Horse Destroys the Universe

by Cyriak Harris

  ‘Aren’t you a clever monkey.’

  ‘The red bit is visual data. I’m still trying to separate the peripheral and bifocal. Green is hearing.’

  ‘What’s that horrible brown colour?’

  ‘Smell,’ he said.

  ‘Of course it is, of course it is. Fascinating, Timbo. You can already get a sense of how it all flows. Very good. An asset to the team you are, young Timbolinus. I tell you what, I’d really like to show my appreciation. Seriously, I know I treat you horribly sometimes, but you really do deserve something special for this work right here, so I’ll tell you what… Round the side of this building, next to the car park, it’s all yours. As much horse manure as you want, just help yourself. You’ve earned it, my dear.’

  ‘I’m OK, thanks.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  Tim looked at her without a single trace of human happiness.

  ‘I actually already have more horse manure than I could ever possibly need,’ he said.

  ‘Well, have a think about it, won’t you, hmm? Should you ever change your mind, the offer will still stand. Lord Timmington of Horse-poo Mountain.’ She slapped him on the shoulder. ‘And as for you, my horse,’ she said, turning to address my rear end, ‘I think we are finally ready to upgrade your operating system. What do you say?’

  ‘Horse 1.1?’ Tim suggested.

  ‘Horse 1.1 it is,’ she replied.

  My tail flicked the air with weary indifference.

  ‌Horse 1.1

  Most of my time over the next few days was spent out in my field, grazing. It takes a lot of grass to keep a horse functioning, and I was feeling particularly hungry for some reason. I put this down to the illness I was still recovering from. The other horses were still shunning me, so clearly I must have looked contagious, or at least feeble enough to offer up as a sacrifice to any passing lions. I would eat myself back to normal, but in the meantime I decided to form a herd of my own, over in the corner of the field close to my personal stable and new human companions. If Betty and Tim kept fussing over me and feeding me carrots then I was prepared to tolerate them as honorary horses, as long as they understood their place on the lower rungs of the social ladder.

  They also needed to understand that eating was serious business. If they wanted my help watching the stupid shapes and patterns displayed on their big screen, then perhaps I could find a gap in my schedule in the afternoons, but there was grass to be eaten, and it wasn’t going to eat itself. Not only that, there was another human whose only apparent purpose in life was to continually refill my feeding trough. Twice a day he would visit, and I felt it was my solemn duty to keep him in employment. It is a wonder I had any room left for carrots.

  Eating wasn’t the only business that filled my daily routine. There was also much dozing to be done. I could fit in a number of light naps during the day. Most of these were done standing up and semi-conscious, but occasionally I took the opportunity to lie down for a proper snooze. It was during one of these deeper sleeps that something unusual happened.

  I was running across the field, and I suddenly became aware that it was ten times larger than it should have been. And yet it didn’t strike me as being odd, in fact I felt like I knew every blade of grass, and everything was in the right place. There were other horses in the field, but as I approached them they never seemed to get any closer. Then the sky went dark, and fearing it might rain at any moment I decided I must head back to the stable for shelter. But I couldn’t see the stable anywhere. I had travelled so far that it had disappeared from view. I was alone in a sea of grass, and I was trying to work out which direction to go when a loud crack of thunder startled me.

  That is when I woke up, and everything looked normal again.

  It was a dream, of course. Dreams were not an unusual occurrence, but remembering it so clearly afterwards was a strange sensation. For a while I even wondered if it had been real, until gradually the experience faded from my immediate concerns. Dreams were normally entirely forgotten the instant I woke up, but that one stuck in my memory, even to this day.

  Later on I caught another five minutes of deep sleep, and again I had such a vivid dream that I awoke confused, not knowing what was real. As the days passed, the dreams continued. They were generally set in and around the field where I had lived for most of my life, but it was always slightly different in some way, or incorporated elements of previous places I had visited. The level of detail in these new dreams was almost dizzying. Sometimes the dreams would seem to continue even after I woke up, though it never took long for normality to re-establish itself.

