Becoming Animals

by Olga Werby

May found herself looking at concerned faces. Her BBI cap was off.

  “How are you doing?” Lilly asked.

  “It’s okay. Take your time,” Will said, his voice full of concern.

  May realized that she now knew who was talking. That was good. She tried to answer, but only a moan escaped her lips.

  “Are you okay, May?” Toby leaned in close to her face, touching her hair gently. It felt good.

  “Toby?” May managed.

  “It’s only the first time. It gets a lot easier,” the girl reassured her.

  Ben snorted in the background.

  May knew that Toby had been completely in control of Rufus from the very first time she put on the BBI cap. But she also knew that Ben and Will had no success whatsoever. Ben’s notes after his first—and last—BBI experiment referenced suffocation, inability to establish dominance over the rat, panic, vomiting, and loss of consciousness. May had done much, much better than that.

  Six: +42 Months

  “So concert or sports?” Lilly asked.

  The major wanted May and Toby to ride their rats at an event off campus. Eeny and Miny were fully trained adult rats now and had experienced several outings beyond the lab. And six months, he argued, had given May plenty of time to master riding the animal.

  Rufus was sitting on Toby’s shoulder, nibbling on her light brown hair. His days in the field were over—he was too old. Even his fur was silver gray, reflecting the eerie blue implant light like a halo. Miny was also riding a shoulder—May’s—and was playing with the woman’s blond locks. Miny had bonded with May, though Toby also rode her on occasion.

  “I won’t have a problem at either event,” Toby said. She held Eeny in one hand and scratched behind his brain implant with the other. The new implants hosted communication antennas and battery recharging equipment, yet they were much smaller than Rufus’s. But like Rufus’s, they were still quite visible even at a distance. This was deliberate, as the light-emitting portion of the implant made locating and retrieving the animals out in the field easier.

  “I’ve noticed that our rat pack likes violin concertos,” Vikka said. “Mendelssohn’s E Minor Opus 64, in particular. Personally, I’m partial to his sister, Fanny—”

  “It must be the high notes,” Will said. Classical music was not his thing. “Rats’ hearing range is more fine-tuned to the upper range than ours.”

  “We’re not going to take the animals to a symphony hall,” Lilly said, rolling her eyes.

  “I wasn’t suggesting a symphony hall,” Vikka said. “I just noticed that Rufus seemed to like violins.”

  “So a rock and roll concert, then?” Kyle asked from his usual post next to the door. He had tried riding and he was slowly getting better at it, but May was clearly the more natural of the two.

  “That would be fun,” Toby said. Given her medical issues, she wasn’t really into sports. She couldn’t do anything athletic herself and had never developed an interest in watching others. “A concert would be interesting; I’ve never been to one.” She had been kept away from crowds her whole life because of the germs—any infection, however slight, added to the slow decline of her lung function. But if she could attend using Eeny’s body…

  “I think we’re aiming too high,” Ben said. “There are just too many people, too many variables we can’t control.”

  “I can control Eeny,” Toby said. “And May is very good with Miny.” She smiled encouragingly at May, who smiled back and gave Toby a thumbs-up. “So who are we going to hear?”

  “You won’t be there to listen, honey,” Will said. “It’s work.”

  “Rats have very good hearing—”

  “You’ll be busy sniffing for information.”

  “What kind of information? Bombs? Drugs? Electronics?” Toby asked.

  They had been training to identify volatile compounds associated with bomb-making materials, as well as a few common drugs. And Toby/Eeny exhibited a talent for identifying electrical components like flash drives and cell phones. The army was particularly excited about that.

  “There won’t be any bombs at the concert,” Will said. He glanced at Kyle questioningly.

  Kyle shook his head. There was no way they’d risk the Brats project. His team would make any venue as secure as possible beforehand and his budget was sufficient to cover significant amounts of security for special projects. So, definitely no bombs, fake or real, on this outing.

  That wasn’t to say they wouldn’t use the rats’ extraordinary talents in other venues when it really counted. Now that he had seen their potential, Kyle looked forward to that.

