"Rog Phillips - Rat in the Skull" - читать интересную книгу автора (Phillips Rog)

"Oh." Dr. MacNare relaxed. "I thought something had happened."
"Something has!"
They stopped in the doorway of the study. Dr. MacNare sucked in his breath
sharply, but remained silent.
Adam seemed oblivious of their presence. He was too interested in something else.
He was interested in his hands. He was holding his hands up where he could see
them, and he was moving them independently, clenching and unclenching the metal
finders with slow deliberation.
Suddenly the movement stopped. He had become aware of them. Then, impossibly,
unbelievably, he spoke.
"Ma ma," Adam said. Then, "Pa pa."
"Adam!" Alice sobbed, rushing across the study to him and sinking down beside
him. Her arms went around his metal body. "Oh, Adam," she cried happily.
It was the beginning. The date of that beginning is not known. Alice MacNare
believes it was early in May, but more probably it was in April. There was no time to
keep notes. In fact, there was no longer a research project nor any thought of one.
Instead, there was Adam, the person. At least, to Alice he became that, completely.
Perhaps, also, to Dr. MacNare.
Dr. MacNare quite often stood behind Adam where he could watch the rat body
through the transparent skull case while Alice engaged Adam's attention. Alice did
the same, at times, but she finally refused to do so any more. The sight of Adam the
rat, his body held in a net attached to the frame, his head covered by the helmet, his
four legs moving independently of one another with little semblance of walking or
running motion nor even of coordination, but with swift darting motions and pauses
pregnant with meaning, brought back to Alice the old feeling of vague fear, and a
tremendous surge of pity for Adam that made her want to cry.
Slowly, subtly, Adam's rat body became to Alice a pure brain, and his legs four
nerve ganglia. A brain covered with short white fur; and when she took him out of
his harness under opiate to bathe him, she bathed him as gently and carefully as any
brain surgeon sponging a cortical surface.




VII.

Once started, Adam's mental development progressed rapidly. Dr. MacNare began
making notes again on June 2, 1957, just ten days before the end, and it is to these
notes that we go for an insight into Adam's mind.
On June 4th Dr. MacNare wrote, "I am of the opinion that Adam will never develop
beyond the level of a moron, in the scale of human standards. He would probably
make a good factory worker or chauffeur, in a year or two. But he is consciously
aware of himself as Adam, he thinks in words and simple sentences with an accurate
understanding of their meaning, and he is able to do new things from spoken
instructions. There is no question, therefore, but that he has an integrated mind,
entirely human in every respect."
On June 7th Dr. MacNare wrote, "Something is developing which I hesitate to put
down on paper тАУ for a variety of reasons. Creating Adam was a scientific
experiment, nothing more than that. Both the premises on which the project was
based have been proven: that the principle of verification is the main factor in learned