Telephone

A warm summer breeze wafted through the open window of Scott’s ‘88 Toyota 4Runner, bringing with it a sudden whiff of lilacs. It lifted his spirits immensely and caused him to sigh with relief: grant meetings always went better when he was relaxed. He pulled into the parking lot at Brin Marine Research Center, noticed a vacant spot next to Prajakta’s car, and squeaked into it. Another sigh of relief. His power steering had needed adjustment a few weeks ago, as he had learned when he had accidentally scraped the whole side of the director’s BMW. But Prajakta’s Prius remained un-scraped, and so Scott killed his engine, gathered his backpack from the passenger seat, and strolled into the aggressively air-conditioned atrium, his good mood undiminished. He waved at the receptionist and started humming tunelessly as he stepped into the elevator. The six floors to his office gave him time to skim his presentation material one more time, making sure it was fresh in his mind. He was still reading through his notes as he exited the elevator and only looked up after nearly colliding with his office door. Scott shook himself briefly and went in. The familiar untidiness of his office was a relief after spending a week in a hotel room during his conference in Seattle. Setting down his backpack on the desk, he took out his laptop and the folder containing his presentation notes and went back out. There was no need to rush, but it would be nice to get to the conference room early in order to make sure everything was set up correctly.
The conference room was empty when he opened the door, although Scott did notice that someone, probably one of his lab assistants, had already set up a basket of fruit and a coffee dispenser. Scott poured himself a cup and did a circuit of the room, adjusting chairs and lowering the blinds. He then sat down, opened his laptop, and had just started scanning his opening slides when the door opened again, admitting a stocky young man in a suit, followed by an older woman in a grey blouse and a black skirt. Following these two, and closing the door behind the ensemble, was a young East Indian woman with an off center braid wearing a clean lab coat and carrying a briefcase.
Scott stood up and smiled, extending his hand to the older woman. “Ah, good morning Ms. Beckett.”
“Thank you,” replied Beckett, grasping his hand momentarily. She then glided over to the sideboard and picked out a handful of strawberries which she ate quickly. “Forgive me, but the atmosphere around your specimen tanks really is quite…pungent.” This last word was clearly a substitute for a word she would rather use but had too much self control for.
“All cephalopods are messy eaters and don’t share tanks well, so the cleanup requirements are much more labor intensive than with other marine specimens. It does tend to get a little ripe just before a cleaning. In any case,” he said, gesturing for the others to partake fo the refreshments, “I’m glad my colleague Dr. Gupta here had the opportunity to show you the facility. It’s always good to see experimental results first hand.”
“It’s certainly interesting to see what you’ve been spending the foundation’s money on,” muttered the young man. His blond hair was a nearly translucent stubble against his shiny pink scalp. He stared at Scott belligerently.
“Of course,” said Scott, doing his best to radiate confidence and good will. “I understand the process of science can be opaque and frustrating to those outside a field. On that note,” he said, drawing a small presentation remote out of his pocket, “if everyone is ready we can begin.”
The heavyset young man strode over to the coffee dispenser, poured himself a cup, downed it almost instantly, then poured himself another. He took his second cup with him to a seat halfway along the table and put his briefcase out in front of him. Beckett took the seat opposite him and sat down, not quite at attention, not quite relaxing. Scott smiled again and clicked a button on the remote, causing his introduction slide to pop up on the screen behind him.
“For the sake of the gentleman here, I am Dr. Scott Johnson. My colleague, Dr. Prajakta Gupta, you already met during your tour of our laboratory space here at Brin Marine Research Center. Together, we lead a research team that is investigating and experimenting with senescence in octopuses.” Scott clicked the remote again, bringing up a new slide on the wall.

“Senescence is a genetically programmed aging in an organism. This programming leads to cell and organ failure and eventually programmed death. It has a function in populations of organisms, particularly asocial, r-type reproductive strategists.”
New slide. “After an organism has reproduced, unless it provides some sort of function for its resulting offspring, the parent no longer needs to exist in order to pass on its genes. In fact, its continued existence can be harmful to its offspring because it still occupies a niche in the ecosystem and consumes resources. The population as a whole is strengthened by the death of the previous generation to make way for the new one.”
Scott paused for a minute to let his two audience members digest he’d said so far and to pace himself. He had a tendency to start talking more and more quickly when he was talking about topics in his field; the conference in Seattle had given him an opportunity to practice a more natural and measured presentation cadence. After a few seconds, he clicked the remote again and continued.
“Human beings, as social, k-type reproductive strategists, don’t have quite the same senescent pressures on them, and as a result don’t senesce as radically as salmon or mayflies or octopuses, but certain age-related changes in human cells and organs over the lifetime of an individual do seem to be triggered by the expression of certain genes. This is possible to distinguish from normal decline and wear using cell cultures, some of which are over sixty years old and continue to grow and divide normally.”
Scott clicked the remote again and gestured briefly at some references in the new slide. “Our research on octopuses is complementary to ongoing experiments in the senescence of great apes. Our experiments and specimens act as a cross-species control group. If, for example, a team using chimpanzees as test subjects finds a metabolic path relating to an aging phenomenon, we can see if there’s a similar mechanism in octopuses. Some of the mechanisms are cellular, which are particularly good for comparison across phyla.”
New slide with a lot of dense, cryptic graphs. “We’ve had a lot of success slowing down and delaying senescence in the common and Giant Pacific octopuses. The normal maximum life spans for these creatures is about two years. As you can see here,” Scott said while waving at one of the dense collections of data, “we have an engineered strain that appears to have a maximum lifespan of about ten years before it reproduces and dies. There’s another, newer strain that was inspired by a paper out of UBC. The oldest specimen of that strain is currently six, and some of the techniques involved have further inspired other experiments on rhesus monkeys. We’re very pleased with the results so far.”
Scott paused and took a deep breath. “With our next grant, we hope to take our research in a more radical direction. Delaying senescence is a huge accomplishment, but the rubber band can only be stretched so far before it breaks or snaps back. There are complicated cellular respiration and tumor suppression mechanisms that mean eventually, cells break down and die. Mitosis has a tendency to introduce errors into daughter cells. I hope it’s clear what that can lead to.”
New slide. “We’re now intending to research a drastic manual rewrite of certain genes and feedback mechanisms that deal with the cellular lifecycle. Carcinogens, disease, and other external factors can still cause cell death and push an organism towards organ failure or cancer and eventually death, but if our work is successful, certain organs could be come extremely long lived, practically immortal. We need to do extensive simulations and experiments with cell cultures before attempting to breed any organisms with these changes. I can elaborate on our experimental roadmap, but I’m guessing that you may have some questions first.”
“That’s right,” said the blonde young man in what Scott felt was a needlessly aggressive tone of voice. “How can you claim to be working within the bounds of your grant when you, Dr. Gupta, and most of your graduate students have published or been involved in research completely unrelated to what you’ve described here.” It wasn’t a question.
“I can answer that, Mr. Travers,” said Prajakta, neatly cutting off Scott before he could even open his mouth. “Academia is both very competitive and frequently very slow paced. Our faculty and grad students need to publish and conduct research as much as possible in order to be taken seriously within the field and to further their careers. Coupled with this is the time frames involved: experiments frequently take a long time, and in our field in particular much of that time is non interactive. Organisms need time to grow and develop. This lets our researchers conduct multiple experiments in parallel.”
Travers swiveled his bellicose stare to Prajakta now. “It must be tempting to try to realign money and equipment the same way you reshuffle the time you spend researching.” The way he said it wasn’t quite an accusation.

