Lucas hated being in crowds. Worse yet, he hated having important things to say when nobody would listen. Just before, the only viable course of action was refused on the basis that nobody would believe him. Those who were outside were incredibly fortunate that Evan was still in the area. Also, once they returned, their terror made them finally realize that their only viable course of action was to wait.
Once news of Evan's cryptic warning propagated, the common room was fearfully abandoned by the building's residents in favor of lightless hallways or personal areas. Many tall, broad windows lining the left and right walls of the chamber allowed murky light to spill inside. The curtains were drawn wide apart, revealing unblinking eyes open to the desolate world. But there was acute awareness the broad surfaces would allow a watcher to gaze in just as easily. A slight mismatch between the floor in here and the outside meant the windows were about five feet off the ground.
That suited Lucas just fine, now that he had a relatively isolated space to contemplate. It was even fairly quiet in here, so any atypical sounds should be easy to notice. Just in case whatever the warning was about came to pass. It was rather unfortunate Evan had not remained around to explain further, but Lucas knew that meant he had something important to attend to.
"Okay, so the infected don't attack each other. I understand that." Chloe tentatively entered the common area and glanced around the abandoned, shadowy domain. She crept cautiously around various furnishings as the door drifted closed behind her. "Why do you think that means they can see consciousness?"
"You mean besides that zombie not choosing to attack the people who were passed out?" Lucas turned to watch her approach from his place on the couch near the powerless television.
"Yeah. It seems way more likely to me that she just somehow didn't notice them laying there." Chloe delicately removed her rain coat and draped it over the back of a nearby chair. She then walked around and sat in a soft armchair beside the couch.
"Well, it also agrees with all the other information we have about the undead."
"Would you mind explaining your reasoning there?"
"It makes a sort of sense if you think about their traits." Lucas hesitated, unsure how best to proceed with his line of thinking. He realized it had to sound pretty out there. Despite having come up with the notion and considering it yesterday, he still had a hard time believing it could be true. "To start with, they only target living humans and not each other. So there has to be something they are keying in on."
"Animals can recognize others of their kind. Maybe that's what's going on." Chloe suggested. "Some kind of instinct that's triggering in the infected, directing them to attack people while neglecting those who are behaving the same way they are."
"That's what I figured too at first. But remember, we also have pretty solid information about z-rays. Even though it happened only the one time that we know about, we can be reasonably confident it struck random locations all over the planet. Actually, that's probably the single most reliable bit of information we have about this phenomenon so far."
"What does that have to do with some ability to detect consciousness?"
"Not anything directly. But remember how you pointed out to me that z-rays didn't appear to strike animals?" Lucas paused a moment to direct his attention outside for a few seconds. Despite recent events, the storm had a familiar, soothing quality about it. "We do know that probably isn't technically true, considering what little we do know about the strikes of z-rays. What is more likely to have happened is that the z-rays also hit some animals, but it produced no effect on them."
"So animals are immune to z-rays, but humans are not. What, because animals aren't conscious and humans are?"
"Animals are conscious, but the sort of awareness they have is not nearly as intricate as the type of consciousness a human has." Lucas shrugged. "Anyway, because just now the unconscious people were missed, it seems likely that is the primary factor of the difference."
"Seems like kind of a stretch."
"Maybe it is. It could be something else." Lucas halted there, then added after a lapse in the conversation. "But consider this. Whatever else this plague is doing, we know it halts once the brain is damaged or destroyed."
"So, if the brain is no longer suitable for whatever the infection does to someone, it will cease. And if it wasn't ever suitable to begin with the disease won't begin doing whatever it does in the first place." Chloe thoughtfully concluded.
"Right, so animal brains aren't sufficient to produce the zombie effect." Not long ago, Lucas had privately speculated about how an undead could be tricked into biting an animal. A careful test could provide more evidence to support the immunity hypothesis, but he had no capability of performing such an experiment. Lucas chortled as he added. "They want to eat our brains. It should have been more obvious, really."
Unfortunately, Chloe was not nearly as amused by the conclusion. "Okay. Let's say the disease is affecting the brain like that. So how do you get from there to some sort of magical power to directly observe consciousness?"
"Well, remember that we're trying to think of what those things are detecting that makes us valid targets yet also does not prompt them to attack one another. They must have some means of recognizing what targets can become a suitable carrier. Even if the only targets they might choose among also have a human shape."
Chloe nodded a bit to that, obviously baffled he didn't elucidate further. "Yeah?" Maybe when they still had access to the Internet, she hadn't watched many of the videos showing the zombie attacks. The video evidence he perused were suggestive that their ability to distinguish was inerrant and consistent among their peers.
"So, that's the question. What is actually the difference between us and them that they could be responding to?"
"The- uh, zombies move differently. And they make that annoying sound."
"So if someone does those things, would the zombies ignore them?"
"I wouldn't want to bet on it."
"Right. But we could still run an experiment. Try acting like one of them with only one person nearby and see if it's still interested in them." Lucas raised his arms up and jerked about in his seat to illustrate the mimicry.
"Uh- Did you do that?" Chloe smirked a bit, evidently bemused by the absurdity of such a ruse, despite her usual stoic mood.
"Well, no. It might be a good idea if someone did attempt that, though. Just to eliminate that possibility." Lucas regret missing the opportunity only a little, after all, he was already fairly confident such a scheme would not succeed. Nobody else seemed willing to indulge such curiosities, which made experimentation like that in the crowded dormitory impossible. "But the blackout that just hit those people outside was a similar sort of experiment. It tested whether or not people who were unconscious would be targeted."
"What if it just ignored them because they appeared to be dead?"
"That's a pretty good question. We could test whether they respond to motion by having someone pretend they were dead, or by having someone sleep close to one and see if the zombie eventually loses interest in them." Again, Lucas recalled the videos from the Internet he had been able to examine the previous day. It was hard to be certain from the evidence he had studied, but such a ploy didn't seem to work for at least one unfortunate victim who had attempted such a tactic. "But the question you should be asking is why they would respond differently to a body they encounter whether or not it is dead."
"If someone is dead, then the brain isn't going to be intact, so the disease wouldn't have what it needs for the infection to do whatever it does."
"Yes, so it does make sense why they wouldn't waste time with a dead brain. But how could they possibly realize a brain is dead? They don't appear to have any cognitive awareness or intelligence, and determining that would take a person at least a few seconds of time. But they still focus on something that guides them only to conscious humans and not to each other." And likely not to the dead either, Lucas thought to himself.
Chloe frowned, thinking about the question in silence. An interlude of peace over which the assaulting storm was the dominating ambiance persisted. "I don't know if I entirely agree with that. But I guess if it just ignored the people who passed out because it thought they were dead, your plan still would have worked."
"Well, the next time a zombie shows up, we could perform some of those experiments to see what happens. If I'm right, a zombie should only lose interest in someone if they are asleep."
"That sounds like a pretty good idea."
A pensive, austere calm permeated the surroundings for quite some time after that.
