Becoming Animals

by Olga Werby

  “Yes. And just in case something in the lab…oh, I don’t know, Will. Just keep an eye on her. Please?”

  “Of course! I always do.”

  Dalla took a turn for the worse. She had to keep going back and forth to the hospital and her prognosis was grim. Will and Toby were spending a lot of time in the hospital as well, to be with Dalla as much as they could. The Crowe family knew they were in the midst of a long goodbye.

  In the lab, the mood was dark. The Brats team was close and Dalla’s illness felt personal to everyone. The major stuck around, ostensibly to inspect the latest BBI developments, but really because he wanted to be nearby if the inevitable happened sooner rather than later. It was just a matter of time and he was worried how Dalla’s death would affect his project.

  Ben and Lilly took George through the facilities to show him the new upgrades. Vikka tagged along as well; with Toby absent, there wasn’t much for her to do. Everyone seemed to be checking their phones compulsively, waiting for bad news.

  The conversation meandered, but George encouraged the group to keep talking. Sometimes he heard something surprising in these informational tangents. He also encouraged familiarity and, though it had taken awhile, he’d gotten everyone in the lab to now call him George. People were wired for trust—he’d studied enough neuroscience to know that. And it’s hard to keep secrets from friends.

  “Have you heard of the cortical homunculus, George?” Ben said.

  “I’ve heard a little,” said George. “But explain it to me.”

  Rufus was on George’s shoulder, standing up on his hind legs and holding on to his human ride’s ear. The team was taking turns being affectionate with the rat while Toby was away. Rufus didn’t like being all by himself.

  They gathered in the control room with its one-way mirror and wall of computer monitors. Ben started to speak as if he were addressing a class. George got the feeling Ben had given this speech before.

  “A cortical homunculus is just a representation of the physical structure of a person, or an animal, inside the brain. It’s like a map of the portions of the brain devoted to different parts of the body. There are two types of homunculi. The sensory one maps what we feel through our senses and the motor one maps body movements.”

  “Why is it called a homunculus?” George asked.

  Lilly jumped in. “There were these comical illustrations of what a human would look like based on the amount of brain resources allocated to a particular body part. It has spindly little legs—kneecaps are tiny. But hands, eyes, ears, nose, and tongue are giant.” Lilly used her hands to mime the giant body parts.

  “I bet,” George said. His mind turned to other body parts that would probably be well represented in the sensory processing areas of the mammalian brain.

  “But it’s not all comical,” Ben said. “People who lose their legs sometimes still feel pain in them. It’s called the phantom limb syndrome.”

  “It’s bad enough to lose your legs, but to also have to suffer imaginary pain? Seems particularly unfair,” George said.

  “True. But without phantom limb proprioception, prosthetics would be useless.”

  “Proprioception?” George asked.

  “It’s the mind’s knowledge of the position and motion of parts of the body. And people who’ve had a leg amputated can extend that sense of their body to include the artificial limb. It can become part of them. Actually, proprioception can extend even further than that. Drivers, for instance, often incorporate the boundaries of their car. Watch someone wince when they back into a parked car—it’s almost like pain.”

  “Student drivers don’t have that yet,” George said. “They have a hard time feeling the vehicles they drive.”

  “Exactly!” Lilly jumped in.

  “I’ve heard drone operators have a hard time in the beginning too,” Ben said.

  Major Watson saw Lilly give him a furtive look to see how he’d react. While they all knew there was a lot of military potential for the Brats project, it just wasn’t discussed. Not here at their lab.

  Ben continued on, oblivious. “But after a little while, they can put themselves into the drone’s dimensions and acquire the feeling—”

  “Do all animals have body image perception?” the major asked. He had no interest in discussing drones with this team.

  “That’s a very interesting question! Will’s been looking into that,” Lilly said. “After all those brain scans of Toby…”

  She stopped. The look on her face told George that she didn’t know what was okay to discuss with him. Which meant they were keeping secrets from him.

