their heads
and torsos.
The video the scientists showed him had no sound, just a voice-over, but Control knew
from the records that an awful screaming had risen from the herded rabbits once the
first few had been driven across the border. A kind of keening and a mass panic. If
the video had continued, Control would have seen the last of the rabbits rebel so
utterly against being herded that they turned on the herders and fought, leaping to
bite and scratch … would have seen the white of the shields stained red, the researchers
so surprised that they mostly broke ranks and a good two hundred rabbits went missing.
The cameras were perhaps even less revealing. As if the abandoned rushes from an intense
movie battle scene, they simply showed the haunches and the underside of the hind
paws of desperately running rabbits and some herky-jerky landscape before everything
went dark. There were no video reports from rabbits that had crossed over the border,
although the escapees muddied the issue, the swamps on either side looking very similar.
The Southern Reach had spent a good amount of time in the aftermath tracking down
escapees to rule out that they were receiving footage from across the border.
Nor had the next expedition to Area X, sent in a week after the rabbit experiment,
found any evidence of white rabbits, dead or alive. Nor had any similar experiments,
on a far smaller scale, produced any results whatsoever. Nor had Control missed a
finicky note in one file by an ecologist about the event that read, “What the hell?
This is an invasive species. They would have contaminated Area X.” Would they have? Would whatever had created Area X have allowed that? Control
tried to push away a ridiculous image of Area X, years later, sending back a human-size
rabbit that could not remember anything but its function. Most of the magicians were
all snickering at inappropriate places anyway, as if showing him how they’d done their
most notorious trick. But he’d heard nervous laughter before; he was sure that, even
at such a remove, the video disturbed many of them.
Some of the individuals responsible had been fired and others reassigned. But apparently
adding the passage of time to a farce left you with an iconic image, because here
was the noble remnant of the science division, showing him with marked enthusiasm
what had been deemed an utter failure. They had more to show him—data and samples
from Area X under glass—but it all amounted to nothing more than what was already
in the files, information he could check later at his leisure.
In a way, Control didn’t mind seeing this video. It was a relief considering what
awaited him. The videos from the first expedition, the members of which had died,
save one survivor, would have to be reviewed later in the week as primary evidence.
But he also couldn’t shake the echo of a kind of frat-boy sensibility to the current
presentation, the underlying howl of “Look at this shit we sent out into the border!
Look at this stunt we pulled!” Pass the cheap beer. Do a shot every time you see a
white rabbit.
When Control left, they had all stood there in an awkward line, as if he were about
to take a photograph, and shook his hand, one by one. Only after he and Whitby were
back on the stairs, past the horrible black gloves, did he realize what was peculiar
about that. They had all stood so straight, and their expressions had been so serious.
They must have thought he was there to cull yet more from their department. That he
was there to judge them. Later still, scooping up some of the bugs from his desk on
his way to carry out a bad deed before calling the Voice, he wondered if instead they
were afraid of something else entirely.
* * *
Most of this Control told the Voice with a mounting sense of futility. Not a lot of
it made much sense or would be news; he was just pushing words around
and torsos.
The video the scientists showed him had no sound, just a voice-over, but Control knew
from the records that an awful screaming had risen from the herded rabbits once the
first few had been driven across the border. A kind of keening and a mass panic. If
the video had continued, Control would have seen the last of the rabbits rebel so
utterly against being herded that they turned on the herders and fought, leaping to
bite and scratch … would have seen the white of the shields stained red, the researchers
so surprised that they mostly broke ranks and a good two hundred rabbits went missing.
The cameras were perhaps even less revealing. As if the abandoned rushes from an intense
movie battle scene, they simply showed the haunches and the underside of the hind
paws of desperately running rabbits and some herky-jerky landscape before everything
went dark. There were no video reports from rabbits that had crossed over the border,
although the escapees muddied the issue, the swamps on either side looking very similar.
The Southern Reach had spent a good amount of time in the aftermath tracking down
escapees to rule out that they were receiving footage from across the border.
Nor had the next expedition to Area X, sent in a week after the rabbit experiment,
found any evidence of white rabbits, dead or alive. Nor had any similar experiments,
on a far smaller scale, produced any results whatsoever. Nor had Control missed a
finicky note in one file by an ecologist about the event that read, “What the hell?
This is an invasive species. They would have contaminated Area X.” Would they have? Would whatever had created Area X have allowed that? Control
tried to push away a ridiculous image of Area X, years later, sending back a human-size
rabbit that could not remember anything but its function. Most of the magicians were
all snickering at inappropriate places anyway, as if showing him how they’d done their
most notorious trick. But he’d heard nervous laughter before; he was sure that, even
at such a remove, the video disturbed many of them.
Some of the individuals responsible had been fired and others reassigned. But apparently
adding the passage of time to a farce left you with an iconic image, because here
was the noble remnant of the science division, showing him with marked enthusiasm
what had been deemed an utter failure. They had more to show him—data and samples
from Area X under glass—but it all amounted to nothing more than what was already
in the files, information he could check later at his leisure.
In a way, Control didn’t mind seeing this video. It was a relief considering what
awaited him. The videos from the first expedition, the members of which had died,
save one survivor, would have to be reviewed later in the week as primary evidence.
But he also couldn’t shake the echo of a kind of frat-boy sensibility to the current
presentation, the underlying howl of “Look at this shit we sent out into the border!
Look at this stunt we pulled!” Pass the cheap beer. Do a shot every time you see a
white rabbit.
When Control left, they had all stood there in an awkward line, as if he were about
to take a photograph, and shook his hand, one by one. Only after he and Whitby were
back on the stairs, past the horrible black gloves, did he realize what was peculiar
about that. They had all stood so straight, and their expressions had been so serious.
They must have thought he was there to cull yet more from their department. That he
was there to judge them. Later still, scooping up some of the bugs from his desk on
his way to carry out a bad deed before calling the Voice, he wondered if instead they
were afraid of something else entirely.
* * *
Most of this Control told the Voice with a mounting sense of futility. Not a lot of
it made much sense or would be news; he was just pushing words around
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