Distributed Intelligence

I found Celia on the bench in front of the octopus exhibit.

She sat quietly before the huge wall of glass, legs hanging over the edge of the bench with her feet swinging gently back and forth.

“Celia…” I tried to keep my voice steady as I sat down beside her. “You had me worried sick. You can’t go running off like that.”

The little girl blinked owlishly up at me, like she was coming out of some sort of trance. Then she smiled brightly. “Hi, Daddy,” she said. “Don’t worry. I was just here. With the octopus.”

Celia is eight years old, but she makes me believe that some human souls are much older than others. When she looks at me with those clear, luminous eyes I feel like I’m speaking to someone far purer and far wiser than I’ve ever been.

I sighed and shrugged in defeat. “I know, little darling. But Daddy didn’t realize that. I’ve been looking all over the aquarium for you.”

A little furrow appeared on my daughter’s brow. She seemed to realize how worried I’d been, because she scooched over closer and leaned against my side.

I put an arm around her and let the warmth of her presence soothe my frayed nerves. I’ll admit it. Ever since Celia’s mother passed, I’ve probably been a bit overprotective. “I just get scared when I can’t see you,” I murmured, kissing the top of her head. “I don’t know where you are.”

My daughter giggled. “You don’t need to see me, silly. You know where I am.”

I raised my eyebrows and glanced down at her.

She was looking up at me with those eyes again. She poked me in the chest. “I’m right here. Forever. Isn’t that what you always say?”

I smiled a pained smile. “That’s what Mommy taught us when she was sick.”

It was something her mother had said: that love connects us with a special bond that is unbreakable and endures forever. Even as a six-year-old, Celia seemed to understand immediately. She had snuggled up close in her mother’s arms and fallen quickly to sleep on the hospital bed beside her.

But I had never really been able to accept the sentiment. It felt like some sappy, spiritual mumbo-jumbo; empty words to soothe a tortured soul. That stuff had worked for Ava, but it didn’t work for me.

I sniffed and cleared my throat, swallowing the ball of emotions that threatened to choke me up. “So,” I asked my little explorer, “why did you want to see the octopus so badly?”

Celia perked up immediately. “Cause it’s so cool!” She squirmed out from under my arm, hopped down from the bench and scurried over toward the glass wall.

Swallowing again, I came to my feet and followed.

“Octopi are super smart,” Celia was explaining, “but they don’t have brains like us. They have a brain in their head, but they also have a lot of little brains called… neurons! And those little brains are all in their arms. I watched a YouTube about it. The video called it… distributed intelligence. The arm brains can all talk to each other without going through the head brain, and that means that they can know things that the head brain doesn’t!”

I chuckled. Living with an inquisitive eight-year-old means constantly getting lectured on whatever they happened to learn in the last few hours. “Is that so?” I asked, feeling the pain in my chest start to ease. “Know things like what?”

“Like where the other arms are.” Celia pressed her forehead to the glass and stared through it. There was an octopus was clinging to a rock a foot away on the other side of the glass. It was hard to tell, but it looked like the octopus was staring directly back at her. “The head brain doesn’t always know where the arms are hanging out, but the arms are always talking to each other. That means they can work together and do complicated stuff like opening clams and solving puzzles. And remember that video of the octopus walking on two legs?”

“I remember,” I said.

“They’re fun, too!” Celia told me. “There was a German octopus named Otto who would pull pranks on the people at his aquarium. He would squirt water at the visitors, and sometimes he would squirt water at the lights over his tank. He would make them all stop working because he thought it was funny to see the aquarium workers running around trying to fix them.” She grinned and waved at the octopus, then pressed her palm against the pane of glass. Her face was illuminated by the gentle blue glow of the water. “But you wouldn’t do that, would you, buddy?”

At that moment, I heard a loud K-CHUNK in the distance. I looked around in surprise as the aquarium lights all flickered and then went out. Far away, I heard someone scream with surprise. Instinctively, I reached down and clutched my daughter’s hand.

We were left in pitch darkness, and when I looked back down at my daughter I was amazed by what I saw. Everything was shadows, but I saw that the silhouetted octopus on the other side of the glass had reached out an arm and touched the place where Celia’s palm was pressed to the pane.

My daughter giggled. “Naughty octopus,” she said.

It was all so unbelievable, so unexpected, that I felt my brain struggling to make sense of it. I looked down at where Celia’s hand was still held in my grip. In the sudden darkness, I hadn’t had time to see where her hand was. Not with my head brain, at least. I had just grabbed it. I had just known.

I squeezed her hand, and Celia looked up at me. It was mostly dark, but the light that remained reflected back at me through my daughter’s eyes.

“I know you’re sad, Daddy,” Celia said. “But you and me and mom… We’re like the octopus arms. Our head brain can’t see it all. But the rest of us knows things. We know where we are. We know we’re together. Forever.”