Miracle Man (4 page)

“Ok, here we go”. At approximately one second intervals, Draper intoned, “729; 302; 128; 297; 186; 136; 423; 114; 169; 322; 873; 455; 388; 962; 666; 293; 725; 318; 131; 406.”

Bobby responded immediately with the full list in perfect order. He then asked Draper if he would like to hear it backwards. “Sure, why not,” replied Draper.

By the time Draper tired of this game, he was up to 80 numbers, each comprised of five digits. Bobby didn’t miss a single one. “Can we stop this game now please, Doctor? It’s getting pretty monotonous, don’t you think?”

Draper loosened his tie. He went through his remaining routines of tests and puzzles designed to gauge a person’s level of abstract mathematical reasoning, theoretical problem solving, linguistic nuances, and vocabulary. Rubbing his now oily face in his hands, he said, “Let’s take a break for a few minutes.”

“Why Doctor? I’m not tired.”

“Well, I am.”

Taking Bobby back to the waiting room, Draper apologized to Peter and Edith for the long period during which he had sequestered Bobby.

“Is everything alright, Doctor?” Edith asked.

“Why don’t you take Bobby to the cafeteria for a snack and meet me back here with him in thirty minutes,” Draper replied.

When the Austins returned to Draper’s office, Draper had two of his colleagues with him. He advised Peter and Edith that his associates would assist him in administering a few IQ tests to Bobby.

Peter’s eyes narrowed as he looked at Draper. “What does that have to do with the nightmares and trances, Doctor? We came here for those issues - not to have Bobby’s intelligence tested.”

“Be patient, please, Mr. Austin. Everything is inter-connected. We’re trying to get a complete picture.”

Draper and his associates, one a Ph.D in psychology and the other a Ph.D in education, administered three different types of intelligence tests to Bobby (utilizing abbreviated versions due to time constraints). First, the Slosson Intelligence Test, then the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children – Revised (WISC-R) and finally, the Stanford-Binet L-M.

By the time the exams were concluded, Draper’s shirt was untucked and perspiration stains protruded from beneath his arms even though the room was cool. He brought Bobby back to the reception area, and took Peter and Edith into a corner of the room, out of Bobby’s earshot. “Your child isn’t normal. Are any of your other children like this?”

2

A
t 2:00 the next afternoon, Draper stood in the Austin’s living room.

“So, Doctor, what exactly do you want to see? Although, I’m not sure why you need to see anything,” said Edith, her brow furrowed.

“It would be very helpful if I could see Robert’s bedroom and the family room you mentioned, the books in the house, and the items that Robert plays with.”

“And the point of all that, Doctor? How does that relate to why we came to see you?”

“Mrs. Austin, as I told your husband—everything is interconnected.”

First, Edith showed Draper the living room book shelves on which Bobby’s college level text books were piled. Draper examined the stacks of treatises on astrophysics, mathematics and bio-chemistry that Bobby had printed-out from the internet which were strewn on a low table next to the computer. Draper photographed them as Edith described how Bobby would stand, surrounded by open books that he would read in an ongoing rotation, his concentration level so intense that he was oblivious to all household noises and activities.

Then came the family room where Edith showed Draper Bobby’s Lego constructions and explained how in a non-stop frenetic four hours of unbroken concentration, he would construct, without directions or diagrams, Lego projects comprised of 5000 individual pieces that would perfectly replicate the pictures on the Lego box.

As he snapped a few photos of the Lego creations, Draper’s face looked pale. “When did you first notice that your son was –shall we say — precocious?”

Edith smiled. “It started early. Bobby taught himself from the kids’ DVDs that we played on TV while he was in his playpen. He loved when we read to him and showed him pictures. He starting talking at five months, and his vocabulary grew quickly. By eleven months, he was a good speller. When Bobby was one, Peter found out by accident that he could already read, and by fifteen months he was reading and understanding fifth grade level books. At two, he was doing complicated arithmetic, all in his head. He got better at it every day.”

Examining Bobby’s bedroom, Draper thought he was in a college dorm. Open textbooks were piled everywhere. There was a large blackboard leaning against a wall that was covered with what Draper recognized as lengthy trigonometry equations, scribbled in the immature hand-writing of a four year old. Draper snapped a photo. On the floor were a few open boxes of plastic molecule building models—the kind that are used by pre-med students in college organic chemistry classes. Taped to one of the walls was a life-sized color diagram of a male human body which showed every muscle, bone and blood vessel in medical school level detail. In another corner of the room, was Bobby’s little five foot long junior bed with its railroad train-motif headboard, footboard, sheets and pillows, and a teddy bear dressed in a train conductor’s uniform sitting on the bed waiting for Bobby.

As Draper walked around the room taking photos, he almost tripped on some long strings that were tightly taped to pieces of furniture, each string at a different angle from the other, with paper circles of varying sizes hanging from them. He found a ruler and protractor on Bobby’s shelf and measured the angles and relative distances between the cut-out circles and the various strings from which they were suspended. Draper photographed it.

On the credenza, Draper picked up an odd looking home-made contraption that had instructions wrapped around it that were scribbled in a child’s handwriting. “What’s this?” Draper asked Edith.

“It’s a perpetual calendar that Bobby designed. If you follow the directions, it will let you do what Bobby does in his head.”

“What exactly?”

“It lets you figure out the day of the week on which any given date, past or future, would fall. Want to see how it works?” asked Edith.

