Becoming Animals

by Olga Werby

  “Toby?” Vikka was shaking her by the shoulder. “What’s going on?”

  Toby worked hard to pull out of Mele; the young calf needed her. “I think Kona knows about Spila,” she said.

  “We just got a report from SeaWorld,” Kyle said. He was leaning over Toby, looking concerned. “You have to keep Mele away from her mother. We don’t want the young whale to get hurt accidentally.”

  “She’s scared.”

  “And you will help her through this,” Vikka said.

  “She’s being violent,” Toby said. “She’s hitting her head.”

  “Yes,” Kyle said, “so please keep Mele out of her way. Talk to her. Play with her. Just keep her out of harm’s way. Okay?”

  “I’ll try.”

  Toby focused all of her energy and attention on Mele. She had to keep the baby whale safe.

  The vibrations caused by Kona’s blows on the concrete enclosure were like explosions on Mele’s skin, sending reverberations up and down her blubber and jarring her inner organs. Toby felt like she was sitting on some giant drum. The sympathetic shaking of her human body moved the blankets off of her and she felt Vikka tuck her back in. It was terrifying for Toby and it must have been an even more harrowing experience for the baby orca.

  The first thing Toby did was coax Mele away from her mother. Vibrations were one thing, but being hit, even accidentally, by several tons of muscle, bone, and blubber would be deadly. The enclosure was irregular, almost an amoeba-like shape, which gave Mele a few nooks to hide in while her mother raged, grief-stricken. There you go, Mele, Toby thought to her.

  Mele floated in place and called alternately for her mother and brother. Toby not only learned those calls, but managed to echo them in Mele’s head. The effect was strangely soothing—Mele felt like she was being listened to and her anxiety levels went down.

  Good girl, Mele. Good girl, Toby sang in the whale calf’s head. It’ll be okay. I’m here with you.

  She tried to release some serotonin—a neurotransmitter that helped with reducing stress and relieving depression. It was natural for Mele to feel depressed over the loss of Spila, but Toby needed her to overcome those feelings quickly. There just wasn’t that much time left for her to bond with the baby orca and depression would dampen Mele’s ability to relate to Toby and find common ground. Besides, Toby didn’t want Mele to bash herself on the side of their tank, or stop eating, or suffer even more anxiousness during what was going to be a difficult trip up to Washington.

  Mele reacted to the song in the air even before Toby registered it as music. The melody was in a minor key and had a haunting, melancholy feel to it. Mele liked it. But it stopped after just the first few bars and Mele’s whole body shook in displeasure.

  Did you like that? Toby asked Mele. She tried to figure out what the melody was. It was vaguely familiar, but Toby’s mind was too stressed to place it. She tried singing another melody instead, a happy version of “We’re Off to See the Wizard.” She didn’t know why that song came to mind, but she knew it well enough to sing it.

  Mele didn’t like it. Too happy for you? Toby asked. She hoped it wasn’t her singing.

  Rufus had definite musical preferences. For him, it boiled down to avoiding low notes that reverberated off the walls and floors and made him feel like a predator was coming to eat him. He preferred violin concertos. Cory had specific musical tastes too. She liked the sounds of human voices—male voices in particular—and, for some unknown reason, she was also partial to the oboe. Twiggy, on the other hand, was mostly irritated by music. Pigs had great hearing, perhaps as a compensation for their poor eyesight, and Twiggy was good at picking up the nuances of vocal emotions. So Twiggy liked the melody of human speech rather than music itself.

  So what kind of music would a whale like? Whales communicated with each other in song—long, complex songs that carried far in their aquatic environment. Toby thought back to the whale songs she’d listened to in preparation for riding orcas; they all had a strong touch of melancholy to them.

  The melody played again. It was an even shorter snippet this time, but Toby was ready for it.

  “What was that?” she asked. “She likes that music. Play it again.”

  “What music?” Vikka sounded genuinely perplexed. “Kyle?”

