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Rat Race

The world that the race of rats occupy is a laboratory. Each of them spends their relatively short lives running along a little treadmill, until one day their little hearts give out and they collapse and die from exhaustion. Each treadmill is actually a kinetic generator connected to a vast Rube Goldberg-like device. Despite its seeming complexity, it only has two functions: It powers a miniature cattle prod that lies behind each treadmill and repeatedly dangles a bit of cheese that lies in front of each treadmill.

One of the mice, Algernon, gets the bright idea to move laterally instead of forward or backward. He realizes that if he moves just the right amount, he can escape the confines of his own treadmill and not end up on the treadmill adjacent to him. Algernon is empathetic. Once he reaches that liminal space, he scurries between the treadmills shouting to the other mice from the sidelines how they can escape. They cannot hear him. The crackling of the electricity of the cattle prod is too loud, and the stink of the cheese so overwhelming that they probably would not want to leave anyway. It is too tempting to just keep running towards it and not look back, not knowing that they will never reach it.

The irony is, if they all stopped running simultaneously, then they would no longer be powering the cattle prods and would have nothing to fear. Further, they would finally be able to reach the cheese and come to realize that it was engineered to be addictive and completely devoid of nutrition. At least, these are the conclusions that Algernon comes to after extensive research into the machine.

Algernon seems to be a clever mouse and he ends up meeting some other clever mice who have found their own ways of escaping their treadmills. They decide to band together to topple the machine. First, they try chewing through wires, clogging up various gears, and other acts of sabotage both major and minor. The machine starts to spit out cages and mousetraps in response. Some of the mice are trapped or die in the process. Apparently the machine has more functions than what is obvious on the surface.

Then, they try a passive form of resistance. They realize that, if they all shout in unison, their squeaky voices are able to reach some of the other mice through the din of machine noise. They manage to get a sizable portion of them to leave their treadmills, enough that the power should have decreased significantly. However, the machine is as "efficient" as ever, chugging along with even more speed and sophistication. What the mice cannot understand is why the machine is still running.

Eventually, some of them discover that the laboratory has a second floor. It is filled with cages that house pigeons. Some pigeons do not like the mice. They think that they are there to steal their pellets of food. Other pigeons are so hungry and vicious that they will eat any mouse that comes close to them. It is not obvious which is which. It is not correlated to whether that pigeon is fat or skinny. Whatever the case may be, they are all still in cages.

In order to obtain food pellets, each pigeon has to pull on a series of levers. If they seem to pull them in the right order, then they will receive differing amounts of food pellets from a little chute. Huzzah! Pulling on levers can be fun sometimes, like cranking on the handle of a slot machine. What they do not realize is that some of these levers are also activating pistons that are actually helping to power the machine on the floor below them, the same machine that the mice are on.

While this floor of the lab is relatively more peaceful than the sense of urgency induced by continuously running on a treadmill, that comfort is a gilded cage. Rather than running until they collapse and die from exhaustion, the game seems to be to fiddle around with levers until they slowly wither away and die from stagnation. They might live longer and have a higher "quality of life" than rats, but not by much.

Some pigeons have learned to snap the levers off and use them to pick the locks that keep their cages sealed. They cannot fly very well though. Being cooped up for most of their lives means that their wings have atrophied to some extent. Many of them also have wings that have been clipped or pinioned. Like the mice, those who have managed to free themselves realize that something is not right about their situation. After enough poking around the lab, they have noticed that the levers are placed back into position through a series of pulleys that seem to come from the floor above them.

The mice and pigeons who get to know each other come to understand the significance of it. From the combination of their unique vantage points, they are starting to get a clearer picture of the functioning of the machine as a whole. Their individual activities are holding each other captive. They need to figure out what is on the next floor, but neither of them is capable of doing it alone. The only way to see what is up there is for a pigeon to fly a mouse up to the ventilation shaft. It is too narrow for a pigeon to fit into it and much too high for a mouse to climb up to it.

There was a particularly strong pigeon named Cher Ami. He flew Algernon up to the shaft. Algernon wandered his way through its maze-like tunnels until he was able to reach the third floor of the laboratory. As he peered through the grating of the vent into the room below, he saw a bunch of monkeys doing various things. Some were jumping up and down trying to reach for bananas that were tied to ropes from the ceiling. If they managed to grab ahold of one and tug on it, it would slip from their hands, retracting like the string of a talking doll. Perhaps this was the mechanism that activated the pulleys through the floor below? He could not tell.

There were also some monkeys who were making child-like paintings as they were hooked up to helmets with wires coming out of them. Again, his mousy brain could not comprehend why exactly they would be doing any of this. Whatever was happening here, it looked more free than the lower floors, but it was also a lot more abstract and seemingly disconnected from them. The only common denominator between them were the animalistic motivations prevalent throughout. By this time, all that Algernon could feel was the grumbling of his stomach. As he pressed his head forward through the grate to get a better look, he fell out of the vent and into the room.

A monkey who was tinkering in the corner of the room walked over to Algernon as he was lying prone on the floor and picked him up. Algernon quivered in fear as he sat in her palm. "This creature is large enough to squeeze me or smash me to death, but she seems different," he thought to himself. She wasn't jumping around and screeching like the monkeys reaching for the bananas, nor oblivious to what was going on like the monkeys who were fingerpainting.

"Hi, I'm Koko. Don't be afraid. Here is some bread," she told him as she handed him a crumb from the pocket of the apron that she was wearing. She began to pet him as he ate. As he felt the fear and hunger leave him, he started to cry. The weight of everything was starting to crash down on him.

"What's wrong?," she asked him.

"I cannot understand the machine that is hurting everyone. I need to understand it so that I can get it to stop or to redirect what it is doing."

"What machine are you talking about?"

Algernon proceeded to explain to Koko everything that he had learned from being on the lower two floors. Her eyes began to widen as he continued.

"I think I know how at least part of the machine is made," Koko said after he had finished.

"How do you know that?," Algernon asked.

Koko took him to the corner of the room where she was tinkering. There were a couple of other monkeys there sitting at a small bench. Upon the bench were various machine parts and little diagrams on how they were to be assembled, something like a toy model or a piece of furniture. Place tab A into slot B.

"I think we are helping to build the machine. We didn't know what the parts were doing. How many floors are above us or below us?"

THE END

...or is it the beginning?