Becoming Animals

by Olga Werby

  He picked an isolated table, both for privacy and for health concerns. They couldn’t afford for Toby to be sick again. Her lungs were compromised already and Will was already talking about putting her on the lung transplant list. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when. As amazing as this girl was, her future was bleak. George hated to think about that.

  “What do you want, Toby?” he asked. He wasn’t talking about the roast beef.

  “I want the implant, of course,” Toby said without hesitation. “I want a full immersion experience. I want full control. I want more than just riding another being’s brain.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I want to become Cory,” Toby said, almost losing her breath with excitement. She had a portable oxygen machine attached to the back of her wheelchair, with thin plastic tubes that delivered the life-giving gas directly into her nostrils. “I want to be Rufus. Well, I’ll have to be careful with Ruffy—he’s old now and in too much pain. But I want to be all of the animals I can be…while I can,” she added quietly.

  George felt uncomfortable under her piercing gaze. Somehow, even without Cory, Toby had picked up some of the raven’s characteristic stare. He hid his discomfort by taking a sip of water. “Your dad is dead set against it, you know.”

  “I know. But I also know that you can change his mind.”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “I do. Do that surprise drone test you were talking about.”

  “What? How did you know about that?” George had expected a lot of things from Toby—pleading, tears, demands, manipulation—but he had never expected the girl would be spying on him.

  “I’m not eight anymore, Uncle Geo,” Toby said with a sad smile. “And I’m probably past the midpoint of my life. No, no, don’t deny it. I know I only have a bit of time and, some of that time, the part at the end, is not going to be pretty. I watched my mother die, you know. I know what it’s like.”

  “I’m sorry, Toby.” George found himself at a loss for words. How does one have an end-of-life conversation with a thirteen-year-old?

  “I don’t need you to be sorry. I need you to be proactive for my cause.”

  “And what is your cause?”

  “I want Dad to find a way of letting me take over some animal’s brain completely. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time now, Geo. This is where Dad’s research is leading. This is the future—a complete consciousness transplant, or at least an almost complete takeover. I’m fine with leaving some of the animal’s basic instincts intact.”

  George put his trembling arms in his lap. This was not how he’d imagined this conversation going.

  “Right now, part of Grock’s cognitive system software rides inside the hardware implant in Kyle’s head. That’s because the bird’s head is too little to support what we’ve done with Twiggy and Bricks. But another animal, a much, much bigger and brainier animal, can support my cognitive system software in its brain.”

  “Like a whale,” George said.

  “A whale, or an elephant, or some other big mammalian brainiac. I thought of gorillas and other great apes, but those are too close to humans. I wouldn’t like it. I need something more removed from a human, yet adaptable enough to allow me to take over.”

  “Like you did with Cory?”

  “Cory wasn’t like this. She doesn’t have a cog-boost and we have a normal BBI connection. Cory is very smart, but she was amenable to my overtures. So it worked. I don’t believe a smart, self-aware animal would surrender completely to me…not forever.”

  “Overtures,” George repeated. He was feeling dizzy. It was true—he had been thinking about stronger bonds, lifelong bonds, between a human and an animal. But he’d never gone that far in his conversation with anyone other than Major Evans. Did Toby overhear him? He didn’t believe so—he was very careful. She must have the most ambitious dreams. He looked at her in awe.

  “I tried to take over Cory’s neural pathways and make them my own,” Toby said. “It sort of worked.”

  “You did what?”

  “I’ve played with her since she was a baby chick. Dad noticed that her brain was changing in a different way from Grock’s, but they all figured she was changing in a normal raven way and that only Grock’s changes were unusual.”

  “They didn’t do a baseline comparison?” George was surprised. This was sloppy research work. Every experiment needed to document what was normal, so they could see the changes due to the experiment.

  “You wanted everything on such a tight deadline,” Toby said. “There was no time to deliver the new BBIs and conduct baseline raven brain visualization. Lilly said they could always do that afterwards with Grock’s other siblings.”

  “I see. So they all think that Cory’s cognitive development is the norm?”

  “I guess so. But…to be honest, George, the experimental nature of the Brats project just isn’t very interesting to me anymore.” Toby sounded far older than her age now. But given her life expectancy, George figured she was allowed.

  Her eyes locked onto his, holding…no, commanding his attention. “I want to find a way to live after this body gives out.”

  “What?”

  “I want Dad to develop an implant that transfers who I am into the brain of another animal. It’s not as absurd as it sounds. If you step back, you’ll see that this is exactly where the Brats research is going anyway. I just want to speed things up a bit. And you can do that.” She looked at him with those raven eyes. It was spine-chilling.

  “I’ll work on it,” George said after a very long pause. It was unnerving to have Toby push for this. Even though it was exactly what he wanted.

  “Good.” Toby smiled and ripped into the raw roast beef on her plate.

  “So she was able to control the bird even without the brain implant. Very impressive.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “We need the professor to create an implant for her.”

  “I know.”

  It was a very brief debriefing. George didn’t tell Major Evans about his lunch conversation with Toby. He didn’t know why he didn’t—he just didn’t.

