Animal Intelligence

I was sitting in the living room, a blanket on my knees. It was nearly midnight.

Thomas had been asleep for a long time. Eva, having arrived on Sparrow Island late in the afternoon, had settled into the small room that served as my office.

A few days had passed since our visit to the Élysée, and I still didn't know what that mysterious 97.8% meant.

I had even questioned Robot1er.com, varying the formulations. Nothing. Cobot had simply explained to me that a medical result could not be interpreted without knowing the examination concerned.

Before Eva closed the office door, I had stopped her.

— Eva? Any news from Prévenir?

She had paused.

— I called the center. They examined your report and want to do additional tests.

My stomach tightened.

— Because of the 97.8%?

— They want to verify this result before drawing any conclusions.

— But what does it mean?

— I'm not a doctor, Franck. I'd rather not worry you for nothing.

— A bit late for that.

— You have to wait until we know exactly what we're looking at.

— And when is that?

— In three days. I've made you an appointment.

Three days. It wasn't long, but long enough to imagine the worst.

Eva must have read something on my face.

— Try not to think about it too much until then.

— Easy to say.

A silence settled.

— Well... are you coming down? Shall we watch a movie?

She glanced toward the office.

— Not right away. I'm going to work a bit more.

— How long?

— An hour. I promise.

I eventually let her work and returned to the living room. Lia was dozing at the other end of the couch.

To try to think of something else, I decided to watch Inception for the umpteenth time. Before each scene, I knew what line would fall, when the characters would meet, and what music would fill the room. That's precisely why I chose it: nothing in this film could surprise or worry me anymore, and yet I still didn't know what stance to take regarding our reality. I no longer wished to know if the top eventually fell, but I hoped to resolve that night a more embarrassing question: was it better to know the truth, whatever it might be, or to live happily in a reality one chose to believe?

A small hunger made itself felt. Between the rowing machine gathering dust in its corner and me, I had chosen my side years ago. I was more in a mindset of gaining weight than gaining muscle, if I were honest. One more or less chocolate fondant wouldn't change anything.

I went to the kitchen, avoiding the floorboard that always creaked in the same spot. Without turning on the light, I took a fork from the drawer, then took out what was left of the fondant from the refrigerator. I ate it standing, leaning against the counter, directly from the dish, in the bluish glow that the screen projected from the next room. The cabin was so quiet that I could hear the metal of the fork scraping the ceramic.

A line of light still filtered under the office door. I hesitated to go fetch Eva, then gave up. I already knew the answer: another five minutes.

I went back to lie on the couch and restarted the film. My eyes closed intermittently. Outside, the day had almost entirely disappeared, and the forest was already blending into the darkness. The fire still spread a gentle warmth in the room, and Lia had settled near the window. I was not far from falling asleep; the film's dialogues were already starting to mix in my head.

Suddenly, a sharp noise pulled me from my drowsiness.

I opened my eyes with a start. Lia was already leaping toward the slightly open window.

Ears pointed forward, she was staring at something in the darkness. A growl rose from her throat, from high to low, while her jaw moved in small frantic spasms, as it always did when she spotted prey.

I looked outside. I saw nothing.

A bat, probably.

Lia darted through the ajar door.

— Lia!

I just had time to see a dark shape rise above the cabin. Lia had already climbed onto the woodpile and reached the roof.

Then both disappeared.

I rushed outside.

Above me, between the roof and the branches overhanging the cabin, the leaves began to tremble. An almost imperceptible buzzing accelerated.

Lia hissed.

Something hit the tiles.

It was happening up there, a few meters from me, in the narrow space between the roof and the foliage.

— Lia!

Another hiss.

A sharp impact.

A fraction of a second later, two shapes burst above the roof.

I saw Lia as if suspended in mid-air, her body stretched in a leap that seemed impossible to me, her paws extended toward the other shape.

Then they fell together and crashed into the grass, several meters from the cabin.

— Lia!

I ran barefoot in the wet, icy grass. I dropped to my knees next to Lia, who lay on her side, her right front paw folded against her body. When I tried to touch her, she let out a brief, strangled meow.

A crackling made me turn my head.

Two meters from us, a small orange light was blinking in the grass. Beneath it, a split shell. A propeller was still turning in fits and starts.

A drone.

I looked at Lia, then at the device.

The cabin door opened behind me.

— Franck? What's happening?

Eva ran across the clearing. When she saw Lia in my arms, her face fell apart.