  “Will told me about Toby’s fMRI scans,” the major said. Will had mentioned the scans some months ago and now he wanted to learn more—especially now that he knew Lilly was holding back.

  “Oh, great!” Lilly looked relieved. “Toby’s scans are extraordinary.”

  “So Will said,” George said, nodding.

  “After thirty months of linking up with Rufus’s brain, Toby’s body image is…evolving,” Ben said.

  “So her homunculus is changing?” the major asked. That was interesting.

  “Homunculi, plural,” Ben said. “Both her motor and her sensory processing maps are drastically different from when we first started. It’s an amazing result.”

  “Can you show me?”

  “Absolutely.” Ben went to his computer and pulled up two brain scans—the before and after images. “See? It’s very different. Here and here.” He jabbed at the screen with his finger. “It’s like Toby is developing areas in her brain devoted to sensory information from Rufus’s whiskers.”

  “And look here,” Lilly said. She pointed to the screen and George and Vikka leaned in. “Rats navigate the world by smell and Toby’s brain is allocating more space to process Rufus’s olfactory inputs.”

  “Can Toby smell better when she’s not connected to Rufus?” George asked. That could be a useful training tool—soldiers with a super sense of smell. George’s mind was quick to see the applications.

  “Hard to tell,” Ben said. “Rats will always have better olfactory hardware than humans. So, regardless of what her brain does, Toby will always be limited to what she can perceive with her human senses. But when she’s hooked up to Rufus, it’s a completely different ball game.”

  “Let me show you the changes over time,” Lilly said. Now that they were all discussing these changes openly, she seemed excited to share the results of the research. She sat at her station next to Ben’s and pulled up an animation. It showed the evolution of Toby’s brain scans over time, ever since the girl started working in the lab. “See? It’s simply incredible.”

  They watched the animation over and over again, in a loop. Toby’s brain was definitely changing. The major wondered what this meant about her humanity.

  “And the rat?” Vikka asked. “Is Rufus changing too? Do you have his scans as well?” It was the first she’d spoken in a while. George had tasked her with observing, taking note of Ben’s and Lilly’s interaction with him. He would debrief her later.

  “We weren’t focusing on Rufus as much,” Ben said, “so we didn’t take as many scans. With Toby, we wanted to be able to spot any problems from using the BBIs. However Will has a theory that Rufus is getting more visually oriented due to his connection to Toby.”

  “Let’s gather that data going forward,” the major said. “When we add a new animal to the study, I want brain scans at least every few days.” This was the first time he had ordered a specific procedure in the lab, but neither Ben or Lilly batted an eye. They had probably planned on doing it anyway. “If Toby is changing, it stands to reason that Rufus and the other animals she rides will change too.”

  “Would you like to see the sensory homunculus we put together for Toby?” Lilly asked. “It’s a representation of a combination of a rat’s and a human’s somatosensory cortex—a hybrid, if you will. It’s just hypothetical, of course…”

  “Yes. I’d be very in
terested,” George said.

  “So this is how Toby’s brain maps to her body now,” Lilly said. She pulled up an image of Toby and Rufus combined.

  It was a bizarre picture, pulled and squeezed—a point-for-point correspondence of each area of the girl’s and rat’s combined bodies to specific points within Toby’s central nervous system. The feet were huge and so were the hands—or were they feet too? The lips were ballooned to 1.5 times the size of the whole head, and the tongue, drawn poking out of the mouth, was almost the same size as the lips. But it was hard to see either the lips or tongue behind the giant set of rat’s incisors—were those teeth really that sensitive? The ears stuck out of the sides of the head like dinner plates. The nose tip was swollen to the size of a beach ball and was surrounded by giant hairs. Whiskers, the major thought. The eyes were about three times normal size. The whole face seemed to be crowded with gigantic caricatures of the rat-girl’s facial features. More rat than girl, really. There was even a small tail. It was comical and grotesque at the same time.

