The Watching Hand

The first sound Maya heard was rain made of popcorn.

Not real rain. Not real popcorn. It came from a speaker the size of a lunchbox, crackling and snapping on a folding table in the lobby of the brain science building.

On the screen above it, a monkey reached for a raisin.

Crackle-crackle-crack-crack-crackle.

Then the screen changed. A person’s hand reached for a raisin while the monkey watched.

Crackle-crackle-crack-crack-crackle.

The curator slapped the space bar with one finger.

“No,” she said. “Absolutely not. It is playing the same file twice.”

Maya stopped walking.

Soren bumped into her shoulder because he had been reading the sign that said OPEN HOUSE STARTS IN TEN MINUTES. He carried his paper notebook under one arm, though the registration table had given everyone a bright green tablet.

“It’s not the same,” Maya said.

The curator looked over. She had a screwdriver in her mouth and three visitor badges stuck to her sleeve. Her hair had escaped its clip in a way that made it look as if she had already argued with electricity and lost.

“It is very much the same,” she said around the screwdriver. She took it out. “The exhibit is supposed to show a neuron firing when the monkey grasps food. Somehow the watching video is connected to the same sound. I have eight minutes to fix it before two hundred people arrive and ask whether brains are like phones.”

Soren stepped closer to the table.

The exhibit had three buttons made from big red arcade switches. One said DOING. One said WATCHING. The third was covered with a sticky note that said DO NOT USE.

Maya pressed DOING.

On the screen, the monkey sat in a lab chair. A small raisin lay on a tray. The monkey’s hand came forward, fingers open, then closed around the raisin.

The speaker crackled hard just as the fingers closed.

Soren pressed WATCHING.

A human hand came into the picture. The monkey stayed still. The hand reached for the raisin.

The speaker crackled again, almost the same storm, but not quite.

Soren leaned toward the speaker.

“Again,” he said.

Maya pressed DOING.

Crackle-crackle-crack-crack-crackle.

Soren pressed WATCHING.

Crackle-crack-crackle-crack-crackle.

“Not identical,” Soren said.

The curator sighed. “Children, speakers are terrible. Old recordings are terrible. My morning is terrible.”

“It starts in the same place,” Maya said.

“Yes,” the curator said. “That is the problem.”

“No,” Maya said. “That is the interesting part.”

Soren opened his notebook, then did not write. He held his pencil still above the page.

“If it were the same file,” he said, “the little gaps would match. The second one has a pause after the first two crackles. The first one doesn’t.”

The curator took one step toward the laptop. She did not touch it.

Maya watched the video again with the sound low. The human hand came in from the side. Nothing happened when the hand appeared. Nothing happened when it passed over the edge of the tray. The crackling burst when the fingers shaped themselves around the raisin.

“Can you play it without sound?” Maya asked.

“I can play it upside down if it will make this stop,” the curator said.

She muted the speaker.

The hand reached.

Maya made her own hand copy the shape, not all the way, just enough for her fingers to make a small cave in the air.

Soren saw it and did the same thing more slowly.

The curator watched both of them.

“You are doing the exhibit,” she said.

“No,” Soren said. “We’re watching it.”

The curator looked at the screen, then at the covered third button.

“That one is worse,” she said.

Maya peeled up one corner of the sticky note.

The third button said HIDDEN.

“That clip confuses everyone,” the curator said. “The monkey sees a raisin put behind a screen. Then a hand reaches behind the screen, so you cannot see the grasp. Some neurons still fire. Not always. Not all neurons. This one did. People think the video is missing the important part.”

Maya uncovered the button all the way.

Soren pressed it before the curator could change her mind.

On the screen, a raisin sat on the tray. A little panel slid in front of it. The raisin disappeared. A human hand came in, moved behind the panel, and vanished up to the wrist.

The speaker crackled.

Not when the panel moved.

Not when the hand appeared.

When the fingers would have closed around the hidden raisin.

Soren’s pencil rolled off his notebook and clicked against the floor.

The lobby grew enormous without moving. The glass doors were still there. The registration table was still there. The cardboard model of a neuron still drooped from the ceiling with pipe-cleaner branches. But between Maya’s eyes and Soren’s hand there was suddenly less empty space than before.

Maya picked up the pencil and gave it back to him.

“Your brain does that,” she said.

“I don’t know if mine does exactly that,” Soren said. “This is a monkey neuron.”

“Fine,” Maya said. “A brain can do that.”

Soren nodded. “Some cells in the monkey’s motor area fired for grasping and for watching grasping. And here, for the hidden ending, if the monkey knew the raisin was there.”

The curator’s mouth opened a little.

Soren added, “That is why the watching button sounds like the doing button.”

Maya touched the old caption taped below the screen.

It read: THIS NEURON TELLS THE HAND TO GRASP.

“No wonder it seems broken,” she said. “The sign is too small.”

“The sign is standard,” the curator said, which sounded like something adults said when they meant nobody liked it but everyone had stopped fighting.

Maya looked around the table. There were blank cards, markers, tape, a plastic cup, a cardboard privacy screen, and a dish of raisins for the demonstration.

She put one raisin on the table.

“Soren,” she said. “Watch.”

“I am watching,” he said.

“No. Watch like the monkey.”

“That is not a precise instruction.”

Maya grinned. “Good.”

She placed the cardboard screen in front of the raisin. Then she reached behind it with two fingers and stopped before touching anything.

“Raisin,” Soren said.

She moved her hand to the left, behind the same screen, where there was nothing.

Soren frowned. “Not raisin.”

“How do you know?” the curator asked.

“I saw where she put it,” Soren said.

Maya lifted the screen. The raisin sat exactly where Soren had pointed without pointing.

The curator was very still for a person with eight minutes and a terrible morning.

Soren pulled a blank card toward him and wrote carefully. Not at the end of the story, not for homework, but because the old sign had made the world too flat.

Maya read over his shoulder.

He had written: ONE NEURON RECORDED IN A MONKEY FIRED WHEN THE MONKEY GRASPED FOOD AND WHEN IT WATCHED SOMEONE ELSE GRASP FOOD. SOME FIRED EVEN WHEN THE GRASP WAS HIDDEN, IF THE MONKEY KNEW THE FOOD WAS THERE.

Maya took another marker and added underneath: THE BRAIN DOES NOT ONLY WATCH THE WORLD. SOMETIMES IT REHEARSES WHAT ANOTHER BODY IS ABOUT TO DO.

Soren considered this.

“Sometimes,” he said.

Maya added SOMETIMES in larger letters.

The curator taped the new card over the old caption.

The front doors rattled. Outside, a line of families pressed closer to the glass. A little kid in a red coat had both hands cupped around their eyes, trying to see in.

The curator looked at Maya and Soren.

“I was going to remove the hidden clip,” she said.

“Don’t,” Maya said.

“It feels like the trick,” the curator said.

“It’s not the trick,” Soren said. “It’s the door.”

The curator laughed once, quietly, and pulled the sticky note off the table.

Then she opened the doors.

Voices rushed into the lobby. Shoes squeaked on the floor. The cardboard neuron swung in the air from all the moving bodies.

Maya set one raisin on the little green tray and slid the cardboard screen in front of it. Soren stood beside the speaker with his hand around the plastic cup.

Maya reached behind the screen.

The speaker crackled, and around the cup, Soren’s fingers curled.