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Peter Watts 188 Blindsight
"A distributed telescope array," Bates murmured.
"A chromatophore underlies each eye—the pigment's some kind
of cryptochrome so it's probably involved in vision, but it can also
diffuse or contract through the local tissue. That implies dynamic
pigment patterns, like a squid or a chameleon."
"Background pattern-matching" Bates asked. "Would that
explain why Siri couldn't see it"
Cunningham opened a new window and played grainy looped
imagery of Siri Keeton and his unseen dance partner. The creature
I hadn't noticed was ominously solid to the cameras: a floating
discoid twice as wide as my own torso, arms extending from its
edges like thick knotted ropes. Patterns rippled across its surface
in waves; sunlight and shadow playing on a shallow seabed.
"As you can see, the background doesn't match the pattern,"
Cunningham said. "It's not even close."
"Can you explain Siri's blindness to it" Sarasti said.
"I can't," Cunningham admitted. "It's beyond ordinary crypsis.
But Rorschach makes you see all sorts of things that aren't there.
Not seeing something that is there might come down to essentially
the same thing."
"Another hallucination" I asked.
Another shrug while Cunningham sucked smoke. "There are
many ways to fool the human visual system. It's interesting that
the illusion failed when multiple witnesses were present, but if you
want a definitive mechanism you'll have to give me more to work
with than that." He stabbed his cigarette hand at the crisped
remains.
"But—" James took a breath, bracing herself— "We're talking
about something... sophisticated, at least. Something very
complex. A great deal of processing power."
Cunningham nodded again. "I'd estimate nervous tissue
accounts for about thirty percent of body mass."
"So it's intelligent." Her voice was almost a whisper.
"Not remotely."
"But—thirty percent—"
"Thirty percent motor and sensory wiring." Another drag.
"Much like an octopus; an enormous number of neurons, but half