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Race to Revelation — On Your Mark

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(From the private journal of Dr. Ambrose Martel)

The past several weeks have been amazingly busy! I truly don’t know how I’ve managed to get by with so little sleep, but I wouldn’t have missed this for the world. To have intelligible, intelligent conversations with a cat–who would have thought it possible? Who knew, for instance, that cats have a quite well-developed mythos? Or that their caterwauling is more than mere noise, but actual songs and ballads? It’s been fascinating learning.

Of course, she doesn’t tell me everything I ask. She’s not that trusting of me–if, indeed, she trusts me at all. But I’ve learned a great deal from her, both in what she has said, and in what she has *not* said.

The time is coming to terminate this experiment, though. I’ve been able to make the process of brain transplantation work, and have seen that, in the short term at least, there appears to be no degradation of the cat brain’s processes and functioning–though I’m most anxious to examine the brain to be sure.

There is also the issue that the subject is advancing to the point where she can ask awkward questions. Just yesterday, she caught my attention, then pointed to herself and asked, “*Her* name? Before?” I did answer her question (though it took a few moments to remember the girl’s name–Lisa), as I didn’t see any harm in doing so. But if she has progressed to having some identification with the human, I’m sure it won’t be long before she asks me to explain what I’ve done to her…to them. And if she understands the answer, I don’t know how she will react.

——–

(Later)

Oh, my. Now I’m torn between wanting to crack open her skull *now* and seeing what’s happened inside, and keeping her alive as long as possible to let whatever-it-is develop further!

While conversing with the subject early this afternoon, she used a word that I know I hadn’t taught her–and she used it correctly. So I asked her, point-blank, if she had any explanation for why she was learning human speech so quickly. It took some coaxing, but she finally told me what she was experiencing. Something that she termed a “back-of-the-head instinct” was feeding her words and helping her learn. This same “back-of-the-head instinct” had also been helping her learn to move and walk in her new body.

During the transplant, I did indeed create neural connections between the cat brain and the human brain for areas such as motor skills, senses, and involuntary reactions such as heartbeat and breathing. But I did *not* create any connection to what was left of the human brain’s speech center. That the cat brain can now access that area means one of two things: either the neural connections already established are somehow accessing and carrying this additional information, or–and this is certainly the more intruiging possibility–the two brains are actually *creating* new neural connections.

Is it possible that the serum I created–the serum I used on the subject during the transplant operation, and for a week afterward, to ensure that the cat brain would not be attacked and rejected by the human system–has had a stimulating effect beyond that? I so want to learn the answer to this question, but the longer I leave her alive, the more time this phenomenon will have to develop, and the easier it will be to identify when I do dissect her.

Soon. Not yet, but soon.

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