Chapter 13
“Oh hello, I didn’t see you come in, have you come to fix the fans?”
Professor Sura was standing in the operations center of her lab. In front of her, a large one-way mirror looked out onto the huge testing area which looked like a miniature post-industrial town with dozens of white mice scurrying around. Various readouts were being projected onto the mirror. Sura tapped at the tablet she was holding and water started drizzling from the roof above the testing area onto the mice. This was an Emergence Lab, and probably represented Arianne’s dream job - working with one of the fiercest opponents of the Merge pathway.
The Merge pathway had been understood for some time. To the utter delight of many 22nd century linguists (and profound surprise of many others), genetic changes had been identified in humans that regulated brain growth which lead to the formation of neural circuits which effectively implemented a cognitive algorithm capable of recursive operations. What’s more, it was easy to demonstrate that humans were the only known species to have this ability. This was dubbed the Merge pathway, and it was hailed as the answer to why language had evolved - why we alone had this strange ability to communicate in such rich and varied ways.
For the evolutionary linguists who had predicted just such a mechanism, there was a decade grand expositions on the human condition and told-you-so symposiums. In fact, it was during one of these celebrations that an intriguing question was raised: if we now knew the recipe for the ability to learn language, could we give it to another species by splicing in the right genes?
This idea was initially resisted, partly on moral grounds - this was, after all, as close to playing God as many were comfortable with - but mainly from proponents of the Merge pathway, who had no interest in seeing their newly won validation being proved wrong. However, many attempts to induce complex languages in other species did eventually follow. Songbirds were the first species to be granted ethical approval for testing. Finches were already able to learn and produce extremely complex songs, and with the added Merge pathway were able to sing even more baroque melodies.
The first chimpanzee imbued with the missing ingredient was named Lady. There was great media interest at her birth, and several papers were written on a series of hiccups she produced in the first few minutes of her life, with bitter disputes over whether there were syntactic dependencies between them. Lady was given an environment positively brimming with language. She had structured lessons and training schemes to teach her to use a special set of symbols on an electronic tablet. She was played tapes of people speaking in all kinds of language. She was given brightly coloured plastic alphabet letters to play with. In time, she dutifully learned to complete a set of tasks in exchange for her favourite snack, Marmite. These included the standard battery of test for syntactic ability, such as recognising grammatical dependencies, spotting sequences that did not conform to the rules and filling in blanks. Everyone agreed that Lady’s ability to process language was well above the average chimpanzee’s grasp, even if her taste in food did betray her primitive ancestry, and the project was hailed as a big success.
The pinnacle of Lady’s career was to be a live hyper-cast interview with super-star linguist Vastion La Quana himself. La Quana had learned the symbol language and launched the interview by welcoming Lady to the exclusive club of language users, and thanked her for showing us to ourselves and, since she was the first non-human who had the ability to express her desires through language, whether she would like to claim a prize for such an audacious success. Lady replied by requesting a Marmite sandwich, which greatly amused the audience and caused La Quana to quip that he had not expected the Merge pathway to also be the key to wit, as well as language. La Quana’s next question was about Lady’s childhood - what was it like to grow up in the language lab? Lady replied again by requesting a Marmite sandwich. Slightly flustered, La Quana shrugged this off and continued to ask about Lady’s interests. This time, Lady requested a peanut butter sandwich, but it was clear that something was wrong. What followed was an agonising 30 minutes of questions ranging from whether she considered herself human or felt alienated from her species, her interpretations of art, the nature of reality and her opinions on various political situations, all of which were met with requests for Marmite sandwiches. The whole event was a big embarrassment for everyone.
Over the following months, the failure was investigated. The researchers found that Lady could give eloquent and fascinating answers to the questions La Quana had given her, but this required a strenuous regime of reward-based training. It slowly became clear that Lady had the ability to use language, but absolutely no desire to do so outside of getting what she wanted. In fact, while they had demonstrated that the Merge pathway could indeed explain an ability to process complex syntax, it couldn’t explain why humans actually bothered to invent and use language at all.
Once this was realised, all the theorists who had been silenced by the apparent magic bullet of Merge came out of the spacewoodwork again. They argued that Lady’s behaviour had proven nothing about the origins of language, nor about what was the crucial ingredient for its emergence in a species. In fact, Lady had been handed a fully-formed language with resources and incentives to learn it, which just pushed the problem back one step.
A new line of inquiry was suggested: was it possible to induce the organic emergence of language in another species? That is, could you take a pod of dolphins or a mischief of mice or a cornucopia of sea slugs, and make a change to their environment or social structure or physiology that would cause them to start using a complex language of their own accord? The race was now on to identify which factor was the key to the emergence of language.
Researchers turned to species with quicker development like mice or songbirds. The Merge enthusiasts started with communities of mice pumped with Merge, but they never bothered to flex their newly found cognitive abilities and the genetic ability never came under selection and washed out within a few generations. A company of finches were given the magical treatment, and indeed their songs became more complex, but they never actually used these new forms to mean anything except “Hey Lady, look at me!”. On the other hand, proponents of cultural evolution tried setting the right social environment. Food was made plentiful, pairs were given time alone, there were even experiments with mood lighting. However, all this usually meant was that the subjects spent all their time sleeping, eating and fucking. Others designed the environment so that getting food required animals to co-operate, or made survival dependent on the development of tools. This resulted in a lot of dead mice.
