ZR-138 knows the words “Explosive Decompression” because they blinked in a gentle red wash for the entire time that she learned to read. She knows “ZR-138” because it is on the label outside her room. She knows the words “Turn Handle,” “Oxygen Low,” and “Emergency Abort.”
She does not have the words for the trembling that comes through her web as another fragment of the station detaches to flee home, to erase itself in a red smudge against the sky. She does not know the word for sky, but she remembers it, purple and dark over the meadow as the evening insects came. Then, she did not know what evening meant, or insect, beyond a tremor in the web and a knowing of feeding to come.
Now she knows that there had been more than one kind of insect in the meadow, delicious moths fat and rare, enormous wasps to be avoided, that would make her have to rebuild the web. Now it’s just the fruit flies that breed in the medium under her home, come up, get caught, get eaten.
She has learned to not eat all of the fruit flies at once. She released one when she became aware that they were not infinite. It drifted back down, and later there were more.
She understands waiting.
She knows the words “Explosive Decompression,” but does not understand what they mean, beyond something bad that happened in the past. It sent wild vibrations through her web, like a thousand wasps were hitting at once — but the web did not break, and there was no new food other than the fruit flies, and after that no people came to look at her.
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She does not understand oxygen, or the fluke in the hatch mechanism that sealed off the chambers where her room is. She does not have to understand oxygen the way a human does; she does not need as much.
The door to her room has been left open, and she comes out, tentatively at first, then, finding no large animals, with increasing resolve. She does not know what the lumps of fur are on the floor of one of the cages, and flies come from there, too. But she knows that the things she sees on the screen across from them are words, just like “Explosive Decompression” or “Oxygen Low.”
And she reads.
With no wasps, she barely has to rebuild her web at all. And with no gravity, the web can take on so many shapes that it could not in the meadow. She tears it down and rebuilds at first from some instinctive desire to catch more fruit flies; then she realizes that what she is doing is what the screens call “experiments.”
As the web in her room catches more flies than she needs, she spins another one, across from the screen. She experiments. She weaves the Platonic solids, feels the truth and heft of them. The pyramid comes naturally, four points in space, like the web she used to hang across the branches, but also in a new direction. The cube is a bit more challenging: She does not see the utility of it at first, but then realizes that it is the same, or almost the same, as her room. She wonders why anything would build a room like a cube, when a pyramid is easier. And then, like an accident, she recognizes that her room was built, the cages were built, the station was built.
By the people, who have not come to look at her in a long time.
She does not have a word for loneliness. That is not included in the training programs that kept running after the people left. But, she understands waiting, and that there are many forms of it, and some of those feel like a broken web she cannot repair.
When the change happens, she knows it at first as a vibration in the web, a knowledge so primal it’s almost unnoticed. The station shudders, not in the small way of parts peeling away, but huge, thrumming, so that she scuttles back to her room. Then there is a bump, this one so large that it moves the lumps of fur. Her web dances with the motion of the station, and she clings with all eight legs.
She does not have a word for fear, but she understands it.
Then there is a hiss, and more thumping, and gentler vibrations. A pattern of movement, something coming. She stays in her room.
“Explosive Decompression” stops blinking, and so does “Oxygen Low,” and then she sees two bulky shapes come into the space. She does not recognize them for what they are, until they remove their heads, and underneath are the heads of the people.
She does not know that language comes through sound, but she feels the vibration when one of them says: “Damn. Hell of a waste. How many experiments did we lose here?”
The other one consults a screen on the wall. “Mostly it was carbon growth yield increases, so not too bad. Oh. Wait. And a couple of uplift experiments.” He looks at the fuzzy lumps on the floor of the cage. “Poor chimps.”
The first one turns slowly, floating in place, then its eyes get bigger, and it grabs a handle to stop itself.
“Joe,” it says. “Were there any other uplifts other than the chimps?”
“Yeah, a —” and stops, as it sees what has caught its companion’s attention, “spider.”
They are both looking at the space between two panels, where she has been experimenting. The pyramid, the cube, the dodecahedron. And spelled out in spidersilk and fruit fly carcass, the shapes that mean “Explosive Decompression.”
The people have finally returned to look at her. She does not have a word for pride, but now she understands waiting, far better than she ever has before.
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