The silence had filled the air long enough. Six finally spoke.

"They blew him up," she said softly, "…they just…blew him up. They didn’t care. They didn’t care that Steve had feelings or that Steve was…was one of the nicest rabbits I’ve ever known…he exploded and they CELEBRATED."

Gerald shuffled to the cage beside Six. They were in the other testing room for the night, seeing as the main testing room was a bit, well, covered in Steve. They were airing it out overnight.

"It’s like…I can accept being a part of science, I can accept that we’re a lesser species, but…but they flat out murdered him and they cheered and poured drinks."

"Six," Gerald said quietly, "…how are you surprised?"

Six lowered her ears, her eyes growing dimmer.

"I guess I…I guess I just wanted to believe that humans had respect-even if not much-for species other than their own but they don’t. Steve didn’t deserve that, Gerald. Steve…didn’t deserve that at all. That was inhumane."

"I told you it’s bad here."

"I KNOW it’s bad here but this is over the edge!" Six said angrily, sounding on the verge of tears, "How do they justify that?! That wasn't experimentation, it was flat out murder! Steve didn't further progress in a medical or scientific field. HE  EXPLODED. Steve isn't a hero! He's not a martyr! He's meat chunks splattered on a wall! And they still have the audacity to think that this was ok!? 'Yay, casual murder! Time for drinks!'. Unbelievable."

Six finally allowed her fur to settle and she took a few deep breaths. Gerald glanced at Doug, asleep in the cage beside him.

"You know what scares me the most about Steve?" Six asked quietly, "Is that it means we're ALL expendable. Even The Special Seven aren't off the hook...any day, any time...they could open the cage door and grab Doug and...just..."

"Don't think like that," Gerry said, "We don't need to stress ourselves out anymore than we already have been worried. I'm fairly confident in saying that The Special Seven are pretty well off. You all matter to them. If for nothing else but the publicity. It's Doug and myself and the others who're the ones who have to be wary."

"People say they do things in the name of science because it's right. That's a conversation I overheard THEM talking about one day when they had me out in the breakroom. Two of the men were speaking about religion vs science, and they said they got into the scientific field because they could make things better while religion only makes things worse....but....but where's the morality they claim to gain from this? They're harming us! That isn't making things better! And what's worse is that they hide behind this guise of caring about making the world a better place so people can't talk down to them!" said Six, becoming visibly upset now, her hair all fluffed up and her teeth chattering wildly, "And they act like they're gods! Meanwhile, last week they had me in another lab and they were sticking tiny metal rods into me to see my reaction to a certain type of alloy! This isn't science! It's cruelty disguised as research!"

"Six..." Gerry started, "We can complain all we want but in the end we're rabbits. We have no control and no power over them, and this is our life, whether we like it or not."

A moment passed.

"Do you know how I ended up here?" Gerry asked.

Six shook her head.

"I was in a pet store. I'd been returned because a family had an older brother who had an allergic reaction to me. Can't be around rabbits. So they brought me back. Imagine the liberation that was. Being picked over all the other rabbits, and to go to a nice safe warm home with a family and they're giving you good food and playing with you and then...you're back there in that tiny glass case filled with whatever rabbits are left until someone comes in and buys you and brings you...here. I went from a nice safe warm home to...this. There's no justice in the world. There's nothing. We're all just gonna have to deal with the fact that we didn't get lucky enough to be free or cared for."

Fern had gotten up and was stretching in her kennel, and flapped her ears a few times.

"I don't know. Each one has it's uncertainty and it's certainties. Pros and cons. You don't know who you're going home with. They could end up abusing you or not being good pet owners, or you could end up in someones Easter Basket, which sadly happens to many rabbits who then die from being poorly cared for. At least here they'd contractually obligated to feed and shelter us. Is it a safe, nurturing, loving environment? No. But neither is the world," she said, as she laid back down and looked at her right paw which was bandaged, and sighed, "The world is kind of a bad place."

Six had had enough and went to lay down as well. Gerry sat looking out at the blinking red smoke detector light across from his cage, and realized how pointless all these conversations were. Yes they were interesting, but in the end what you're left with is a meandering, meaningless debate that always ends where it starts. Gerry laid down and curled up, and shut his eyes. Then...a small scratching sound. He looked around, and noticed a small mouse had come out of a hole in the upper right of the wall, and their eyes met.

"Please," the mouse said, nearly in tears, "please don't let them hurt me anymore..."

Gerald sat in the corner of his cage, staring at the table where he’d been held on mere hours earlier as THEY tested some new sort of X-Ray device on him. He couldn’t understand much, but he knew it was apparently going to ‘help’. He’d acquired a small vocabulary of human words since being in the lab, words he’d picked up from hearing repeatedly, and ‘help’ was the most common next to ‘rabbit’. He tipped his ears forward and thought, “If I’m helping, why do I feel so bad…”

His silence was broken by rustling in the cage next door, where Douglas, one of only a few to have been here as long as Gerald had, had sidled up from under the brush in his cage and pushed his nose against the side, looking into Geralds space.