— A drone. She jumped on it.

— A drone? Here?

Lia let out another cry. Eva opened the door in front of me and cleared the kitchen table.

I placed her under the harsh light of the ceiling lamp, then felt her paw centimeter by centimeter, slowly, my eyes fixed on her. At a precise spot, her body tensed. Her claws scraped against the wood without ever turning toward me. Even in pain, she seemed to know I was trying to help her.

Under the fur, something had given way. An angle outlined the paw where there should never have been one.

— It's broken, I murmured.

The vet was more than an hour's drive away, and I refused to leave her like that until morning. I took out the first aid kit, broke a wooden stick in two, then improvised a splint with gauze.

Eva crouched at Lia's level and placed a hand on her flank.

— I'll hold her. Do what you have to do.

My fingers trembled. I tightened just enough to immobilize the paw, checking that the bandage didn't cut off circulation.

Lia let me do it to the end, with a trust that moved me deeply.

When I finished, I wrapped her in a blanket and took her in my arms. She snuggled against me, her paw immobilized, and I gradually felt her breathing slow down.

I hadn't even noticed that Eva had gone out again.

The door opened a few minutes later. She entered, a pair of gloves on her hands. She was carefully holding the remains of the drone: the split chassis, two twisted propellers, and several blackened plastic and metal fragments she had picked up from the grass.

— You collected all that?

— Everything I found.

She placed the pieces on the kitchen table, one by one, without touching them directly.

— Do you really think the gloves are necessary?

She looked at the gutted drone.

— As long as we don't know who sent it, I'd rather not assume anything.

No mark.

Not a logo, not an inscription, not the slightest trace of a manufacturer. I turned the fragments over, searched for a serial number on the chassis, under the circuits, even in the battery compartment. Nothing. Even the electronic chips, usually covered with tiny characters, seemed to have been sanded with a care that was anything but accidental.

Eva brought one closer to the light.

— You don't do that on a private individual's drone.

— Do you know what it is?

— No. But I know what it's not.

She took out her phone and launched an application I didn't know.

— No flight identifier. Civilian drones normally broadcast an electronic identity, their position, and certain flight information. For systems monitoring the sky, this one doesn't exist.

She resumed examining the debris.

— No memory card either.

— So the drone wasn't recording anything?

— Or it had no reason to keep what it was recording.

She showed me a small circuit still attached to the shell.

— There's enough computing power in there to analyze images directly on board. It could recognize what it was looking for and only transmit a result.

— Recognize what?

— A building, a vehicle, an object... a face.

I thought I had misheard.

— A face?

— Facial recognition can work directly on this kind of processor. You just need to provide it in advance with the characteristics of the person being sought.

— So this thing could know who it was looking at?

— At least determine if a face matched the one it had been asked to search for.

She uncovered another component, barely larger than a fingernail.

— Probably a thermal sensor. It can see at night, spot people, follow them, or confirm a human presence.

— You mean it might not have come to film the cabin?

— The question might not just be what it came to see.

Her gaze met mine.

— But who it came to recognize.

This possibility seemed much more worrying to me.

— But rest assured, it's not a killer drone.

— Ha ha!

I didn't know if she said that to reassure me, scare me, or make me laugh.

She then focused on a broken antenna.

— I don't see any classic long-range control system either.

— How was someone piloting it?

— Maybe no one was piloting it. When the GPS is jammed and communications are cut, the machine must be able to continue alone.

— How does it know where to go?

Eva pointed to the camera.

— It looks. We have long taught machines to know where they were thanks to satellites. Now, we teach them to navigate by observing the terrain, buildings, roads, vegetation...

— So it didn't even need the exact coordinates of the cabin?

— An approximate area, some aerial images, and landmarks can suffice. Then it can finish its approach alone.

I remembered the dark shape above the roof and its almost imperceptible buzzing.

— All that in a thing this size?

— Maybe that's what we'll remember from our era. The wars of recent years have done for autonomous drones what previous ones did for aviation or radar: they accelerated their evolution at a crazy speed.

She showed me the components.

— Commercial camera, standard battery, motors available everywhere, consumer processor. What's sophisticated here isn't the hardware.

— It's the software.

— Exactly.

— So anyone can make this?

— Not just anyone. But many more people than when these capabilities were reserved for states.

Eva stopped handling the fragments.

— Do you have a metal box? There may still be powered components. As long as I don't know what they do, I prefer to assume they can still emit.

