The holo stirred. Pseudopods of color bloomed in its margins. They felt their way across the display, sucking in symbols as they crept. I couldn’t explain why, but I got the impression that they represented something I was supposed to recognize. That they were people I was supposed to know.
I checked on the girl, wondering if she saw it too. She did, but didn’t seem alarmed. I played the past few seconds back in my head to see if she had activated it with a swipe, but if she had, I hadn’t seen it. “We actually celebrated when it happened,” she said, “if you can imagine that. That’s the normal reaction, right? Create an apocalyptic plague, and toast each other with champagne?” She laughed mirthlessly at that. Mirthlessly, and all alone. “I still remember it so clearly. Miller and I were out in the lab demonstrating our results to Charles, Rauch, Britt, and the rest of them. We had the coneys back in the chamber, and they were hooked up to a rack of diodes.”
The blobs on the screen elongated and flexed. The idea that I was supposed to know them grew stronger. The one on the left, in particular, impressed me as something that was trying to make a connection.
“It was Miller’s idea, originally. He noticed the second pair had an interesting way of interacting, so he put them on the EKG and noticed that their alpha waves were incredibly similar. When one showed signs of stress or excitement, the other did too. When one mellowed, the other did soon after. He split them up to see if they were reacting similarly to external stimuli, but the results were the same. It was almost as if they were…”
“…of one mind,” a faint voice finished for her. It sounded vaguely like Miller’s, but thin and faraway, as if spoken through a muzzle. The girl paused, then gestured towards the holo as if to say ‘yeah, what he said.’
“He had them in separate chambers at this point,” she explained. “He’d split the diodes so he could do it…keep them both plugged in to the EKG and still hold them in separate rooms. Though at this point I’m not sure we needed it. The holoscreen was split as well…the readings from coney number one were showing on the left half, and the readings from number two were showing on the right.” The faint voice of Miller scratched out something through a wash of feedback…too much feedback for me to make it out. The girl interpreted, “he said, ‘now watch what happens when I introduce some food into one chamber, but not the other.’ Here he presses a couple of buttons. Everyone watches as the video insets show a dish of pellets slide into the chamber on the left. Miller says, ‘as you know, these chambers are quarantine-quality. There is zero chance that the coney on the right could see the food, smell the food, hear of it from its partner, or otherwise know of its existence. But watch…’ our eyes are glued to the screen as brainwaves fill first the left half of the screen, then the right.” Another wash of feedback mixed with snippets of Miller’s voice. Another chance for the girl to translate. “‘See how similar the patterns are, both consistent with awareness of food.’ He gets a little flustered here as he notices something on the display.”
“Why did you add the overlay?” It was Britt’s voice this time, not as staticky as Miller’s, but also faint and faraway.
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“That was Britt,” the girl said. “He asked ‘why did you add that overlay?”
“I heard.” I was still trying to puzzle out the meaning of the blobs.
“I know.” She gestured towards the rifle-holders. “But they didn’t.”
What the hell? Banks and Bergman offered no indication that they noticed anything amiss, despite the cryptic message and the odd way the screen was acting. I studied the holo, wondering why, and more importantly, how, she was showing it the way she was.
“Here they’re going back and forth about the overlay that’s popped up in front of the patterns. It’s hardly worth noting, in and of itself…just a shorthand of the signals the background was receiving, but it’s causing a row because Miller doesn’t know where it came from. He and I share a look but I shake my head no, I don’t know either. He checks with Rauch and gets the same response. He looks confused and starts to play with the controls, and, oh hell, I’ll just queue it up.”
She swiped. The pseudopods resolved into human projections. Miller stood in the center, at the controls as the girl had said. Rauch and the girl stood to his right. Britt emerged from the one on the left…the one that I’d sensed calling to me earlier. That made sense, though I couldn’t have said why. The backgrounds of the two halves of the holo chattered with the different readouts; the peaks and valleys of the EKG scrolling horizontally across the background, and on top of that a ghostly scroll-up that showed, in plain pictures, what appeared to be a trended summary.
“…and how did you get it to translate like that anyways?” It was Britt again, still asking about the overlays. “I know that software – it won’t do it. It can’t translate into anything, let alone graphics like these.”
“I…didn’t,” Miller pecked at the controls. He locked on one in the center of his interface, and hit it ten or twelve times in a frustrated crescendo, as if he could somehow get results if only he pressed hard enough. “I don’t know what they’re doing there.”
“They’re pretty spot-on, whatever they are. Did you see how the one on the left showed an image of the rabbit eating its pellets, just as the EKG spiked with hunger signals? And then the one on the right showed an image of berries and grains, but indistinct, as if knew there was some kind of food somewhere but not what kind or how to get it. And look now on the left, as she finishes eating…the EKG shows satiety and restfulness, and the images show her taking a snooze. But…hello, what’s this?” He pointed as the image multiplied and split, like light passing through a prism. The first of the copies peeled away, but remained an image of her resting after her meal. The next three floated apart, and showed her eating again; in one the dish was at its current level, then half, then just a few crumbs in the bottom of the bowl. The fifth image showed the dish, still half-full, being whisked away by an unseen force through the slot in the side if the glass, and the sixth showed a rabbit pawing at the slot thereafter. The seventh showed her lying, emaciated, in the corner of the chamber, her breathing strained, clawing feebly at nothing. The EKG behind them all peaked and valleyed schizophrenically.
“Is she…” Britt ventured. The real rabbit from the feed twitched her head from side to side. Her eyes darted from the pellet dish to an unnamed nothing at the corner of the camera’s view and back again. “Is she planning? Those EKG lines are consistent with cognitive thought and forward-planning, and the images seem to represent a range of possible outcomes.” He moved closer to the screen, eyes alight. “I think she’s planning! She’s using past experiences to decide how much to eat now and how much to save for later, and she’s weighing the risks and rewards of each! And we’re seeing it all right there on the screen!”