“I can’t possibly believe that it’s accurate. I’ve never heard of such a thing.” Draper tested it out ten times.

“Robert designed this? When?”

“About a year and a half ago,” Edith replied.

Draper pulled out his camera and took a picture of it.

“Is there anything else I can show you, Doctor?” asked Edith.

“What I’ve seen is quite sufficient. Thank you for your hospitality.”

Several days later, at the Psychology Department’s weekly meeting, Draper said, “This boy, Robert Austin; there’s something unusual happening here. It doesn’t seem possible. But what I’ve recounted to you is fully accurate and not exaggerated, and Doctors Lewis and Mardin participated in the testing of the child.”

Draper then projected onto a screen the photographs he had taken in the Austin house and his list of measurements on the 3-D mobile made from string. Everyone stared at the photo of the mobile.

One of the psychologists said, “This is just a play thing the kid made, nothing more than that. Arts and crafts.” A part-time assistant of Draper, a graduate student in astrophysics, kept looking at the projection screen. He started to type into his laptop as he continued to view the projected photograph. He kept typing, looking at the projection screen, and pressing “enter” on his computer emphatically.

“Doctor Draper, with all due respect, I don’t think that mobile is meaningless arts and crafts. I’ll hook my computer up to the projection screen so I can show you something.” He was able to position on one side of the screen, Bobby’ mobile and juxtaposed on the other side of the screen, a scientifically accurate 3-D extrapolation diagram of the Andromeda Constellation which he had pulled off the internet. He super-imposed one side of the screen atop the other. There was a perfect match. Bobby’s string mobile perfectly represented the Constellation down to the exact degrees of spatial relationships between its components. Silence overtook the room.

3

D
raper called Dr. Herman Knoll, the Chancellor of the city’s Board of Education, a recognized authority on gifted children.

“Dr. Knoll, I’ve discovered a highly unusual young boy. I would like the Board’s assistance in verifying the findings that my department has made.”

Knoll said, “I’ve never received this kind of request from Mt. Sinai before, so am I safe in assuming that this situation is really that special?”

“You are, Chancellor. I’m confident your time will not be wasted.”

“OK then. Send me your full report and I’ll review it with my staff. Then we’ll schedule an interview with the boy and his parents, and prepare to conduct our own tests.”

Two weeks after receiving Draper’s detailed report, Knoll called Draper.

“Well Doctor, Robert Austin does seem to be exceptional. But your conclusions appear extreme. Perhaps the Board’s experience over the years has brought us into contact with more highly gifted children than your department has encountered. You know, there are more children who are gifted in mathematics and science than you may think, and photographic memories are not that rare, particularly among the gifted.”

“But Robert isn’t just a child who can do calculations in his head and has a photographic memory. He has theoretical problem solving and mathematical reasoning abilities that are extraordinary, with very high powers of abstraction, conceptualization and synthesis. With all due respect, Doctor, in twenty-five years of being exposed to gifted children, I’ve never met anyone who comes even close to this boy. I’m aware of the differences —and I believe we’re talking here, not about ‘highly’ or ‘exceptionally’ gifted. I believe Robert fits into the category of ‘profound intelligence’ and we know how rare that is Doctor.”

“Coordinate with the parents and my secretary, and make an appointment. We’ll get to the bottom of it and see just how profound this boy really is.”

Dr. Draper didn’t have an easy time with Peter and Edith in getting them to agree to have Bobby tested by Knoll’s experts. But he did prevail, and after Knoll’s tests confirmed Draper’s conclusions, Draper had an even harder time when Knoll brought the Austin case to the attention of Raymond Massey, the dean of the State Board of Regents examiners. Massey wanted his experts to also examine Bobby. Exasperated, Peter told Draper, “Look Doctor. How many people have to test Bobby to confirm what Edith and I have known since he was five months old? My son is highly unusual. That’s obvious. He’s been tested enough. And we still haven’t gotten any answers to the questions we’re concerned about. His nightmares persist and so do his withdrawals. Does anybody care about that? Is anybody testing anything to fix that?”

“Mr. Austin, please. I understand your frustration. But you are asking us to help you with a boy that we are trying to truly understand. Hasn’t it occurred to you that his intelligence and these problems you are concerned about are products of each other—are interconnected in some way? The more we learn about Robert, the more likely we’ll be able to help him.”

Edith piped in, “You know, he’s not a guinea pig or a circus oddity. He’s our son and deserves to be helped.”

Draper nodded. “But we’re not hurting Robert. In fact, I think he somewhat enjoys these tests and interviews. He thinks they’re games. He’s entertained by them. The last thing he said to Dr. Knoll was, ‘So when are you guys going to give me some tough questions?’”

Edith and Peter relented and the experts of the State Regents Board subjected Bobby to six different intelligence tests including those designed for the most rarified levels. Their conclusions were the same as Draper and Knoll. Dean Massey summed it up in his report when he wrote, “The boy’s intelligence defies accurate measurement by any current means of testing. We can only determine Robert Austin’s minimum intelligence—we have no way of measuring its upper reaches—his real intelligence—because he quickly ‘ceilings-out’ on all of our test scales.”

Dean Massey knew what he had to do. In his thirty year career in education, he never had to even consider compliance with Intergovernmental Protocol 329. But it was obvious to him that he had to now. So Massey reported Robert James Austin to the OSSIS (the Office of Special Strategic Intelligence Services), a security agency of the Federal government. The discovery of profound intelligence is considered to be a matter of national security because such people are regarded as rare natural resources.