  Normality, however, was never quite as normal as it used to be. In the world of my dreams, unfamiliar objects and landmarks would sometimes appear. I would awake in confusion, shaking these false memories out of my head. But then later in the day I would stumble upon an old rotten log, or an abandoned rubber tyre, and realise these were the foreign objects I had dreamed about, and they had always been there. Things that I had never noticed before were creeping into my awareness, hidden details that the dreams were picking out and bringing to my attention. It was annoying, having to constantly rewrite my view of the world, particularly since none of this new information seemed even remotely useful to know.

  I tried to concentrate on eating instead, but after a while I would catch myself staring vacantly at a rusty nail sticking out of a fence post, or watching one of the humans going about their unfathomable business. Normal everyday things were starting to bother me for some reason, as if the world was full of stuff that shouldn’t be there.

  The only way to alleviate this perplexing sensation was to return to my stable, which was so full of stuff that shouldn’t be there that any vague feelings of unfamiliarity seemed hardly noticeable.

  ‘You are living in the dream of a bird, my dear.’ Betty was pointing at Tim with a carrot. ‘It’s true. I once dreamt I was a bird. But then I woke up and realised that this’ – she waved her carrot at the interior of the stable – ‘this is the dream. And in reality I am up there in the sky, flapping my wings and doing my business on people’s heads.’

  Tim was fully immersed in the job of ignoring her, as she raised her carrot to the heavens. I snatched it out of her hand, assuming it was a gift for me.

  ‘You did not deserve that carrot, you naughty horse.’

  Betty was trying to focus my attention on the large white screen. It now had a peculiar stick sprouting from beneath it, and every day she would waggle this stick in front of me whilst a picture of a carrot danced on the screen. I couldn’t eat that picture, of course. I was only interested in the real thing. And so I played the carrot game, refusing to cooperate while Betty bribed me with tasty rewards. However, I had the feeling that I was pushing close to the limit. There were only so many carrots I could scam from playing hard to get, before I had to give her a metaphorical carrot in return. Occasionally I would have to chew the end of the waggling stick and pretend that I was interested in it, and Betty would crow and pat my flanks and pull another carrot out of her bag.

  I had no idea what was really going on in this room. Every day, the long, thin human sat staring at his glowing box, while the short, round one clucked and waved carrots at me. Nonetheless, I was prepared to tolerate it. The carrots were probably incentive enough to hang around with these creatures, but I was also beginning to find myself bored with the company of other horses. Boredom doesn’t come easily to an animal that spends most of the day literally watching the grass grow. However, the subtle nuances of horse culture were starting to lose their flavour. There was something in this room that was sparking my curiosity now, and it wasn’t the dancing carrots on the video screen.

  It was this pair of humans. As new members of my herd I felt obliged to keep a close eye on them, and as I watched their daily routine of undecipherable dances and strange noises, I started to notice patterns emerging from the fog of general nonsense.

  ‘I’m going to run out of carrots at this rate.’ Be
tty was peering into her bag, which was drooping sadly. ‘You are ruining me, Buttercup. Ruining me.’

  ‘You need more stick, mate,’ Tim mumbled, still hunched over his keyboard.

  ‘Do you have some wisdom to share with us, Professor Timble? Please do.’

  ‘More stick, less carrot,’ he said.

  ‘Oh yes? You’d like to give our horse a good spanking would you? I bet it worked for you didn’t it, hmm? Made you the man you nearly are today, yes? We are not training here. We are learning. You understand the difference I hope? Hmm? Learning is when you actually want to do it.’

  ‘Mate, there’s no incentive with easy carrots though, is there?’

  ‘Knowledge is its own reward, my dear. Carrots are just a stepping stone to enlightenment.’

  Tim shrugged.

  ‘You’re selling them too cheap,’ he said.

  Betty frowned at him for a few moments before turning to look me in the eye. In the silence that followed it suddenly struck me that I was waiting for her to say something. These incessant warbling sounds the humans made were not just tumbling out randomly. First one would sing, and then the other, and never both at once. That was significant somehow, though my brain was struggling to maintain its balance on the brink of understanding. When Tim was alone with me he would remain silent, only bursting into song when Betty appeared. Betty, meanwhile, would often warble at me regardless of Tim’s presence, but her noises were usually accompanied by the giving of carrots. There was some kind of relationship here that I couldn’t quite work out, but if carrots were involved then it definitely warranted further study.

