PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 250 Blindsight
surface: Stretch and Clench in their adjoining cells, rendered in
splitscreen. Cryptic vitals defaced little grids below each image.
The distortion distracted me. I looked for a corrected feed in
ConSensus, came up empty. Sarasti read my expression: "Closed
circuit."
By now the scramblers would have seemed sick and ragged
even to a virgin audience. They floated near the middle of their
respective compartments, segmented arms drifting aimlessly back
and forth. Membranous patches of—skin, I suppose—were
peeling from the cuticles, giving them a fuzzy, decomposing
aspect.
"The arms move continuously," Sarasti remarked. "Robert says
it assists in circulation."
I nodded, watching the display.
"Creatures that move between stars can't even perform basic
metabolic functions without constant flailing." He shook his head.
"Inefficient. Primitive."
I glanced at the vampire. He remained fixed on our captives.
"Obscene," he said, and moved his fingers.
A new window opened on the wall: the Rosetta protocol,
initializing. Kilometers away, microwaves flooded the holding
tanks.
I reminded myself: No interference. Only observation.
However weakened their condition, the scramblers were not yet
indifferent to pain. They knew the game, they knew the rules; they
dragged themselves to their respective panels and played for
mercy. Sarasti had simply invoked a step-by-step replay of some
previous sequence. The scramblers went through it all again,
buying a few moments' intermittent respite with the same old
proofs and theorems.
Sarasti clicked, then spoke: "They regenerate these solutions
faster than they did before. Do you think they're acclimated to the
microwaves?"
Another readout appeared on the display; an audio alarm began
chirping somewhere nearby. I looked at Sarasti, and back at the
readout: a solid circle of turquoise backlit by a pulsing red halo.
The shape meant atmospheric anomaly. The color meant oxygen.