by Olga Werby
Impulsively, she dashed toward the center performer and slipped under his floor-length jacket. Miny followed behind her.
But at that moment, the beat reached a crescendo and the man in the woman’s costume fell to his knees. The spotlight followed him and the two rats were clearly illuminated. A loud “ahh” sounded from the audience.
Oops, Toby/Eeny thought. Time to run.
She turned to go backstage, but Miny seemed frozen in place.
The performer screamed and Miny, startled, jumped and grabbed hold of the fabric between the man’s legs.
The man screamed again. The music stopped. Miny bit.
May had lost control.
A heartbeat later—longer for Eeny and Miny—Ben jumped onto the stage to try and grab Miny off the performer’s crotch. Ben dropped to his knees and seized Miny, who unfortunately wasn’t letting go of the man and continued to dangle between his legs. The auditorium exploded in laughter.
Someone finally figured out to turn off the stage lights. In the darkness, Ben managed to secure May’s freaked-out rat, bring her backstage, and put her back into her cage. Toby/Eeny returned to the cage too.
The experiment was over.
Major George Watson paced his office as his two lieutenants reported to him via a computer conference call. But he already knew the details. Students had posted the whole thing on YouTube and shared it on Facebook and Twitter. The incident had been dubbed Bit Apples. There was even a trending #BitApples hashtag.
“So let me get this straight,” he said. “You bit his genitals?”
“Well—” May started.
Kyle cut her off. “Yes, sir. Ben retrieved May’s rat when I cut the stage lights.”
“Good thinking,” George said.
“Thank you, sir.”
“I really don’t know what happened,” May said. Her voice and expression said volumes about the horror that she felt over the incident. “I think it was just the proximity. And Miny was so agitated and scared—”
“But Toby had no problems with her rat?” George asked.
“No,” Kyle said. “She held it together with no problems. She tried to assist May using grooming to get May’s animal to relax and help May get it back under control.”
“So, we’re back at square one: we only have one pre-teen girl who’s truly able to ride the animals. Is that correct?”
“That’s correct, sir,” Kyle said.
“Then it’s time for a new strategy.”
“Will and Ben have been discussing a new, larger implant,” May said. Will and the rest of his people had been very supportive of May and Kyle becoming full research members of the team. Perhaps his openness with them was Will’s attempt to make May and Kyle “his” people as much as the major’s. “It would embed more executive control right into the animal. I don’t really understand it—bio-implant brain tech is not really my area of expertise—but the gist of it is that it would make it easier to control the animal’s panic instincts. With that level of control, I might have been able to manage Miny even in that stressful situation.”
“Sounds like we need to start encouraging Dr. Crowe and his team to work in that direction then.” George stopped pacing his office and faced his computer screen and the faces of his trusted lieutenants.
“A larger implant would no doubt require the project to work with larger animals,” Kyle said.
“Well, I did promise Toby a dog,” said George. “She’ll be twelve soon. Time for a visit. And a present.”
Part Two: The Menagerie
Seven: +48 Months
Twiggy and Bricky arrived in the spring. They were brother and sister Göttingen mini piglets, the same breed of pigs often used for medical research, and Toby thought they were adorable. She named them based on The Three Little Pigs—but with only two pigs, she skipped the “straw” name. Bricky was the dark, patchy one; Twiggy was all white. Their heads were large enough to take in the new cog-boost implants designed to extend a rider’s cognitive control over the animals.
Twiggy—Toby’s favorite—was sleeping, wrapped like a baby in a blanket in Toby’s arms. She was about seven inches long, with short, coarse, white bristles, and a disproportionately large pink nose. Her eyes were closed now, but when open, they were big and brown and always seemed to smile.
Toby marveled again at how tiny her ears were. They were very different from the pictures of piglets Toby had researched on the Internet. Vikka had said that small ears were one of the characteristics of the Göttingen breed. Another was that these animals would remain quite small. All pigs grew throughout their lifespans, but mini pigs started out smaller and grew more slowly. In fact, if the Göttingen pigs were kept on a strict diet their whole lives, they shouldn’t get much heavier than about ninety pounds. That was still much larger than most prospective pet owners were led to believe when buying a cute “teacup” size mini pig—but it was perfect for lab work.
Mini pigs’ brains were small, but they were huge compared to rat brains. When fully grown, Twiggy’s brain would be about one hundred grams, as compared to two grams for a rat or fourteen hundred grams for a human. Rats were smart animals, but Toby thought the piggies would be a lot smarter. Her dad, though, told her that comparing animal intelligence like that wasn’t appropriate. He said that each species was smart in a way appropriate to how it lived and survived.
“Why did we put them to sleep for the brain scan?” Toby asked. She was sitting on the couch in her office. “Doesn’t that defeat the whole functional component of the test?” Toby had learned a lot in the years she’d spent working in her dad’s lab. She was well-versed in the procedures involved in gathering brain function data.
“We’re going to do a lot more documentation prior to inserting the implants,” Lilly said over the speakers. She was back at her lab station analyzing brain images from the other piglet. “These scans are really just for placement. We’re using functional brain-imaging data of adult pigs from another lab.”
