Tuesday, August 24, 1993
1:21PM
Hill Valley, California
The day after the dimension-hopping fiasco, Doc Brown and Lisa were together in the lab. Einstein was curled up in a warm corner, watching them as they worked together on a security upgrade for the lab.
“It won’t go off every time I walk in here, will it?” the mutt asked.
“No,” said Lisa. “This kind has a pet-immune motion sensor.”
“You know,” Doc said, “I’ve been thinking about that. Not the motion sensor, but you communicating with animals. Remember when we wound up in Hill Valley, Germany and you used our link and my brain to translate the language?”
“Yeah.”
“Could I do the same to understand Einstein?”
Lisa blinked. She’d never thought of that before. She hadn’t been linked to someone who owned a pet before now. “Maybe. I never thought of it. We can try if you want.”
Doc put down his tools and faced her. “What do I have to do?”
“Concentrate on opening your mind to me and to the link. Focus on the area of my brain that contains language.”
She felt him opening up to her and she, in turn, opened up to him to allow him access. He searched her mind for the information he needed. Einstein already understood Doc perfectly, so it was only a manner of Doc understanding Einstein.
“Einie,” Lisa said to the dog, “come over here and say something. Start with something simple, like ‘hello’.”
He padded over and sat in front of them, canting his head. “Hello.”
Doc frowned. “I think…well, it sounded like ‘hello’ but it also sounded like a bark.”
“Concentrate harder. Try again.”
His grip on her mind tightened and Einstein said again, “Hello.” Doc shook his head and scrunched his eyes shut in concentration. The dog spoke once more and, finally, Doc’s eyebrows shot up his forehead.
“I understood him!” he said excitedly. “Great Scott! It takes a lot of concentration, though. Is it that much of an effort for you?”
She shrugged. “I can’t say I’ve had a lot of practice. Whenever I travel, I’m always somewhere where English is spoken. The only time I wasn’t was when I was with the Doctor and then the TARDIS did all the translating. After he died – ” Her voice cracked a little. “ – that didn’t work anymore. So the idea only came to me when we wound up in Germany. Though I guess I’m more used to it than you would be.” She shrugged. “I use a lot of concentration to control my hearing and the telepathy, so…” She shrugged again.
“Are you going to practice?” Einstein asked Doc.
“Most definitely. I would eventually love to be able to do it fluently like you can.”
“I wouldn’t call me fluent,” she said. “I just hear something I can understand.”
“That’s fluent, Lisa.” Einstein said and Doc grinned.
“I was going to say the same thing.”
She threw up her hands, defeated. “All right, all right. We’ll work on it ’til you get the hang of it.”
The End
Back *~*~* Trivia and In-Jokes