Blue Elephants

A Tomorrow People story

Just for a change, I decided to put one of my TP stories on here as well as on the TPFICT mailing list.

What can I say? I'm in a whimsical mood. Personally, I blame Jedikiah who inspired this story and - perhaps as importantly - didn't tell me to stop when I started writing it.

This short story is based on the 1970s television series 'The Tomorrow People', created by Roger Price for Thames Television and owned by Fremantle Media.

Feedback - even just a few words - would be most welcome.

Okay, it was a bad idea.

I'm man enough to admit that - to myself and to you, TIM, even if not to anyone else.

It started simply enough. We're the next stage of human evolution, the ultimate pinnacle of mammalian life. But how can we look to the future if we don't understand the past? How can we reach out to new worlds, even if we can't understand and care for our own?

You were never happy with me keeping animals in the Lab, TIM. I know that. But after we expanded in the new Lab, after we had space to keep them well away from you, I didn't see the harm in keeping a few test subjects.

And it was useful - you can't deny that. If I hadn't kept the juvenile rats, trying to understand human ageing, we might never have figured out the whole Hitler affair. At least not in time to nip it in the bud.

Even so, Liz drew the line at the pygmy elephants.

Personally, I was rather fond of them. Eggshell blue, and small enough to fit in the palm of my hand. Figuring out the genetic adjustments necessary to keep them down to that size took months - particularly since you sided with Liz on that one as I recall. I'd become accustomed to you helping me with the maths. In this case, I had to work from scratch.

Look at it from my point of view: elephants are amongst the longest-lived of mammals. The great apes aside, they have one of the longest gestations, one of the longest childhoods. I wanted to know why the apes had developed such high intelligence, while the pachyderma hadn't. So it made sense to me to miniaturise the elephants I was to study, how else was I to fit them in the Lab?

Admittedly the pale blue colour was an unanticipated side effect. I saw Liz's lips purse when I lifted the first of my little ones out of the gestation tank, and she folded her arms across her chest. Even without her broadcasting it, I heard the question. If the colour of these little beasts was different, then what else might be?

I wondered that myself as I watched the little blue elephants play their way through the their infancy. They learned quickly, figuring out my mazes and challenges far more rapidly than the rats ever did. I think it was Mike who gave them the ping-pong ball, and after that Mike and Andrew spent more time with my pygmy elephants than I did, dividing them into two teams of three, and teaching them a rudimentary form of football.

I was happy enough to allow that. After all, it wasn't as if I didn't have other things to keep my busy - the constant demands of the Federation's diplomatic service, the search for new breakouts ... oh, and saving the world from time to time.

Eventually though, I turned my attention back to the little blue animals. They were adolescent now, and starting to figure out the order of dominance in their miniature herd. For years I'd studied them. I'd made copious notes. I even sat down from time to time and made a start on analysing them. But there were always more exciting new experiments to do, and it was easy enough to set the detailed analyses aside for later.

I had reached one conclusion though. As intelligent as wild pachyderms were, my little beasts were brighter still. They responded to spoken instructions. They managed complex tasks, their two-inch trunks proving to be surprisingly delicate manipulators. I think it was that which made me wonder how much further they could go.

Okay, perhaps you would have stopped me, TIM. It was hardly my fault that you were offline, all your circuits occupied by one of your periodic synch-ups with the Trig's computers. Tikno had promised it wouldn't take long - no more than a day - but it was still frustrating for me. With Liz getting Mike and Hsu-Tai settled on the Trig, I had only Andrew to keep me company. And while the boy is bright, I was missing some adult conversation. I turned instead to the pleasures of invention.
I'd made you, TIM. Okay, the Federation initialised you and gave you the indefinable spark that is 'mind', but your circuitry? That was my design. I knew about telepathic technology - the mechanisms needed to detect and interpret telepathy. And with the pygmy elephants, I didn't need to provide the spark of life. I wanted to study their minds, not create new ones.

The headsets were delicate nets of wire. Andrew held the pygmies, keeping the squirming, playful little animals still while I slipped the filigree harnesses over their trunks and settled them against the soft blue skin.

I heard them almost at once. I heard their confusion as they adjusted to the new sensation. And I heard their delight as they sensed one another's thoughts. Within an hour, as Andrew and I watched in fascination, they were figuring out how their piccolo trumpeting corresponded to the sensations they could now share. Their communication, always limited by the simplicity of their vocal abilities, became steadily more complex, and I realised they were learning as rapidly as a human child might.

Heaven help me. I'd created the pachyderma superior!

- x - x - x - x -

I think Andrew realised it as quickly as I did. After all, we both had our mental shields low, listening to the pygmy elephants' first hesitant attempts at a conversation. He looked up at me, and then down again at the wire netting that formed a chicken run - okay, elephant run - in the research lab. His eyes widened, and for a moment I caught an image in his mind: of his father casting him into the spirits cellar, slamming and locking the iron door.

