Black Wolf by Juan Gomez-Jurado

Author:Juan Gomez-Jurado [Gómez-Jurado, Juan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

WHAT THEY DID TO HER NEXT

In the control room of the Red Queen project, Mentor is talking to a small, shaky eighty-year-old who is bald, half blind, and wearing a plaid jacket. He doesn’t look in good shape; in fact, you might say he has one foot in the grave, and the other on a banana peel.

But age can be deceptive. He is possibly the greatest neurochemist of his generation. His name would figure among the candidates for a Nobel Prize if he weren’t slightly deranged.

“She’s not ready to start, Dr. Nuno.”

On the other side of the glass, unaware that in the future she will lose a husband and have her son taken from her, a youthful Antonia Scott is making strenuous efforts to arrange sequences of numbers into logical patterns. She has electrodes attached to her head and is dressed in a plain hospital gown.

“How long has she been in training?”

“Longer than any other candidate. But I’m finding it hard to get her out of her comfort zone. It’s extremely frustrating.”

“How is she responding to the chemical compound?”

Dr. Nuno stretches out a hand streaked with protruding veins that resemble purple lightning. He takes the sheet of paper Mentor holds out to him.

“The data looks good. Better than good, in fact. No other candidate has such elevated markers.”

“And yet I can’t see any results. Her mind is still working either too fast or too slow. The red pill allows her to focus, but only for a short time.”

Nuno clears his throat and takes a deep breath. Mentor senses a lecture coming. He has a strong urge to call security to restrain the man, lead him to a dark alley, and discreetly make him disappear. He could do it. And nobody would protest.

“Do you know what differentiates us from animals, Mentor?”

“The lottery?” he says, since any incorrect answer will do.

“The capacity for diagnostic reasoning. To see a broken jug on the floor and know it was previously a jug on the counter. And that the child’s ball next to the fragments has something to do with it. Substitute a dead body for the jug, if you prefer.”

“I’ll stay with the jug. Please continue.”

“Researchers have tried to detect signs of diagnostic reasoning in animals. We began with chimpanzees and bonobos, then went on to dolphins. Nothing. Finally, some bright spark thought of testing crows. We placed a piece of meat inside a horizontal glass tube, and watched. The crow was able to figure out that to reach the meat it had to use a tool. Also that it had to avoid a trap hole in the middle, so that the meat wouldn’t fall out of reach.”

“Isn’t that what they do with octopuses?”

“No. Octopuses are capable of getting food out of a jar. This is far more complicated. It involves the tube, the trap hole, and the tool. And the researchers discovered that even when they moved the trap hole, the crow was able to get to the piece of meat.”

End of preamble, Mentor thinks to himself.

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