(From the transcript of the interrogation of Dr. Joseph Wilson. Assistant researcher assigned to Project Amanita towards the conclusion of the program.)
Windswept windows and creaking metal. That’s all I remember of the flight to the facility. I must have half-slept through the whole thing. We, the other new assistants and I, boarded our shuttle to the surface early that morning and we probably made it to the facility by midday. The pilot said a blizzard on the surface almost kept us from landing but Dr. Castaldo wouldn’t have it, saying he wouldn’t tolerate another delay. That really made my day. It’s always nice to see a nervous pilot. The Doctor at least had the nerve to meet us when we landed. I can still feel the nasty smile he gave us, like his teeth were peering between the fur lining of his hood. His sense of humor peaked out right behind his teeth after he felt like we had lined up and waited in the hangar long enough. “I hope you all are enjoying the weather. . .” as if there wasn’t ice creeping down the walls.
“You all should have already received your tasks for the day. I’d like you all to get started immediately. You will want to be under your blankets by nightfall. The temperatures have been just brutal this summer.”
So, we all did just that. Filed into the facility. Focused on our instructions the best we could and hoped the night would go by quicker than the day.
The next morning the doctor pulled me away from my console. This may have been the only time I felt thankful towards the man. I was already getting tired of reviewing subject muscle elasticity and calcium levels and blood iron content and every other inane measure of physiological status for a group of freaks I hadn’t even seen yet. He directed me to walk with him down one of the corridors towards the subject holding cells as he spoke to me.
“You will be reassigned to work directly with subject four. It’s a male adolescent Betazoid. . .”
“I’ve never heard. . .”
“It doesn’t matter. It’s an alien, remarkably human but nevertheless alien. Subjects three and four are the only ones of their kind in the facility. There aren’t many of them left and their abilities are not the most potent so there isn’t much to be concerned about.”
Dr. Castaldo continued, handing me a PADD with more information he was just going to tell me anyway.
“Subject Four’s extra sensory perception is acute, but the real excellence of this specimen lies in its physicality. If the projections are accurate then the creature will be an ideal candidate for graduation. Tall and strong enough to be an impressive agent for the empire never mind the subjects predictive capabilities but most importantly. . . apparently human at first glance. Many of the other subjects are too obviously alien to serve under a respected Terran officer without suspicion but this one, if we can guarantee its loyalty, would be perfect.”
“You aren’t worried that ‘respected’ officers may be unnerved putting their safety in the hands of a thing like that?”
“That is why we need to guarantee its loyalty. If we can clear it on that count, then any benefits should far outweigh the natural risks.”
So, I began working closely with subject four. At first the creature seemed. . . unremarkable. It had evidently spent its whole life in the facility. It was pale and hunched but nevertheless physically impressive for something raised in hell’s only frozen corner. I thought that still left it leagues behind any well-bred human soldier but eventually its performance in subject trials proved me wrong. It became something of a competition among us assistant researchers to see which of the subjects would outperform others. I guess it really started as a way to downplay the. . . unnerving elements of our work. I remember one of the earlier interactions I had with subject four. It began as a simple ESP examination. I was supposed to ask the subject a series of questions about an unseen variable. In this case it was three hogs kept behind separate closed doors but before I could even ask subject four anything he began to reply. It went something like:
“Behind each numbered door is a pig. Which. . .”
“Number two.”
“Excuse me?”
“Number two is the hungriest. You fed it three days ago. Number one is the next hungriest. You fed it one day ago. The third is never hungry. Dr. Castaldo tells you to always feed it. He wants to eat it. But you want to eat it too. You’re jealous of him.”
“That’s enough subject four.”
“I know you hate it here.”
I mean he. . . it was right but that didn’t make me more comfortable having that thing poking through my head. Never mind personal concerns about privacy, how are you supposed to keep an animal in a cage when it knows the lock combination? Dr. Castaldo had practically given up on keeping secrets from the subjects. At a certain point you could have asked any one of them for any detail about the project and they’d know. To be fair, I once asked him why he wasn’t worried about escapees and he looked at me and asked “Where would they go? I just have to know I can blow the shuttles from my office and this planet is frozen solid and they know it too.”