  Toby and the major both wanted the same thing—or at least, they wanted to follow the same path. Toby’s objective was to live; Major Evans wanted humans who could completely take over another being. But the technology was the same.

  If Will and his team succeeded, there could one day soon be humans riding humans, with all of the implications and horrors that would bring.

  And if Will succeeded, Toby—or whatever became of Toby—would live.

  George could walk away. Or…maybe he couldn’t. He wasn’t sure anymore. But even if he was allowed to distance himself from the Brats project, someone else would just step into his shoes. The project would go on. It wouldn’t die.

  And Toby would.

  Eleven: +60 Months

  “Ow!”

  Grock had pecked May hard on her hand again. He must have been nervous—or Kyle was—and it was May who suffered the consequences.

  “Control your bird, Kyle!” She settled back in her lawn chair to view the upcoming experiment. “Why didn’t we go with dogs?” she asked George.

  “Dogs don’t fly,” the major said. He looked at May’s hand. “Need first aid?”

  “It’s not that bad,” Kyle grumped from the back.

  “There’s blood,” May said. “But no, I’m fine. Unless Grock had a bloody breakfast and I need to disinfect?”

  Lilly passed her the first aid backpack. “Here. Better be safe than sorry.”

  May took the bag and got busy with sprays and a bandage. It wasn’t a large wound, but it wasn’t the first either. May had several scabs that would turn into scars, all courtesy of Kyle’s raven. She knew that Kyle felt bad about it, but it didn’t change the fact that he couldn’t control Grock enough to prevent it.

  “I’m allergic to dogs,” Toby said. The girl was sitting in her wheelchair just a few feet away from May. Her bird was calm
as could be. “I remember wanting a dog so badly as a kid. I got Ruffy instead.”

  May didn’t know that bit of history. “But pigs are fine?”

  “Different dander or saliva or something,” Toby said. “George tested me before he got Twiggy and Bricks.”

  It always amazed May how much of the Brats program had been directed by the needs of a sick kid.

  Well, not a kid anymore. Toby had changed a lot this last year. Even sitting in her wheelchair, a hoodie draped over the implant on her left temple and an oxygen tube snaked under her nose, Toby looked powerful with the black raven on her shoulder. Toby was the main force behind this show. Ever since the experiment with the gold key in the courtyard, Toby seemed to be calling the shots.

  Despite Will saying that it would never happen, Toby had gotten the brain implant she wanted. Will did the surgery himself. She also got Cory and, over Kyle’s objections, she was allowed to occasionally ride Grock. They were all going along for the ride and Toby was driving.

  The girl swiveled her head and peered directly into May’s eyes. May shivered slightly and dropped her gaze. She couldn’t hold eye contact with the girl.

  “You know, dogs are creatures of smell,” Toby said. “That’s how they construct their world. Birds, and us, we’re all about sight.” A look of amusement played across her face. Though she and Kyle had been hooked into their ravens for the last hour waiting for the experiment to begin, Toby retained her personality even while riding.

  Personality but not humanity. The stray thought crossed May’s mind.

  May felt an enormous sense of loyalty toward the kid, but if she was honest, she felt some jealousy too. Toby was the star rider, Kyle bonded with Grock and Bricks, and Toby was so possessive of Twiggy that May was mostly stuck riding the rats, Eeny and Miny.

  “Dog owners try to change their pets,” Toby continued. “Like they stop them from sniffing their guests’ butts.”

  She’s toying with me, thought May, but continued to smile.

  “They even stop dogs from sniffing things outside when they take them out for walks. What do you think happens to a dog subjected to these kinds of behavioral interventions from birth?”

  “Dogs stop sniffing around?” May said. She had no idea. She figured that if dogs were into smell, they would continue to sniff around even against their owners’ wishes. Nature would reassert itself in the end.

  “Dogs become more vision-focused, just like their owners. Dog owners are changing the essential nature of their pets,” Toby said.

  “That’s a shame. But you don’t want a dog sticking its nose into the crotches of strangers. Or when dogs roll around in something horrible…yuck!” May tried to laugh, but she knew it came off as artificial.

  “I bet dogs feel differently about it,” Toby said. “Humans value only the kind of intelligence they can recognize. They try to change animals. They reward only the traits they like…or understand. You know dogs fail the mirror test, right? You put a paint spot on their head, have them look in the mirror, and they don’t react. They don’t paw at the spot. They just aren’t visually oriented enough. But the Canine Cognition Lab at Barnard College has made a version of the mirror test more suitable for a dog.”

  As Toby talked, Cory idly picked at loose strands of her hair. May wondered what additional information Toby was getting through the bird’s senses. When riding the rats or pigs, May always got a lot of emotional backwash—that’s what they called the referred psychological sensations. Sometimes it was hard to tell where the anxiety or fear originated from—her own mind or the animal’s. That was one reason that the cog-boost was so important—it gave much more control to the human rider.

  “To test their self-recognition, the researchers collected the dog’s urine,” Toby continued, “and made experiments out of that. The dog sniffed just his own urine, or his own urine spiked with some other chemical. Guess which he found more interesting?”

  “His own?”

