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With so much
funding, this is the food you eat? Chal thought this, but didn’t
say it to the cook, who looked unhappy to be there anyway. She
finished quickly and began to explore the rest of the structure. The
hallways that led to the laboratories continued through the building,
and she found herself wandering through a number of preparatory
laboratories. Some of them had technicians at work, but others were
vast and empty, filled with computers and other analytic equipment.
What other projects were happening down here?
Chal was curious
to know.

At first she greeted
the military men standing guard at each door, but after a few brusque
replies, she decided to just ignore them. Her ID card seemed to
unlock any door, at least on this level, and she enjoyed the sense of
freedom she had at being able to roam about the laboratories. She
reached a large door at the other end of the hallway from the living
quarters, and swiped herself in, nodding at the men with machine guns
standing guard.

This lab was the
bio-substrate lab, she realized as soon as she stepped in. There were
shelves from floor to ceiling everywhere the eye could see, and all
of them were filled with glass jars and cages. Mice scurried in
wheels in huge tanks on some of the shelves. In others, small brains
floated in a clear red liquid that she recognized by smell as being a
formaldehyde-based compound.

There were no
chimpanzees, but she was drawn back past the mice tanks to a huge
aquarium that was set back from the other shelves. Inside was a reef
of corals, but no fish. Peering into the aquarium, she tried to see
what was hiding in the shadows of the coral. She thought she saw a
small movement in the back and squinted, her hands cupping her eyes,
but couldn’t see anything.

Letting her hands
drop from the tank, she turned around and almost ran into Dr.
Fielding.

“Jesus,”
she said, starting backwards and bumping into the tank. “You
scared me.”

“So sorry,”
Dr. Fielding said, but his tone indicated that he was anything but.
What would he be doing in this lab anyway, creeping up behind her
like that?

“It’s
okay,” Chal said, determined not to let him drag her down to
his level. She was going to be professional, no matter how much she
disliked the man.

“Octopi,”
Dr. Fielding said.

“Excuse me?”
Chal asked.

“Octopi,”
Dr. Fielding repeated, gesturing to the tank.

“Oh,”
Chal said. She watched as Fielding climbed the stepladder and
retrieved a fish from a smaller tank above the octopus tank. He
dumped the fish unceremoniously into the water. As quick as a flash,
two octopi emerged from the coral and made for the fish which still
seemed dazed from being thrown into the tank. It swam slowly through
the tank, oblivious to the danger. The smaller octopus reached the
fish first and enveloped it with its tentacle. Before it had time to
swallow the prey, the larger octopus reached them both, and extended
a tentacle out, prying the fish from the smaller animal. Their
tentacles wrapped around each other, and they struggled to wrench the
fish away. Dr. Fielding looked at them fighting, his pupils dark
pinpoints flashing from side to side. He seemed to be enjoying
himself.

“Why are there
octopi here?” Chal asked. The octopus nervous system was useful
for basic study, but she thought that was all it was useful for. It
only had five percent of the nerve cells that the human brain had,
tops. At least, that was all she remembered from her biology classes.
Lord, she hated biology. The larger octopus had gotten the fish away
from the smaller one, and was busy stuffing it into its mouth cavity.
The smaller octopus lost interest, or pretended to lose interest, and
stretched its way back toward the coral.

“The octopus
is the smartest animal, aside from man,” Fielding said. His
eyes tracked the octopus as it moved across the floor of the
aquarium. “They can think, they can learn. Sometimes they
play.” The small octopus sat motionless on the bottom, its
tentacles waving in the invisible currents of water.

“They even use
tools,” Fielding said, his eyes never once leaving the tank.
The large octopus had eaten the fish and was now swimming lazily
through the tank. The small octopus shied away from the large one as
it swam by.

“They don’t
feel very much, though, do they?” Chal asked. “I read
once that they’re insensitive to burns or something like that.”

“They don’t
feel anything,” Fielding said. “Nothing that we feel,
anyway. They fight for dominance, but it’s strictly for
survival.” He turned to her, the odd smile creeping once more
across his face. “When a male octopus copulates, its heartbeat
is as slow and steady as in an animal at rest.”