Still, the research continued, with combinations of factors being tried in different species (and a few attempts at cross-species emergence). This, inevitably, brought all the squabbles about what constituted linguistic ability or complex language right back into the open, but now with whole new dimensions for disagreement. This meant that language emergence studies had become a huge field with many large sub-areas of inquiry. The expert in the area of social emergence of language in mice was Professor Aditi C. Sura, who had just mistaken Arianne for a ventilation engineer.
“Er, no, I’m Dr. Karen Arianne. I’m here for the grant review.” Arianne said.
“Oh, please forgive me.” Sura said, almost casually sweeping a stack of data drives off her desk into a bin as she reached out to shake Arianne’s hand.
“You’re just in time to see a crisis moment.” Sura continued, “Please, come and have a look.”
As Sura lead her to the viewing window, Arianne reminded herself that she was supposed to be an evaluator.
“This is the testing area?” she said, trying to sound like a law enforcer questioning a suspect.
“Yes, it’s a CAFCA grant level-24 funded facility. We are currently halfway through chain 3 of a 100 generation, 50-subject trial.”
The testing area really was like a miniature town. Narrow paths wound between mouse-sized hills with tiny terr
aced alcoves clinging to the steep sides. In some of the wider rifts there were long, low shelters with grey rooves. Dotted here and there throughout the valleys, metal wheels with mice running in them were held high above the ground up by tall, red steel frames.
“What’s the emergence condition?” asked Arianne.
“We’re interested in the emergence of language through diffusion of social tension. The environment provided for the subjects here is relatively rich - they don’t need to struggle to survive and most of the time they don’t even need to come into contact with each other. However, we provide environmental and ecological conditions that provide occasional crisis moments, which are conditions for the necessity of intense social proximity in a restricted space. A key element to lower stress in this situation is to signal non-threatening intentions that are also non-committal. We believe that complex communication is the only tool that can achieve this, and furthermore, that the crisis conditions themselves will be the basis for grounding an initial language.”
Arianne looked out onto the bleak landscape. Indeed, the artificial rain was herding the mice towards the shelters, where they were nervously jostling for space.
“So,” Arianne said “they’ll feel so awkward that they’ll start talking about the weather?”
“Essentially, yes. But the testing area is just one part of what makes our research possible. We also have a state of the art Recording system.”
“Oh? Please tell me more.” Arianne knew all about cultural simulation recording systems, of course, but wanted to keep Sura talking. It struck her that it would also be quite a convenient exposition for anyone listening into their conversation.
“Of course!” Sura smiled “We want to observe many generations of mice in our micro-societies, and we want to run several different lineages. The current experiment will involve over 100 generations. The problem with this is that mice have a lifetime of about 2 or 3 years, so the experiment takes some time. We have ten lineages working simultaneously in various labs, but it still takes more than a human lifetime for a project to complete. The answer, of course, is chryosleep - we could just wait in cold storage until the experiment is over. However, we also want to observe the experiment as it’s running. Initially we observed the experiment for a short time, then went into chryosleep for 2 years, then observed another short time, then went to sleep and so on. However, conventional preparation for chryosleep takes some time and is very distracting for our research- it’s like needing to go to the toilet twenty times a day.”
Sura made a tinkling laughter sound and Arianne attempted to do so too.
“Our solution” continued Sura “was a state of the art recording system. It works much like seamless business-class commuting.”
Arianne attempted a blasé nod.
“We go about our usual procedures” continued Sura, “but every so often we’re rendered unconscious with our posture recorded. We’re automatically put into chryosleep in our own in-house chambers”
Sura pointed behind Arianne. The operations center was separated from a small antechamber by a glass wall with a glass door set into it. On the other side of the antechamber was a door leading to the main hub complex, and along one wall was a set of chryochambers, sitting like iron golems in a meditative sleep.
“We stay in cold storage there for a year or two, then we’re reset into our previous position and put back online. The result is a seamless montage of the experiment unfolding before our eyes.”
Sura ended with a flourishing gesture towards the testing area, but Arianne was looking at the around the spartan operations centre with a puzzled look.
“Wait, where do the chryo droids come from?” asked Arianne.
“From outside”, said Sura, pointing through the large window to the antechamber.
“Can they catch you before you fall?”
“Ah, no - when you get zapped, the robot arms catch you.”
Arianne followed Sura’s nod to a pair of robotic arms packed away on the roof. Each had a large claw on a telescopic tube with three joints.
“Then the droids come in, scoop you up and place you in a chryo-chamber. Then, when the mice have progressed a bit, and it’s time for you to come back online, the droids wheel you in and the robot arms keep you in your previous position before you’re zapped awake again.”
“What happens if there’s more than two of you in the lab?”
Sura was staring at the robot arms.
“Hmm? Oh, the arms juggle you. Er … Dr. Arianne, do the arms look like they’re moving to you?”
Arianne turned to look at the arms again.
“Not really”
“Wait - look closely”
Arianne was about to protest again, but the arms suddenly shifted very slightly. A few seconds later, they shifted again - only a fraction of a degree, but as quick as lightning.
“Are they supposed to be moving?” asked Arianne.
“No, I have nothing scheduled.”
The two exchanged worried looks. Sura pointed to the table next to Arianne.
“Pass me my key pass - let’s go check if there’s a problem.”
Arianne picked up the key pass on the desk next to her and tossed it towards Sura. Too late, Sura shouted
“No!”
The key pass disappeared in mid air. Arianne blinked in surprise.
“What happened?”
Sura was surveying the floor around her. She looked up wide-eyed.
“I think a recording session has started.”
Arianne’s left eye twitched.