Free Placebo by Steven James

chamber, is not locked, and the hinge gives a faint squeak as we enter.
    The soundproof chamber sits in the middle of the room and looks like a giant walk-in freezer, but of course it wasn’t designed to insulate food or regulate temperature. Rather, the metal walls were constructed to stop all electromagnetic signals from entering. There’s no way of communicating with a person once he or she is sealed inside.
    After all, if you were able to send radio signals into the chamber, faking a test like this would be easy. It was one of the oldest tricks in the book for televangelists or psychic healers who claimed to hear voices from “on high” or “the great beyond.”
    Simply have the “evangelist” wear a tiny earpiece radio receiver. A cohort reviews people’s application forms and transmits to the guy the names and ailments of people in the audience. Then he “miraculously” calls folks out by name and announces that God has told him their disease or disability, and while everyone in attendance is in awe of his abilities, he “heals” the person.
    True, those with enough faith might actually be helped simply because of the placebo effect, but most people wouldn’t be healed at all. And then of course, the blame gets shifted back onto them: “Godwanted to heal you, but you didn’t have enough faith. I’m sorry. You just need to believe more.”
    Then comes the offering time for “gifts to the ministry.”
    A very slick racket.
    Charlene opens the chamber door, and my thoughts cycle back to where I am now, here inside the research building.
    I peer into the chamber. Someone has made an effort to try and make it look homey. Crammed inside are a reclining chair, a small end table with a stack of spirituality books, and a countertop with instruments to monitor the participant’s heart rate, respiration, and galvanic skin response. A floor lamp sits nearby. But the feeble attempt at interior design doesn’t do much to soften the impersonal atmosphere of the chamber’s stark, copper interior.
    During the test, only air will be fed into the chamber.
    That’s it.
    A video camera hangs surreptitiously in the corner of the chamber.
    Hmm . . . That carries digital signals to the room with the sender. Is that how they do it? Somehow use the video cable?
    I notice a release mechanism on the inside of the door and realize that even if the door were latched shut, even if I were trapped inside, I would easily be able to escape—even without having to get out of cuffs or a straitjacket first.
    Still, the idea of being in a closed space like this brings to mind my wife and sons drowning in our minivan, and I immediately feel my breathing tighten, my heart tense. I turn from the chamber and set up the equipment Xavier gave me at the rest stop.
    I don’t let Charlene see me trying to calm my breathing.
    She closes herself inside the chamber, and we test the RF jammer to make sure that if Dr. Tanbyrn’s team does try to send any signal other than the video feed into or out of the chamber, it’ll be blocked.
    Nothing gets through.
    I take some time to check different frequencies and settings to make sure that Charlene will truly be isolated from all means ofcommunication tomorrow during the test. There’s no Wi-Fi in the building, perhaps for some sort of security reasons, and none of our mobile devices get through the walls of the chamber.
    There are still lots of ways they might be faking the studies, but I feel confident that at least we won’t be dealing with radio interference or frequency tampering.
    In addition, the heart rate monitor Xavier gave us—the one Charlene will secretly wear to make sure that the center’s findings actually match ours—is working and undetectable outside the chamber.
    As we’re finishing up the tests, she proposes that we place the RF jammer beneath the chair cushion so