Becoming Animals

by Olga Werby

  “Amazing! Simply amazing,” George said. “Taste this. Enough salt?”

  He shoved a spoonful of pasta sauce into Will’s mouth. It was hot and Will choked a little.

  “I thought so,” the major said. He sprinkled more salt into the pot.

  “Major—I mean George…”

  “That’s better,” George said. “But please, everyone calls me Geo.”

  “Geo…George.” Will couldn’t make himself say “Geo” to the man’s face. It just felt wrong. Besides, he wondered if the request was just a ploy for the major to ingratiate himself to the family. Somewhere, Watson must have read that short, non-threatening names created an atmosphere of trust. “The scans are wild,” Will continued. “They’re all over the place. Toby’s auditory processing is off the scale and so are the areas of her brain that deal with olfactory discrimination. Her brain is lit up like a Christmas tree on the Fourth of July.”

  Will tried to maintain his composure. He always felt emotional talking about his daughter, always on the verge of losing control. And that wouldn’t do in front of the major.

  “A beautiful Christmas tree,” George said with an encouraging smile. The man always seemed to be carefully managing Will and his moods.

  “But—” Will started.

  “Your daughter is developing extraordinary abilities. Why is that bad, Will? She’s an exceptional student, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “In fact, she’s way above average. Vikka showed me her scores on the standardized exams for the sixth grade. She’s off the charts!”

  “Yes, but—”

  “There is no but, Will. Toby is very gifted. Her work in the lab hasn’t held her back; it’s allowed her to leapfrog way ahead of her peers. You are enabling her to blossom to her full potential.”

  Will couldn’t argue with Toby’s academic success. She was particularly amazing when it came to biology. She was a full member of the Brats team and she wasn’t shy about making suggestions to improve their experiments with Rufus. And the truth was her proposals were often better than those that came from his junior team members and graduate student assistants. Not that he had graduate students working with him anymore. With the additional funds George had allocated for the Brats project, Will had been able to step away from his teaching responsibilities. He was now focused exclusively on the development of human-to-animal BBIs.

  “But—”

  “And she’s not getting sick as much, is she?” the major pushed. “And Dalla hasn’t been sick in months. This has all been positive.”

  “The scans…” Will said again. But he knew he had been beaten. There was nothing wrong with Toby’s fMRI scans, other than they showed a very active brain. Toby’s brain was using more oxygen in parts where other humans, like Will, were dull by comparison. How could he complain about that?

  “Did you see Rufus’s scans too?” he asked the major.

  “That rat is no humdrum rodent,” George said, imitating Toby. It was funny to hear the major speak like that—especially since he was a six foot three, salt-and-pepper-haired man with a big black mustache and the comportment of a soldier.

  Will smiled, his first of the evening. “Rufus’s recent scans have diverged significantly from the baseline scans we took at the beginning of the study, before we did the BBI implant.”

  “I expected nothing else,” the major said. “You’ve implanted a chip into the rat’s brain and connected it to a human mind almost every day for years. There were bound to be changes.”

  “Hmm.”

  Will gave up. Dinner was ready anyway.

  “So, I’d like to take Rufus out into the field,” George said between bites of ginger ice cream. They had finished their dinner and moved on to dessert. “Someplace less structured than a lab.”

  “I told Dad we should take Ruffy to the botanical garden,” Toby said excitedly. “I’ve been telling him for weeks—we’re ready! We can do it, Uncle Geo. Ruffy and I, we can do it.”

  “I know you can,” George said.

  George was very fond of Toby. She was not only his star researcher; she was like a daughter to him. He had never married, never started a family of his own—work had always come first. He’d drifted from one emergency mission to another, from one priority project to the next. His niece, Vikka, was the closest he had come to watching a kid grow up. But now Toby, with her genuine enthusiasm and intelligence, had wormed her way into his heart.