Prajakta raised her eyebrow. “If you’re concerned that money intended for the research your foundation has approved and is funding is being misappropriated,” she said, her Bengali accent becoming slightly more precise and clipped, “I can understand your concern. Such things have happened in the past, which is why this institute and the NSF have strict accounting policies. Our spending is kept under very close watch, and the Beckett Foundation has the right to request documents or even an audit to verify that your money is being spent as expected.”
“That having been said,” Scott interjected, “our team consists of the best and the brightest in the field, and the academic output of the best is frequently unnerving. Richard Feynman and Paul Erdös, for example-”
“I’m not interested in Feynman or Erdös,” interrupted Travers. “I just want you to know that the Beckett Foundation’s accounts are under a watchful eye, and we fully intend to cease grants for and take legal action against researchers who use our money for other projects or fritter it away for a lot of academic navel gazing.”
Scott tried not to clench his teeth and settled for sighing slightly. “Our team has always been upfront with the fact that our particular line of research is ancillary to the foundation’s goal of extending human life. All I can say now is that any biomedical or genetic research on humans moves very slowly due to legal and ethical requirements of exhaustive ancillary testing on animals first. To quote David Bowie playing Nikola Tesla in The Prestige, ‘exact science is not an exact science.’ You are more than welcome to check that your money is being used as we say it is. I would also encourage you to contact other grant recipients more directly involved in achieving the foundation’s goal. Many of them will support me when I say our research has saved them years of fruitless experiments and encouraged them to investigate avenues that have proved to be very productive and worthwhile.”
Ms. Beckett moved slightly at this point. During Scott’s presentation she had moved very little, pausing only to sip at her coffee, barely blinking. She now cleared her throat. “The fact that other researchers talk about your team and your work in such glowing terms is why I decided to arrange this meeting in the first place. Given the specific topics your group has been researching, concerns have been raised that some of the foundation’s money may have made its way to other projects not strictly under the purview of the grant you received.”
Travers seemed to be expecting this cue. He smartly clicked open the latches of his briefcase and withdrew a yellow legal pad. Gazing at it, he started to recite. “’Gustatory Preference and Diet Engineering in O. Vulgaris,’ ‘Removal of Invasive Species with Adapted Cephalopods,’ ‘Signal and Tactile Communication in Schooling Cephalopods.’” He paused and sneered slightly. “Seems to me like someone wants to save the environment with octopuses, and I find it suspicious that such a person would happily forgo such a goal in order to do ancillary research for human longevity.”
“On the contrary, Mr. Travers,” Scott retorted, “the research we’ve done on behalf of your foundation has been rewarding and helpful.” He was properly angry now, but forced himself to stay calm. His words came out evenly and precisely, and the slight widening of his eyes and almost invisible half smile were the only signs Prajakta could see of his anger.
“Longer lived octopuses are useful for conducting other research in marine biology for the simple reason that they don’t need to be replaced as frequently. The problem of programmed death is thorny and complicated enough to entice any real scientist. And lastly, my team has their careers on the line. Even if one member was willing to risk theirs for some personal goal, the others would tear them apart for bringing them down as well if there were any hint of a scandal. Quite frankly, any potential rewards couldn’t justify the real risks.”
Becket raised her hand slightly as if to hold back Scott’s tirade. “As I’ve said, Dr. Johnson, other grant recipients have indeed supported your claim that your research has been invaluable, and there have been no red flags to indicate a misuse of funds. Mr. Travers is merely…zealous in his duties.” She stood up and walked over to Scott, proffering her hand. “Thank you for this opportunity to see your research first hand, and thank you for your candor just now. We look forward to seeing what results your team provides from your next grant. She shook Scott’s hand, went back to the table to gather her briefcase, and exited the room as smoothly as she had entered it.
Travers lingered for a moment, staring at Scott with continued hostility. “You may very well be on the level, and Ms. Beckett is generally a good judge of character, but I know you’re up to something, and I will be keeping a very close eye on you.” With that, he stalked out.
Scott breathed out in a long, slow stream. “She’s a real piece of work, huh?”
Prajakta nodded with great conviction. “You’re lucky you missed out on the lab tour. Lots of ‘this looks quite expensive’ and ‘this isn’t part of your experiment, is it?’. He’s quite horrible.”
“I’m mostly shaken up from her.” Scott shuddered. “Good cop and bad cop at the same time, beating you over the head with the carrot and trying to get you to eat the stick. I thought I’d gotten used to her after the last meeting.”
Prajakta tilted her head slightly. “Aren’t you at least a little concerned about that rabid accountant of hers?”
All the tension left Scott’s face in a great hoot of laughter. “He’s got all the pieces in front of him and he still can’t see what we’re trying to do. In any case, we don’t really have anything to hid from him. The longevity problem is absolutely critical to our work, and I doubt Kim and Steiner at Berkeley would be anywhere near as far along as they are without our help.”
“I suppose he isn’t a direct threat,” conceded Prajakta grudgingly, “but if he keeps digging and shares his findings with the wrong people…”
Scott shook his head. “If it seems like he’s attracting the wrong sort of attention we can always drop the grant and find another source of funding for longevity. I bet Sheridan would be willing to fund it if we got other grants for some of the fishery sciences research.” He stood up and stretched, wincing slightly as his neck, knees, and back popped audibly. “Come on. I’m starting to get concerned about the Cohabitants, and I could your insight and rapport.”
Prajakta nodded. “I’ve been worried too. They’ve been aggressive and anti-social, and it seems to be getting worse.” With that, the two of them left the conference room and walked over to the elevator.
As soon as the elevator door closed behind them, Scott started fumbling through his pockets, eventually pulling out a large, multi-ringed tangle of keys that resembled nothing so much as several HIV viruses stuck together. He deftly cycled through the tangle until he reached a key with two bands of green electrical tape wrapped around the head, then inserted it into the service keyhole and twisted. The lighted floor buttons started blinking regularly. Scott quickly punched in a pattern on the floor button then twisted the key back and removed it. A low, vibrating hum suffused the dimly lit elevator as the motor lowered them for what felt like longer than an elevator had any right to descend. Eventually the elevator shuddered to a halt, and the doors slid open.

