Fur of Reason
Interrogatories
In the end, we stood not in the tribunal room but in a classroom with a chalkboard because Kaminska believes in theatrics, too, and prefers props that children like. There were twelve people in the room. Four of them wore Bureau badges. Six were our internal ethicists, of which I like three. Two were from the Committee on Applied Human Environments, who had never looked inside the vault room without a tour and an apology.
“Let us state the question clearly,” said the Director, taking up a piece of chalk. She writes in block letters even on digital surfaces. On a board she indulged in their square exactness. “The question is: Is Vera a person?”
“She is a child,” said one of the ethicists in that gentle way the kindest people use to preface arguments that will hurt you.
“Children are people,” said the Director. She underlined the word as if the chalk could hold it.
“Being a person is not necessary for having moral status,” said another ethicist, who is not unkind but has a taste for taxonomy. “We do not need to climb to personhood in order to secure protection.”
“We also do not need to climb to personhood to merit respect,” said the first.
“And yet,” said the Director, “in this case there is a practical question that names the abstract one: Can we permit her to leave the grounds when she chooses? Can she consent to things, and can her consent be respected? If the answer is yes, she is a person in the sense the law uses the word.”
“Legally,” said the Committee man, “we have said in similar cases that someone may be a person with restricted competence, pending demonstration.”
“If we confine competence to the question of avoiding or approaching cold, then she demonstrated this morning,” said the Director. “I have spoken to maintenance. Their view is that the subject’s intervention prevented a failure cascade.”
“What did she intend?” asked the second Committee member. “Did she decide, or was she propelled by engineered habit?”
The Director looked at Vera. “What did you intend?” she asked.
“I intended to help,” said Vera with a very seven-year-old impatience. “I wanted the boxes to be safe.”
“Why?” asked the Director.
“Because they are ours,” said Vera, as if that explained everything, “and because they are flakes of people who said we could use them to make other people better.”
“Other people,” said the Director softly.
The philosopher had been waiting. “Dr. Horvath,” he said to me, “you do not dispute that you engineered tendencies.”
“I taught habits,” I said. “I also teach to look both ways before crossing the hallway when carts are moving. I do not confuse habit with slavery.”
“You adjusted parameters—”
“Thermoregulation,” I said. “Hair patterning. Brown fat recruitment.”
“—and thus influenced cognitive environment,” he finished as if I had not spoken. “It is possible you tilted—”
“Professor,” said the Director, “I tilt my coffee cup every morning to stop the drip from running down the side. This does not render the coffee less coffee.”
“It renders the cup less messy,” he said.
“And I would like the world not to be messy,” she said. We were not, I should note, arguing in bad faith. We were doing what people do when the map is new. We were trying to place words at the corners so that men with badges and women with keys could avoid walking off them.
“Let us,” said the Director finally, “follow Dr. Adegoke’s suggestion and allow adversarial procedure to rescue us.”
Kofi looked as surprised as I was. “Adversarial?”
“You argued yesterday that continuing consent is operative here. I propose we ask to whom it continues.”
“Me,” I said, my mouth speaking faster than the rest of my brain. “And to her,” said Kofi, because he is persistent in the right ways.
“To both,” said the Director, “which introduces the possibility of conflict. Suppose Dr. Horvath wishes to enroll Vera in an environment test in the arctic wing next month. Suppose Vera says no.”
“She has said no before,” I said.
“But if Dr. Horvath believes that the test is necessary to rescue a program, and Vera believes that the test is unnecessary to rescue the flakes,” said the Director, “who prevails? If we say Vera’s consent is primary, we treat her as a person. If we say Dr. Horvath’s consent is primary, we treat Vera as a thing.”
“And if we say both must consent?” asked the philosopher.
“Then we require accord,” said the Director. “Which is what families require anyway. I propose we adopt the family standard until Vera is twelve, with power to self-consent over environments that would shame an unmodified child. After twelve we apply the adult standard to environmental risk and the family standard to strategic decisions.”
This was, for an improvisation on chalk, remarkably specific. It was also, I realized, rooted in a principle I could defend: that you judge personhood not by fur but by the ability to say no.
“I accept,” I said. “I also accept,” said Vera, with an air that suggested she had been saying yes to the existence of rooms her whole life and found it easy.
The first ethicist nodded. The second sighed but wrote a note. The Committee men both looked vaguely relieved, for what you cannot decide categorically you can sometimes decide procedurally.
“Good,” said the Director. “We have resolved the second directive. The third we obey by the above mechanism.” She tapped the chalk as if tapping a gavel. “The first remains, and here I am prepared to be harried. Does Vera require a non-human environment to survive?”
“No,” I said. “She can survive human temperatures. She will be uncomfortable in a hot bath.”
“Then you have built a person,” said the Director, “and decorated her with a coat.”
“Decorated,” said the philosopher as if tasting a word he might someday enjoy.
“May I go outside?” asked Vera.
“You may go outside,” said the Director, “if your mother says yes and you wear a hat.” She said it gravely.
Vera considered it gravely, and then said: “Yes,” because you learn grace by watching adults pretend to be formal when they are being kind.
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