1n1REzE

Peter Watts 218 Blindsight
"Indeed Then what are you so happy about Don't you know
what this means"
Sudden prickling on the back of my neck. I looked around; I
looked up. Jukka Sarasti had appeared in the center of the drum,
eyes gleaming, teeth bared, watching us.
Cunningham followed my gaze, and nodded. "I'd wager it
does..."
There was no way to learn what they'd whispered across that
wall. We could recover the audio easily enough, parse every tick
and tap they'd exchanged, but you can't decipher a code without
some idea of content. We had patterns of sound that could have
meant anything. We had creatures whose grammar and syntax—if
their mode of communication even contained such attributes—
were unknown and perhaps unknowable. We had creatures smart
enough to talk, and smart enough to hide that fact. No matter how
much we wanted to learn, they were obviously unwilling to teach
us.
Not without—how had I put it— negative reinforcement.
It was Jukka Sarasti who made the decision. We did it on his
orders, as we did everything else. But after the word had come
down— after Sarasti had disappeared in the night and Bates had
retreated down the spine and Robert Cunningham had returned to
his studies at the back of the drum—I was the one Susan James
was left with. The first to speak the vile thought aloud, the official
witness to posterity. I was the one she looked at, and looked away
from, her surfaces hard and refractory.
And then she started.
This is how you break down the wall:
Start with two beings. They can be human if you like, but that's
hardly a prerequisite. All that matters is that they know how to talk
among themselves.
*
*