Even though she had spent entire weekends in this room, Prajakta always felt slightly sick for a few minutes whenever she first got off the elevator. Damp concrete, astringent chemicals, ozone, and the hot metal and oil smell of heavy machinery, all layered on top of a pervasive fishiness. She fought off the nausea the way she always did, focusing all her attention on the physical process of swiping her badge and pushing through the rotating metal bars of the checkpoint. Scott passed through a moment later after swiping his own badge. He never seemed bothered by the smell, which Prajakta had always considered horribly unfair.

The two of them walked over to one of many large pits set into the concrete floor, each of which was surrounded by a metal railing. The pit was lined with plastic and filled part way with salt water that gently slapped at the sides. Sitting on a small metal table just off to the side was a pile of virtual reality headsets and haptic gloves. Both the headsets and gloves appeared to be heavily modified and customized. Scott helped Prajakta put on the equipment, tightening straps that the gloves were too clumsy to handle.

“You good?” he asked.

Prajakta slowly panned her head around and twiddled her thumbs for a second, then started flexing and contracting her fingers. Satisfied that everything was well adjusted and tight, she nodded.

“Good,” said Scott. “Go in gently and try to socialize for a bit before asking questions. I’ve got a new puzzle that should be enjoyable. Just let them know that it’s waiting.”

“Okay,” Prajakta confirmed. “We’re lucky this batch has outstanding delayed gratification. I don’t think they’d tolerate my presence.”

Prajakta heard Scott walking away from her towards another part of the room. His footsteps echoed in the cavernous chamber. She couldn’t see him, of course. The VR helmet occluded her vision, and when it was powered off everything was completely black. It was a little disquieting, but it didn’t take very long for the system to power up. The blackness in front of here was soon replaced with a stereoscopic view from an articulated robot submerged in the water of the tank in front of her. Its twin cameras were semi-independent and could be controlled with her thumbs, letting her orient for clear vision and depth perception or for a wide field of view. Her fingers controlled the eight arms of the robot. The arms were attached to the base of the robot with joints like the base knuckles of a hand. They could curl in both directions around one axis and had limited freedom of movement around a second. Fully extending her fingers caused the arms to curl up, while forming a fist caused the arms to move down. It took a lot of practice to be able to move and coordinate the waldo smoothly, but as Prajakta had learned long ago, the trick was to think about fluid movements, not precise positioning. Scott always joked that the waldo made him think of an undersea cowboy lassoing everything in sight. It was one of his better analogies.

As Prajakta moved the waldo around she saw a hazy movement through the headset. She turned the waldo around so that its cameras were facing the disturbance and used the arms to propel it forward, half swimming and half walking along the sandy bottom. After a few moments she was close enough to make out two octopuses locked in a flailing, tentacled embrace.

‘Color pattern: greeting,” Prajakta said distinctly, and waved two of the waldo’s arms. The headset’s microphone and speech software parsed her statement, and through her peripheral vision she saw a glowing pattern move across the waldo’s skin. The skin was a poor substitute for Coleoidal chromatophores, but it could mimic simple patterns.

The two octopuses immediately disengaged and started extending arms towards the waldo. Their movements were much more restrained than they had been during the fight, and now that Prajakta was closer to them she could see aggressive coloration patterns fading into something similar to her greeting, although much more nuanced and dynamic. Octopodal communication was a combination of visual and tactile signals. It was frequently hard to understand to follow in real time, so all interactions were meticulously monitored and recorded for subsequent analysis. Even then, the result was far from satisfying. The cephalopod nerves and nervous system were so alien that even with state of the art sensors, actuators, and chromatophoric skin on the waldo, the octopuses themselves could be baffling. They liked interacting with the waldo, though, turning what would otherwise have been a nearly impossible task into one that was merely confusing and very difficult.

Taking a deep breath, Prajakta relaxed into the conversation. She gently extended the waldo’s arms and started dictating coloration patterns to the chromatophore software. She had to be gentle when moving the waldo’s arms, but not so timid with her movements that her meaning was lost.

After a few minutes of greeting and casual interaction, she posed her first question to the octopus on the left.

QUERY AGGRESS THAT ONE. She tried to make her question casual and non-accusatory through a gentle sweeping of the ring and middle finger on her left hand, trying hard to twist her fingers at difficult angles while taking great pains not to be too forceful.

Wade, one of her graduate students, had once torn an octopus apart when he had been trying to command the waldo. The other octopuses had immediately fled, and every inhabitant of the tank had refused to interact with the waldo at all until it had been altered beyond recognition.

Scott had been livid. “These are our children!” he had screamed at the trembling form of Wade, huddled in a corner. “If you’re too thoughtless to keep from mutilating our children then you have no business doing uplift. Wade had spent the next few weeks holed up in the hardware lab, redesigning the haptic interface and tweaking the actuators, as a form of self penance, before transferring to the computational proteomics team.

Prajakta snapped back to the present as the gloves’ force feedback pressure pads started tapping out patterns on her skin. The human sense of touch was too coarse and indistinct to convey precise meanings, but feeling the way octopuses touched the waldo helped the user feel their mood better than just reading the machine synthesized analysis on the goggles’ head-up display.

The tone that Prajakta was feeling was friendly and straightforward. The octopus she had addressed was unbothered by the question, and the fragments of its response that she understood were frank but non-aggressive.

NOT THIS ONE <UNKNOWN> RECLUSION <UNKNOWN> THIS ONE NOT RECLUSION<UNKNOWN>FIGHT ENGAGE. 

