Redemption Prep - Samuel Miller Page 0,35
you know who shows up.”
Aiden’s eyes settled on the wall behind his desk. In the center, there was a photo of an AAU basketball team he’d played on when he was thirteen. In it, he lay across the front of a group of ten kids, sprawled out and holding a trophy, with a tiny gold basketball player at the top, doing some kind of one-leg-up crossover. The trophy itself sat a foot in front of the photo, on his desk, next to a dozen like it.
His entire life, he’d been a basketball player. If that was going to continue, he couldn’t be distracted. He needed to find her.
“Fuck that,” he said, shaking his head. “I’ll be there.”
Neesha.
HER WHOLE CLASS was tittering excitedly as they entered, Yangborne’s boom box blaring country music. With the B-School students in the room, there weren’t enough chairs, so students were standing between them, sitting on tables, leaning against walls. Several instructors from around the school—Dr. Roux from the P-School, Dr. Richardson from Human, and even Father Farke—were crowded in the back of the classroom, staring at a glass case in front.
Two rats sniffed around inside, one on either side of a solid granite block. From the third row, Neesha could barely separate their glassy marble eyes from the matted fur of their faces. Two patches were shaved into that fur, on the side of their tiny rat heads, where a simple electrical wire was fused in.
Dr. Yangborne killed the music and stood behind them, his hands placed lightly on either side. “Mice in a cage, the oldest of scientific experiments, today made revolutionary,” he said to the whole room, emceeing the proceedings in a white lab coat. “Ladies and gentlemen, meet the most important rats in human history, Turner and Hooch.”
The class snickered; they’d voted on the names last week. Neesha leaned forward onto her elbows, watching Turner sprint corner to corner to corner inside her cage.
“I’ve spent the morning teaching Turner a specific behavior task—touch lever, receive treat.” He demonstrated. As soon as the light switched on, Turner ran for a plastic protrusion at the front. She leapt up, a tiny paw falling onto it, releasing a brown pellet from the tube behind her. She pounced immediately.
“Our implant connects Turner’s motor cortex to an electronic signal, which will then be sent to”—he traced his hands along the wire to the computer between them—“a shared electron environment. Hooch knows nothing of lights or levers. He’s simply living in his cage.” He flipped the light in Hooch’s cage on. Hooch stood still.
“If Turner’s brain can communicate this behavior to Hooch’s, without ever physically interacting, it will represent the most sophisticated linkage between two brains in history. But, of course, the linkage isn’t the most complicated part of the experiment. More challenging is the translation of their brain signals. If you’ll remember, from when we last tried this experiment, we weren’t able to stimulate the right parts of the brain. Brain science students, we appreciate all of the work you did on the electronics side, I’m sure it will help, but today we’re accelerating the experiment with a more . . . human solution.”
He placed a small paper dish inside both of their cages, and immediately the rats leapt for it, lapping up the white, frothy liquid with their tiny tongues.
Yangborne beamed at Leia. “An impressive discovery from one of our own.”
Neesha felt her lips curl into disgust as she stared at the glass case behind him. The Discovery Trophy was a holy relic. The people in the photos that lined the wall next to her were real scientists, actual innovators whose ideas changed the lives of millions, not hack students who passed off natural hormones as some kind of breakthrough for rats. But if tonight’s experiment went well, Yangborne made it sound like he was ready to bash open the case and offer Leia the trophy. Her stomach backed up at the image.
Both rats finished the compound and began to chew through their paper trays.
“Well,” Yangborne said, taking his time, smiling. “Should we try it?”
The room cheered. Neesha kept staring into the cage, watching as Turner returned to testing the limits of her environment, revisiting each corner only to find that it still had her trapped. Her circles grew tighter and more panicked until eventually she froze in the center.
Neesha shifted in her seat. Turner was staring straight at her.
Behind the rats, Yangborne turned the computer on, and both rats went stiff. “All future communication will