Teuthology V

Teuthology IV
Teuthology VI

Script for today:

Page 13

Close-up view of a single neuron.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): …remains characteristically human.

View of one of the octopuses cowering in the corner of its tank.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Something of human mental life might survive…these poor girls might actually be aware of what has happened to them.

View of Edith, standing by the side of the glass of the tank, a sheet of something up to the glass. The octopus inside is reaching out with one of its arms and touching the glass.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): It is very easy to devise simple behavioral tests that seem to confirm this.

View from inside the octopus’s tank. We wee Edith dimly through the glass, and more clearly, what she is holding up against it. It is a family portrait, containing a mother, a father, a teenaged girl, and at least one little brother and sister. The octopus is grazing one arm up against the glass.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): Octopuses have excellent eyesight, but no organs for shedding tears.

Edith lying in bed in her hotel room. The room is dark. A bedside digital clock reads 3:03. Edith’s eyes are wide open.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): What a pity.

Another view of Edith looking down at her work table. It is now something of a mess, covered in papers and notes. Her shoulders are slightly slumped.

CAPTION (Edith thinking): In principle the process should be reversible.

Page 14

Edith, silhouetted against a giant blue glowing screen filled with data.

CAPTION (Edith thinking, upper left): But there’s a problem…

CAPTION (Edith thinking, lower right): In order to even have a prayer of doing it successfully we need a lot of biochemical pathway data about how the process ran in the first place.

In the foreground, Dr. Sin is calmly running a detachable hard drive over an electromagnet. In the background, a SWAT officer is pointing an assault rifle at Dr. Sin.

SWAT Officer: Drop it, motherfucker!

CAPTION (Edith thinking): And Dr. Sin seems to have destroyed that just before capture.

View of Edith, sitting at her work table. It is dark. Her face is illuminated by the glow of the computer’s screen.

CAPTION (Edith writing): It would seem that the only way we could get that data back would be…

Same panel as before, except that now Edith is staring into space with a shocked expression.

A view of the cruciform gurney we saw before, except that the room is very dark.

Page 15

Upper body view of Shackleford, who is looking back at us with a shocked expression of his own.

SHACKLEFORD: That’s insane, Professor Sterling.

Long view of a work/conference table in the industrial space. Edith sits at one end, Shackleford is half rising out of his chair at the other. Between them, Chen. Edith is sitting with her arms folded. Shackleford is pointing angrily across the table at Edith.

EDITH: I had no idea you military types were so sentimental about experimental subject well-being.

SHACKLEFORD: Cut the crap, Sterling. We have ethics standards at DOD. This is real life, not Dr. Strangelove.

Half view of Edith, who is holding up one of the dossiers for us to see. She has an angry expression.

EDITH: You bring me in here, Admiral. You wave this in front of me with a story that would draw tears from a stone.

View of a young woman’s face, contorted in terrible pain.

CAPTION (Edith speaking): It’s not often you run into victims who would have been luckier to meet a serial killer than what they did meet.

Another view a young woman’s bare midriff. Octopus arms are beginning to sprout from it.

CAPTION (Edith speaking): And then you expect me to just walk away from the one thing I can think of that might undo all this?

Since Admiral Shackelford brings it up, we really must pay photographic tribute to Dr. Strangelove, who’s one of the best known mad scientists of all times.

(Found at the blog The Golden State.)  “A ratio of perhaps 10 to 1 would…”  Oh, never mind.