  “This is how Toby sees herself?” George asked.

  “Not exactly,” Lilly said. “Our mental picture of ourselves doesn’t match our homunculus. Instead, think of it as how Toby’s brain sees her.”

  “Is she still human?” Major Evans asked.

  “Legally speaking, she’ll always be human,” George replied. “But she’s definitely changing.”

  “And how does Dr. Crowe feel about it?”

  “I think the man is in denial.”

  “Good. Keep it that way,” Major Evans said.

  “I’m trying.”

  “And how is she holding up?”

  “Well, her mother is dying.”

  “Must be scary for a little girl.”

  “Vikka has been good for her. Before Dalla went into the hospital, Toby was spending a lot less time with her mom. That should help.”

  “Yes, that was great thinking, George.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “What about Toby’s health?”

  “She’s weaker than she was two years ago. She gets tired more easily. But she’s very smart and she’s got spunk.”

  “I know you’ve become very fond of her—”

  “She’s a good kid, sir. And an amazing rider.”

  “Well, keep me informed.”

  “Always do, sir.”

  Four: +33 Months

  The end came very fast.

  In the morning, Dalla was home and bought a new pair of plastic orange shoes over the Internet. She liked Crocs because they were comfortable and could be disinfected in the dishwasher.

  That afternoon, she was having serious breathing problems. Toby and her father rushed home from the lab. An ambulance was called. Toby’s father hugged her on the street as they watched the ambulance speed to the hospital, taking Dalla away. It wasn’t the first time—it was the fifth time this year alone. But somehow it never became routine.

  “I’ll pack Mom’s bag,” Toby said.

  She didn’t really need to—Dalla kept a hospital bag packed at all times—but Toby liked to add a bit of something non-essential: a chocolate bar, a nice hair clip, a rose from the university garden. She went upstairs to get Mom’s bag while her father went to get the car.

  They drove in silence. They had said everything before many times and words would have just intruded.

  When they arrived at the hospital, Dalla had been admitted into intensive care. Toby’s father went off to meet with the doctors, leaving Toby with Nurse Gary, a man they both knew well. They knew most of the nurses well; the university hospital had been very supportive of the Crowe family. Nurse Gary took Toby to a private family waiting room and gave her green jello. Toby took out her book and settled down for a long day at the hospital.

  The hospital was filled with strong smells. When Toby was younger, she hadn’t noticed so much, but lately, they were hard to dismiss. The food smells were okay. The green jello was strongly acidic and a bit bitter, with perhaps a tinge of cleaning fluid aftertaste. It tingled her nose and the back of her throat. But there were other odors that really bothered Toby. She could smell the machinery—the acrid hot dust on electrical cables, the sharp metallic tang of medication in the IVs, and the stale oil lubricating the gurney wheel joints. The worst were the body smells—sweat and bodily fluids. Intermixed with them were the odors of emotions: fear, pain, anxiety, and sometimes hope. Each had a distinct smell.

  Toby had learned to tell whether her mother was having a good or bad day solely by the way she smelled. She imagined every disease had a specific smell, uniquely identifiable if one knew what to focus on. She knew the cystic fibrosis smell well. Not just from her mother, but from herself. Although she didn’t like to pay close attention to it, she could smell the changes in her own body sometimes. And Rufus always knew.

  She spent hours in the waiting room. Her dad didn’t come back until around dinnertime and, when he walked in, he looked more tired than usual on days like these.

  “The doctors are doing what they can to keep Mom comfortable,” he said.

  “Can I give her a little goodie now?” Toby asked. She had packed a sprig of mint leaves wrapped in a wet paper towel to keep it fresh. Frankly, it was more for her own benefit that for her mom’s—mint was strong and hid a lot of unpleasant things with its dominant odor.

  Will hesitated, then said, “How about some dinner first, kid? They’ll move Mom to another room soon and we can see her then.”

