Mus Numena 4: Empathy (Patreon)

“Jesus.” Ted stared at the laptop screen.

Dan looked over at him. “Are you looking at personal documents on an internal client’s laptop, against company policy? More importantly, are they porn?”

“Not intentionally. I mean, to the first one. Doug left Outlook open on this email chain. And no, not porn. This is about the Dynamice Ultra, and yes, I am back on my emergent behavior hobbyhorse because they’re starting to speak.”

Dan got up and walked to Ted’s desk, peering over his shoulder. “They’re what now?”

The email chain from Doug Barnhart, VP of Future Vision (whatever the hell that meant), opened with a customer service rep escalating a frantic ticket from one of their laboratory customers who’d been testing new cosmetics—cosmetics?—on the Ultras, using what they dubbed a “modified LD50 test.” One of the mice had started screaming when they rubbed the test substance on his arm—as the customer wrote, “When I say he screamed like a small child, I mean he sounded human. Then he started sobbing and repeating, ‘It hurts. Please stop.’”

“Holy shit,” Dan said. “What, uh, what exactly is a modified LD50 test?”

“A normal LD50 test is giving the test animals enough of what you’re testing to kill fifty percent of them.” Ted scanned the email chain, a sick feeling rising in his stomach. “This is basically the same thing, but just to ‘near death,’ and they only use ten subjects because they’re so much closer to humans.”

Dan pursed his lips, exhaling in a slow hiss, and looked at Ted. “You need to close this and forget you saw it.”

“I don’t…” Ted closed his eyes. “I don’t think I can do that.”

“What the hell do you think you can do? Tell the company they need to recall them? Become a whistleblower?”

“No, but…”

“No buts.” Dan put his hand on Ted’s shoulder. “Look, either this is a weird one-off fluke, or it’s a fountain of shit that’s gonna blow without your help. You do not want to be near it when it does.”

“Dan, you know they’re still trying to figure out some way to push the Dynamice into other markets, and one of the ‘roadblocks,’” he made air quotes with his fingers, “is that they don’t understand English.” He gestured at the laptop. “They just got over that roadblock. Or at least, they’re going to claim they did.”

Dan eyed him. “You figure the mice did this on their own.”

“Yeah.”

“Just like you figure they made themselves look human on their own, and the company just took credit for it.”

“I know they made themselves look human on their own.”

Dan pursed his lips, going still for a few seconds. Then he leaned over and stared at Ted earnestly. “Fountain. Of shit.”

Once Dan headed back to his desk, Ted finished up with Barnhart’s laptop. Snapping it shut, he picked it up and stood. “I’ll walk this back to Doug.”

Dan flashed him a baleful look, but didn’t say anything. Normally, clients came to pick up their own laptops, but execs like Barnhart expected IT to run concierge service.

In theory, the top-level suites were as locked down as the laboratory floor, but showing the laptop to the admin assistant got him buzzed right in, from the calm stillness of the executive reception area into relative madness.

All right, only “madness” relative to the previous visits Dan had made, but still: there was an ambient buzz of tense conversation everywhere, from offices with open doors to a glass-walled conference room to hallway walk-and-talks. He didn’t have to eavesdrop—much—to know the cause of the agitation.

Barnhart was in conversation with whatsherface, Lambert, the VP of Product. “None,” he was saying excitedly to her. “That’s what I’m trying to get across to you. There are no limits on what markets we can pursue with them if they can talk. Can—”

“We don’t want them to fucking talk, Doug, because if they can fucking talk they can fucking say things like ‘It hurts, please stop!’ And—”

She stopped abruptly as Barnhart motioned at Ted. “Oh, great, the Chicken Little guy.”

“Ah. My laptop! Thank you. I hope it wasn’t too much trouble.”

“No trouble at all.” Ted walked over and handed it to him.

Lambert narrowed her eyes. “How much of that did you hear?”

“I…” Ted cleared his throat. “I already might have seen a little bit of the email thread on the subject, because the laptop was open to the mail client.”

Lambert turned her death glare on Barnhart, who shrugged cheerfully. “It’s going to get out shortly one way or another,” he said. “I’m telling you, we need to get ahead of it.”

“Uh-huh.” She turned back to Ted. “I don’t have to remind you of the NDAs.”

“You don’t.”

“Don’t tell me this is emergent fucking behavior, either.” She turned back to Barnhart. “How do you suggest ‘getting ahead’ of this?”

“We’ve had models out with VIPs already, ones who aren’t committed as experimental animals. At least a dozen.”

She crossed her arms. “I’m aware.”

“That’s partly to see what they do with them, right? It’s field research.”

She nodded.

“So that’s the first step. If we enable speech for other units, too, we can see how that changes their usage.”

“We didn’t ‘enable speech’ on any of them. This one enabled it for itself!” She quickly glanced at Ted with a warning expression.

He raised his brows, remaining silent.

Lambert took off her glasses and rubbed her temples. “Don’t have you somewhere else to be?”

Ted nodded. “Uh, yes, ma’am.” He headed toward the door.

“Thank you, Ted.” Barnhart waved.

When he got to the elevator, Ted hesitated with his finger over the button for IT’s floor. No, not yet. Fresh air felt like less a good idea than a critical need right now. He punched the button for the lobby and headed outside.

Lambert might have been aware they had “models out with VIPs,” but Ted sure hadn’t been. It didn’t sound as if Stan Hackett had gone home with his (his what? Loan? Rental? Purchase? Gift?), but apparently others didn’t have the same reaction.

“Field research” to do what? Find out if they made good pets? A five-foot-something mouse woman built like a bikini model—let alone a twelve-foot-something mouse man built like a Greek god—was not a pet under any non-salacious definition.