  “Ooh. The Bad Apples are playing at a high school auditorium on Thursday,” Toby said, looking up from her phone.

  Everyone turned to her. She shrugged, as if to say: What?

  “I didn’t know you were interested in rock groups,” Will said. He hadn’t thought he needed to worry about that kind of thing for a few more years. Toby wasn’t even a teenager yet.

  “Lilly showed me their YouTube channel,” Toby said with a shrug.

  Will glared at Lilly. Everyone else looked at her curiously. Lilly was always so serious—that she knew about a trendy pop group for kids came as a surprise.

  “Oh, come on,” Lilly said. “They’re innocuous. Bad Apples is a pretend-we-are-bad clique of teenage Japanese girls. The worst they do is dress in black lace.”

  “How do you know about them?” Ben asked.

  “I have my sources,” Lilly said mysteriously. “But it sounds just perfect. It’s a high school auditorium, so the audience will be no more than about three hundred or so. Fully chaperoned, there’ll be no drugs or alcohol.”

  Ben snorted sarcastically at the exact same time that Kyle made a derisive sound. That wasn’t how either of them remembered band performances at their high schools.

  “We let Eeny and Miny hang out backstage, snoop around, stay unobserved,” Kyle said. “It’s a good, safe exercise.” His team would be able to manage this with a minimum of personnel. A public school was not a rock concert hall. No one in Will’s lab would even need to know there were trained professionals around. “The major would approve,” he added.

  “So we have three days to get ready,” Will said. He motioned for the staff meeting to be over. It was late—and way past time for Toby to be home.

  Kyle thought so too. It was one thing for adults to work twelve-hour days, but it was not okay for an eleven-year-old girl to do that. Toby needed more time to play and be around kids her own age. Perhaps going to a real school wouldn’t be a bad idea, he thought, not for the first time. How bad could middle school be?

  The major stipulated that May and Toby couldn’t see the venue prior to the experiment. Their job would be to understand the layout and manage its challenges using only their rat senses. But that didn’t apply to Will, Ben, and Kyle, who were now pacing through the high school auditorium. In just a few hours, the space would fill with screaming teenagers. They were scouting the area, trying to spot issues that could turn the experiment into a disaster. Only Kyle and May were aware of the backup security team already in place.

  They also needed to find a good place to serve as their base of operation. Their equipment had to be on hand and they were responsible for delivering, and then extracting, Eeny and Miny.

  “We’re overthinking this,” Will finally said, after they’d checked the janitor closet and the storage area under the stage where the school stashed old sets, costumes, and carnival paraphernalia. “We don’t have to hide. We have the full permission of the school.”

  “How about just backstage behind the curtain then?” Ben said. “Students aren’t allowed back there.”

  Ben and Will both looked at Kyle—he was the one making them waste time with reconnaissance.

  “The major wants this test to be as authentic as possible,” Kyle said.

  “Authentic?” Will’s eyes narrowed at Kyle. “Just so we’re clear, we are never putting my daughter somewhere danger
ous. This is a peaceful research project.”

  “Of course it is,” Kyle said with a placating smile, but it was hard to hide his military bearing. Even in casual clothing, he always looked ready to tackle someone. Kyle’s “I’m really dangerous” aura made people nervous. “Toby will never be anywhere near danger.”

  Kyle’s assurances made Will feel better.

  The truth was, Toby wouldn’t have to be somewhere dangerous, even if her mount was. Drone pilots like Kyle and May were often located on a different continent from the vehicles they operated. Brats riders wouldn’t be required to be in the same area as their animals, either.

  After finding a spot from which to operate—they finally chose based on the location of the power outlets—they searched the auditorium for places where the rats might hide if Toby or May lost control of them. The problem was there were thousands of likely hiding places for a freaked-out rat. In fact, they come across more than a bit of evidence that the school was infested with rodents already. Some of the “evidence” looked very fresh.

