Killing Rhinos

by Herb Hughes

  “Name?” the deep voice said. “Let’s see… It’s been so long. What the cruzzles was it?”

  “Oh, dear,” the high voice said. “You are so polite. I must try hard to remember my name.”

  “Oh yes,” a third voice said, one between the other two in pitch and much like a normal male voice. Avery’s head snapped back. This was unexpected. Did he now have three voices to deal with? “I remember it now. It’s …”

  The mid-range voice uttered a sound that Avery could not easily repeat. The scientist puckered his mouth and tried.

  He was immediately chastised by the deep voice. “That was pathetic!”

  “But you tried so hard,” the high voice said.

  “Let’s make up a name that is easier for you to pronounce,” the mid-range voice said. “We need to come up with something easy, but distinct enough so that it does not sound like a common name in your language. You call me a brain, since that is all that is left of me. How about Braindon?”

  “Braindon? Hmmm. That works quite well,” Avery said. “Okay. Braindon it is!”

  “Now that we have the social unpleasantries out of the way,” the deep voice said, “The last thing that will be left is putting my tank on the cart. Once we are ready to leave, that is. Not before. But you must be careful in doing so. Remember, as I told you before, once my tank is disconnected from the framework, it will revert to internal battery power. You will have approximately half a year to develop a new energy source for me. You have assured me you will be capable of doing that.”

  “Yes,” Avery responded. “We are currently experimenting with electricity. The low levels of current you require should not be a problem.”

  “Should not?”

  “Will not,” Avery corrected. “Do not worry. I will be able to provide you with a new source of energy.”

  “I believe in you,” the high voice said. “You are such a great inventor.”

  They heard a sound not too far away. Someone was coming, several rooms down. Avery stepped to the side and peered through the doors. Jack was three rooms away and jogging toward them.

  “My traveling companion, Jack Wheat, has returned,” he said. “We are ready to put your tank on the cart then go to my laboratory in Lisbon.”

  Jack told Avery about Dokie getting arrested and about the breakout. He apologized for denting the automobile, but Avery waved it off as insignificant.

  Avery pulled Jack aside and warned him about the different voices, all claiming to be one being and one voice. Then they set about moving the tank to the cart.

  “First, remove the bolts holding my tank to the framework,” the low voice said. “There are twelve of them, and they are accessible from underneath. Then unplug the power connection on the bottom rail, at the back of the tank. It will immediately revert to internal power, so that will not be a problem, but exercise extreme caution. If you knock the top off and spill my fluid, I’m dead. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, of course, Braindon. We will be most diligent.”

  Slowly, one-by-one, Avery removed the twelve small bolts, handing each one to Jack as it came out. The top of the tank felt quite secure so he was not too concerned about spilling any of the liquid, but he was careful nonetheless. He was not sure what might happen if he didn’t follow directions to the letter.

  With the high voice offering occasional encouragement, the medium voice issuing detailed instructions, and the deep voice shouting dire warnings, Avery and Jack lifted the tank and set it in place. They secured the tank to the cart with the same twelve bolts then made the makeshift water connections. Finally, they hooked up the dispenser for the additives that would mix with the water as it dripped into the tank. Water was automatically added only when the fluid levels in the tank got below the minimum mark. The dispenser had been above the tank in the rack, not connected to it, so Avery had to devise a method for attaching it to the tank then reconnecting the level detection apparatus so water would drip into the tank when needed.

  The scientist was amazed to learn that the additives would never be depleted as long as the tank had power. The necessary trace elements were pulled straight from the atmosphere then combined into the appropriate molecules in the thick base of the tank. It was astounding science. Over time, Avery hoped to learn all the details. But for now, he had to accept and move ahead. Time was critical.

  “That was wonderful,” the high voice said. “You did a marvelous job.”

  “I’m amazed you didn’t kill me… yet,” the deep voice said. “Now, this place is dead and boring. Let’s get the cruzzles out of here.”

  During the times he needed a break from the tedium of teaching a language, Avery had wandered through the entire underground complex. There were one hundred forty-four giant rooms in a twelve-by-twelve grid. But there were no more living brains in any of them. All the other rooms were as dead as the room with the hole in the ceiling. This made Avery determined to save Braindon. He took every precaution he could, which meant that everything proceeded at a slow pace.

  Getting the cart up to the desert was not as simple as it sounded. The cart rolled all the way to the first room easily enough, but getting it up and out of the hole was a different matter. Working together, Jack and Avery could easily lift the cart, but not while climbing a rope ladder.

  Avery gathered some of the scrap metal railing and climbed up to the desert. He built a dome-shaped framework over the hole in the desert floor, or the room ceiling, depending on your perspective. Using parts salvaged from a robot, he added a pulley at the top of the dome. The pulley was connected at the end of a movable rail. They could swing the rail around and away from the hole once the cart was above the desert floor.