Her conversation partner then attempted to play with the waldo, scooping sand and pebbles up with one arm and batting them towards the waldo with another.

“Paging Scott. I just broke up what seems to have been a two-member territory dispute. They’re both friendly to me, though. Going to ask why they like the waldo more than they like each other.”

Scott’s voice came in over the earpiece a few seconds later, slightly muffled. “Acknowledged. I’ve got a few hypotheses, but I’ll just write them down so as not to contaminate the interaction.” Scott’s voice paused. “I’ve got enough hamster balls for everyone. Let me know when you’re done and we can scatter them throughout the habitat.”

“Acknowledge,” Prajakta responded. “End page.”

She then turned her attention back to gently disengaging the waldos arms from the octopus on her left and starting a friendly dialogue with the one on the right. This was particularly confusing and delicate, as the haptic translation software wasn’t sophisticated enough to determine when the waldo was being touched by more than one octopus at a time. Eventually, though, she disengaged fully from the left octopus, at which point it scooted a meter or so away. The octopuses had learned that the waldo preferred talking to just one at a time. Prajakta eased into the same gentle, friendly touching and color changing, and again, the octopus seemed perfectly friendly with the waldo. After about thirty seconds she posed her carefully phrased question:

THIS ONE NOT RECLUSION QUERY NOT NOT THIS ONE AGGRESS THIS ONE.

The negation of ‘this one’ was distinct from the negation of ‘aggress’ and was a common pattern of octopus communication. Her conversation partner flashed a color pattern she wasn’t familiar with, and its response to her query seemed somehow hesitant.

NOT NOT THIS ONE <UNKNOWN> HUNT-TARGET JOIN RECLUSION NOT THIS ONE <UNKNOWN> PUZZLES FOOD THIS ONE <UNKNOWN> NOT THIS ONE.

Prajakta was a little shocked but tried to steady herself so that her hands wouldn’t tremble. She engaged in a little more cephalopod small talk on automatic pilot while considering the interaction she had just had. Even wild, natural octopuses could act in what a human would perceive as an affectionate and playful manner, but she was astonished nonetheless. Nobody so far had considered this particular strain to be capable of abstract, long term emotional attachments.

Eventually she disengaged from the second octopus and scooted the waldo back a little. She performed an oscillating, vertical motion with two of the waldo’s arms and addressed both of her recent conversation partners.

MUCH PUZZLES DISPERSED.

The left hand octopus scooted off at once, but the one on the right paused for a moment. It then reached out its arms again and made contact with the waldo.

ATTEND.

It bunched up four of its arms agains its body and, to Prajakta’s bewilderment, flapped these pseudo fins up and down, causing it to float jerkily upwards.

Prajakta burst out laughing. She just couldn’t help herself. The octopus settled back down to the sandy bottom and reached its arms back to the waldo.

QUERY NOT THIS ONE <UNKNOWN>.

Prajakta sensed the same hesitation as before. She responded with a quick VERY GOOD and flashed a color pattern most octopuses displayed after solving a puzzle. The octopus let go of the waldo and jetted off into the murk.

“Paging Scott: They’ve both left. Go ahead and distribute your puzzles.” She returned the waldo to its storage crevice in the corner of the tank and shut down the connection.

“Need a hand?” came Scott’s voice from off in the distance.

Prajakta nodded, assuming he was within seeing distance. “Just help me undo the gloves and I can get the helmet.” The two of them spent a few minutes loosening straps and buckles. After she had pulled off the gloves and removed the headset, Prajakta stretched her neck and arms while squinting slightly in the bright light.

“Let’s get some coffee and review the exchange in my office,” she suggested. “There were quite a few things I didn’t understand in the middle of the action, but I have a few guesses.”

“Sounds good,” said Scott. “Just give me a quick minute to gather my notes and we can head up.”

“This may sound like a stretch, but I think the problems we’re seeing have a cultural solution, not a genetic one.”

The two of them were sitting in Prajakta’s office now, watching the recorded interaction on the screen of her laptop while a visual representation of the waldo’s arms and pressure sensitive skin were displayed on the standalone monitor on her desk. A third monitor displayed a rough, machine translated transcript of the exchange. The transcript was dynamic: Scott and Prajakta could make guesses about the meaning of certain phrases, patterns, or gestures that the machine had no translation for, and the guesses would percolate throughout the rest of the transcript.

Scott leaned back and distractedly bit into his scone. They had been analyzing the exchange for about an hour, during which his mostly untouched coffee had turned stone cold.

He nodded in agreement. “It’s clear that they recognize the waldo is different, but the interesting part right now is the beginning. You broke up the fight just by arriving, and it looks like that completely defused the encounter.”

“I agree,” said Prajakta. “Notice that they were fighting over a scarce resource that they can do nothing to increase, and they hinted that there are fights over food too. Now, food isn’t scarce as such because we make sure there’s enough, but even though this generation has a greatly expanded and varied diet, there are preferences.”

Scott slapped his hand on the desk, causing his coffee to wobble. “Which explains why they didn’t fight over the puzzles I dropped in! We’ve made it clear that there are enough to share, multiple times, so they don’t count as a scarce resource.”

“So what do we do now?” Prajakta tapped her forefinger on the desk and frowned. “There aren’t words that we’ve discovered to describe cooperation and community, so we can’t really describe the concept without inventing a word, which runs counter to the precept of the experiment.”

“This is actually something Cathy Lin has been thinking about,” replied Scott. “The exact phrase she used was barn-raising an octopus’s garden. It sounded promising, but I din’t think we would be ready for anything like that with the current level of encephalization.”

“Nice. Has she written any of this down, or was it just mentioned in passing?”

“She’s got some notes and the outline of an experiment proposal,” Scott said. “I’ll ask her to polish it all up and do some simulations first.” His voice broke on the word, and he gave a quick hacking cough before draining his cold coffee in one long swallow. “Sorry I’ve been talking non-stop over the last few days. Man, I wish these foundations would just leave us all alone. Or rather,” he said, his face suddenly thoughtful, “I wish they would all write us a pile of big, fat checks, and then leave us alone.”

Prajakta laughed, her weariness and annoyance evaporating. “Why do you always have to qualify yourself like that?”

“Never know when a genie might be listening,” said Scott with a grin. “They’re devious bastards.”