  “I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “There’s no music here, Toby. Everything is quiet—”

  “No, it’s not!” Rider called from the front. “My phone rang.”

  “That’s it!” Toby said. “It makes sense. Can you play your ring tone again?”

  Rider fumbled with his phone and the motor home swerved.

  “Just tell me what your ring tone is,” Kyle said, pulling out his own phone. “I’ll play it.”

  “It’s the Westworld theme music, by that guy who did Game of Thrones,” Rider said.

  “Really?”

  “I like it,” Rider said with a shrug. “And so does Mele, apparently.”

  Kyle found the song and played it.

  “Is it just me or is this music too perfect for our situation?” Vikka said. Westworld was a show about a robot theme park where human visitors were free to express their basest instincts, like rape and murder, and where robots become fully self-aware as a way to survive that purgatory.

  “Is this good, Toby?” Kyle asked, ignoring Vikka’s question.

  “Yes. Mele likes it,” Toby said. “Just keep playing it.”

  “Ten days of grief and Westworld,” George said to Major Evans. An endless loop of the music had been pumped through the speakers by the whales’ enclosure.

  “It’s getting on my nerves,” Evans said.

  George just nodded. Everyone there had had enough.

  “When will they be ready to move?” Evans asked.

  “It’s still hard to tell. She’s clearly getting better, but…” They couldn’t move the whales until Kona stopped acting out her grief. It would be too dangerous—for the calf, the tanker, and the people aboard.

  “The vet suggested drugs days ago,” Evans said.

  “I wanted to see if Toby could get a handle on the situation.”

  “And she’s doing a great job. But Toby’s now at our base in Washington and I want the whales to join her ASAP. It’s time to drug the mother.”

  His tone was clear—this was an order.

  “But Mele’s still breastfeeding,” Will said. “If we drug her mother, the breast milk will carry the chemical, and Mele will get some of it too.”

  “That might make Toby’s job easier,” said George. The truth was that he agreed with Will. But he had his orders and he needed Will’s cooperation.

  “What about Toby?” Will said. “You know the results of the research we’ve done. Administering anti-anxiety drugs to rats can give their riders nightmares, panic episodes, even suicidal thoughts. We can’t risk Toby like that. I won’t do it.”

  “Will, I’m on your side here, but we’re out of options. We need to move the whales and we can’t take an aggressively depressed adult whale on a transport tanker. We also can’t separate Mele from her mother without risking a repeat of what happened to Spila.” He paused to allow for all of this to sink in. “You tell me, Will, what do we do?”

  “We wait.”

  “We can’t do that. Toby’s getting weaker—”

  “I know! I’m her father!”

  Will’s nerves were already thin. He had been sequestered here in this hotel room for days, practically under house arrest. He had his computers, but hardly any human contact—and none at all with Toby. It was hard on him, George knew.

  “I’m sorry, Will.” George tried to use the deep, calming voice that Vikka had taught him. It worked great on nervous animals—and nervous humans.

  He waited a bit—and then deliberately changed moods, like flipping a switch. “For months, I’ve been doing nothing but trying to help you save your daughter!” he raged.

  Will sat down, stunned by the quick turnaround in George’s temperamen
t. That was exactly what George had intended.

  “I pulled you out of that mental institution and I set you up with a lab of your own, so that all you had to do was work on saving your little girl. I found the orcas. I got you there, set you up in another lab, and made sure you were able to finish brain surgery—on a whale!” He practically screamed the last words into Will’s face. “And all the while, I’ve kept the whole US military complex off your back. I kept Toby safe and drove her to you. I made sure she got a chance to try to ride the whale. And I convinced everyone, up and down the chain of command, that the best course of action was to allow your daughter to undergo the world’s first full human consciousness transplant. Anyone else probably would have put you in jail for child abuse for even contemplating this crazy scheme!”

  “Wasn’t this your idea?” Will asked weakly.

  “What?” George barked.