— I have a biscuit tin.

— That will make a poor Faraday cage.

— I didn't know there were good and bad ones.

— The good ones cost more and contain fewer biscuits...

She emptied an old dented box and placed the fragments inside.

— A Faraday cage prevents waves from passing?

— When it's well designed. Your biscuit tin, much less. But it's still better than leaving an unknown device communicating on your kitchen table.

She closed the lid.

— How could it find this place?

— It must have had a starting point: an area to explore, a reference image, information telling it where to look.

I immediately thought of Cobot.

— Its systems must have recorded its route when it came here. If someone accessed its data...

— They could learn where to look.

Cobot was probably one of the most protected systems in the country. If someone could dig into its movements, my cabin might be the least of our problems.

— GØD?

Eva lowered her eyes to the box.

— Since the Élysée, I've been wondering how far this GØD is capable of going.

Something was bothering me, though.

— Wait. I've been living here for months. Cobot came about two weeks ago. But this thing appears a few hours after your arrival!

Eva's face closed.

— It might have followed my route.

— Or your phone. You said it could recognize a face. Maybe it wasn't even following you. Maybe it was looking for you.

Her silence lasted a bit too long.

— It's possible.

— Or me.

— Also.

I definitely didn't like that expression.

— Have you received other messages from GØD?

Her silence was enough for me.

— A few, she finally admitted. Nicolas, Claire, and I are trying to trace their origin. That's what I was working on. Every time we think we have a lead, it disappears.

— What do they say?

— Phrases, allusions to what I'm doing, to the people I see. Sometimes to things I've just done.

A different cold from that of the wet grass ran through me.

— And you still came here?

— I wanted to know if it would continue. I really thought this place was isolated enough.

She glanced at the box.

— Apparently, I was wrong.

The night behind the window no longer looked quite like the one an hour earlier.

— It followed you. And now it knows where I live.

— Maybe.

Our phones vibrated simultaneously. The same message had just appeared on both screens.

"You chose isolation. Not invisibility.

— GØD"

I turned to the box.

— It knows we found the drone.

— If it was still transmitting something and we just cut the connection, the message could be a reaction to the loss of signal.

— Is that reassuring?

— Or it's observing us otherwise...

Eva tried to display the sender's information. The screen went white, and a few seconds later, the message had disappeared.

Something still bothered me.

— If this drone was as sophisticated as you say, why get so close? If it just wanted to observe us, it could have stayed further away.

— Lia might have surprised it.

— Or it had to get close enough to recognize a face.

Eva looked at the clearing.

— It's possible.

— The question remains which one.

Eva had arrived a few hours earlier. Thomas was sleeping upstairs. Cobot had come here a few days ago. And I, of course, lived here.

We were four possible faces. And no reason to prefer one over the other three.

I drew the curtains.

— You never close them usually, Eva noted.

My hand remained on the fabric. She was right.

— Maybe that's what it wanted.

— To close my curtains?

— To change your behavior. Surveillance doesn't need to be permanent to act on you. You just need to know it's possible.

In less than an hour, I had closed the curtains, wondered if my phone was tracking me, and looked several times toward the window, worried.

The drone might not have needed to record anything. It had already changed something.

Me.

Lia was sleeping near the fire, her paw bandaged, her breath finally peaceful. She had sensed a presence and leaped without wondering what it wanted. We were doing exactly the opposite: for an hour, we had been searching for the hidden intention behind this machine.

Was it here to observe? Follow Eva? Find me? Recognize Thomas? Test our security? Scare us?

I remembered a phrase from Cobot.

I see the acts, but I don't see the intentions.

For the first time, I really understood what he meant.

We now knew how the drone could fly, see, navigate here, and how someone had taken care to erase its identity. But we still didn't know the only thing that really mattered.

Why it had come.

A few days earlier, Prévenir had found something inside my body that I still didn't know. That night, another machine had come to my house, and I didn't know what it was looking for either.

In the living room, Inception was still waiting for me. I suddenly had a strong desire to return to that fiction: at least I knew what was going to happen there.

A few hours earlier, I had started the film wondering if it was better to know reality or live happily in the one we chose to believe. The question now seemed almost naive to me.

I looked at the curtains I had just closed, the metal box on the table, then my phone that I no longer dared to leave near me.

An idea had settled in my mind, and I couldn't get rid of it: someone could be watching me.

And if that was precisely what the drone had come to do?

Not to observe me. To plant in me the idea that I could be.