Prajakta laughed again. “I remember when you chewed out Bendez for wishing the pumps would fail so he wouldn’t have to ask WHAT THAT ONE NAME fifty thousand times.”

Scott’s face darkened and his cheek twitched momentarily. “I know he was tired and cranky, but that’s no excuse. As I always say, these beings are our foster children, and what he did was just as bad as wishing your child is really sick when you take them into the ER late at night.”

“It’s a cross between an economics problem and an arms race,” said Scott. “Traditional invasive species management is woefully inadequate in a marine environment. There’s a balance between highly expensive, labor intensive processes, and pre-emption/prevention. In areas where prevention has failed, we’re confident that O. Ecologous can be used much more cheaply and more effectively than conventional methods.”

The dark suited man sitting opposite him finally stirred, and Scott had to keep from shuffling nervously. Dr. Greenwald had barely said ten words throughout the whole morning and had been completely motionless and inscrutable during Scott’s presentation. During his time as a researcher, Greenwald had thoroughly unnerved his colleagues with his looming stature and deep set eyes. When he had transitioned to head a department at the EPA, the other researchers at the Brin Institute had cheered openly. Finally having a well respected scientist in charge of a department they had frequently been frustrated by was a welcome relief. Many of them had also been secretly glad not to be on the receiving end of that silent, enigmatic stare. Scott had always liked Greenwald and gotten on reasonably well with him, but damn, the man could be unnerving.

Eventually Greenwald spoke up. “Dr. Johnson, I’m assuming you’ve seen Jurassic Park?”

Scott nodded and felt a bit of a grin tweak the corners of his mouth. “I understand. Treating invasive species with genetically engineered invasive species may initially seem like a horrible idea, especially if the researchers involved insist that their creation is perfectly controllable and cannot reproduce. Clearly we can’t surgically alter every octopus we hatch, and the whole point of this project is that they hunt and eat in an uncontrolled environment, so we can’t affect their food supply directly. Instead, we have three safeguards that prevent them from reproducing.”

Scott picked up a whiteboard marker and started scrawling on the board. He added a bullet point followed by the words ‘No potential mates’. “Cephalopod sex determination is genetic, not developmental or external, so we can control this. We’re already creating artificial ova and spermatozoa, so controlling sex is possible.” He then added a second bullet point and wrote ‘Underdeveloped sex organs’ next to it and turned back to face Greenwald.

“We’re able to control the timing of developmental stages and hormonal secretions of different organs in the octopus embryos and juveniles,” Scott explained. “This in itself is the result of many outstanding work by my team and colleagues in the field at large. But in this case, we can use it to cause certain blood vessels to open or constrict, to withhold or provide an overabundance of certain chemicals that trigger gene cascades, and thereby prevent the sex organs from fully developing. When they mature, the adults are completely sterile.”

Scott stepped to the side and tapped at the two bullet points. “These two safeguards are enough to prevent accidents or unforeseen circumstances, but we figured the responsible thing would be to add yet another layer of safety.”

As he said this, Scott was writing out a third bullet point, whose text read ‘Senescence before mating’.

“This last safeguard draws on some of our previous research,” Scott explained. “I know you’ve read that paper. The same techniques that stretches the lifespan of the octopuses and adjusts relative timing of lifecycle stages can be used to move some of the lifecycle stages around. In the case of O. Ecologous, we use those techniques to delay mating until individuals are six years old. Mating is a trigger to senesce in unmodified octopuses, but there are other triggers and expression mechanisms involved, and we use those to make senescence happen before mating.”

“To summarize,” Scott said, ticking off his points on his fingers. “There’s no ongoing labor cost once specimens have been deployed at a cleanup site. Using biological agents is a much steadier solution than depending on manual removal or robotic removal. Subspecies can be engineered for a wide variety of specific applications in invasive species removal, not just zebra mussels as we’re proposing for the pilot program. There aren’t any toxic chemicals involved, and the engineered species have highly specific hunting patterns and diets, so the effect is targeted specifically at the control of a particular invasive species with now effect on any other organisms.” Scott put his hands down. “I know that this proposal isn’t going to be popular in certain circles, but frankly, the environment’s in trouble, and we’re out of other options. This solution is the best we have, and it’s pretty good in absolute terms as well.”

Silence fell, and Scott tried not to fill it. Eventually, Greenwald stood up and gathered his coat from the back of his chair. “Do you still bring your own lunch?”

Scott blinked, bemused at the non-sequitur. “Uh…kind of. I’ve got cheese and cold cuts and bread in the fridge…”

“Let’s go out and get something to eat,” Greenwald stated. “From what I’ve heard about all the projects you’re responsible for, you could probably stand a good square meal.”

Scott laughed uncertainly. He couldn’t tell if Greenwald was joking or not, but he couldn’t of a better response. “I guess I could go for enchiladas.”

“Good. I’ll drive. I don’t trust that car of yours.”

The ride to Tia Sophia’s was completely silent. Scott tried to relax into it, but there was just too much at stake. Eventually they found the cozy adobe walls of the restaurant, parked, and soon had themselves seated in one of the unpadded but strangely comfortable wooden booths in the dimly lit, low ceilinged establishment. Eventually their waiter bustled up to take their order and beamed when he recognized Scott.

“Buenos dias, Mr. Johnson! We’ve not seen you here for too long!”

Scott smiled a little sheepishly. “It’s good to see you too, Antonio. How’s your grandmother doing?”

“Better, and happy now she has Maria living with her again.” Antonio noticed Greenwald and started. “Ah, but you are here with a friend. Can I get you something to drink?”

After Antonio had left with their orders Greenwald folded his hands on the table. “It may surprise you to know that I’ve been following your career closely ever since I left the institute. Brilliant young researcher, highly ambitious, amazing at organizing and coordinating a team. You seemed like one I should keep my eye on.”

Scott blinked. “Thank you.”

“Which is why,” Greenwald continued, seemingly unaware of Scott’s voice, “I was both aware of and surprised by your most recent set of papers. Prey determination? Social behavior and schooling in cuttlefish? Interesting topics, but not really material of your caliber. Now it could be that I was mistaken about you, or that you had burned out, or something else had happened to dim your star.”

Scott sat frozen. Surely Greenwald hadn’t guessed? He was a busy man, he couldn’t have focused on Scott that much…

“But in your presentation, I saw that you were still possessed of the fire that I first saw in you fifteen years ago. And I was reminded of some offhanded conversations you’d been a part of during your post doc, and some of your research from five years ago.”