  Jack tied a long rope to the back of the car and ran it through the pulley then let it hang down to the cart. He webbed the rope to each corner so the cart would stay level as it was lifted. With everything in place, they began the tedious process of lifting the cart out of the hole. Avery drove as Jack stood over the hole and directed. The low voice grumbled and complained and shouted urgent warnings as the cart slowly inched toward the desert above, a job imminently more complicated because of the debris pile in the room. The high voice said little.

  Finally, in spite of the difficulty, they reached the top. Jack swung the rail over so that the cart was directly above the desert and not the hole. Avery backed up slowly, lowering the cart to the ground.

  “There, now. It’s done,” Avery said as he breathed a sigh of relief. “We’ll be in Lisbon in about a day.”

  “You are so… so creative,” the high voice said. “I do appreciate everything you are doing for me.”

  “Why were you in fish tanks?” Jack asked.

  “Fish tanks? What is a fish tank?” the deep voice asked.

  “Ah, let me try again. Why did all your people abandon their bodies and go underground, putting your brains in those tanks?”

  The high voice said, “There were several reasons. For one, our bodies became so… restricting. We had all become somewhat large.”

  “Fat,” the deep voice said. “We lived a life of leisure and plenty, and we were all big and fat.”

  “Fat,” the high voice said, mulling over the word. “It sounds so, well, so harsh in your language. It doesn’t sound as bad in ours. But, yes, we were all huge.”

  “That was only a minor issue,” the medium voice said, “Not a critical one. There were two main problems. First, beyond what we were doing to ourselves was what we were doing to our planet. Our physical interaction with our world was ruining our environment. Forests were disappearing. Water was becoming scarce and polluted. Temperatures the world over were on the rise. And the air was becoming so polluted it was unhealthy to breathe. The second thing was our social interaction. Do you have computers in your world?”

  “No,” Avery said. “We know about them because of the books from our home planet, but we have not reached a level of technology that would allow us to develop them.”

 
“In some ways, that’s fortunate for you. In others, perhaps not. Since you are not computer literate, this is going to be hard to explain,” the low voice said.

  “But I will try,” the medium voice said. “A computer savvy society interacts differently. As a civilization becomes more and more technologically dependent, beings become more and more dependent on interacting with each other through a computer instead of face-to-face. This removal of the face-to-face interaction lowers inhibitions, tearing at the fabric of social structure. Beings spend less and less time learning from each other and more time forcefully communicating their own thoughts and beliefs to others.”

  “In other words,” the low voice said. “We quit learning from others and began teaching everybody whether we knew anything to teach or not. We literally started treating each other with total disdain if they did not believe like us.”

  “The result,” the medium voice said, “Is that beings became more and more intolerant of those who did not believe the same way. It’s easy to become intolerant of someone who is not there in front of you, face-to-face. Does that make sense?”

  “I suppose so,” Avery said. “I believe I understand.” He glanced at Jack.

  “I’ve read some general stuff about computers,” Jack said. “Sheffie has a few books in the library that mention them, but there isn’t much detail.”

  “So your answer to these problems,” Avery continued, “Was to take your brains out of your bodies and put them in tanks? Wouldn’t that get… well, boring?”

  “Oh, no,” the high voice said. “Not at all. We had the dreams, which were as real to us as the world had been before, but with no problems and no restrictions.”

  “We wanted to live forever,” the medium voice said. “Or as close to forever as possible. The only way to free ourselves from short-term death was to get rid of our bodies and live through our dreams. Individually. This completely solved all three problems. We no longer treated each other badly through computer social interaction because there was no longer any social interaction at all. Each of us lived in our own dream world.”

  “We no longer ruined our planet’s environment,” the high voice said, “Because we were no longer living in that environment. With all of us underground, living in our dream worlds, the planet could start to return to a more natural state.”

  “And we were no longer fat,” the low voice said, “Because we no longer had bodies. We were all slim and fit in our dream worlds.”

  “Our brains would be preserved for millions, perhaps even billions of years,” the high voice said. “We lived through our dreams instead of through our bodies. You can do so much more in a dream, things that you could never do in a body, especially a fat one. Only… it is so sad. The dream labs were supposed to last forever. We worked everything out perfectly. Well, almost perfectly. We never anticipated a problem.”

  “We should have anticipated a problem,” the deep voice said. “Because we sure as cruzzles had one. Something went terribly wrong.”

  Avery scratched his head and stood a moment. This was all so confusing. Then he asked, “So what did you do in your dreams that you couldn’t do in a body?”

  “Everything,” the deep voice said. “There were no restrictions in the dreams.”

  “Fly through the air like a bird,” the high voice said. “Just flap your arms and soar. Our dream planet was beautiful and perfect and unpolluted. The dream people we interacted with were all beautiful and slim and fit and believed like us. We were each a king or queen in our own dream world. We could have sex with anyone and everyone.”

  “And in any place or position we wanted,” the low voice said.

  “Even flying through the air,” the high voice said. “It was imaginary in real life, but when you used the dream machines to dream, it was as real as real could be to us. It was happening even though it wasn’t happening. We could have much more sex than a flesh and blood body could tolerate, especially a body too fat to reach, well, you get the idea. We could have sex all day long, over and over again. Every day. In strange and wondrous ways. On top of a cloud, if that’s what we wanted. It was so nice.”

