a thumpin' good time

"i thought you would have seen it, powder."

 

"seen what?"

 

"the connection."

 

"between?"

 

SIGH!  "between beckman and US, powder B!  sheesh.  for an enhanced rabbit, you sure can be a dumb bunny when you apply yourself."

 

"oh right.  that."

 

"well?"

 

"well?!  well, i'm waiting for you to tell me what i'm missing, pyong.  i may be enhanced, but i'm not a mind reader.  well.  except when i'm talking mind to mind with someone.  but you know.  it's been months."

 

"if you'd exercise your brain occasionally and stop moping about over EVERY little thing, then it might have occurred to you too!  i mean, you've been mulling over our social responsibility for weeks now!  and here's this opportunity...and you don't even see it!"

 

"just TELL me, pyong.  then i can stroke your ego and tell you how wonderfully brilliant you are and we can move ON."  she chuckled finally.  good, we're not going to be bitchy bunnies forever. 

 

"ok.  i'm sorry.  it's just that you sit here like a lump so much, and it drives me nuts.  i know all sorts of stuff is going on inside your head, and you don't really share, you just get depressed.  so, really what i'm trying to do is get you excited about this."

 

"i promise to get excited as SOON as you tell me what it is that you're going on about!  i mean, suspenseful, ok, you've got me - i want to know.  so give."

 

"ok.  so beckman?  they study intelligence.  all forms of it.  including, i suspect, RABBBIT intelligence."

 

"yeah, but everyone knows rabbits aren't very bright."

 

"everyone THINKS that, but everyone is WRONG, aren't they?  i mean, look at us!  we're hyper-intelligent!"

 

"yeah, one of us is WAY hyper..."

 

"right!   oh, shut up, powder!  i'm serious!  everyone is wrong when it comes to us. and what's more, everyone is wrong when it comes to the wild rabbits.  i mean, we never knew how intelligent they were!"

 

"if you can call THAT intelligence.  they squander it.  they're so concerned with their rules and regulations that they hardly LIVE, pyong."

 

"i KNOW that, powder, but humans think that they're just like domestic rabbits and we know they're not!"

 

"you know what they ARE like, pyong?  they're like humans.  caught up in the pressures of a society that they may not have had any part in creating, but from which they can't escape.  they daren't change a thing, because the whole rotten structure might just come tumbling down on them...  i take that back... well, part of it.  humans seem determined to destroy themselves.  they don't care.  so many of them just don't care.  they won't change a thing to help themselves because any changes would interfere with their lifestyles, their so-called quality of life.  so.  you haven't said, pyong, what's so great about beckman.  they don't know about rabbits, so that tells us they don't know much.  and we don't WANT them to know about rabbits, really, because they can't be trusted to be responsible with that kind of information.  they'd only exploit us.  they ALREADY exploit us - we test their MAKEUP for godsake!!!"

 

"yes," said pyong soothingly, "intelligent they may be, but that doesn't mean they have any wisdom.  i don't mean that we should walk up those shiny granite steps and turn ourselves in - 'oh PLEASE experiment on us!  implant electrodes!  remove our brains!'  human scientists have little subtlety.  what we ought to do is check out their facilities.  see, humans care about one thing, essentially - themselves.  humans are FASCINATED with what humans are, what humans do, and what can be of use to humans.  so when they say all kinds of intelligence, my guess is that above and beyond ALL of the rest of life, humans care about HUMAN intelligence.  but that's ok.  because we, powder, are at least as smart as humans and i want to study OUR intelligence."

 

"well, what's there to know?  we're smart...a lot of good it does us."

 

"social responsibility, powder.  what if we busted up that static, decaying rabbit warren we left?  what if we were able to enhance ALL of our kind?  what if bunnies became the next superheroes?  what would you say to that, powder?  if we were able to rally all of the rabbits, change everyone, we could take back the earth!  we'd certainly have the numbers...why, Australia alone..."

 

"i...i'd NEVER thought of that.  NEVER EVER in a million years WOULD i have thought of that.  pyong, you ARE brilliant.  IMAGINE what we could make of the world!"

 

"yeah, yeah.  thanks.  slow down, though.  we've got a lot of work to do.  a lot of work that just MIGHT take your mind off some other things.  promise me you'll come out of your funk, powder?"

 

chin up, powder b!  "yes, i promise.  i think this is something i can work with."

 

"good."

posted by: barkalot at 20:04 | link | comments (2) |

it's late.  the library has just closed, which means it's just after 3am.  soon the sky will start getting light and the sun will chase away my private view of the stars.  i'm in my window on the second floor looking out over a campus that seems very peaceful ('m sure that someone somewhere nearby is making a liar out of me).  i wish we'd taken up lodging in an observatory, so i could see the sky better.  i think often of the g-pigs and wonder what our friends may  have endured in our absence.  as if a scope could show me the answers to the questions i have.  the observatory is not so popular nor so populated as the engineering library.  i guess we'd be getting by  on slim pickings then.  the library is most days full of bright, eager students who cheerfully and willfully ignore the no-food policy.  good for us.  bad for the library.

pyong has crept up beside me.  we sit side by side in one of the large leather chairs, facing the windows.  we murmur to each other because anything louder produces odd and unsettling echoes in this large room. 

"what are you thinking, powder?"

