The springy stuff on which I sat, gross as brushwood, would have been cotton wool to normal-sized human touch. Perhaps it was vegetable fibre of that order. Crouching near me was a girl, clad in coarse blue fabric which in reality would have shamed our finest textiles. The details of her face were simplified in a doll-like blurring of line. But still she was recognizable, even with the lashlike filaments around her eyes.
Somehow I still spoke with my lips. "Jan." My voice seemed a miniature bass bell. I crept to her side.
Her courage and sense of humor were intact.
Her laughter was a tinier bell. "I'm all right, Charlie. At least, yet. Maybe I just don't realize. One thing we've talked about has happened, hasn't it? You look sort of cute, Charlie, like a puppet in a show. Doc, too." Jan laughed again.
Beyond her, dressed like myself, was the reduced image of Dr. Shane Lanvin, though his inner self remained unchanged, his triumphant smile just faintly edged with doubt.
"Hi, Doc!" I greeted. "Congratulations for success in a venture which began with you. Now, for the record, let's hear your version of just what has happened."
He smirked good-naturedly. "All right," he chuckled. "You can't get back to any control hoods, our former human-size selves. I've tried. So our whole identities must have been transferred to these far smaller forms. Somewhere in our adventures the structure of each of our brains must have been exhaustively charted, down to the finest wavering of cell-filament, and the least variation of chemical state. Thus must have been captured every phase of our minds, memories, and personalities. This might have been done by something analagous to our focused radar or X-ray photography, penetrating deep, and making an instant record. From this record, the pattern of our brains must have been rebuilt, with all the complex channels of association and so forth, but in a totally different medium, capable of a far finer and more compact flow of energy than mere nerve impulses. In a brain of protoplast, I think it could happen."
"Loose ends still dangle," I chuckled. "For instance, I remember a machine called George, and a statement by him that consciousness, awareness of self, was even difficult to define. How about transferring that?"
Doc Lanvin shrugged. "Maybe the consciousness—the true self—is inherent in the brain channels, like the memory, and would also be transferred simply by copying them precisely," he said. "Or could the awareness be a kind of spark, capable of being captured and transported by an appropriate apparatus, as an electric spark can be captured in an electroscope? I don't know, Charlie. But I noticed some of the equipment carried by these Xians when they took us; and I thought of that."