  Toby furrowed her brow. She didn’t like how Dad was avoiding her eyes and his smell betrayed him—he was hiding something from her. Everyone hid things, especially from children. She’d caught Uncle Geo lying to her more than once. Other people at her dad’s lab did it too.

  “Okay,” she finally said. Maybe he’d tell her what was going on over dinner.

  They went to one of the university’s cafes. Toby had eaten at most of them by now. It wasn’t bad—better than her old elementary school’s cafeteria food, anyway. As a test, Toby grabbed two dessert plates; if the news about Mom wasn’t so bad, her dad wouldn’t let her get away with eating sweets for dinner. But he just paid the tab. That wasn’t good.

  They settled at a corner table, away from the students eating in the lull between afternoon and evening classes.

  “How’s Mom? When does she get to go home?” Toby asked, spooning carrot cake into her mouth. Carrot cake was Rufus’s favorite—so she was careful to drop a few carrot cake crumbs into her tangled hair. Rufus would appreciate finding them later.

  “The doctors are making sure she’s comfortable,” her father said, avoiding Toby’s eyes. “They’re moving her into a room with a view,” he added.

  Toby scraped her plates clean. “Can I have another?” she asked.

  “Hmm?”

  “Another carrot cake?” Toby asked. It was another test. If he said yes, it was really bad.

  “Sure, honey.” Toby’s father rose and walked to the counter to get another plate of cake.

  Toby started to cry. She couldn’t help herself—tears just poured out of her eyes. The back of her throat hurt. Her ears buzzed.

  “Here you go.” Her father placed a fresh plate of carrot cake in front of her.

  Toby wiped her face with her sleeve. She didn’t touch the cake.

  “Honey…” He looked unsure what to say.

  “How long?” Toby managed.

  “How long?”

  “How many more days do I have a mom?” Her question was direct. Toby was blunt, the way a child can be.

  He hesitated.

  “So—not long,” she said quietly. She watched her dad from underneath a halo of unruly hair, chewing on a loose strand in her mouth.

  Her dad just shook his head. He started to cry. “It’ll be okay,” he said. “We will be all right.”

  “I know, Dad. Mom and I talked about this.” She felt bad for him—no parent manual gave instructions on how to tell a kid that her mother was dying. That was what Mom
had said.

  “You did?”

  “Many times. She wanted me to be prepared.”

  “I see.”

  “Did she talk to you?”

  “We talked,” her father confessed.

  “But it’s still hard, right?”

  Her father nodded through his tears. “Right.”

  They took the long route back to the hospital, going through the botanical gardens. The scent of flowers after a warm day still lingered, even under a layer of fresh evening dew. Rufus would like it here, Toby thought.

  The hospital room was big and open. The walls were a soft peach pastel and the tiled floor had a brown and beige checkered pattern. A large window provided a view of the whole campus, lit up in the setting sun. Big purple-red shadows were moving over the Greek-style buildings and rolling terrain. The only medical equipment in the room was a vitals monitor and an IV on a rolling stand connected with tubing to Dalla’s arm.

  But although the room had been made to look happy, it smelled of death. Toby picked up on that scent as soon as she walked in. People didn’t get better in this room; they came here to die. She took her dad’s hand to try to make him feel less sad.

  He squeezed her fingers. She tried to be brave.

  They stood by Dalla’s bed. She wasn’t conscious. Maybe she was asleep? The only sounds were her uneven, raspy breathing. She was fighting for each breath.

  “Why did they take away her oxygen machine?” Toby asked. Her mom always wore the little tubes under her nose to get a bit of extra oxygen. Toby had stopped paying attention to them a long time ago. It was just a part of how her mom looked—like glasses.

  “She doesn’t need it anymore,” her father said very matter-of-factly.

  “I liked it,” Toby said. She had used one of those portable machines herself the last time she was sick. The extra oxygen blowing into her nostrils had made it much easier to breathe.