"i was wondering about the g-pigs.  wondering what they're doing.  what they know.  what's happened to our friends."

"i think about them, too.  sometimes."

"yeah, pyong-pyong, but your head is full of other things.   you're always *up* to something.  i can see your brain's working hard on something - your ears keep twitching.  you have this nervous, but brilliant impatience of the ears. "

she thought about that.  "powder?"

"yes?"

"do you know what lies to the north of this building?"

"well...a lot of things.  do you want to be more specific?"

"i'll just tell you.  to the north of the engineering library is the beckman institute."

my turn to think about something.

"and what can you tell me about the beckman institute, powder?"

"not much, i'm afraid.  i know our person worked there before she worked here.  have you discovered something to do with beckman that will help us find our person?"   i was suddenly filled with hope.  did beckman hold the answers?

"no...it's nothing to do with our person."  my face must have shown my disappointment, for pyong quickly continued, "they study something important there.  in fact, they have only one main research focus.  do you know?  can you guess what it is?"

i scrunched up my nose, trying to remember what i'd heard about beckman.  nothing came to me.  odd.  i shook my head slowly, in the negative.  her answer, when it came was surprising.  "intelligence.  powder, they study intelligence.  ALL kinds of intelligence."

"i don't see..."

"yes, i know," she said impatiently (more ear shaking).  "but i do."

posted by: barkalot at 23:47 | link | comments (2) |

so cold. fell asleep with my feet all tucked under my fuzz near one of the large windows on the second floor. pyong woke up early and left to go about her business. i woke up somewhat later, somewhat disoriented and chilled. not enough fuzzy bunny to keep warm in this great heat sink. brrr. i repositioned myself near a heat vent and let that warm dry air get under my coat and next to my skin. ahh. a desert bath.

happened to notice a rabbit outside, hopping through the grass on the quad. very purposeful looking bunny. wondered briefly how the campus rabbits live. are they as regimented as the urbana rabbits? like clockwork, the urbana buns. not being among them anymore is both a great relief and a great loss. we didn't make any special friends among them, so i guess logically there is nothing all that much to miss. but for some reason it hurts anyway. i get this funny tight feeling in my chest...because aren't they supposed to be my "people"? and here i lived among them for only a short time and not one of them cared to know me, know what i thought about. they were so focused on their bureacracy, on maintaining some system/appearances. they never cared to ask where i came from...and i could have told them such stories! well, to be honest, i probably wouldn't have told them THOSE stories. who would have believed me? partly i am to blame...for i never bothered to learn who they were either. we certainly didn't stay long enough to know them.

we really do come from different worlds, and i don't mean just because i lived "off-planet" for some time - probably the equivalent of several years in a rabbit's timeline. i was never a wild bunny before, and something about me is still domesticated...perhaps despite their surprising "street smarts," these wild bunnies wouldn't be able to fathom what it's like to be me? or wouldn't see how i've lived as being any kind of advantage. i will readily admit that i often don't see it as advantageous either. it's isolated me more than anything...and i guess i'm a bunny that's hungry for community. more than broccoli stalks, more than cilantro, more than that sweet sweet orchard grass that started all of this, i long for a home and a place and a people.

do you think that if these wild bunnies had had a taste of the orchard grass that they too would long for something more? or would they remain content with what they have? and is it only my lack of having something stable like that that makes me different? would i be reluctant to change even if i thought there might be some other way? just because it was what i knew? i wonder.

posted by: barkalot at 08:51 | link | comments |

march already? i haven't been outside for days. since leaving the rabbits of the real world, and their...aimless pursuit of labor. a rabbit on every lawn. i'd no idea rabbits adhered to standards. i wonder if ANSI has that one? is there a British equivalent? haha. engineering humor. RABBIT engineering humor.

i've never built anything in my life. well, maybe things like TRUST and FRIENDSHIP, but nothing engineered. pyong has, tho. she once dug a hole. it was MARVELOUS. (i only have her word on this - i didn't see it.) we were out in the yard at our person's home and pyong pyong found a lovely spot of dirt just by the edge of the garage. she thought it might be a good spot for a burrow and so she sunk her nails deep into that dirt. it felt like heaven. the earth was almost sandy, dry from lack of rain, yet easily manipulated - not that hard-baked cracked kind of soil. she kept digging until she felt a coolness, a moistness - this was when she knew she really COULD make a go of things. a sandy burrow would have been impractical - as they have the tendency to collapse suddenly. she slipped into an odd concentration where her body continued to work, moving and manipulating the dirt, and her mind wandered. she was totally focused in these two places (weird, huh?) and she didn't notice another person (not ours, but related) observing her. that is, she didn't notice until a handful of dirt dropped back into her hole and messed up her easy tranquility. hmm, she thought, as she kicked it out again. she resumed her digging, but seconds later MORE dirt appeared in the hole. HMMM! she thought. things were getting out of hand. when moments later a stick and then a few rocks appeared in her hole, she angrily gripped them in her teeth and threw them out. then she panted and looked about her with teeth ready. a person. an evil person was interfering. the person laughed and dumped another handful of dirt in her hole. her beautiful hole...well, it was not to be. she quit on the spot. forgot about it after about 40 seconds and went back to nibbling dianthus buds. and that, my friends, is just water off a duck's back.

posted by: barkalot at 00:03 | link | comments (3) |

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