  “Major—” Will started. He was cut short by three pairs of eyes glaring at him across the dinner table. He tried again. “George…our equipment isn’t exactly portable and there doesn’t seemed to be a real scientific purpose for taking Rufus and Toby out of the lab. What do we hope to learn?”

  “This technology has to work outside of the lab, Will,” George said patiently. “I’ve seen what Toby can do in a structured situation. In the lab, there’s no problem you can pose that she can’t solve. It’s time to see what she can do when it’s a bit more unplanned.”

  “Exactly!” Toby looked thrilled to have George on her side. For months, she had been secretly begging him to convince her dad to allow her to take Rufus out into the real world. Now she and George both sat at the table with smug smiles on their faces.

  “I see,” Will said. “I guess I’m late to this decision as well…like always.”

  “It’ll be great, Dad!”

  “Like she says,” George said. He took another bite of ice cream.

  Will capitulated with a theatrical sigh. “I’ll get Ben and Lilly to work on finding ways to make our system more portable.”

  George noted that Will wasn’t putting up much of a fight. Not that it would have mattered if he did. Will loved the work he was doing, he enjoyed working with his daughter, and he wanted to push the boundaries of what was possible—just like George did. George understood that and took advantage of it.

  “Great,” George said. “Now, about introducing animals other than rats—”

  “What?” Will almost choked on his ice cream.

  George had deliberately chosen to broach this topic at Will’s home, during dinner with his family. He knew that Will found it difficult to say no to his daughter—and that Dalla always strived to prove that she wasn’t an obstacle to the success of either her husband or her daughter. If George could get their approval, Will’s would follow.

  Toby’s eyes went wide with excitement. “Dog! I want to be a dog! Dad always said we could get a dog someday—”

  “Your mother can’t tolerate dogs, Toby. You know that,” Will said. “The fur and animal dander—it’s bad for her.”

  “Yes, but this dog would live at the lab. And I would wash up super well and change all my clothes before coming home. I’ve been good about wearing the lab coat while playing with Rufus and Mom hasn’t had a problem yet. It would be all right with a dog, too, right, Mom? I would be super careful, I promise.”

  George smiled. Judging by the look on Toby’s face, it was clear that there would be a dog in the Crowe family’s future.

  “Sure, honey,” Dalla said, as George had known she would. “It’d be great for you to have a dog.”

  Dalla was on the waiting list for a lung transplant, but she was unlikely to ever get a new pair of lungs. Her disease had progressed too far, turning her lungs hard and brittle. She could no longer walk Toby to the lab, make meals at home, or even read aloud to her little girl for long without gasping for breath. And George knew she felt bad about the effect it might have on Toby. As a result, it was important to Dalla that her daughter have as many normal childhood experiences as possible.

  “What will it take, Geo?” Dalla asked.

  And like that, the decision had been made.

  “Nicely done, George,” Will grumbled.

  George just smiled.

  “But we’ll focus on experiments with Rufus first, okay?” Will looked to the major for confirmation. “It’ll take a lot of work to try out Rufus in the chaos of the outdoors. A dog
will have to wait.”

  “Absolutely, Dad!”

  “You’re the lab director, Will,” George said.

  While Dalla put Toby to bed and retired for the evening herself, the major helped Will clean up the kitchen. By now, George knew the routines of the Crowe household well.

  He also knew Dr. Will Crowe well. He had known Will would initially push back on taking Rufus out of the lab—but that his passion for solving problems would ultimately take over.

  Will had spent the last fifteen minutes brainstorming ways to make the experiment a success. He proposed a few ways to extend the range of the rat’s wireless connection to the base station that relayed the connection with Toby. He had some ideas on how to make Toby’s BBI cap more portable. And now he had the challenge of recharging the animal’s brain implant. Currently, their operating time was only about one hour; they would need to increase that if Rufus left the lab. They didn’t want to lose him out there.

  George just nodded and made occasional “hmm” and “uh-huh” noises.