So, I continued working with subject four for probably five months until winter came. Now in all fairness the temperature on the planet didn’t fluctuate that much over that time but that may only be because the planet could not possibly get colder and still be habitable. That was when Dr. Castaldo finally introduced me to his famous “the chicken or the egg” test. It was a form of competition between the subjects. This on its own was not uncommon. Plenty of the assistants preceding my arrival had devised competitions to pit the subjects against each other but this one was the doctor’s own design. It began with a simple question: what happens when two combatants can read each other’s intentions? Every first-year academy cadet knows deception is the essence of war and every instance of combat is something like a conversation between two liars but what happens when two fighters can’t lie to each other? You may say “then it becomes a test of reflexes” and I would say “sure,” but we are not talking about two people who know all each other’s tricks. We are talking about things that immediately know each other’s intentions, maybe even before the mind becomes consciously aware of them. How do they fight each other? What does that fight even look like? Who wins? Does it become a game of reaction or of prediction. In short, which comes first?
“The chicken or the egg.”
Dr. Castaldo had run this test multiple times before I arrived, but he was always dissatisfied with the results. He argued that the results of each test were always tainted by a mismatch in abilities either because of differences in experience or cognition or age or species or some other uncertainty. This was until he decided that subjects three and four were ready. The two were uniquely qualified for this test. They were practically a perfect match along every metric. Species, age, temperament, reaction time, vision, everything but sex which in this case made little difference as Dr. Castaldo had opted to make this iteration of the test a kind of stand-off out of one of those ancient Western movies. Both subjects were taken out into the facility’s central courtyard, where two phasers had been placed on the tables on opposite sides of the courtyard. The doctor and I watched the test from an enclosed viewing platform overlooking the courtyard. He then announced over the facility intercom.
“Subjects, you are to take up the weapons before you and kill the other before they kill you. You may begin at the tone.”
So a single note rang out over the speaker and then. . . nothing. The two of them stood there for a moment. Then at once they both took the weapons, perfectly in sync. Then they stood there for longer. . . much longer. Arms out, guns pointed at each other and. . . nothing. Nothing for minutes. The whole thing felt like hours to us and what I’d give to know how long it felt for the subjects. Dr. Castaldo was practically at the edge of his seat until he slowly rose out of his chair and leaned forward on the console, moving like the subjects were zoo animals he didn’t want to startle. He was muttering to himself the whole time too.
“Fascinating. . . just fascinating. . .”
And I have to say I even started to get caught up in the tension. I thought the whole thing would be over and done in a second or two and after it wasn’t, it was hard not to buy into the doctor’s curiosity. My first thought was that they were both stalling but you could see it in their eyes something was going on in their heads. Plus, it was already late enough in the day that it was only going to get colder the longer the game went so it wasn’t in their best interest to wait too long anyway. So, we watched and waited looking for the slightest change. You can check the old recordings yourselves. The two were perfectly still even in the frigid conditions, which was practically miraculous on its own never mind whatever all-out war was going on behind their eyes. Then there was a twitch. The tiniest twitch in subject three’s trigger finger and then four shot clean into her stomach. I had to go back to the recordings to catch what had happened, but Dr. Castaldo saw it immediately, the eyes, the twitch, everything. He said over the intercom:
“Congratulations subject four, you’ve graduated. . .”
Then he said to me that four will be prepped for reassignment tomorrow as he left the viewing platform. I stayed for a few moments to watch four through the glass. He was on his knees in front of three, just staring at her. Maybe she was still alive somehow, I don’t know. I just called for someone to take them both back to their cells.
The next day, Dr. Castaldo stopped me and asked me to take four his food. That was strange, normally one of the lower staff fed the subjects, but he insisted, said it was part of four’s “graduation celebrations” and he handed me a tray with a lid. I wasn’t in the mood to fight the doctor on the issue so I took the tray and went to four. I stopped at the same deadbolted steel door I had seen every day for months, slide it open, and there was four, sitting on the floor. I handed him the tray and he popped open the lid. It looked like pork belly. Four looked at it for a second and then up at me. We locked eyes and he said:
“It’s three.”