  “No,” Toby said. “It was the altered one. The dog recognized that there was something different. They weren’t interested in their own pee. Perhaps the mirror test for olfactory creatures should focus on smell and not sight.”

  “That makes sense,” May said. It did, sort of. Maybe. She wasn’t a scientist; she was a soldier.

  “Did you know elephants used to fail the mirror test?” Toby asked.

  “I thought you guys told me they passed,” May said. Something about this topic was important to the girl, but May hadn’t figured out what it was yet.

  “They pass now, but at first, they always failed. Know why? They were shown a tiny mirror! The elephant never saw more than a few inches of his skin in that thing. Imagine if someone was showing you a photo of your shoulder blade or your kneecap. Would you be able to guess it was you? Of course not! But when someone finally set up a huge mirror, the elephant passed the test with no problem. They saw the spot on their head in the mirror and immediately their trunk went to the same location on their own head.”

  “Using a small mirror for an elephant does seem like a stupid mistake,” May agreed.

  “But it’s not just about matching the sensory capabilities of the animal. We need to test what animals care about.” Toby was getting worked up now. “A dog doesn’t care if he’s got a paint spot on his fur. Elephants care. Great apes care. We care. But dogs don’t. They’re okay about being covered in dirt or mud. We’re testing what humans care about, not dogs. It’s like testing them on the color pink when they’re colorblind!” Toby inhaled deeply. All this talking was making her breathless.

  May worried whether Toby would be too tired to go on with the experiment. What was the holdup? “You seem very passionate about this,” she said.

  Toby closed her eyes, but Cory didn’t. The raven continued to stare at May. “I just want to be judged by the right measures,” Toby said. Her voice was tired, winded.

  Vikka came over and gave Toby a big hug. “Oh, Toby. No one is judging you.”

  May wondered how long the woman had been listening in on their conversation. But she was glad it wasn’t her job to hug the girl. While she really cared about Toby, May had never been very good at the child-rearing thing.

  She also disagreed with what Vikka had just said. No one was judging Toby? The girl was being judged constantly. When you thought about it, the whole Brats experiment boiled down to judging Toby.

  The test was about to begin and Toby was already exhausted. She berated herself for getting into it with May, but the woman stared at her all the time now, and she had been ever since Toby had gotten the human implant. So what if Toby was different from other humans? At the Brats lab, of all places, she should be safe from hominid prejudices.

  She had spied Vikka and her dad talking about her brain scans with George. Dad was clearly upset about them, but George acted like they weren’t a big deal. He argued that it was to be expected that Toby’s brain was changing—neuroplasticity and all that. Of course Toby’s brain was different—it had to be! Neuroplasticity was the brain’s ability to reorganize itself, to heal, to form new connections, to become different when the need arose. And Toby had needs.

  George was good at talking with her dad. He always came to the Brats lab super prepared. He had really mastered Dad’s vocabulary in this last year and he used it to direct the Brats experiments. The man was very smart. And while her dad was all about the details, George was the big picture guy. That’s why Toby had gone to him with her total consciousness transplant proposal. He was now slowly building up the argument for Toby’s proposal, just as he had promised. Toby just had to keep up the appearance of being a little girl for a bit longer.

  But she didn’t feel like a young girl anymore. Her rides had aged—Rufus was old, Twiggy was an adult pig with adult cravings and sensibilities and, at nine months, Cory was at least an adolescent—and with so much exposure to adultness, Toby felt herself tipping that way herself. But she could tell her adult attitude was making her coworkers unc
omfortable. Perhaps she should write another fake diary entry or a “letter to self.” The last one of those, when she’d written about God and scripture, had a dramatic effect on May. According to Vikka, no other animal on earth thought about such things. Only humans.

  And dreams. I should write a few dreams for them to find. Toby felt a sad, twisted smile flicker across her face and she quickly shoved it back behind the mask she carefully cultivated in front of a mirror. She had to look the part of a happy young girl. A human girl.

  Toby suppressed a yawn. Next to her, in the traveling cage by her feet, Rufus yawned as well. Cory did the corvid equivalent of a yawn: she stretched, shook out her feathers, lowered her heard while raising her shoulders, and opened and shut her bill. Vikka had once explained that yawning was contagious among humans, chimps, and great apes—but animals only sympathetically yawned if they emotionally related with the original yawner. Strangers didn’t elicit this reaction and it was an uncommon reaction across species. Still, Toby knew that if she yawned, all of her riding partners would too. They were completely in sync, even when not connected via the BBI.

  “Are you ready, Toby?” George called to her. He sat at the edge of the basketball court they were using as a staging area for today’s experiment.

  “Sure.” She slouched into her chair, the hood of her black hoodie looking very much like Cory’s hackles. The bird mimicked her movements and bobbed her head.

  “Looks like Cory’s ready too,” George said. He had apparently noticed the similarity of postures, but made light of it for the rest of the group. Toby didn’t know if she should be mad at him for drawing attention to it or be grateful for his attempt to downplay it.

  “Okay,” Ben called from his computer station. “I have the connections loud and clear for both the Toby/Cory and the Kyle/Grock teams.”