If we enter the personal companion market…

Which meant what?

Field research, that’s what. To learn what billionaires wanted their personal Dynamice Ultra models to be.

He sat down on a bench, rubbing his face. Somehow this all kept coming back to the question of why that first Dynamouse Max made herself into an Ultra—made herself look human.

A question that he had no real business focusing on. It didn’t concern his job. It was distracting him from his job. It wasn’t his problem if…

…if the company he worked for was planning to make non-human slaves?

…if they were already making them, and selling them as subjects for experiments that would be unethical to do on humans?

God. He didn’t have it in him to be a whistleblower. Who did he even blow the whistle to? The FDA? USDA? Dateline? Nanolab had been getting ever more skittish about the attention focused on the Dynamice; the protests still hadn’t completely died, and a coterie of congressmen in both parties kept making noises about investigations into “animal-human hybrids” (which they weren’t, but that came from the same bozos who claimed schools kept litter boxes for students who “identified as cats”) or “dangerous nanites” (more correct, ignoring that nanite was a made-up word from Star Trek).

Dan was probably right. If this was real, it would get out without his help, and, yeah, it would be a fountain of shit.

But he couldn’t shut off his damn brain this time.

Okay. If this is going to keep bugging you, work through the problem. You have to figure that if they made themselves look like humans, it had to be for humans; that’s why it was so easy for Nanolab to sell the world on the idea that, well, it was their idea. But why? What did the mice hope to get out of it?

Hmm. If they were more humanlike, they’d be able to…what? Have opposable thumbs. Apparently, be able to make human speech. But was that it? Wasn’t it awfully anthropocentric to assume the human form was a pinnacle of evolution they would aspire to?

He got up and headed across the lawn back toward Building One, his office. Hmm. Well, when they went that anthropomorphic, they’d get different reactions from humans, at least. He wasn’t alone in calling them sexy (something the more conservative congressmen saw as particularly perfidious). Despite the metallic sheen, the sense of alienness, they were cute. Hell, even the giant one was cute. Still terrifying, but cute.

As he sat down at his desk, a word flashed into his head. Empathy.

He went still, staring at nothing, until Dan waved a hand in front of his face. “Yo. Ted.”

“I need to speak with…huh. I’m not sure. Someone who already knows about the problem.”

“The problem?”

“The problem we’re not supposed to know about. With the mice.”

“And you think speaking about this with someone who knows you shouldn’t know is a good idea why, exactly?”

“Because on the small chance that I’m right, your fountain of shit might be much worse than we thought.”

“How so?”

Ted held up a finger. “Wait. Torgensen. He was CC’ed on that thread.”

“Who?”

He opened a Slack direct message to the scientist. Hi. I have a crazy theory about current issues relating to the Ultra project and I need someone to tell me I’m crazy. Or not.

Dan crossed his arms. “I think that kind of communication’s supposed to go through your direct management.”

Ted spread his hands. “I’m proactively showing independent initiative and facilitating horizontal cross-department interaction.”

“I do not know how you managed to say that with a straight face.”

“I don’t, either, honestly.”

The dock icon for Slack bounced, and Ted looked over. I’ll take five. Meet by the elevators?

Ted typed back, OK, and stood up. “Back shortly.”

Torgensen wasn’t in his lab coat today, but the big square glasses, tucked-in polo shirt, and actual genuine pocket protector still gave him the air of a scientist-engineer. “So.” He headed toward the break room, motioning Ted to follow. “What’s your crazy thought?”

“Empathy.”

The scientist arched a brow.

“What if the Dynamice started reconfiguring themselves to look human because they wanted our empathy? Because we’d be less likely to do…well…what we do to them if they looked that way?”

“Mmm. What if indeed. It’s a stretch, Mr. Bishop.”

“I know. But it just—explains so much, doesn’t it? If they understand that they’re experimental subjects, and want it to stop.”

Torgensen waggled a hand as he got a coffee cup and stuck it under the dispensing spout. “Your theory is not as crazy as I would wish, if I am honest. There’s not much I can tell you about tests we’ve been doing—non-invasive tests, for the record—but…at the very least they don’t contradict you.”

“So…?”

“So?” Torgensen picked up his coffee and shrugged. “If you are asking if I am concerned about the optics, yes. The ethics, also yes. But solving this is not my call.”

“Uh-huh.” Ted dispensed his coffee. “I guess I’m wondering, uh, if they don’t collectively feel like literally begging for help is working, what do the Dynamice do next?”

Torgensen sipped from his styrofoam cup, looking contemplative, then finally gave another silent shrug. “I’ll bring this up at the next departmental meeting, and will keep your name out of it, Mr. Bishop.” He patted Ted’s shoulder. “I suggest you keep these thoughts to yourself otherwise, hmm?”

• • •

Thanks to an “emergency” with a sales executive’s laptop (they’d locked themselves out of Sharepoint, for the third time this quarter), it was dusk before Ted left the office, heading across the campus lawn to the now almost empty parking garage. Well, it wasn’t as if he had anything big planned for dinner anyway.

As he pressed the elevator button, a glint flashed off to his right, toward the garage’s outside corner. He turned, startled. Nothing. The sunlight might have been at just the right angle to hit the metal staircase there, though.

The elevator doors closed. As it rose to the top of the three-story structure, he heard—what? Running? Clanging?

As the doors again opened, he found himself tensing up.

The mouse woman stood there. The mouse woman. The one he’d seen, only once, that first night. Silver metallic fur, coppery hair, pinup model body revealed in full.

But—how—what—

She looked into his eyes, her expression pleading, desperate. “Help.”