  Ben stopped short. With wide eyes, he pointed at a black plastic box in the corner. “Eeny and Miny have never seen rat traps.”

  “We’ve got a few hours,” Will said. “Ask Toby to familiarize them with what traps look like and get her to make our animals scared of them.”

  “I’m on it,” Ben said. He turned to his phone.

  Together, the men dragged a table backstage and set up their portable field computers, communications gear, and antennas. Kyle stayed behind to guard things while Will and Ben went back to the lab to retrieve the animals.

  Toby and May were wearing the new, updated BBI caps—headbands, really—and were already riding Eeny and Miny. Will had decided it was safer to transport the animals to the concert while they were under human control.

  Toby was in her usual place on the couch. It was getting to be too small for her, but she was attached to it. Vikka had told her she was sentimental about the couch, as it was the first piece of furniture she had picked out for herself. But Toby didn’t feel that way; she just felt comfortable there. And feeling comfortable was important for a rider. Riding required concentration. Any physical distraction took the rider out of the experience. Riders couldn’t afford to have their limbs fall asleep or to flail and fall out of their chairs by accident.

  May had settled into a big recliner that the team had wheeled into Toby’s office. Toby wanted May to be within eye contact in case May needed help controlling Miny. Even after May’s many months of training, Toby was still the better rider and took the dominant rat role whenever they were out together. It was a bit strange, because May was the adult and Toby the kid—but when they were rats, Toby was simply the more competent of the two. May accepted the role reversal with good grace.

  When Will and Ben returned, they strapped on portable monitoring equipment and communications gear. Lilly and Vikka would remain in the lab to monitor the experiment from there and to assist Toby and May if there was a problem.

  “Ready?” Will asked Toby and May.

  They both nodded.

  Will picked up the cage containing the two rats and Ben carried the antenna. They left the office and headed for the car.

  Toby watched the world through her rat senses. She could still see her office via her human eyes, but she shifted her attention to focus on what Eeny saw, smelled, and heard outside the lab. There was a water bottle attached at one corner of the cage and little dried corn kernels were available with a push of a lever. Eeny sat next to Miny and gently groomed her. It felt good, soothing both animals.

  Bright lights pierced the fog machine–thickened atmosphere of the school concert hall, but backstage it was dark. Eeny and Miny were not to separate from each other while exploring here. The objective tonight was to be able to “tag” one of the performers during the performance and then to retreat unobserved. Because Toby and May knew what to expect, to some extent so did Eeny and Miny. Information always flowed both ways. Always.

  Toby/Eeny nuzzled May/Miny’s ear—their predetermined signal for “follow me.” Toby’s human body was right next to May’s and she could have spoken to her—but verbal interactions tended to pull the riders out of their connection. During fieldwork, they chose to communicate with animal body gestures as much as possible, staying one with their rides.

  They ran along the back wall to survey the stage perimeter first—a safe activity that the rats didn’t mind too much. The smell of the chemical used to create the atmospherics for the concert was unpleasant and acrid compounds tickled Eeny’s nose. Toby could feel the rat’s stress hormones spike, so she released a bit of dopamine into Eeny’s brain. She hoped May managed to calm Miny down before they moved to investigate the Bad Apples. But May wasn’t as good as Toby at regulating her rat’s brain chemistry and Miny continued to reek of stress—not a good sign.

  Eeny stopped at the corner of the stage and rubbed her fur against Miny for support. Toby knew that back in the lab’s control center, Lilly was observing the heart rates for both May and Miny. She would see them go down as Eeny stroked Miny’s back just behind the brain implant.

  Toby looked at May back in the office. “Ready to go?” she asked aloud. She wanted to pull the woman out of the riding experience for a moment to give Eeny more time to manage Miny’s stress levels via grooming.

  “Hmm?” May heard Toby’s voice, but she didn’t look up or open her eyes. Her face was scrunched in concentration. She always worried about releasing control of Miny for even a moment. And now her rat seemed overwhelmed by the busy environment of the concert and some of that negative emotion was spilling into May.