He turned his gaze upward, pinning Scott with his thousand watt stare. “You don’t really want to be doing invasive species management, do you?”

Scott licked dry lips and managed to find his voice. “I do think it’s important work, but…no, it’s not really what I want to be doing.”

“¡Mui caliente!” exclaimed Antonio as he placed huge plates swimming in red chile in front of Scott and Greenwald. Scott jumped a little. He’d felt like a rabbit staring down an oncoming truck, completely oblivious to all other stimuli. After Antonio left Scott tried to gather his thoughts, focusing on the scented steam rising up from his plate.

Eventually he looked up again. Greenwald hadn’t moved. “My team and I,” Scott said eventually, “were hoping that we could find grants and ancillary objectives that would let us take care of a lot of the detail work without having to scrounge around for funding the project as a whole”

Greenwald nodded. “I noticed that your research grant for senescence came from the Beckett Foundation.”

“Exactly,” said Scott. He glanced down at his chile rellenos. “Do you mind if I start eating?”

“Please,” said Greenwald, who also turned his attention to his food.

Scott hadn’t thought he was hungry, but he managed to polish off his whole plate without feeling stuffed. Greenwald ate perfectly regularly, his fork raising and lowering like clockwork. He looked back up, waiting for Scott to continue.

Eventually, Scott took a deep breath and plunged on. “You’ve guessed what we’ve been up to, but I’d like to point out that we haven’t broken any laws or institution policies. The rest of my team has their careers to think about, and if you’re determined to get us for pursuing-”

“You’re under a misapprehension about what I want now that you’ve confirmed my suspicions,” interrupted Greenwald. He stood up, pausing to extricate a neatly folded wad of bills from his wallet and leaving them on the table. “The last thing on earth I want to do is stop you. I just want to see what you’ve accomplished.”

“I don’t understand,” Scott said eventually. They were now standing in the parking lot outside Tia Sophia’s.

Greenwald paused as he was about to pen the driver’s side door and looked up. “What in particular don’t you understand?”

“Why you’re not going to try and stop me,” said Scott. “As a member of the government, you’re practically required to take a dim view on something as controversial and potentially dangerous as uplift.”

“That’s certainly one way of thinking about the matter,” conceded Greenwald. He got into the car, and Scott did likewise, his clothes sticking to the hot leather seat. Greenwald carefully navigated them out of the parking lot and merged onto the freeway. As they joined the greater flow of traffic he spoke up again. “All I heard you talk about today was a revolutionary idea to use octopuses to manage invasive marine organisms. Anything else that I’ve seen or heard or speculated about is clearly absurd sci-fi nonsense not worth repeating.”

“That…doesn’t really explain anything,” pressed Scott. “I get that you’re choosing to do the whole plausible deniability ‘this never happened’ thing, but why?”

“Because of you,” said Greenwald. He tapped the brake slightly, causing the Audi that had been tailgating them to swerve to the left and hold down his horn. “Because I have great confidence in your capabilities and vision as a scientist and in the ethics you apply to your research. And frankly, I’m somewhat alone in the federal government in thinking that it’s impossible to cram the genie back in the bottle. Other researchers and other governments are going to start experimenting in uplift, if they haven’t already, and I’d much rather that you be the father of the field than someone making smart monkeys for jungle warfare.” Greenwald smoothly exited the freeway and started navigating the labyrinth of smaller roads that led to the institute. “I can run interference for you at the political level, and I’ll push for your invasive species project.” He slid the car into the parking spot next to Scott’s 4Runner and treated Scott to a rare smile. “I just want to see what you’ve been up to these last few years.”

“I guess I can do that,” said Scott. His mind was still reeling from the confrontation. He had absolutely not expected this reaction from Greenwald. The best he had hoped for was grudging acceptance and willful ignorance plus blackmail, an acknowledgement that the ancillary work was too important to raise a fuss about the uplift project, but using the threat of exposure to try to keep Scott in line. “I’ll have to let Prajakta know so that she doesn’t panic when she sees you in the lab.”

“Do what you have to,” said Greenwald. “I’ll wait in the lobby.”

“What do you mean ‘he wants in on it’?” demanded Prajakta. Scott had found her leaving the office of the head of Computational Biology and had hurriedly pulled her into an unoccupied meeting room where he had described Greenwald’s insight and motive. She had also known Greenwald before his transition to the public sector and shared Scott’s view: Greenwald was competitive and likable but deeply unnerving and inscrutable.

“He guessed that we’re uplifting octopuses and he wants in on it.”

“What does that even mean?” she hissed.

“Sorry, just…he trusts us.”

Prajakta blinked. “Keep explaining.”

“He thinks uplift is inevitable, and he trusts us to do it in the right way for the right reasons. I’ll ask him to explain what he wants to do, but I swear, he’s on our side. He just wants to see what we’ve done so far.”

Prajakta shook her head. “Absolutely not. Right now he suspects, he doesn’t know. And he’s using that stone gaze of his to fish for answers If you go back down and get rid of him-”

“That won’t do any good,” interrupted Scott. “Wait, hear me out. If we stonewall him, he has enough clout to get an official investigation started almost immediately, so if he were just fishing, he wouldn’t need to go through us. And even if we wanted to, we can’t scrub the project fast enough if he started anything official.”

The silence that followed was tense enough to house a three ring circus. Eventually, Prajakta unfolded her arms and breathed out slowly. “I guess if we’re so helpless, it doesn’t matter what we do.”

They made their way to the elevator and rode down to the lobby in an uncomfortable silence. Just as the doors were about to open Prajakta spoke up.

“It will be kind of nice to show someone the good news.”

Scott grinned. “And here I was thinking you didn’t like showing off.”

“I’m just saying it’s a monument of interdisciplinary cooperation and problem solving. It’d probably be Cathy’s dissertation if we could publish.”

Scott stuck his head out of the open doors and called. “Come on in, Dr. Greenwald. We’re heading down to the basement.”

Greenwald gazed thoughtfully at the twin monitors duplicating the feed from the waldo’s cameras. “I’m impressed. I didn’t think it was possible to make octopuses school.”

“It’s not really a school,” said Scott. “Clearly we don’t know how they’d react to the appearance of a predator, but there’s a lot more high level interaction than you’d see in a school or a flock or a swarm.” He tapped a fuzzy, dark grey blob in the corner of one of the display’s feeds, causing a faint pink marker to light up. “Prajakta, can we get a closer at the castle?”