“So they don’t
get excited over sex,” Chal said, raising an eyebrow. “Is
that what you’re learning from them?”

“A purely
unemotional creature with a high degree of intelligence is a
wonderful control group,” Fielding said. He stepped down from
the ladder, his fingers trailing across the glass.

“Intelligence
without emotion,” Chal murmured. Certainly it was
possible
.
Was that all Alan was? An intellect with no feelings? It could be, he
could be mimicking rather than truly feeling. But no, he wasn’t.
Despite her misgivings, she could tell that just from his face.

“It’s
nice to have pets,” Fielding said. “I never had any
myself when I was a child.”

“Oh? Where are
you from?” Chal asked, relieved to be off the topic of octopi
for the time being. She wanted to leave, but Dr. Fielding was staring
at her so intently that she thought it would be rude.

“I’m
from here,” Fielding said. “Arizona. Too many coyotes to
have cats around, and my mother never liked dogs.” He looked
into the tank again, and Chal had the odd feeling that he would have
loved an octopus for a pet.

“Is your
family still in Arizona?” Chal asked.

“No,”
Fielding said, and his eyes narrowed. “My father lost his job.
Fucking immigrants coming over and taking everything.” He said
this with the same low, unemotional voice, but Chal could see the tic
at the corner of his mouth. His tongue darted out to lick it.

Chal didn’t
know what to say in response that wouldn’t be unduly rude. Many
of her family members were immigrants, and one of her mom’s
friends still worked for the embassy to help immigrants get through
all of the paperwork and red tape and escape poverty after the
digital Divide. Her mother, of course, had gone back in West
Catalonia, having fought so hard for the creation of the country in
the first place. Still, Chal remembered her family leaving, one by
one, for the promise and future of digital-saturated countries.

Sometimes they had
left illegally, Chal knew, but none of them was anything but grateful
for a chance to live in a country that embraced technology. It seemed
stupid to her to blame the individual immigrants, anyway. They were
just doing what was right for their family’s survival. It was
the natural thing to do.

She pressed her lips
together and ignored Dr. Fielding. No need to make him hate her even
more.

“If you’ll
excuse me, I have to prepare for the next round of awakening,”
she said.

“Where were
you born?” Dr. Fielding asked Chal, as though he hadn’t
heard her.

“Not here,”
Chal said. “Forgive me, I really have to go prepare.” She
turned to leave.

“I’m
keeping an eye on you,” Dr. Fielding said.

Chal turned around,
astonished. “Excuse me?”

“You heard
me,” Dr. Fielding said, and now there was a sharp edge to his
voice that Chal had never heard before. “Don’t think you
can just do anything you like here. I’m watching.”

Chal tossed her hair
back. So that’s what his deal was.

“Watch all you
like, Dr. Fielding,” she said. “It’s possible you
might learn something.”

He scowled, but Chal
didn’t wait to hear his reply. She was already through the
shelves, swiping her ID at the keypad. As she left, she looked back
to see Dr. Fielding standing next to the tanks, his thin eyebrows
knitted in anger, the octopi waving their tentacles up toward him as
though in supplication.

***

Chal’s second
interaction with the prototype was normal, or as normal as possible
given the circumstances. She sat back and watched Alan play with his
fingers, his hands, his eyes wide and wondering as an infant’s.
At one point he made a gesture, and she froze in her chair. After he
was re-sedated, she fairly ran out to the observation room.

“Did you see
that?” she said.

“See what?”
Dr. Fielding asked in a cold and clipped tone.

“His finger.
He was dancing it the same way I danced mine during the first
awakening.” She was heady with excitement.

“Wait, what?”
one of the technicians said. Dr. Fielding looked as though he wanted
to throw the technician through the wall.

“His finger,”
Chal said. Did none of them get it? She wiggled her finger in the
air. “
Balla amb so dit.
He
remembered
!”

Dr. Fielding put his
hand over his clipboard.