The blue elephants caught it too, and they looked up at us, trumpeting in alarm. Now I stared too. Heaven help me, I hadn't expected the communication between them and us to be a two-way street!

In his defence, and my own, I have to say that Andrew probably didn't quite take in the matter of scale. Our elephant run - and good grief, doesn't that sound ridiculous? - might have been no more than a couple of meters long, but to the pygmies it was the size of a respectable safari park enclosure. But all Andrew saw was a telepathic species and the bars on their prison. He acted before I got over my own shock, pulling the wire netting off the enclosure roof and knocking one of the walls outwards.

The pygmy elephants took one look at the suddenly boundless horizons and stampeded.

All right, the door to the research lab should probably have been shut, but then I was keeping an ear on the chirping of your drives, TIM, listening out for any sign of a problem in the download. There was no way I could have caught the little blue elephants before they made it out into the main room. And, truth to be told, I wasn't even sure that I should try.

Even if he'd forgotten the scale of their enclosure, Andrew was correct about one thing. We didn't have the right to keep the pachyderma superior confined, any more than they did us.

Andrew looked down at the empty cage and then gave me that look of his that combines twinging guilt with his mischievous nature. I honestly can't remember whether the two of us jaunted into the main room, or just ran through the open door.

All I remember is the sight that met us.

Two of our little friends were galloping across the floor of the Lab, and my mind supplied the thunder of their passage as if they were the size of their mighty cousins. Their high-pitched trumpeting was joyful and enthusiastic. A third had found its way to the crumbs scattered around the base of your table, TIM. I don't know how many times I've told Andrew to eat at the coffee table rather than using you as a handy sideboard. And I don't know how many times the two of us have pointed out that a plate of sandwiches doesn't sit comfortably on the curved surface of your hemispheres. Today's lunch had just been one of the many that end up knocked carelessly to the floor.

But the crumbs of bread and peanut butter were a feast to the tiny elephant. Her sinuous little trunk wrapped around each morsel, lifting it delicately to her mouth and revelling in the amazing new taste of each bite.

But fascinating as her mental impressions were, it was the last three that drew our eyes. Andrew had left the Lab's television on - projected on a screen designed to display more weighty material. Three of our little blue pygmies were standing in front of it, their eyes wide, their minds full of wonder. Through their perceptions, a third rate science fiction show became the most wonderful spectacle ever devised. The shimmering special effects and constant motion was a stimulus I'd never provided to my erstwhile pets. And they revelled in it.

I think I'd been watching them for several minutes, oblivious to Andrew's impromptu football game with the other three pygmies, before one of the couch-potatoes stepped backwards onto the remote control. An elephant is not designed to jump, and believe me, until you've seen one leave the ground in surprise - its ears flapping open and its trunk raised, before landing flat-footed on remote control buttons that sink beneath its feet - you don't know the meaning of the word 'funny'.

The channel switched, and it seemed curiously appropriate that the screen was now filled with the graceful pirouettes of a company of ballerinas. A mental image came to me of my little pygmy, dancing as it was on the unsteady ground of the remote control, dressed in a tutu and twirling gracefully as if it were some refugee from that old Disney film Fantasia.

Dangerous things, mental images. More dangerous still when you're sharing them with half a dozen miniature pachyderms.

Within moments, my three blue elephants were dancing across the jaunting pad, their sturdy legs shuffling beneath them to provide a deceptive grace.

I think that's when I shook myself, finally roused by the sheer absurdity of the sight. I rounded up my now-weary little elephants, and Andrew gathered together his own little trio. They were glad enough to return to their spacious enclosure, and to settle down onto their fresh hay beds. For a moment I considered removing their headsets while they slept, but I couldn't rob them of the gift of communication that I had so unwittingly bestowed upon them. I left the headsets on, and simply turned out the light, closing the door to the research lab behind me.

And that's when you came back online, TIM, announcing that Liz was already on her way back before I could even begin to explain our dilemma.

Well, now Liz is asleep, TIM, and you've got to help me figure this one out before morning. Like it or not, I've created a new species. Find me a nice safe planet I can send them to, TIM, where they can stretch their legs and explore to their hearts' content. Let me give them the opportunity to make the same new start that we're making here on Earth. And for goodness' sake, help me to do it before Liz notices the murmur of their dreams.

I think she suspects something anyway, to be honest. We would probably be all right if Andrew was a little diplomatic.

Liz was already materialising on the jaunting pad when Andrew turned to me and announced that at least now we knew why three blue elephants pirouetted across the jaunting pad. Liz gave him a blank look, and as I recall you were speechless yourself, TIM, as she demanded to know why.

Andrew gave her that wide-eyed Scottish innocence of his, and smiled angelically. When he spoke it was with all due seriousness.

"Why, to get to the other side, of course."

You know what, TIM? I think when I can tell this story without laughing out loud, I'm going to strangle that boy.

- x -

The End