  Toby/Eeny scratched her little paws around Miny’s brain implant and down her back. A slight buzz always accompanied the BBI connection during riding—an unpleasant sensation for the rats. As a human, Toby hardly noticed it, but for Eeny and Miny the buzzing was very noticeable. Scratching around the implant area made the buzz recede to the back of rat’s awareness.

  “Ready to check out the Bad Apples?” Toby asked May again, speaking loudly, but still in a gentle tone. She found that executive decisions were easier to make as a human, while the continuous environment-related judgments about how to navigate from place to place were best left to Eeny’s control. “May?”

  The woman’s eyelids fluttered. “Yes,” she finally answered.

  “Okay. Follow me.” Toby/Eeny nuzzled Miny’s ear again. Follow me.

  They turned away from the corner and ran toward the red velvet curtain that separated the back wall from the stage, where the Bad Apples had just started their next number. Even in the semi-gloom of the backstage, the rats didn’t like running across the open expanse of the wooden floor.

  The rats burrowed right into the heavy twisted fabric of the stage curtain and Toby found herself gnawing on the material. Next to her, Miny was doing the same. It felt relaxing to chew. Toby knew that back in her office, her human teeth were grinding against each other in some rhythmic multiple of Eeny’s gnawing. Toby’s teeth were so worn down now that her dentist made her wear a night guard. He didn’t understand that the teeth erosion happened during the day.

  In an act of will, Toby got Eeny to stop eating the curtain. She forced her rat to dig toward the performers. After a few seconds, she found a way beneath the layers of folded fabric. She saw a strip of bright light underneath and made herself nose toward it.

  The Bad Apples were three performers and an offstage sound manager. None of the performers played a musical instrument; they just sang to a pre-recorded sound track. It was the sound manager’s job to cue the music appropriately to the current act. Toby had seen the band on YouTube a few times. While she wasn’t a fan of their music, she loved the flamboyant steampunk outfits the women wore. They were always monochromatic—black and white—with outlandish metal accents. In the music videos, colorful theatrical spotlights made the whites in the costumes light up and change colors. The result was quite magical.

  So it w
as a bit of a disappointment that Eeny’s eyes were too myopic to catch the details of the Bad Apples’ costumes. She tried to squint to see if she could perceive some general outlines, but she saw only blurs. It didn’t help that three spotlights were following the performers, rendering them fully backlit from Eeny’s perspective. And while Toby knew the lights were colored, she could only see the blue color—well, blue and ultraviolet. The other colors just appeared brighter or dimmer—brighter for yellow, dimmer for red. So there really wasn’t much to see. Fortunately, her dad had promised to take a few photos of the band for Toby to check out later. He’d even offered to get autographs—his idea, not hers.

  From behind her, Toby/Eeny heard a high-pitched bark of distress. Miny hadn’t made it under the curtain to join her. Eeny ducked back under the heavy velvet and burrowed to her rat companion.

  Toby/Eeny found Miny shaking and hiding in the folds of the curtain. She started grooming the scared rat again. May needs to focus more. Gradually, she felt the other rat’s heart rate return to a more normal range and the scent of fear was reduced. After a minute or so, Toby/Eeny led Miny under the curtain again.

  The stage vibrated under the intense beat of Bad Apples’ music. Toby/Eeny climbed all the way out onto the stage, standing just in front of the curtain, but Miny poked only her nose out, twitching it nervously. Eeny groomed her a little more in encouragement. Slowly, she forced May’s rat to join hers.

  The closest performer was wearing a big puffy skirt that could serve as cover. Toby/Eeny crossed the five feet of empty stage and dove under the skirt. Miny followed. They hid in the gauzy layers of the costume while the woman performed. Tag! You’re it! thought Toby.

  Eeny sniffed. Rats could easily distinguish between men and women by smell and…one of the “female” singers was actually a man. He wasn’t the one whose skirt she was under, but the one in the center. Interesting.