The Science of Understanding - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Polly Kronenberger is a novelist whose work explores the intersection of everyday life and humanity. Drawing inspiration from her years of work in a plethora of jobs, her stories often delve into the dilemmas of our increasingly connected world. When she's not writing, she enjoys the world around her, where she lives with her life partner and a menagerie of pets and farm animals in Camden, Ohio.

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I knew I had to be completely silent. The darkness of the room made me feel safe, somehow. As safe as I could feel as I watched my friend die. I sat there on the blood-soaked floor, holding him in my arms. I saw the life move out of him. A gunshot. Most likely the one to his neck. The metallic smell of his blood rose up around us. I kept my eyes locked with his and never left his gaze. Andy looked so scared at that moment, gasping for air, struggling to stay alive. And then, in the very next second, it all changed. He was gone. 

Someone was still in our lab. There were several offices along our corridor, as well as the lab, the area where Andy and I sat sprawled on the floor, covered in his blood. But I could hear that person moving outside. I let go of Andy, got up quickly, and hid behind a stack of food boxes in the walk-in cooler. Three boxes high, dates and plums, and other fruits. I hunched down so tightly under the back shelf and slid those boxes in front of me. And waited. 

Perhaps only minutes had passed, but it felt like hours. The entire ordeal came crashing in on me when the door swung open with a thud. The person there, breathing hard, called out loudly, “Clear!” That is when I spoke, softly at first, then louder, telling them not to shoot. It was the police who had finally made their way to our floor. They cuffed me immediately and led me out into the main area. I explained I wasn’t the shooter and nodded down to my identification badge, clipped to my lab coat. It didn’t matter. It would be hours until everything got sorted out.

The trouble started a couple of months earlier. Our work there at Corrington and Ames Research (CAR), funded by a United States governmental grant, had been focused on communications with animals. Our purpose, our mission, was to figure out how animals and humans might communicate most efficiently on a peer-to-peer level.

I guess I should make it clear who I am. My name is Victoria Greene. Rory is what most people call me. I’m a human, first and foremost, a citizen of the planet. And secondly, I am a scientist. I never expected when I first became interested in science, in finding out how and why the world works the way it does, that I would be caught inside some tangle of murder and kidnapping. Ape-napping, more to the point.