The waldo started ambling towards the blob, causing it to darken and fall into sharp relief. It was clearly an artificial structure of some kind, cobbled together from interlocking plastic tiles. A long, tentacular arm was hanging out of one of the openings, drifting in the current, languidly curling and uncurling. The tip of one of the waldo’s arms reached out and gently tapped the wall of the structure just below the opening. The octopus’s arm was promptly withdrawn, and a moment later the rest of the octopus emerged. It immediately flashed a color pattern which the translation software posted to the display as <WARM GREETING>.

“Fascinating,” said Greenwald. “Are these patterns taught or emergent?”

“The entire language and communication system is emergent in the sense that we didn’t create it,” explained Scott. “Our first successful generation came up with many of the patterns and gestures and structures, and we’ve propagated it by letting juveniles observe and interact with adults in a controlled environment. Communication would be impossible if we had to learn a new language for each generation, but we don’t introduce new vocabulary, we just learn it.”

Greenwald nodded. “Of course. You’re seeing how their culture and sociology develops without directing it.”

“We have given them a few nudges,” said Prajakta vaguely. She was better at operating the waldo than Scott and better at carrying on a conversation at the same time, but most of her attention was on the VR headset and haptic gloves. At the moment, she was trying to make sense of the animated but mostly unintelligible stream of gestures, grips, and patterns coming from her coleoidal conversational partner. She tried to stem the flow, falling back on the old standbys of <I DO NOT UNDERSTAND> and <COMMUNICATE LESS FAST>. Eventually she managed to transmit one of the unknown phrases accompanied by <NOT INSIDE>. The flow of gestures and touches ceased immediately. Her cephalopod conversant paused for a moment, floating gently in the light current, then it flashed a firm <AWAIT THEN ATTEND>. It then jetted off into the murk.

“What’s going on?” came Greenwald’s voice from behind her. Prajakta started. She’d been so involved in and confused by her conversation with the octopus that she had nearly forgotten about Scott and Greenwald.

“I’m really not sure,” she said, not bothering to turn around and face him because of the VR cowl. “We added these locking tiles to their habitat so that they could build structures and hiding places of their own. It was an attempt to start encouraging tool use and niche engineering. But they’re trying to show me something about it that I don’t understand. There were so many unfamiliar words in the interaction all we can do is wait and watch.”

She could now see three shapes moving towards her out of the murk. Her conversation partner had been joined by two other octopuses, and all three were jetting as quickly as could. Prajakta was shocked. Octopuses normally moved by a combination of swimming and walking with their arms on the substrate. They usually only employed jet propulsion when fleeing a predator; it required too much oxygen to be used frequently or for any length of time. As soon as all three had arrived at the structure they spread out around its perimeter, reaching arms out to some of the more lopsided protrusions.

They were changing colors so rapidly and in such intricate patterns that Prajakta couldn’t follow it. All she could do was keep the waldo’s cameras focused on the emerging spectacle. The octopuses were tearing down parts of the structure, leaving a slender tower with an oddly shaped base with the leftover plastic tiles scattered all over the substrate.

“This is fascinating,” exclaimed Scott from just beside her. “How are they coordinating this? Who’s making decisions? We’ll have to get everyone together to review the footage and come up with some answers.”

Prajakta didn’t respond. The octopus team had stopped removing tiles and had started gathering discarded ones into a smaller pile. After a moment, one of the octopuses levered one of the tiles off of the ground, four of its arms bracing against the ground and the other four suckered onto the tiles face. One of the other two scooted over and started pushing the tile from the other side. The two of the m lifted the tile up and started walking with it, lifting it up onto the base of the structure. They then carefully maneuvered to the the spier and started climbing up it, the tile caught in a web of suckered arms. When they got to the top, they spent a moment locking the tile into place, making it continue the sheer face of the tower. The two octopuses dropped off the tower and returned to the ground where the third octopus had already levered another tile up.

Over the next half hour, Prajakta, Scott, and Greenwald watched the octopuses use the discarded tiles to double the height of the tower, causing its top to break over the surface of the water. As soon as the last tile was lifted onto the top and nestled into place, the octopus that had lifted it up pulled itself onto the platform and started slowly flapping its arms over the surface of the water.

Greenwald whistled slowly through his teeth. “Wow. That’s quite something.”

Scott was shaking with barely controlled excitement. “We were right! We were RIGHT!” he didn’t quite shout. He turned to point at the surfaced octopus which gave a quick wave and slid back into the water. “They work together spontaneously and cooperatively if it’s interesting! They weren’t just attacking each other because of shelter, they did it because they were bored! There’s so much we can do now that we know what they’re capable of!”

Prajakta was only half paying attention. She had been equally shocked and delighted, but she had had to focus on the job at hand. She picked up the conversation with her now re-submerged partner, who had drifted down from the top of the tower. It flashed a happy color pattern.

PLEASURE. DIFFICULT. WELL DONE.

VERY WELL DONE.

Prajakta tried to focus. There were so many questions to ask, and she was limited by the vocabulary they had to work with. This was going to be exhausting, confusing, and time consuming, but the thrill of progress fizzed through her blood. First she’d have to ask how they’d coordinated like that…

“In part, this just confirms something that’s been suspected about octopuses for a very long time,” said Scott. The three of them had returned to his office, where his monitor had the recorded data from the interaction thrown up with annotations. Some of the other researchers had already been making guesses about some of the unknown phrases, peppering the data with a blizzard of comments, hypotheses, and possible followup experiments and questions. “Aquarium staff have known since practically forever that they love to solve puzzles and can develop behavioral issues if unstimulated. The tower building is a way of satiating their desire to problem solve while also creating shelter.” He paused momentarily, forcing himself to slow down and breathe. “But in this case, it’s clearly more than that. They can work together! We can work together with them. There are all kinds of things we can do.”

Greenwald nodded, a rare smile wrinkling his eyes. “I must say I’m thoroughly impressed, and I’m glad to have been present during such a groundbreaking interaction.” He reached into his pocket and drew out a thin leather wallet. “I can run political and departmental interference, and I’ll let you know if I sense any trouble or unhealthy attention coming from any of my circles. Here’s my private number; I’d love to hear about anything else exciting that happens.” He drew out two plain white business cards and handed one each to Scott and Prajakta, shook hands with both of them, and walked out of Scott’s office, still smiling.

