a thumpin' good time

what we already know: through a strange marriage of orchard grass and cavvian soil was created a special grass that when imbibed by two earth rabbits produced profound changes in their brains - making them highly intelligent. at the same time, this grass also gave them other powers or enhancements heretofore unsubstantiated and unrealized in other earth creatures.

we could spend minutes, hours, days, years discovering and describing those changes - mapping the new pathways, examining irregular or supraregular brain tissue and making slides of our own neurons. but we're not going to do that, because A.) that would mean cutting into our own little bunny brains (yes, this is the height of earth technology) and B.) we don't really care how we differ at the cellular level from other domestic rabbits. what we DO care about is making these changes in other rabbits.

what we need to find out: we really have no way of predicting how the special grass would affect other rabbits. it has given both pyong and i different powers. the only thing that does seem to be the same is that we're smarter than we were before and more self-aware. this might not be a boon in others' opinions. i suppose it might be worth knowing how "safe" it is - like, if we were to administer it to other rabbits, would they become merely smart? or would they also become crazy and out of control? i can't imagine rabbits on the rampage would be a good thing for society at large. i mean, not without some common cause or common good to uphold. i also don't know how we could/should test for such a thing. obviously we'll be needing more of the special grass or some way to isolate the whatever it was that worked on us to make us what we've become. as you can see, my scientific vocabulary is deserting me. and we don't really want to do "trials" on anyone because we have no idea what to expect. maybe it's something particular about pyong and i that made us into attackrabbits and not crazy mutant killer rabbits that hang out in caves and savage knights of the round table. hmm. should we offer up the magic grass and let rabbitkind choose to nibble? should we warn them of possible dangers? can we presume/assume that every rabbit will be as ethical as pyong and i in the execution of their power? what kind of hell on earth would we have if everybun were a superbun?

even worse is that we don't even know if we've discovered the extent of our own powers. will there be more surprises in store for us? will new powers unmask themselves when the need arises? are we still changing or is the transformation complete? we are like a new species discovering itself. humans have done this over time - discovered themselves and begun chronicling everything they know. we are the first or the last (depending on how you look at it), and we don't know how much time we have. we're like the replicants, the nexus6, we don't know what our lifespan is. i guess technically no one does - the game is up when its, well, you know, UP! but most beings have an average lifespan. and we don't know if the changes in us, the changes we want to make in others will be something that can be passed on to our offspring. neither pyong nor i will be having any offspring, as we're no longer in possession of our reproductive organs.

the questions weigh heavily in my mind.

as for who might be able to help us, i have a feeling that there is no human being on earth that could - or that would once s/he understood the implications that our research could have. mankind might have to, god forbid, REALLY share the earth. and we already know how well mankind plays with others of his own kind - not so very.

posted by: barkalot at 22:13 | link | comments (1) |

what you need to know: neither one of us has a PhD in biology, or in neuroscience, or in psychology...or in any discipline that would make it easy for us to just, you know, make excellent use of the research space in a facility that studies intelligence. our enhancements do not come with these perks, unfortunately. so neither one of us can absorb information through osmosis or even speed read. it's a shame. it also took us two months to realize that we were getting nowhere and were, in fact, trying to reinvent the wheel, so to speak.

we had peered eagerly and anxiously into and around each piece of laboratory equipment in all of the labs trying to ascertain what they did and how we might use them. we watched the researchers and their legions of graduate students. we listened to them discuss their work. we read their papers. we couldn't really say that we had any idea what they were talking about. when we did understand them, it quickly became clear that their studies might not have any import at all for the kinds of things we wanted to know.

so one night after our lab was emptied of the usual crowd, in a moment of frustrated clarity i announced, "we are getting nowhere!" i had read countless textbooks on neurology and the brain and the longevity of neurons. i had read countless studies on the regeneration of brain tissue in canaries, on the formulation of new neural pathways in young human beings on the abilities of rats to navigate their way through mazes, on the intelligence of other presumed to be highly intelligent animals - whales, pigs, birds, dolphins, gorillas. No one cared about rabbits or rabbit intelligence. people just wanted rabbits for their sensitive eyes and skin, their lucky hind feet (not so lucky for the rabbits!), their soft pelts, their stew, and barring all of that - their radiant cuteness. one gets tired of being only cute after awhile. what about our depths? does anyone bother to scratch the surface?

"we're going at this all wrong." i said. "instead of trying to learn everything there is to know about intelligence - the ultimate goal of this institution - we should discuss and outline what it is that we want to know; what it is that we want to do; and then formulate research and plans based on these things."

pyong just looked at me like, duh.

i felt slightly foolish.

pyong winked at me. "hey, powder, it's ok. i just figured that's how you work. i mean, you want to understand everything about everything. you're sort of a whole picture kind of guy. except then while you're getting the picture, you realize just how incredibly detailed and nuanced it is. and then you decide that you have to know all of the details, and then the details of the details, and then the details of the details of the details. then you get tired and your brain shuts down and you come back around eventually to the starting point and wonder, 'how did i get so off-track?'"

"well, why didn't you, you know, STOP ME."

"you never listen to me when you're so focused."

right. "so, ok, anyway, have YOU made some progress that you'd like to share with me?"

"well. not much, really. i've been overwhelmed by our new digs, too. and i thought maybe you would find something we could use in all of your reading - i mean, before you reached brain saturation. i came up with some questions for us to think about, though: what do we already know? what do we need to find out? and is there any way we can use someone ELSE'S expertise to help us? because, like you said, we don't want to recreate the wheel, or spend years earning our own PhDs in neuroscience."

posted by: barkalot at 21:38 | link | comments |

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