  “Yes, I suppose so,” Avery said, somewhat embarrassed.

  “How long will it take you to fix the dream machines?” The low voice asked.

  “Ah… Fix the dream machines?”

  “Yes, yes,” the high voice said. “I can’t wait. Well, I can if I have to. I can wait a little longer. After all, I’ve been waiting for years. Many years. Forget the years. Many millennia. It’s been a long, long time, but I can wait a little longer knowing they will be fixed. How long?”

  “Ah, Braindon, I’m quite sorry. I cannot make them work again. The technology is much too far beyond what I am capable of doing.”

  “You… you can’t fix the dream machines?”

  “No. I’m, ah, afraid not.”

  “AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”

  The screech was so loud it was painful for Jack’s and Avery’s ears even after they had covered them with their hands. Avery stumbled to his knees and pleaded, “Please quit!” but his voice was far too weak to be heard above the grating sound. Then, as suddenly as it had started, it stopped. The silence was almost deafening.

  “I’m okay now,” the high voice said. “Time to move ahead. Did you hook up the nutrient pack you made? That was such a clever piece of work.”

  Avery and Jack staggered to their feet. “Yes, of course,” Avery said.

  “Very good. I’m ready to go now.”

  “Ah, okay. Off to Lisbon then. We will attach the cart to my automobile like an old motorcycle sidecar so we can talk along the way. Jack brought plenty of wood so the trip should be quick as long as we don’t run into a Rhino. I’ve got two homebuilts just in case.”

  “A Rhino? What is a Rhino?” the deep voice asked.

  “The monstrous creatures that burst from the ground and kill people. They are huge. They’ve got three horns on their ugly faces and use the long, center one to rip people apart. Surely you know about Rhinos. This is your planet, after all. How did you control them?”

  “Ah… These Rhinos have been something of a minor problem for you?”

  “Minor?” Avery said. “These monsters have killed thousands of people. They terrify everybody. They are the absolute scourge of the planet!”

  “And they’re getting worse,” Jack added.

  “Oh, dear.” The strange sounds of the brain’s original language began, going back and forth in deep and high voices with an occasional statement by the mid-level voice. After a moment of silence, the high voice said, “It gives me much regret to know that the Inui-Tee have caused you a problem. They were not my idea. I promise. The authorities thought they were necessary to protect us.”

  “Cruzzles,” the deep voice said. “I must say I was against the idea from the start. It was such a stupid idea. I always thought so.”

  “Protect you? I don’t understand,” Jack said. “How could these… what did you call them?”

  “Inui-Tee,” the mid-level voice answered. “They were designed to scare away sentient creatures so nobody would go snooping around and find us. There is no way a brain in a tank can defend itself. You have to remember, we planned to live in our underground dream labs virtually forever. Forever is a long time. There were elements in our leadership who thought we would eventually need protection from colonizing aliens or from intelligences that might evolve after we left the surface. Over a vast span of time, of course.”

  “I was against the idea,” the high voice said.

  “Yes, definitely against it,” the low voice said.

  “What exactly are these… Inui-Tee?” Avery asked.

  “The Inui-Tee is an engineered animal,” the deep voice answered. “We took the best traits from the animals around us, well, perhaps the worst traits. Depends on your perspective. We made the fiercest creature we could imagine. Then we seeded the ground over the entire planet. Sentient beings cause subtle chan
ges in the atmosphere. The Inui-Tee are designed to come out when those changes are detected. Their seeds could stay dormant in the ground for millions, even billions of years. But when the atmosphere changes because of the presence of higher life forms, the seeds start to stir, and the Inui-Tee start growing underground until they become adults.”

  “But it is timed such that they will not come out of the ground all at the same time,” the high voice said. “Only one every now and then. It was designed to keep animals from evolving into higher life forms.”

  “Or to scare visiting aliens away,” the deep voice said. “We recognized the distinct possibility that we were not alone in the universe.”

  “How could intelligent life evolve here?” Avery asked. “There are no animals, nothing larger than the size of my hand.”

  “Ah,” the high voice hesitated. “We planned to be in the dream labs for as close to forever as possible. Even tiny animals would eventually become intelligent through the natural processes of evolution. The larger ones would get there sooner. So we, ah, interjected extinction processes.”

  “Extinction processes?” Jack said, his confusion obvious.

  “We killed them all,” the deep voice said quickly.

  “All of them?” Avery asked. “You exterminated every species of animal on your planet?”

  “Of course. Everything large enough to kill. That was the only way to make sure we would be safe forever. If you found animals the size of your hand, then they have evolved since we went into the dream labs.”

  “Perhaps,” the high voice said, “We could have found a better way.”

  “It worked,” the deep voice responded.

  “Oh, dear,” Avery said. “You traded your evolutionary heritage for a permanent ethereal orgy. That… I don’t understand.”

  “I don’t either now that you’ve put it that way,” the high voice said. “But please remember, we saved our planet in the process.”