"W’at’s up mate?"

"I…" Gerald said, "…I’ve picked up a new word THEY’VE been using recently. ‘Pioneers’. Any idea what it means?"

"No, sorry…" Doug said, "Can’t say I really know much of ‘eir language. I’m not as savvy to pick up it up as you’ve been. Maybe Six knows."

Doug and Gerald hopped to the front of the cages and rattled them a bit, attempting to make contact with the set of cages across the room, where 7 ‘special’ rabbits had been placed. The superior ones. The ones they didn’t test makeup and medical equipment on. The ones they used for intelligence.

"Six!" Doug called out, "Six, can ya ‘ear me?!"

A moment. Then a murmur as Six made her way to the front of the cage.

"What do you want?" she called out, groggily.

“‘E wants to know w’at a word means!” Doug said in a hushed shout, so as not to disturb the other rabbits and animals in the lab, “It’s uh…cripes, w’at was it again?”

"Pioneer," Gerald said flatly.

With that she settled into a monotone reciting of a dictionary definition, “Pioneer; verb: a person who is among the first to develop or use or apply a new method, area of knowledge or activity.”

"THEY seemed pretty pleased with themselves," Gerald said, "…but how can they be so happy with themselves helping others at our expense? Don’t they care we have to hurt in order for others not to? And sometimes the things we test don’t save people, they’re just useless products."

"Well, I’m sure t’ey care about us as much as t’eir allowed to," Doug said, "Probably don’t wanna get too attached, ya know?"

"Morality isn’t a sliding scale depending on who’s on either end, though," Six said, now chiming in, "if anything I’m more mad about not getting the credit for what WE discover, since WE’RE the ones doing the busywork."

"You DO get recognized!” Gerald said, with a hint of annoyance, “Doug, myself, the others, we’re the ones who get short changed! You at least get written up in journals, we’ve heard them read them! Talking about how wonderful the Special Seven are, but no mention of Doug, who last month took an electronic shock to the brain to test if the new taser was safe for people!”

"T’at…t’at one kinda ‘urt, I’ll admit," Doug said, "In both ways, physically ANDI didn’t get thanked.”

"We’re not them, so we don’t matter," a soft, wilting voice said from the darkest corner of the room, as the one sole dog in the lab-a slightly young Australian Sheepdog-started speaking, "They care about their own means, their own ends, and their own survival. Some animals get special treatment, like dogs, or cats, because they’ve deemed us ‘cute enough’ to be socially acceptable pets and thus not as used in experimentation. We’re their ‘friends’. But we’re not equal."

Gerald sighed, and thumped the ground in happiness, “See, see, Fern gets it! She understands what it’s like!”

"It’s not so bad sometimes…" Fern continued, "Sometimes they take me home and give me a nice, normal life, but…it’s not like that small momentary lapse of humanity justifies their overarching cruelty towards us. You don’t get forgiven for massacring an entire species simply because you were nice to one of them one day."

Six sighed and scratched her ears, as she nestled back into the straw and laid back down, “You are all hopeless. Is it bad here? Yes. Even on the Special Seven end, but at least we’re in a controlled environment where there are laws in place to protect us from outright abuse. The outside world…it’s much worse. I’d rather be here.”

Doug and Gerald glanced at one another before Doug hopped back to lay down in his own little nest he’d made. Gerald stood at the front of his cage, still dumbstruck.

"So I’m the only one who’s struggling with the morality of this?" Gerald asked.

"Seems like it, mate," Doug said.

"Gerry," Fern said quietly, "you can either accept what you can’t change or let it destroy you. We don’t have an option, or a choice. This is our life and debating it isn’t going to make it any easier."

Gerald nodded, knowing she was absolutely right. He hopped back to his own little bundle of hay and laid down, sighing, his ears drooping to the sides of his head.

"It’s just not fair," he said quietly.

"Maybe one day we’ll get lucky, yah, and one of t’ose animal activist groups’ll ‘it our lab and rescue us," Doug said softly, "It’s not a lot of ‘ope, but it’s better than nothin, i’d reckon."

Gerald nodded; he was right. It was a small glimmer, but it was something he could grab onto for comfort. 

Gerald had a dream that night that he was in a field. It was sunny, and bright, and he could see a large black figure in the sky. A bird maybe? He could hear the sound of cars and people nearby, and he was happy as he laid in the suns warmth and enjoyed being alive. Dreams seemed to be the only place he could live anymore. His reality was the nightmare. When Gerald woke up that morning, he didn’t remember a single bit of the dream, except the black figure, which only left him confused.

And his day started again, back on the table, back to being nothing more than a tool for the pioneers.

Back to being less.