The screen blinks. Same shot as before, but two hours later. Paul awakens, turns over, sees its rear ejection, and looks toward the spooning trio, still asleep with their backs to Paul. Slowly, but steadily, Paul, on all fours, pushes the rear ejection toward John. John stirs. Paul drops to its belly and closes its eyes. A few moments later, Paul opens its eyes again. John remains asleep. Paul resumes pushing its rear ejection toward John until the rear ejection is just behind John’s rear, such that were a witness to arrive on the scene at this point, it would seem to him that John had been the one that rear-ejected while asleep.
Paul crawls back to the spot where it had been sleeping, sits there, and whistles. The spooning trio of Curios wakes with a start. Keith taps Mick on the shoulder, gestures at John. Mick looks at John, pokes John on the shoulder, points at the ejection. Paul, on its feet now, is also pointing at the ejection, and whistling. John, at last, turns, sees the ejection, leaps to its feet, kicks the ejection across the nest, at Paul, then runs at Paul and kicks Paul in the knee. Paul grabs its knee and falls. John heads to the center of the nest, lies down alone. Paul goes to John, attempts to spoon. John shrugs Paul off. Paul tries to spoon again. John shrugs Paul off. Paul turns over. They lie back-to-back.
The screen blinks. Second tableau. “John, itself,” Maya says, “deactivated inside the CureSleeve—so sad—midway through the following day, after having gone seven consecutive nights without producing a rear ejection. It did leave one behind in the sleeve, however, presumably in the course of deactivating. That one, I did think to photograph.”
The screen blinks. A photo of a lowercase-gamma-shaped rear ejection resting in the middle of a human palm appears onscreen.
After six seconds, the screen blinks again. The word CONCLUSION—green letters, black screen, as before—flashes three times.
Once more, the screen blinks. Second tableau. “It would seem, as I have already said,” Maya says, “that my hypothesis has been confirmed: that Curios are capable of understanding the principle of being recorded. And so it would seem that I was justified in having made the inductive and, perhaps, intuitive leaps that I mentioned having made in my Introduction. Id est, it would seem that Curios see the images on a television screen much the way we humans do; it would seem that they recognize themselves on television screens, which would in turn necessitate that they possess a sense of self; and it would seem that Curios are capable of the kinds of relatively complicated acts of logical deduction that would enable them to understand that it is by way of my pointing a camcorder at them that I am able, later on, to view images of them on a television screen.
“It would seem, it would seem, it would seem, I say. I stress the word ‘seem,’ because there is another explanation that seems no less reasonable, but had not occurred to me until only very recently. Namely: it could be that the original John, Paul, Mick, and Keith, rather than understanding the principle of being recorded, simply developed a powerful association between me, Maya Mehta, and the camcorder with which I taped them every day during their weeks of pattycake training. More precisely, it could very well be that these Curios, which are, as all Curios are, inhibited from rear-ejecting in front of human beings, learned, by having so often seen me with the camcorder in front of my eye, to think that the camcorder was a part of me. If this were the case, it would follow for them to think, upon looking up at the ceiling of their PillowNest and seeing the camcorder, that I, myself, were present in their PillowNest.
“Were there time before the science fair deadline, I would perform further research in order to determine whether this were the case. Here is how I would do it: I would clone a third generation of John, Paul, Mick, and Keith, train them to perform the pattycake routine as previously, and tape the training just as I had taped the first generation’s, which should be sufficent to cause them to develop an association between me, Maya Mehta, and the camcorder, but I would not show the tapes I made to this third generation, which would prevent them from being able to understand that the camcorder recorded images of them. Then I would place the Curios in a camcorder-rigged PillowNest for a week, and I would see whether their rear ejections were inhibited. If their rear ejections were inhibited, the hypothesis that Curios are capable of understanding the principle of being recorded would not be confirmed.
“So, in conclusion, my study, although all kinds of useful and very fascinating thoughts and data were produced and recorded in the course of its undertaking, is inconclusive.”
The screen blinks. The word REFLECTIONS—green letters, black screen, as before—flashes three times.
The screen blinks. Second tableau. “To close my presentation, I would like to add a couple of final thoughts,” says Maya. “First, I will, shortly, conduct more research myself. At the very least, I will clone a third generation of my Curios and perform the research I proposed in the Conclusion section of this presentation. Maybe that will be part of my science fair project next year!
“Beyond that, however, there are topics of research my present study has given rise to, for which I do not currently possess the means, the training, or, perhaps, even the innate ability to study on my own. Without further hesitation, then:
“I have given much thought to what Paul did, upon waking up to find it had rear-ejected in its sleep. I have wondered: What could Paul have been thinking when it moved its rear ejection behind John’s bottom? Did Paul think that John would believe that John had rear-ejected in its sleep, or was Paul, perhaps in response to some embarrassment it felt at having rear-ejected in its sleep, attempting to save face by simply making a clownish joke? And if a clownish joke, was the joke made for me, for John, for Mick and Keith, for itself, for any combination of the aforementioned, or for all of us? And what—assuming Curios can even be said to be embarrassed, or to possess any emotions at all—what precisely was the source of the embarrassment? As you can see in the footage of the other cures rear-ejecting, Curios, though they appear never to willfully rear-eject while being looked at directly by other Curios, are not inhibited from rear-ejecting by one another’s mere presence. So while it would seem doubtful that Paul could have been embarrassed before John for having rear-ejected in John’s presence, it does seem possible that Paul was embarrassed before John for having rear-ejected beneath the eye of the camcorder. Does that sound strange? It does not sound all that strange to me. I know that there are things I do in front of my family for which I am not embarrassed, but were I to do these things in front of outsiders, I would be embarrassed, and were my family to learn that I’d done these things in front of outsiders, I’d be even further embarrassed, you see? An example might be walking around with uncombed hair, or to be wearing a dress with a stain on it. Could it not be the same for Curios and rear ejection in front of human beings?
“Then again, maybe I am strange. I have mentioned my shyness…
“But as you can imagine, it is for many of the same reasons that I could not design a study to discover whether Curios are truly shy that I cannot come up with a way to design a study that could determine whether Curios have a sense of humor, or irony, or a sense of embarrassment, or pride. Maybe someone else could, though. I hope so.