1n1REzE

Peter Watts 238 Blindsight
like undulating backbones. Cryptic patterns played slowly across
their cuticles.
"Supposing it's just— instinct," I suggested. "Flounders hide
against their background pretty well, but they don't think about it."
"Where are they going to get that instinct from, Keeton How is
it going to evolve Saccades are an accidental glitch in
mammalian vision. Where would scramblers have encountered
them before now" Cunningham shook his head. "That thing, that
thing Amanda's robot fried— it developed that strategy on its own,
on the spot. It improvised."
The word intelligent barely encompassed that kind of
improvisation. But there was something else in Cunningham's
face, some deeper distress nested inside what he'd already told me.
"What" I asked.
"It was stupid," he said. "The things these creatures can do, it
was just dumb."
"How do you mean"
"Well it didn't work, did it Couldn't keep it up in front of more
than one or two of us."
Because people's eyes don't flicker in synch, I realized. Too
many witnesses stripped it of cover.
"—many other things it could have done," Cunningham was
saying. "They could've induced Anton's or, or an agnosia: then we
could have tripped over a whole herd of scramblers and it wouldn't
even register in our conscious minds. Agnosias happen by
accident, for God's sake. If you've got the senses and reflexes to
hide between someone's saccades, why stop there Why not do
something that really works"
"Why do you think" I asked, reflexively nondirective.
"I think that first one was—you know it was a juvenile, right
Maybe it was just inexperienced. Maybe it was stupid, and it made
a bad decision. I think we're dealing with a species so far beyond
us that even their retarded children can rewire our brains on the fly,
and I can't tell you how fucking scared that should make you."
I could see it in his topology. I could hear it in his voice. His
nerveless face remained as calm as a corpse.
"We should just kill them now," he said.