Bricky had been scanned earlier that day and was now with Kyle. As much as Kyle didn’t like rats, he had bonded quickly with the dark, squirmy piglet that he insisted on calling “Bricks.” Both Kyle and May were supposed to learn to ride the mini pigs and were determined to do so at least as well as Toby. Toby didn’t mind the competition. She couldn’t be inside all these animals at once, after all, and there were plenty of minds to go around.
Besides, none of these animals could ever measure up to Ruffy. He was special—her first animal soulmate. Although he was officially retired, Toby still connected with him via the BBI link from time to time to keep him company. She was sure that Ruffy liked Toby’s thoughts inside his head. And, although Toby was scared to admit it to anyone, she liked it too. Not just liked it—needed it. She needed to ride Ruffy.
It was different for the other riders. Some of them didn’t react to the experience well at all—like Ben, and Toby’s dad, and Vikka. When Vikka tried to ride Miny, she felt an overwhelming claustrophobic panic. She couldn’t breathe and her heart rate went through the roof. Vikka never tried again. She said while the experience had been valuable in helping her relate to the difficulties that riders had controlling their rides, for her, once was enough. She just didn’t have what it took to be a rider. Toby was both sad and happy about that. It would have been nice to run with her teacher and share the joys of becoming an animal, but it was also nice to be special. And Toby knew she was very special.
Toby looked down once more at the tiny sleeping piglet in her arms. Twiggy seemed special too. She was making gentle snoring sounds and little flecks of drool leaked from her tiny snout. It was sweet and innocent. Toby found herself gently rocking the baby piglet and wondered what it would be like to be wrapped up and cuddled like this. She would find out soon enough. Assuming the brain scans provided the information they needed, Twiggy’s surgery was scheduled for later that afternoon.
“Ready?” Lilly asked, her voice slightly distorted through the computer sp
eakers.
Toby nodded. She stood up and carried the piglet as gently as she could to the imaging center. She didn’t want to wake her Twiggy.
She placed the piglet in the center of a nest of twisted hospital blankets constructed to keep her head still for the scan. Then she stepped around the corner to where Lilly was operating the fMRI machine. The device pulled the little animal inside the giant magnetic donut.
Toby knew this machine well; she’d been scanned many times. The Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine used spinning magnets and low-level radiation to see what was inside a person’s—or animal’s—brain. The blood flow showed which regions of the brain were active. The functional part meant that the researchers gave Toby tasks to perform, then they watched which parts of her brain lit up. Sometimes she was asked to read poems or memorize lists of numbers. Other times she was asked to remember memories that caused strong emotions. Afterward, they would often allow her to view a recorded video of her mind in action. As a result, she now knew the precise areas of her brain—primarily the amygdala—that activated when she thought of the night her mother died.
The brains of Rufus, Miny, and Eeny had been scanned too. Rats’ brains lacked the iconic convolutions and folds of human brains. The technical term lissencephalic brain popped unbidden into Toby’s mind. She also knew that pig brains were gyrencephalic. That meant the cerebral cortex folded over on itself many times. Pigs were like humans in that way.
Several times, when the rats were being scanned, Toby and May had linked with them and tried to think through problems—solving a virtual maze, or identifying a chemical smell. Even though the rats had been slightly drugged so that they wouldn’t move inside the fMRI machine, their brains lit up with thoughts just the same. It turned out that imagining running through a maze lit up the same parts of the brain as really running it.
Toby had spent enough time at the lab that she could name the brain regions—basal ganglia or thalamus—when she saw them on the scans. It was scientifically stimulating, even if a bit lonely. Sometimes she missed going to school and spending time doing normal adolescent activities, in rooms that weren’t plastered with posters of animal brains and their anatomy.
May and Kyle used a bit of spycraft to separately follow circuitous routes that ended at a building across the street from the Brats facility. The entrance was on the far side of the building and May went in first while Kyle stayed back to make sure they hadn’t been followed. When he joined her, they went up the stairwell and unlocked the door to a small, windowless room that looked like a television control studio. One wall was plastered with dozens of monitors, each displaying a video feed from the various rooms, corridors, and exits of the Brats lab. On a desk facing that wall, an elaborate switching console bristled with illuminated buttons, each with a tiny label.
Major Watson believed the Brats program was vulnerable from inside and out; academic researchers were notoriously lax about security. The university had security measures, of course, but they were a joke—anyone who knew a bit about social engineering could get into any lab on campus. And the major was determined that the Brats lab stay secure. So his team had installed hidden security cameras and microphones throughout the lab. He saw no problem with a bit of secret surveillance if it meant that he knew what was going on in his project.
May and Kyle initiated the call over a secure link.
The major’s face appeared on screen. “How’s it going out there on the farm?” he asked.
The major had been calling it the “farm” ever since the pigs arrived. It had been a month now since the implants were successfully inserted into the two piglets. The procedure had been a complete success and the riding had started as soon as their brains healed, just three days afterwards.
“I like to think of it more as a menagerie,” May said.