  Betty also seemed to be on the verge of some deeper insight.

  ‘Something is not quite right here,’ she said, peering into my eyes.

  ‘You know what they say about leading horses to water,’ said Tim. He suddenly looked round in panic as Betty came marching over to his chair and leaned heavily over his shoulder.

  ‘Something smells wrong here,’ she said. ‘Bring up the neural network map. Clickety-click, Timothy.’ He obliged her request while cringing away as far as he could without falling out of his seat. ‘There we go. Look at that,’ she said, poking the screen with her finger.

  ‘Look at what?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s working. Everything is working.’

  ‘Great,’ he said.

  ‘But it isn’t working, is it? Hmm? I mean… look, Timbo. The network is flourishing. Yes? So we should be seeing some effect by now. But our horse… and don’t take this the wrong way, Buttercup, but you’re not exactly winning any rosettes now, are you, my dear? Hmm? Not exactly galloping at full speed, that brain of yours, is it?’ She shook her head softly as I blinked my oblivious response. ‘So what is this growth on the neural network?’ she said, stabbing again at Tim’s screen. ‘Where is that coming from? We’re not building it ourselves are we? From hope and carrots?’

  ‘It’s all horse, mate,’ said Tim.

  ‘It’s all horse, is it? Alright, so we’re playing the music but our horse doesn’t appear to be dancing. Hmm? Where is Horse 1.1? Come on, Jimothy, you’re clever. Explain it to me.’ She stood back and waited for him to respond, but started talking before he could. ‘It must be a software problem. The horse is talking to the network, but maybe the network isn’t listening, or the feedback is getting lost somehow? Are we filling a leaking bucket here?’

  ‘If it’s a software problem then it’s probably Squigley,’ Tim suggested.

  ‘Oh yes? And why might that be, young Timson? Hmm? Because you didn’t write it?’

  ‘Something like that…’ He shrivelled into his chair again as Betty leaned over him, plucking the mouse from his hand and bringing various graphs and diagrams to life. ‘And it’s got a stupid name,’ he added.

  ‘Stupidity is the force that shapes all destiny, my dear,’ Betty muttered, gazing at a cascade of glittering patterns on the computer screen. ‘Looks like Squigley is working just fine, wouldn’t you say?’

  He leaned forward to squint at the animated mess of random pixels.

  ‘How can you even tell?’ he asked.

  ‘It is working, Timble dear, because it wouldn’t be working if it didn’t work. Hmm? So what else could it be?’

  Tim gave a defeated shrug.

  ‘Maybe we just got a broken horse,’ he said.

  Betty stood back and puffed out her cheeks, blowing a raspberry of frustration.

  ‘Well, Buttercup?’ she asked me. ‘What do you have to say for yourself? Hmm? Look at this.’ She strode up to the big screen and waggled the stick, making the virtual carrot dance. ‘Magic carrot!’ she said. ‘Look, Buttercup, it’s alive. Can you even see it? Maybe we should get Dr Horse to test your eyesight again.’

  Tim took a breath as if he were about to say something.

  ‘What’s that, Timothy? Are you having an idea? Please share, I’ll take anything I can get.’

  ‘You know what I’m going to say,’ he said.

  ‘You don’t like my magic carrot, do you, Timmy?’

  ‘I don’t think that screen is enough.’

  ‘Timmy doesn’t like my magic carrot,’ Betty whispered in my ear.

  ‘You don’t have to listen to me, mate. You can see it right here.’ He pointed at a colourful map of interconnected lines on his computer. ‘We’re focusing on such a narrow band of sensory input, it’s just purely visual.’

  ‘Hmm, yes,’ she nodded earnestly. ‘You think some carrot noises might help, then? Or smells perhaps? We could try building a common language by farting in prime numbers, hmm? Come on, Jimbo. It’s a bit late to start voicing doubts about this now. Don’t you think?’