  Will was almost shaking. “I mean, I seem to remember we were talking—”

  George radically changed his demeanor again—he spoke once more in the calm, gentle voice. “Toby told you she wanted to live, Will. You’re her father and you wanted to save her. I understood. I helped.”

  “Thank you.” Will’s voice was meek. George had broken him—but it had to be done. He hated himself for manipulating the man, but their options were running out fast.

  “So now you have to help me help you, Will,” George said. “Please.”

  “What do you want me to do?” Will asked.

  “Come with me.”

  Twenty-Three: +67 Months and 2 Weeks

  For five days now, Toby had lived in the new Brats lab in Washington. It was a gorgeous complex on a bluff overlooking the small bay where Mele and her mother would eventually be allowed to explore—and where Toby would learn about her new life in the ocean. It was also isolated—and seeing as they’d passed through a military checkpoint to reach it, Toby assumed it was on an army base, but it didn’t feel like an army base. There were no other buildings visible from the windows.

  It was a bit lonely too. Vikka and Kyle were here, but Rider had left the motor home even before they arrived. Kyle told Toby that she wasn’t to tell anyone that Rider had ever been with them. She didn’t understand why, but she was happy to keep the secret.

  Grock and Cory were set up in a large rookery, but they weren’t allowed to roam free outside just yet. Grock was clearly interested in exploring, but Kyle tempered that interest by riding him all the time. Cory, on the other hand, had mostly been left on her own and, for the first two days, she cried for Toby. Finally, Vikka had made sure that both Cory and Grock stayed together with Toby in the room they’d dubbed “the riding room.” That’s where Toby and Kyle spent most of their time hooked up to their rides: Toby to Mele, Kyle to Grock.

  The riding room was big and airy, with floor-to-ceiling windows that provided a beautiful view of the water. When Toby wasn’t looking at the world through Mele’s senses, she watched the Pacific Ocean roll in and out. Even the smell of the ocean managed to permeate the room despite the elaborate climate control systems. Toby loved that smell—and through Toby, Mele loved it too.

  Toby was in the riding room now, enveloped in the new sensory input–reducing chair made exclusively for her. Kyle had one too, custom-made to fit his large frame. Toby looked out of the window. She tried to memorize every minute detail of the bay, so she could share it with Mele. She knew that wild pods of orcas lived in this area and she focused on creating a mental fantasy of happy orcas jumping in the waves. It wasn’t real, of course, but the calf was always delighted with Toby’s mental pictures of the ocean; she wanted to know all about the big water. Soon, Toby kept telling her while riding. As soon as you get here.

  Mele didn’t understand that. She was stressed, still living in the enclosure in San Diego with her heartsick mother. Toby’s presence was the only thing that calmed her down.

  “Hey, Toby.” Lilly walked into the riding room wearing a white coat with a Brats emblem patch on the left arm.

  “Hi, Lilly,” Toby said.

  Ben and May were still back in Arizona. Ben was in charge of the science side of the operation—the military ran the rest—and May was supervising a class of fresh Brats recruits. But Lilly had been brought here to help Toby with Mele assimilation. Toby was glad she’d come.

  “I see you’ve got some of our new chairs here,” Lilly said.

  Her voice had that fake cheerful tone Toby knew well. Almost everyone used it when they were around her, like she was a sick dog or something.

  “You guys designed these?” Toby asked, patting the thick vinyl-covered cushions that conformed to the chair’s arms, back, head, and legs. It was like sitting in a space chair—nothing pressed, nothing rubbed, and it gave complete, full body support. When she sat in it, Toby felt like her human body simply dissolved away and she could completely focus on Mele.

  “Well, not us exactly. Ben wrote up some specs and some other engineers worked out the details,” Lilly said. “There are so many new people working on the Brats project now. It’s much easier to make things like these chair-pods happen.”

  “But harder to keep track of the whole project?” Toby asked.

  Lilly glanced at the two ravens watching her from the rafters, then nodded. “Much harder. But they let me come—that’s what matters.” Toby vaguely wondered who they were again.

