Грег Иган - The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

She tried closing first one eye, then the other, gradually building up her octopus vision, but it wasn’t until Vainilla started playing with a clamshell that she found something to focus on. It took several back-and-forths, but finally Natalia was able to recognize the shell seen through Vainilla’s eyes: the blurring of the striations, the squashed shape. She had to close both eyes one more time, and shake her head hard, but when she opened the right one again she could recognize the clamshell.

“Major progress!” This was Gilcrest’s boss, Yohannes Kirk. They were sitting in a small conference room with frigid air-conditioning that was chilling Natalia’s still-wet hair. “I don’t think we expected to be able to calibrate so quickly, did we, David?”

Gilcrest muttered something affirmative.

“I don’t want to overstate my understanding…” Natalia began, and Kirk flapped his hand.

“Of course, that phase isn’t over yet, but still! Remarkable.”

“Sir,” Gilcrest murmured. “If you recall…”

“Oh yes, of course.” Kirk turned to Natalia. “We’d like you to join the team. David here thinks, and I agree with him, that you’re the right person to work with the cephalopod on this.”

“And what exactly is ‘this’?” Natalia asked, letting some of her annoyance into her voice.

“Ah, naturally, you haven’t been told. Proprietary, you know, and very sensitive.” He beamed. “But I think you’ll like it. Ah… David, maybe it’s best if you explain.”

Gilcrest was almost diffident, and got to the point much more quickly in front of his boss. “As you experienced today, we’ve found a way to translate the electric signals we can pick up from an octopus’s brain into visual stimuli that humans can, ah, with some learning, understand.”

Natalia nodded into the pause.

“Our overall goal, however, is much more ambitious.” Gilcrest glanced at Kirk. “Our researchers believe that they can distinguish between brain activity based on immediate observation and brain activity based on memory.”

“Memory,” Natalia repeated.

“Specifically,” Kirk took over, “we plan to use the memories of octopi to rebuild the Great Barrier Reef.”

He was beaming, and Natalia wasn’t quite sure she was awake.

“Initially,” Gilcrest interjected, “we had planned to do a computer analysis of the images, but it turns out computers, including the best artificial intelligence we could get our hands on, have a very hard time interpreting these signals.”

“They can’t do it,” Kirk said. “Can’t. But the human brain…” He tapped his temple, still grinning at Natalia. “We can.” He paused, but her human brain couldn’t figure out anything to say to that. “So what do you say? Will you work on this with us?”

“What we want you to do is first, spend a lot of time getting calibrated, so that you can really understand what the octopus is seeing.” Gilcrest must have learned how to translate his boss’s macro-enthusiasms into operational terms, probably an important skill for him. He seemed to want reassurance, so Natalia nodded. “Then you’ll do a swim-along at the site of the reef. We’ll fit you out with some kind of recording tool that makes sense underwater so you can take notes—and of course all the brain activity will be recorded, so you can rewatch it later if you like.”

“Then we analyze and figure out how to regrow the coral!” Kirk put in. “We know it’s a long shot but it’s also just weird enough to work. Will you do this with us?”

More octopus swim time and the chance to see how the Barrier Reef had once looked? She didn’t even have to consider whether the part about helping to rebuild it was realistic. “Yes,” Natalia said, and then belatedly remembered she should negotiate. “But I will have to increase my rate for this more intensive work.”

It took three weeks to calibrate to everyone’s satisfaction, and Kirk and Gilcrest both professed repeatedly that this was far faster than they had expected. They flew out to the site of the old reef by helicopter; Natalia, swaying in her seat, wondered if Vainilla, in the closely strapped tank of water, was any more comfortable than she was. She wondered what the electrodes, already soft-glued into place, were showing the technicians. Were they looking at the octopus’s current perception, or did the placement of the sensors hardwire them already into memory mode? What sort of memories did a helicopter ride inspire in a marine animal?

The project team was by then accustomed to Natalia taking her time to get settled before she signaled them to turn on her octo-vision. In this new environment she was particularly careful. They had tried out the memory function, but (as Gilcrest had said) the shallow bay didn’t inspire many memories in the cephalopod. Floating above the skeleton of the Great Barrier Reef, on the other hand, was creepy enough without any enhancement. Finally, though, Natalia raised her hand and closed her left eye.

A lost world bloomed before her eye.

Natalia had never seen such a densely populated marine environment. In Vainilla’s memory, fish and anemones and—there! A sea turtle!—played among the astonishingly variegated coral. In the first five minutes Natalia counted at least seven extinct species, speaking their names urgently into the specialized recorder set in her respirator.

The world veered suddenly, and Natalia opened her left eye to see that Vainilla was careening toward the depths. The starkness of the dead coral was shocking, but much as Natalia wanted to shy away from it and stay in the richness of memory, she had to keep that eye open to follow Vainilla. If I lose this octopus now… flew through her mind, though she knew even as she thought it that Vainilla would never escape; they must have a tracker or dozen implanted.

Natalia spiraled down after the cephalopod, opening first one eye then the other. It was eerie how the vibrant memories of life and movement, seen monochrome through the octopus’s eyes, matched the bleached present. It seemed wrong, and disorienting, as if what she was seeing in real time was also a flashback. But everything seemed wrong now. The octopus was tickling crevices that were dry instead of carpeted in ciliae, crevices that were, in memory, homes. And there at the sandy bereft bottom of the sea, meters and meters below Natalia now, the octopus was writhing in search or desolation at the empty place where the octopi had once gathered.

Vainilla reached out toward the memories of individual octopi, each so clear and distinct that Natalia could almost feel the recognition. There were so many of them, whirling into focus one by one as Vainilla turned through the bone-bare patch of seafloor.

Natalia closed her right eye against the memory of—relatives? Friends? Community?—but the view from her left was blurry. She rose, ignoring her recorder and the questions in her earpiece. Only long-ingrained practice made her pause, almost forgetting why she did so, to hover a few meters below the surface, sobbing into her regulator until her body decided it was time to let herself float upwards.

Natalia had no idea what to do with this blankness, this intolerable feeling of loss. She hadn’t been able to drink usefully since her cousin was killed by a drunk driver, and while she enjoyed an ice cream cone now and then, she had never felt any desire to eat a pint of it at a time. She spent a lot of time in her apartment crying. Sometimes TV, if it was engrossing enough, could make the feelings go away for a while, and she became a squirrel for high-attention shows, searching them out, stocking them, and rationing them. She flaked on job after job. Some people called her and left concerned messages when she didn’t answer. Her inbox was dotted with messages titled ¿señales de vida ? But it was weeks before Natalia felt like talking to anyone and when she did, she didn’t know whom to call.