Number 16 (Confirmation Bias)

FractalFluff, January 1, 2014; 09:13 / FB 15999
=======================================================================================================================================
Number 16

"Baybehs? Pweese, nice mista, gif baybehs?"

Number 16, a feral mare with a grubby blue coat and greenish mane, stretches up her forelimbs, as if she could somehow reach the foal you're dangling in front of her. The rest of her litter — mere hours old — mewl and chirrup unhappily from the basket on the high table next to you.

"It's quite simple, fluffy," you tell it. "You just have to answer my question. Foal or sketties?"

"Wat mean? Nu stand! Wan baybeh. Pweese gif?"

"No, fluffy. I'm offering you an exchange here. A trade. A nice bowl of sketties for your baby."

"Nu stand! Gif baybeh! Baybeh too wittew fow go 'way, him nee mummah! Pweese gif?"

You sigh. She simply can't have understood you. It's just impossible that a fluffy mare — and a feral at that — would reject the fluffies' preferred foodstuff for one foal.

"Sketties. For. Baby."

"Baybeh nu can eat sketties! Him wittew baybeh, nee miwkies!" She's bawling in earnest now. Must be the thought of the infant depriving her of her precious sketties.

"No, no, the baby won't be eating the spagh — the sketties. I'm off-er-ing you an ex-change."

"Wat skange? Nu wan skange! Wan baybeh! Nee baybeh! Baybeh nee mummah! Pweeeeeese!"

Ah, she still doesn't understand you.

"Your. Bay. By. For. Sket. Teeees." you enunciate slowly and loudly. You're extremely proud that you've managed to use the fluffy idiom so consistantly; it's important for the validity of your research that the mare understands you.

The response is a high-pitched scream of horror.

"Baybeh fow sketties..? Yeeeeeeeeek! NU PU' BAYBEH INNA SKETTIES! Pweese, mista munsta-hoomin, baybeh nu fow nummies! Baybeh fow huggies an wuv! Gif baybe! Pweese! Pweese gif!"

"Hmm." You make a careful note of the last utterance in your lab records. "'No put baby in the spaghetti' and 'baby not for nummies' — presumably reversing word order due to bad fluffy grammar. Real meaning is doubtless 'no put spaghetti in baby' (that is, don't let the baby eat the spaghetti) and 'nummies not for baby.' Mare is now obsessed with the idea that her baby will somehow steal the spaghetti."

Typical, just typical. More proof for your hypothesis that fluffies lack anything that humans might recognize as a "maternal instinct." Well, might as well give her one more go.

"Okay. Let's make sure you've understood. What are you going to give up? Baby or sketties, fluffy? Which do you want me to remove and which do you want me to leave with you? The infant or the spaghetti — sketties, whatever you call them?"

The mare is now prostrate on the floor, hooves over her head. "Huuuhuuhuuu...mah baybeh... huuhuuhuuu.... baybeh... fwuffy wuv... baybeh..."

Ah-HA. You give a triumphant smirk. Just as you expected. You make another note: "For all its initial protestations, when the choice between desirable food and its foal was clearly presented, the mare inevitably chose the former. Number 16 was one of the clearest examples, swiftly making an unequivocable statement that it preferred me to remove one of its foals over the possibility of missing even a single opportunity to indulge its appetites."

You place a small portion of cheap canned spaghetti next to the mare, then return the remaining foals. You note that she immediately curls herself around them and begins counting them, doubtless to assure herself that she has plenty of currency with which to barter for future delicacies. You leave, still carrying the foal.

The mare has now finished her arithmetic, and discovered the loss. A scream of "BAYBEEEEHHH!" rings through the walls of the concrete shed where the fluffy labs are conducted.

"Calm down, Sixteen," you say to yourself. "You got your damn spaghetti." You shake your head. "Sucks to be you, little guy. Your mother didn't even love you enough to skip a single meal," you tell the foal. It will either be euthanized or become an experimental subject; of course, the same thing would ultimately have happened whatever 16 said, but the foal would have had a few more days of milk and comfort.

You had planned to repeat the experiment, to see if a reduction in the number of infants would change the mare's responses. Upon returning the next day, however, you discover that Number 16's foals are nowhere to be found. The mare is lying on the floor and doesn't react when you move her, except to mutter: "munsta... baybes... yu nu get... safed baybehs..."

Questioning her about the babies is a frustrating exercise. All she does is repeat the phrase "Wan pie," though her annoying fluffy speech patterns make the P sound like a D. She also witters on about wanting "Fowevew sweepies," presumably a further corruption of "sketties."

Wants pie and infinite spaghetti. Food on the brain. Greedy little thing.

More aggressive questioning elicits only muttering, in which the words "munsta," "babybehs," "belly," and "safe" appear frequently. From this, you deduce that the mare thought her babies were monsters, and that she needed to keep her belly safe from them. Following an unpleasant hunch, you induce vomiting. Sure enough, the vomitus contains traces of blood, fluff and body parts. Some time during the night, she has eaten all her foals. The spaghetti, oddly, is untouched.

"Wan die... wan die... huuhuuhuu... pwease gif fowefew sweepies..."

Wow. She literally thinks about nothing but food!