floor.

"One," she said.

Soren chose the image without looking at the file name. He placed his fingers on the pads. The metal felt cool again. His left hand hovered over the buttons.

The screen went gray.

A blurred tunnel appeared, tan stone around a black crescent of shadow.

The red line kicked upward.

Soren's finger hung above the three buttons.