PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 219 Blindsight
Separate them. Let them see each other, let them speak. Perhaps
a window between their cages. Perhaps an audio feed. Let them
practice the art of conversation in their own chosen way.
Hurt them.
It may take a while to figure out how. Some may shrink from
fire, others from toxic gas or liquid. Some creatures may be
invulnerable to blowtorches and grenades, but shriek in terror at
the threat of ultrasonic sound. You have to experiment; and when
you discover just the right stimulus, the optimum balance between
pain and injury, you must inflict it without the remorse.
You leave them an escape hatch, of course. That's the very point
of the exercise: give one of your subjects the means to end the
pain, but give the other the information required to use it. To one
you might present a single shape, while showing the other a whole
selection. The pain will stop when the being with the menu
chooses the item its partner has seen. So let the games begin.
Watch your subjects squirm. If—when—they trip the off switch,
you'll know at least some of the information they exchanged; and if
you record everything that passed between them, you'll start to get
some idea of how they exchanged it.
When they solve one puzzle, give them a new one. Mix things
up. Switch their roles. See how they do at circles versus squares.
Try them out on factorials and Fibonnaccis. Continue until Rosetta
Stone results.
This is how you communicate with a fellow intelligence: you
hurt it, and keep on hurting it, until you can distinguish the speech
from the screams.
Susan James—congenital optimist, high priestess of the Church
of the Healing Word, was best qualified to design and execute the
protocols. Now, at her command, the scramblers writhed. They
pulled themselves around their cages in elliptical loops, desperately
seeking any small corner free of stimulus. James had piped the
feed into ConSensus, although there was no mission-critical reason
for Theseus' whole crew to bear witness to the interrogation.
"Let them block it at their ends," she said quietly, "If they want
to."
For all his reluctance to accept that these were beings, intelligent