Scott beamed, turning to Prajakta. “I’ll go make a fresh pot of coffee, and then we can get to work on parsing some of those patterns. I can’t believe it, everything is just going so fabulously.”

“FuckfuckfuckFUCK!” Scott ran up the stairwell, his sneakers slipping a little on the condensed vapor on the treads. “Don’t die don’t die don’t die, come on, don’t die…” He sprinted out into the middle of the darkened atrium and fumbled his cellphone out of his pocket, dropping it on the floor. “Come on you stupid…” He quickly picked it up in trembling hands and scrolled through the contacts until he found the number he was looking for and pressed it, hard. He continued his subvocal litany as the phone dialed, ringing much, much too slowly. “Pick up pick up pick up you stupid mother fucker, PICK UP!!!” Eventually a sleepy voice on the other end answered, half-slurring. “Scott, what’s-”

“Institute, now!” Scott shouted. “I need oxygen tanks, and I need individual pumps and skimmers and-”

“Woah.” Prajakta was shocked awake by the sheer panic and volume in Scott’s voice. “What is it?”

Scott resisted the urge to scream. “Get dressed, get over here, I’ll explain, maybe, I need everyone, and the maintenance staff. It’s a tank crash.”

A plastic clatter came over the speaker. A second of silence, then Prajakta spoke again. “I’m on my way. Do what you can, call Greenwald and the team, I’ll ring up the facility people while I drive.”

Scott started to cry, panicked, choking sobs bursting out of him. “I can’t call from down there. No signal, too much concrete.”

The sound of Prajakta’s car was already coming over the line, underneath the sound of her voice. “I’ll call everyone else, just tell me, what equipment is down, what do we need to do.”

Scott took a gulping breath, steadying himself. “Pump, filter, chiller, protein skimmer, none of it’s working. The tank is hypoxic and in the red line for ammonia. At least six octopuses are floating, probably dead, the others are probably dying. I’m going to run an oxygen bubbler down into the water, but it’s not going to diffuse well, and I can’t do anything about the ammonia.”

“Okay. You know what to do. I’ll get everyone else up to speed and on their way.”

“Kay. Bye.” Scott hung up and ran back down the stairwell, nearly crashing into the door before wrenching it open. He sprinted into one of the back rooms and emerged a second later with a huge coil of clear plastic tubing slung around his arm. Running over to the other side of the room, he came back to the side of the tank, grunting as he pushed a huge cart with racks of oxygen cylinders jostling and clacking against each other. Scott feverishly wrestled an end of the hose onto the nozzle of one of the cylinders and dropped the other end into the tank then wrenched at the valve. Immediately the water around the hose started to bubble and churn. Moving much more slowly, Scott staggered away from the pool and towards the control room, intending to have a look at the pumps and maybe get them part way disassembled by the time help arrived.

The smell of cooked fish smacked him in the face when he opened the door. A pervasive, hot, oily, slightly rancid fishy miasma saturating the air. He gagged and nearly threw up, but managed not to, instead heading over to the circuit breaker panel. When he got to it, looked like a large swath of breakers had already been flipped, including those for the offline equipment. He pulled on insulating gloves and, carefully, began to unhook pipes.

“How many got into the machinery?”

Scott stared at the mug in his hand, not really seeing it. It was just something to hold on to, something to keep his hands from shaking.

“Scott?”

“Ten,” he said quietly. “All the other bodies are still in the tank.”

“You know it wasn’t your fault.”

He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.

“You got everyone moving as soon as you found out. You did everything possible while people were rushing over here to-”

“We knew they were building towers, Prajakta,” he said quietly. “We knew they were curious and could leave the water for a short time and were hoisting themselves on those fucking plastic structures we gave them, and we were too excited that our baby was walking to realize it might fall down the stairs.”

“We didn’t lose everything, Scott.”

Scott stayed quiet. He was emotionally and physically drained, the cost of organizing people as they trickled down the stairs throughout the night, his arms and back aching from carrying oxygen cylinders back and forth. They’d had a meeting at seven, Scott and Prajakta and the other researchers while technicians repaired and replaced the machinery. Everyone was shredded; Scott had just managed to keep it together in order to tell them all the bad news: all the octopuses in the tank had died. Some of them had climbed out in the middle of the night, crawled across the floor and down into the pump intake vestibule. They had clogged the pipes and gotten wrapped around the pump impellers, causing the motors to burn out. He had walked out after that, leaving the rest in a stunned silence. Prajakta had found him just outside the break room twenty minutes later, holding a stone cold cup of coffee and looking as though he had been crying.

“We still have eggs, and planktonics, and-”

“It doesn’t matter. The culture is gone, language. Even if we teach them, it’ll be something we made up.”

“Does it matter? We can still salvage a lot of the purely genetic side of things, and Greenwald will still be interested in the applications.”

He looked sharply at Prajakta, his withdrawal retreating for the first time that morning. “I’m aware that everyone has their careers to worry about.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Scott turned back to stare at the wall of the break room, focusing on it and not looking at her. “I never told you what got me interested in uplift in the first place, did I?”

Prajakta shook her head. “Not that I remember.”

Scott shrugged. “It was when I was really young. I had this dream one night, about all the people in the world joined up like cells, making a huge person out of people. The whole human race working together to make something that works like a single organism. And we, I mean that person, got lonely, because we didn’t have anyone to talk to.”

Scott smiled the ghost of a smile, a stark contrast to his normal toothy grin. “So we shouted, and eventually a big alien come by and looked at us. Can’t even describe what it looked like, and it didn’t say anything, it just gave off this feeling of ‘I don’t know what you’re saying’.”

He took a sip from the cup in his hand. “And when I woke up, I had this idea that you could make a chain, like the telephone game. We could talk to one link, and the alien would talk to another link, and we’d understand the link we were talking to and so we could understand each other.”

---

Hello again. This story is a web of topics that I've been interested in for a long while, all coming together after a lot of research, wild goose chases, frustrating experimentation, long pauses, and false starts. It's my longest complete piece yet, clocking in at over 10,000 words, and it has been a very long time in the making. A lot of thanks goes to David Brin, for teaching me about uplift; Bruce Schneier, for introducing me to the fascinating world of coleoids; Brandon Sanderson, for his uploaded creative writing lectures at BYU; and my dad, for nagging me incessantly to finish after I'd sent him a partial first draft.
Sorry about the formatting. It's partially hand hacked via HTML.