  “I’m very glad they did,” Toby said, trying hard to communicate her sincerity. Cory had taught her how important tone of voice was to conveying information. Some people only listened to the tone and ignored the words, and many said one thing with their words and communicated the exact opposite through their presentation.

  “I brought you a little friend,” Lilly said with a smile.

  “Twiggy?” Even though she hadn’t ridden the little pig in several months, Toby missed her terribly.

  “No, sorry. That would have been too hard. And May uses her now to teach. Twiggy’s mellowed quite a bit in her old age.”

  “I miss her,” Toby said.

  “She misses you too.”

  “So who did you bring?” Toby asked.

  “Eeny!”

  “Really? Doesn’t May need her too?” Toby asked. “And Miny too?” She remembered how Eeny and Miny liked to nuzzle each other and curl up to sleep together.

  “Well, Miny now has six baby rats to keep her company. They’ve all been implanted with a brain device—successfully!”

  “Wow. You’ve been busy without me.”

  “Well, we’ve got a lot of new riders to train, so…” Lilly spread her arms and shrugged. “It would be much easier if you were still there, but May has been doing a great job.”

  “Good. I’m very happy for the whole team.”

  “Thanks.”

  “So why did you bring Eeny here?”

  “George asked me to. I guess you don’t know why either?”

  “No idea,” Toby said. She glanced at Grock. Kyle probably knew.

  “Well, we’ll find out soon enough,” Lilly said. “Have you been riding Cory much?” Toby’s raven fluffed up at the mention of her name.

  “Not while Mele needs me,” Toby said. “I’ve been trying to help her ride out her grief, so to speak. Kona is scary and distant. She’s been thrashing inside the enclosure at SeaWorld. They’re worried about putting Mele with her on a boat.”

  “I heard,” Lilly said. “Well, just from your dad. Back at the lab, they don’t tell us anything.”

  Toby wondered again who they were. Who was making the decisions about her? Was Uncle Geo in charge? Toby knew for certain that her dad wasn’t calling the shots.

  “Your dad also told me a bit about the new brain implant,” Lilly said. “It’s huge. You have complete control of all the motor functions, all the perceptual apparatus, all—”

  “I know,” Toby said quietly.

  “Well, yes, of course you know. It’s just that…what your dad did with Mele is revolutionary! It’s genius. It’s so much m
ore than what we’ve done with the other animals. The implant has a massive memory reservoir.”

  “That’s so I can fit in there,” Toby said. Lilly must have been told about that too, or she wouldn’t have been allowed in here.

  “Yes, but your dad believes it’s only a gateway. In time, you’ll take over parts of the orca’s organic brain itself, as it develops and matures. Most of you will then be stored in the living, growing brain tissue of the orca.”

  Toby couldn’t help but shudder at that. A tremor moved up and down her legs and arms. She could feel her heart begin to race.

  “Toby?” Lilly’s voice rose in alarm. “Are you okay?” Toby was fully hooked up to the medical monitoring equipment and they showed her vital signs.

  “Sorry.” Toby used her meditative techniques to control herself. “I just hadn’t really considered some aspects of the whole thing.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean…if I take over Mele’s brain, where will she go? She’s not like Rufus, Twiggy, or even Cory; she’s fully sentient. Can I just move in and take over her brain?”

  “Have you discussed this with George or your dad?” Lilly said.

  “Yes. No? I’m not sure. I’ve been so tired lately.” It bothered Toby that she couldn’t remember.

  “It won’t be all or nothing,” Lilly said. “Mele’s very young. She’ll grow up with you. You’ll be part of who she is. You probably already are.”

  “It’s only been a few days.”

  “But important days. Brains change more rapidly when their hosts’ environments are in flux. Mele had the surgery, and then the move to San Diego, and the loss of her sibling, and the grieving mother…and you! You were there for her all that time. Isn’t she happy when you ride her? Is she waiting for you? Does she know you’re in there?”

  “Yes to everything,” Toby said. “Mele is less scared when we’re together.”