“Dr. Davidson,
we must avoid jumping to conclusions about the prototype. It’s
simply too underdeveloped to have that kind of memory retention yet,”
he said.

“But I’m
sure–”

“We’ll
be sure to record your observation about what you believe the
prototype is doing,” Dr. Fielding said. She wanted to shake him
by the shoulders.
This was important! He was
learning
!

“Let’s
prepare the room for a slight increase in stimuli,” Dr.
Fielding said. “Up the ambient noise to sixty decibels.”

“Should we
increment the variety of noises?” the technician asked.

“Not yet,”
Dr. Fielding said, looking straight at Chal. She was staring daggers
at him. “We must be patient.”

Chal turned on one
heel and left the observation room. Evan and another assistant had
taken the prototype out of the tank and were wheeling him out of the
room on the hospital gurney. She ran to catch up with them.

“Mind if I tag
along?” Chal asked.

“Sure thing,”
he said. “He’s already under full sedation.” They
pushed the gurney along the hallway. It was too narrow for Chal to
walk alongside, so she lagged behind, looking at the prototype from
where she could glimpse him around the shoulder of the other
assistant. He looked just like he was sleeping, peaceful almost.

They came to the
holding room and the assistants picked up the prototype carefully,
transferring him to what looked to be a normal hospital-style bed.
They inserted the necessary IVs and Evan checked for sores, bruises,
or soiling. The monitors along the wall beeped and whirred,
performing the necessary task of constant observation.

Before they left,
Evan came around the bed. To Chal’s surprise, he pulled out
handcuffs from under the bedsheet. One end was clasped around the
bedpost. The other he slid around the prototype’s arm and
cuffed shut. He then proceeded to do the same for his other arm, and
then his legs.

“Why are you
doing that?” Chal said.

“Huh?”
he asked.

“Why are you
handcuffing him to the bed? He’s sedated.”

Evan shrugged.
“Protocol. It’s Dr. Fielding’s order.”

Chal nodded, but
inside she was seething. She felt that it was ridiculous –
unduly paranoid, to be sure – to handcuff a child to a
hospital bed. For that was what Alan was – a child. One that
looked like a man, to be sure, but still a child inside. His neuronal
connections had taken a steep jump in the second experiment, and they
had read sharp spikes of alpha waves in alternation with longer theta
states, which most likely meant that he was learning, or at least
thinking about his experiences.

“It’s
crazy to think of what’s going on in his brain right now,”
Chal said. “Were you involved with the programming?”

“A bit,”
Evan said. “I worked mostly on capability programming.”

“What’s
that?”

“Setting up
neuronal structures to be activated later. Stuff like how to drive,
how to use a fork, little things.”

“Using
backwards induction?”

“Yeah,”
Evan said. “I actually worked with the guy whose DNA we’re
using for all this. So that there wouldn’t be any problems
interfacing brain and body.”

“But you can’t
just preprogram stuff like knowing how to drive.” Chal frowned.
Her rats had still needed to learn the mazes. There was no way to put
that knowledge into their brains beforehand.

“No, but the
structures are set up to make learning easier.” Evan was
starting to get excited, and she could tell that this was the kind of
research that he was best at. Some scientists liked the code, and
some liked the lab work. It seemed like Evan was one of the former.

“If the brain
has to build out all those structures, it takes forever,” Evan
said. “We code it so that the myelin networks for different
tasks are all already built up by the time the brain is ready to be
developed. That way, just like that–” and he snapped his
fingers “–the brain is ready to go.”

“So it grows
into the existing structure.”

“And it should
be damn quick,” Evan said. “What you’ve seen so
far... well, it’s much better than what we’ve done
before, but I want to see what comes next. He’s going to be a
superlearner.”

“Can I see the
program notes?” Chal asked. “I’d like to know
exactly what kinds of structures he has preprogrammed.”

“Sure,”
Evan said. “Dr. Fielding should have all of the code on his
workstation.”

“You don’t
have a copy I could look at?”

“They
classified everything as soon as I was done with it. How dumb is
that, right? I made the damn program and I’m not even qualified
to see it without permission.” He rolled his eyes.