  “It’s not just the difference in physiology,” Will said. “As humans, we forget that we’re at the top of the food chain—we no longer have any real predators, other than other humans. But rats have to be scared of most other animals. There are many predators that find them appetizing.”

  “We’ll have to keep an eye out for cats,” George said in jest.

  Will went on as if he hadn’t even heard. “And we should consider the time of day. Rats are crepuscular, meaning they’re naturally most active at dawn and dusk. Toby has more control over Rufus when we synch to his biorhythms.”

  George just smiled. He clearly didn’t need to say another word. Now that Will had the bit in his mouth, he wouldn’t stop until he’d made this experiment a reality.

  After turning off Toby’s lights, Dalla lifted the covers and crawled into bed beside her daughter. Sometimes she liked to lie with her while Toby fell asleep.

  “Mom?” Toby said.

  “Hmm?” Dalla replied softly. She was trying to listen through the floor to the conversation Will and Geo were having. She wanted to know about the future—the future she wouldn’t be around for; the future she wouldn’t share with her husband and daughter.

  She stifled a sigh and pushed those thoughts aside. Right now she needed to be present for her daughter. Being “in the moment” was becoming more and more challenging lately.

  “Sometimes I have rat dreams,” Toby said in the darkness.

  “What? You dream of Ruffy?”

  “No. I mean I dream as Ruffy.”

  “I’m not sure I know what that means, dear. What kind of dreams?”

  “When I dream—I mean when I dream as me—I tell myself stories. I say and do things that people do.”

  “Like going to school?” Dalla asked. Then she remembered it had been over two years since Toby had been to a regular school. “School” for her daughter was going to a university office and hanging out with Vikka and neuroscientists all day.

  “Sometimes I dream about school,” Toby said. “Or about being in a story like Harry Potter. In my dreams, I meet all the people from the wizarding world and I can do spells and I study magic.”

  “Those sound like great dreams,” Dalla said.

  Dalla hated how isolated Toby was from other children. And she hated that it was her fault—her sickness’s fault. Other kids had real friends, human friends. And what did Toby have? Characters in books—and a rat. Rufus was a nice pet, but he wasn’t a true companion. Frankly, if they had a rat infestation in their home…well, they would treat it like everybody else would—with exterminators.

  “I like those dreams,” Toby said. “Sometimes I have dreams that span multiple days. You know? One story that just goes on and on.”

  “I remember when I was a girl, I had Wizard of Oz dreams like that,” Dalla said.

  “That’s it! But you were a person in those dreams, right?”

  “Of course! I even had the magic slippers. Dorothy asked me to keep them safe for her.” Dalla smiled at the memory.

  “Well, some of my dreams are detailed like that. And I’m a person and I can do people things,” Toby said. There was a hesitation in her voice.

  “But Ruffy dreams are different?” Dalla asked.

  “Very.”

  “I see.” Dalla reached over and pulled her daughter’s head onto her shoulder. “Tell me about your rat dreams.”

  “There are no words in rat dreams. It’s all feelings and emotions, but no language,” Toby said.

  “Hmm.”

  “And there’s no red. Rats don’t see red and, in rat dreams, I don’t see red either. Or I do, but I don’t care for it.”

  “You don’t like the color red when you have rat dreams?” Dalla wasn’t sure what Toby was saying, but she understood that it was important. She wished Will were here to hear this.

  “No. Not like that,” Toby said. “Rats don’t see red, so they don’t pay attention to it. But I can see red…or…I know when an object should be red. So when I see a plastic cup on the floor, I know it’s a red cup with white inside. I know because these cups come in red or blue, and rats can see blue. And if the cup doesn’t look blue, it must be red. Does that make sense?”

  “I think I follow. You mean that you can deduce that the cup is red, but you don’t see it as red, right?”

  “Yes. But it’s not really important. It’s more about how I see the world, or how rats see the world, or how I see the world when I’m a rat.”

