Animal Testing

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But just because its happening on a distant planet shouldn’t let us ignore their suffering, professor.“

It was the first time Garrison had gotten corralled in to teaching a mass psych 101 class – they let the untenured associates run the day care. But when the department chair dared him in to betting his jacks against an off suit 2-7 (winning that corner office would have been sweet!) the stiff-necked old professor ended up the river and the department chair had a boat.

“Well young lady animal experiments have a long history in the medical field. Without it, mass psychology would still be in its infancy. “

“But doctor, to let so many millions of the creatures die? Just to see what pushes their little primate buttons?”

“We’ve learned some amazing things. How half the indigenous population can be stampeded in to mass insanity with some remarkably small nudges”

Garrison activated the class screen and up came his title card. This was actually a good way to segue in to the lesson he’d planned. The letters shimmering in the space above his lectern : “The Final Experiment”

“For centuries we’ve been experimenting on the inhabitants of this lovely spot.” As he spoke images of the natural wonders of the distant planet sped by as indigenous sounds supplied the soundtrack. ”We had to stop, we knew they’re getting close to developing weapons that would drive them extinct. Actually, they were a lot closer than we thought as our last experiment had some rather unforeseen side effects. But we’ll get to that much later. Odds are they’ll be extinct in the wild in another century or so. Fortunately, they breed well in captivity. We’ll always have a steady supply for lab use.”

Up came images of their primitive cities. Nasty looking things, thought Garrison.

As they formed larger groups and created vast power imbalances between individuals, we ran what has since been dubbed “The Great Experiment”

The screen shimmered with the experiment’s central question: “How easily could they be pushed in to conflict in groups?”

He gave the students a moment to ponder the question, and then launched in to the elevator ride length answer: “Turns out it really didn’t take much. And once they started, we wanted to see if we could get them to just keep it going. But we didn’t need to do a thing. The fire kept burning”

Images of the sentient primates’ battlefields flashed by, as they pursued their slaughter with reckless abandon. It was a matter of great debate in the academic world but Garrison came down firmly on the side that they were vicious little things that were ready to fight for alpha status in a heartbeat, even if it was their last one.

“And now we get to our Final Experiment. The premise is simple: How much damage can a single one of them goad the rest to do? A random individual was selected.”

The image that came up at that point was not the right one. But Garrison wouldn’t know that for many years, until his book came out, to his great embarrassment. For weeks he would be an academic laughingstock. But at this point, he had no idea he was the victim of a grad student’s prank who’d switched the meta data on the image file. It was actually one of the primates who’d groomed itself to appear similar to their subject. Some weird social ritual that conferred status in the tribe. His fellow xenopsychologists had a field day with it

If he ever found the culprit, he’d hear screaming all right.

The selected subject had been darted and tagged not long after the end of the first great experiment ended. But this particular tag included a low-grade brain expansion module

“It’s charisma was scaled-up exponentially. Almost immediately it began to form a tribe as the alpha.”

“In a dozen years it controlled a not inconsiderable portion of the planet’s resources. A few more and half the population was trying to wipe out the other half. Ironically, they ended it all with the very kind of weapon that we knew meant we couldn’t keep doing mass experimentation. Our mass experiments were over for good.”

“But we continue to gather invaluable behavioral data at the individual level.”

Up came an image of a basement, bare except for a bucket and three metal bed frames. To each bed frame one of their young was chained to the bare metal. They varied in age but from what Garrison knew of the species they were young pups

“We have gained a fascinating understanding of violence triggers through this field work. By learning about the minds of these ‘humans’ we learn a great deal about ourselves, and this semester you’re going to discover just how much.”

In the image before the class, a powerfully built man had entered the basement. And across all those light years of space, Garrison heard all three children begin to scream.