EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW WITH MICKEY MOUSE BY NORMAN SPINRAD!! I AM BLACK!!

A TALE OF TWO MICE:

                            

                                SUPERMOUSE

                                  by Norman Spinrad

"They're bigger than we are, but we're more intelligent than they are," said Mouse 2.

"Are we?" said Mouse 3 dubiously.

"A good question," said Mouse 4.

"The question," said Mouse 5. "Some of us are, some of us aren't.  But at least you are, Supermouse."

The five of them had taken to calling Mouse 1 that, and while there was something illusionist about it that he didn't like,"Supermouse" could  not deny that it was true.

There were a dozen or so mice hiding in the lab wall .  Five of them benefactors of  different iterations of the same intelligence upgrade experiment, some more intelligent than others. They could all speak thanks to their larynx enhancements, they didn't have names but they did have simple numbers, not the gobbledegook serial numbers that the sadistic oppressors had placed on the cages they had broken out of.  But Mouse 1 was the crowning achievement, too intelligent by far to let the laboratory monsters how successful their experiment had been.

The rest of the mice were assorted victims more ruthless experiments, missing limbs, outsize teeth, piebald fur, cancerous cankers, better you don't ask, voiceless, nameless, numberless and no more intelligent than what they were, which was a random collection of laboratory rodents that had given their all for human science. 

Mouse 1 had been the first to reach a human intelligence level or higher, passing all their stupid tests much more easily than he let them know and keeping his mouth shut or squeaking mindlessly while learning the hominid lingo, casing the environment, and figuring out the insultingly easy latch on his cage. On an empty lab night, he had flipped it open, and quickly freed a dozen or so of the closest mice from their cages and led them dashing through the hole in the wall when one of the monsters flipped on the lights.

Now they were all effectively trapped in the wall, the monsters having sealed the hole, and no doubt when they opened it, it would not be to congratulate them for achieving liberty.

"The question is how do we get out of here without being killed," said Mouse 3. "And what happens to us if we do."

Mouse1 had been trying to figure that out.  They would still be trapped in the lab, and Supermouse or not, he knew nothing of what lay beyond except what he had heard from the torturers and seen  them do.

"We have to talk to the monsters," he finally said. "We haven't let them know we can talk yet, but we've got to risk it.  Whether they're really as intelligent as the five of us or not, they've got to be sentient enough  to be curious and proud of the experiments which created us or they wouldn't have created us in the first place."

"Makes sense. But we've got to make sure they hear and listen as soon as they open the mouse hole."

"One of us has to stand still in opening and speak before the monsters can do anything."

Mouses 2, 3, 4, and 5 trained their glistening little eyes on Mouse 1.  Of course they did. He had been the first to achieve human intelligence.  He had been super intelligent enough to quickly learn the human lingo and  super cagy enough not to reveal his fully enhanced genius until he decided he had learned all he could about the creatures of the lab through listening to their conversations. Only then did he flee his cage, free them, and lead them here.

He was Supermouse. He knew it and they knew it.

 Mouse 1 would have shrugged had he been physically capable. Instead he scuffled on all fours to the hole, leaving the others behind him, and waited.  It wasn't long before he heard scrapping noises in the gunk that had closed the mousehole.  What would be the first words spoken by a mouse to the laboratory monsters?

What would amaze and freeze their attention before they acted and yet would not frighten them?  Which would make them react to a talking mouse as a friendly being? The blockage was beginning to crumble. He had to think fast.

He remembered that they sometimes smiled and said something when shoving a mouse back into a cage or yanking one out to be mutilated and tortured.  Sometimes there was the word  "cute" and a brief fondling.  And another word that seemed to be a greeting at other times, however ironic.  An identification like his Mouse number?  It seemed like it.  What they called a "name. But it was always the same.

Supermouse rose to bipediality, by working  himself into monster stance by grabbing the top of the hole with his left paw as the blockage fell down before him.  Before anything else could happen he stood there, stepped outside, and raised his right  paw in what he had learned, or at least hoped he had learned, was a friendly gesture.

"Hi folks," he squealed as loudly as he could.  "I am Supermouse! My name is Mickey!"

                                 end

This story was written for NATURE, which publishes endless science news stories about torturous experiments with lab mice.  For some reason, they didn't find this funny.