  “And how do you see the world when you are a rat, dear?” Dalla asked. She tried to keep trepidation out of her voice. It was okay for her daughter to have rat thoughts, right?

  “It’s more emotional somehow,” Toby said. “I feel good running down a dark tunnel and I feel bad about a patch of sunlight. I feel happy crunching on a bit of bread. I even know how good the stale bread will taste before I sink my teeth into it. I know how the bread will feel as I gnaw with my two long front teeth. But it’s not with words. It’s all with feelings.”

  Calm, remain calm, Dalla told herself. This is a perfectly normal conversation.

  “Sometimes when we’re linked together,” Toby continued, “Ruffy feels something strongly and it makes me stop and rethink what we’re doing together. If it’s a bad feeling, I take that as a warning and we do things differently. Ruffy remembers places where he was hurt and times when people were mean to him.”

  “Does Ruffy feel bad about any of the people in your Dad’s lab?” Dalla asked, trying to keep the worry out of her voice. Is someone hurting my baby?

  “He likes Uncle Geo,” Toby said evasively. “Geo is always nice to him and scratches him in a good way and carries him around on his shoulder. But that’s not what I wanted to tell you. What I wanted to tell you is that…sometimes I dream the way Ruffy experiences the world.”

  “Does that bother you?” Was there somebody at the lab that Toby was scared of? Was something making her feel wrong? Dalla wanted to help…if only she knew how.

  “No. It’s just different, that’s all. Forget I said anything.” Toby burrowed deeper into her mother’s shoulder. “I think I’ll sleep now.”

  “Okay, honey.”

  Dalla gently rubbed her daughter’s back until she heard soft snoring.

  “Rats are very social animals,” Will said to George. “You leave a rat alone for a long time and it goes crazy.”

  “Same with humans,” George noted.

  “True. But rats don’t have the intellectual capacity to cope with loneliness, so psychological unraveling happens faster for them. But even for humans, I think, solitary confinement is a form of torture,” Will added.

  “Uh-huh.” George nodded ambiguously. The truth was, he agreed with Will, but the US government didn’t—and George worked for the government. “Rufus has spent a lot of time connected to Toby. Do you think that’s increased his ability to tolerate isolation?”

  “Perhaps,” Will said. “We haven’t stud
ied that yet. There’s so much to do. And taking the whole thing out of the lab…”

  “It’ll be fine, Will,” George said reassuringly. “Think of everything you’ll learn. And it’ll be good for Toby. We’ll run some real world scenarios—”

  “What are you thinking about?” Will sounded nervous again.

  “We were always aiming at search-and-rescue operations. The field rats won’t ever be alone—each animal will always have a human partner,” George said. “Rufus and Toby will be naturals at that.”

  “That’s probably true,” Will said thoughtfully.

  When Will went up to bed, Dalla told him about the strange conversation she’d had with Toby.

  “Rat dreams?” Will said.

  “It was all jumbled up—magic and Harry Potter and running tunnels like a happy rat…”

  “Harry Potter? You mean Wormtail? She dreams herself as that Peter Pettigrew character? The bad wizard?”

  Toby and Vikka had been reading the Harry Potter books together and Toby really liked the series. Will thought it was a bit too violent for her—and some of the themes in those books were very dark—but Vikka insisted she was up to it.

  “I don’t know who that is,” Dalla said. “You know I never got to read the Potter books. I was kind of saving myself for Toby and then…it just never happened.” Her voice broke.

  Will pulled his wife close. There were a lot of things they had both hoped to do as a family—things that simply hadn’t been possible. “Toby knows you’re interested in what she’s reading. That’s why she came to you with this.”

  Dalla wiped her eyes. “No. I don’t think it was about Harry Potter at all.”

  “Then what?”

  “It’s something about rat feelings. When she dreams, Toby experiences the world as a rat. At least that’s what I understood. I’m not sure it’s bad…”

  “But it is very…different,” Will said.