The Evolution of Bruno Littlemore - Benjamin Hale [22]
I remember a device consisting of two wooden stands connected by a series of parallel metal rods, each arranged equidistantly from the next in a lateral row, with brightly colored beads strung along the rods that could be pushed in either direction. This I would later learn was called an abacus. I remember a large soft ball made of red rubber that could easily be squeezed, rolled, thrown, or bounced. I remember a device shaped like a giant bowling pin, painted to resemble an animate being. The being wore a blue suit and a horror-stricken expression—a gaping mouth and eyes stretched wide in fear—and seemed to be holding a piece of paper in front of his torso, on which was a clumsy drawing—which the being himself had presumably drawn—of a crude blue circle encircling a red dot, making a target. One could effortlessly push the being over, but he would always spring back up, recalcitrant, returning at once to an upright position. I remember a complex device made of brilliant green plastic: it was shaped roughly like a cloverleaf, with four prongs sticking out of a central hub, which featured several rows of tiny holes that made strange noises when the device was being operated; at the end of each of the four prongs was a larger hole. This device came with a hammer made of brown plastic, designed to mimic the look—but not the feeling—of a mallet fashioned of coarsely grained wood. During play, a brown plastic creature would emerge from one of the four holes. The creature looked like a brown lump and had eyes and a nose and a mouth from which two white square teeth exuded, and it wore a little red mining helmet with a headlamp on the front. When one smote the creature with the faux-wooden plastic hammer, it would vanish into the bowels of the machine, only to be replaced immediately by another creature, similar but not identical, from another hole. Each of the brown lump-creatures had a distinct personality: one was clearly a “nerd,” with glasses and a timid expression; one was female, with lipstick and long eyelashes; and one was a mentally deficient brown lump who wore his mining helmet backward. You could smite these creatures with the plastic hammer all you pleased, but another would always rise up, Hydra-like, to take the place of the last. The pattern, if there was one, was wildly unpredictable, and this process continued ad infinitum or until the smiter grew weary of smiting. This device I would later learn was called a Whack-a-Mole system, because the brown plastic lumps represented the subterranean animals, moles (hence the mining helmets), and the holes represented mole holes.
These and other such objects lay on the squishy blue mat in the corner of the room. I was encouraged to manipulate them—and manipulate them I did—in a zealous frenzy—in feverish abandon.
VI
But there is also another, chillier memory from that day embedded limpidly in my brain. It surely occurred on that first day; I don’t see how it could have not. The afternoon had passed, the rain had ceased, and I had been out of confinement—relatively speaking—all day, playing, interacting with the humans, exploring the laboratory. And the human beings one by one began to exit the room and not come back. They exchanged words with one another, and as each human left, he or she would make a certain utterance and perform a certain physical sign that I guessed to be a gesture signaling polite departure: to hold up a hand and move it around. Different people performed this sign in different ways, but it was always interpreted as containing more or less the same meaning: “I am about to leave and not return, but do not worry, I am not upset with you.” As each of the humans left they made a variation