Kyle ignored the banter. Everyone at Will’s lab was very informal and joked all the time—except Kyle. The atmosphere of the Brats project was very lax, very chill, very Californian. Even the major, when he visited the lab, acted the same—very non-military. But Kyle had always been a very “by the book” kind of guy. “Both of us can ride Bricks, the male pig. Granted, we’re doing simple riding maneuvers and haven’t activated higher-level controls yet. Will says we have to wait on testing the cog-boost until the animals’ brains mature a bit more. But Toby still doesn’t allow anyone to ride Twiggy.”
“Why?” George asked. “Is there a problem with the female pig?”
“No, sir,” said May, taking a more professional tone.
“The girl is just attached to the animal, sir,” Kyle said with a shrug.
The major shook his head. “Unacceptable. I need both of you to be able to ride both pigs. I thought I made that clear.”
“Yes, sir,” May said. “But Toby feels particularly…protective with Twiggy. Perhaps when the pig matures a bit? She’s very cute and follows the girl everywhere and…you told us to be solicitous of Toby’s needs. And frankly, sir, Bricky is actually better with Kyle than with Toby. The animals seem to have favorite riders.”
“What about you?” George asked. “Can you ride Bricky better than Toby?”
“Maybe about the same,” May said. “But not nearly as well as Kyle. I feel more resistance and less control of his animal.” May put a lot of stress on the word “his.” “Kyle is masterful with Bricky. I think he bonded—that piggy head with those chubby cheeks, and big soulful eyes…”
May snorted a little, realizing that she’d slipped into the familiar again. “Sorry, sir. The piglets exhibit characteristic baby features that make humans react positively to them. We’re wired to like babies, I mean.” Kyle gave her his signature quit it look—but she went on to finish her thought. “Anyway. Kyle is much more receptive to Bricky than he ever was with any of the rats.”
“I see,” the major said. He added under his breath, but loud enough for them to both hear, “I hate those cutesy names.” Kyle nodded in agreement.
“Kyle calls him Bricks,” May said with a smile.
The major snorted. “I can see how ‘Bricky’ wouldn’t be a name Kyle would be partial to.”
“No, sir,” May said, glancing quickly at Kyle. He didn’t react.
“Okay. Do what you can. If it’s one pig per one rider, then it’s good that we know that now,” George said. “I want a full demonstration when I come out next week.”
“Understood. Does Will know you’ll be coming?” Kyle asked.
“No. It’s a surprise visit.”
“Yes, sir,” May and Kyle said in unison.
Toby and Kyle were reclined in their new specially built chairs, riding Twiggy and Bricks via new BBIs. Today was the first test of the cog-boosts—the higher-order cognitive controls built into the new brain implants. If they were successful, the riders would be able to quash their ride’s reflexive or impulsive behavior triggered by an emotional reaction to a difficult situation—preventing another Bit Apples situation.
Will, Ben, and Lilly were in the control room, monitoring the experiment, while Vikka and May were observing Toby and Kyle in person. Everyone was a bit worried; the effects of the cog-boost were unknown. If there was a problem, all of them knew how to pull the plug.
“Any difference?” Will’s voice floated over the speakers.
“I don’t feel any different,” Toby said.
Toby was the only rider who found it easy to speak with her human body while riding her animal. For that reason, Will and his team had built special buttons into the riders’ armchairs—one for each finger. The set of buttons were duplicated for each hand. The thumb rested on the emergency stop button; press it and the team instantly knew that the rider was in trouble. The other buttons stood for “yes,” “no,” “okay,” and “I don’t understand”—or what they liked to call the “huh?” button. It was like texting, but with only five options. The hope was that pressing buttons instead of speaking would enable the riders to communicate with researchers without losin
g their focus.
Kyle pressed the “no” button under his middle finger. He didn’t feel any cog-boost change either.
Will shook his head. “Well, I think that’s to be expected. The environmental conditions haven’t changed.” To Ben and Lilly he said, “Turn off the cog-boost and then let’s put the pigs under a bit of stress.”
Food was used as a reward and novelty as a stress factor. Twiggy and Bricks were intensely motivated by food. All pigs were food-centric—their emotional world revolved around eating and food acquisition. And pigs were prey animals—in the wild, they were hunted and eaten by dominant predators. Thus they had the psychological makeup of prey animals—they were easily spooked and didn’t take kindly to strangers or novel situations. That didn’t mean they weren’t smart—Twiggy and Bricks were obviously very clever pigs—just that they were smart in a porcine way, not a human one.
So far, Will and his team had been taking it easy on the piglets, and Toby and Kyle had found riding them easy. The next step was to make things progressively more difficult and see if Toby and Kyle could still ride these animals when they were stressed.
“Release the chocolate,” Will ordered Ben portentously.
Ben flicked a switch.
Chocolate-covered raisins had been used as a reward ever since the piglets were old enough to take solid food. Pigs naturally had a sweet tooth, so sugar-based treats worked best as motivators. Toby also liked chocolate-covered raisins, so it was a natural choice. The piglets quickly learned to associate chocolate with positive outcomes. In this experiment, the piglets would just get the scent of chocolate—an artificial chocolate smell was easy to produce—tempting them with the possibility of a reward, but not the real thing. It was about to get interesting.