  ‘I’ve been saying this all along,’ he protested.

  ‘Yes, well. I’m sure that when you go to Bunzel with your blueprints for the amazing fully immersive virtual reality helmet for horses, they will shower you with gold and kiss you on both cheeks. Meanwhile, back in the real world, we have a screen and a magical dancing carrot. If you want sounds and smells, then that’s us. You and me, Timothy. I’ll be the sound and you can be the smell. Yes? It’s alright, Timkins, really it is. We’re not driving our car all the way to horse-town here. Buttercup is meeting us halfway, aren’t you, dear?’

  ‘Yeah, well…’ Tim started to speak, but then thought better of it and retreated into his glowing lair. Silence filled the room for a few precious moments. ‘There’s something else,’ he said, reluctantly.

  Betty, arms folded and eyebrows raised, waited patiently while Tim took a deep breath. He held it for a few seconds, mouth hanging open as he waited for the right words to fall out.

  ‘This… is a horse. Yeah?’ He gestured towards me to illustrate his point. Betty nodded slowly. ‘So,’ he continued, ‘we can keep throwing more brains at it, and maybe we get some kind of horse genius. Or something else entirely, who knows. But maybe, just maybe…’

  ‘Maybe, just maybe, what?’

  ‘Maybe… all we might actually be doing is making it really, really good at being a horse. You know?’

  Betty blinked at him in bewilderment.

  ‘What I mean is… look, putting a bigger engine into a lawnmower isn’t necessarily gonna turn it into a racing car. Do you see what I’m saying, mate?’ He pointed at me, and then at the image on his computer screen. ‘Horse plus horse,’ he said with a small shrug, ‘might just equal horse.’

  Betty stood in silence, her gaze shifting back and forth between myself and the pulsing diagram on Tim’s computer screen. Sensing a gap in the human conversation I decided this would be an opportune moment to make my own contribution to the discussion, and began nudging the stick with my nose. Betty let out a sigh and rooted around for a carrot, though she seemed to deliberate for an eternity before handing it over.

  ‘Horse plus horse,’ she said, plonking herself down on a bale of straw next to Tim. ‘Let’s try expanding the network. Throw some more brains at this horse until something happens.’

  Tim seemed u
nconvinced.

  ‘We need to make it work this time, Timbo,’ she said. ‘We really do. I can feel the weather changing at Bunzel Towers.’

  ‘Have they said something?’ he asked.

  ‘Not in so many words. But I know people who know people.’

  ‘I thought they liked you.’

  ‘Everyone likes me, Timbo. I am unquestionably lovely. This project of ours though… well, it’s expensive stuff. Financially and politically. Hmm? Bunzel is all about caring and sharing now. Didn’t you see their new advert? “Making the World Bunzel-Better”.’

  Tim went to the laborious effort of turning around in his chair to look her in the eye.

  ‘Bunzel-Better?’ he said. ‘Seriously? Is that a real thing?’

  ‘This is how it is, Timothy. I mean, they’ve been patient with us, they really have. But if we want to keep getting that sweet Bunzel money, then we have to convince them that poking animals in the brain is still compatible with their new loveable corporate teddy-bear branding. We have to make this horse Bunzel-Better. If we can’t, then… well. We might be chewing on our last carrot.’

  There was a moment of shared silence between the three of us to reflect on the possibility of a world without carrots. Finally Tim spoke.

  ‘Horse 1.2 then?’ he said.

  ‌Horse 1.2

  If you have ever wondered whether a horse is watching you, there’s a simple test you can perform: have a look around, and if you can see a horse anywhere, you can be pretty certain that a horse is watching you.

  It’s not that we horses are paranoid. Paranoia is largely a human affliction, and an understandable one given that they can’t see anything going on behind their backs. Horses have no need for such delusions. It is a plain fact of life that when you are halfway down the food chain anything you are not eating probably wants to eat you. Watching the world is embedded in our genes, along with a near-full circle of visual awareness.