Gloria entered the lab that morning with plots hatching in her head.  When she ran the experiments and trials that day, she never mentioned the rat who was outdistancing all the others and often sat and stared at her. She did not want Porter to be suspicious of anything.  

She needn't have worried.  Porter spent the day in his usual self-absorption, his most pressing thought for the day being where to have lunch. He never noticed that she altered times and outcomes on the reports, she wanted to downplay the performance of this rat.  In doing so, she was not being a dutiful researcher but she also realized that the powers that be would not listen to her findings.  That is why she had to take Einstein, 4251.  That is why she was considering this next boldly insane move.

At home, Willoughby watched the TV that Gloria had been so thoughtful to leave on for him.  The usual scenes were flashing by his eyes when he noticed something interesting.  A young human, a child, was playing with a toy.  It was a box with knobs that looked something like the television and as he turned the knobs lines and pictures appeared on it's tiny screen. Willoughby had noted that humans often used implements that turned lines and circles into patterns through which they communicated.  These patterns of language were often shown across the television screen and he assumed they had a relationship to the voice that  boomed behind them.  He had never thought of learning these patterns, it had never seemed possible before for him to make them.  But now, a thought occurred to him that never had before and he scurried into the bedroom to search under the bed for something he had seen there many times.  

The day at the lab went slowly for Gloria, she was nervous and unsure.  Her thoughts ran wild with possibilities and yet she knew that if she embarked on this dangerous course she could endanger her position.

"I am taking the day off Friday", Porter suddenly offered.

Gloria stared at Porter.  This was the first time since he had started working here that anything he said had interested her in the slightest, but now she listened with heightened attention, barely able to keep her excitement out of her voice.

"Oh? Why is that Porter?"

"Because it is going to be a beautiful weekend, Beautiful, and I want to enjoy it.  Gonna go stay at a friend's beachhouse".  He didn't notice the icy look she shot him when he called her Beautiful and for once she didn't bother to remind him that she had a real name. "You should get out more too, you know.  You aren't bad looking, you might even find someone.  If you stay cooped up here with no one but the rats for company Gloria, you are going to wake up one day very lonely and very frustrated. Of course, if you ever start to feel frustrated, you know I would  be glad to be of service."

He was odious.  But he was going to be gone for a whole day.  That was enough to brighten her spirits in itself but it also gave her time to think, to plan.  She left the lab that night, full of ideas and a strange sense of anticipation.

Gloria went home that evening to find that Einstein had somehow found the Etch-A-Sketch that her niece had lost months ago in her apartment. She had scoured the entire apartment to the wailing voice in the pitch of a 3 year old girl, but never located it.  It was strange and she wondered how he had come across it.  Stranger still, was that he was playing with the knobs.

"Where did you find that, Einstein?" Gloria asked.  Seeing that the screen was full and that he could make no more lines, she took the Etch-A-Sketch and shook it upside down to clear it.

"This is better now, you can start over", she said as she set it back down on the floor in front of him. "You get up to strange things when I am not home, don't you Einstein?"

Willoughby stared at the toy in front of him, the screen was blank again.  So that is how it is done, he thought.  But no matter how he tried, he could not think of a manner in which he could accomplish this himself.  When he had finally mastered this pattern language he would have to do it perfectly the first time.  But this was not his first concern right now.  First he must learn and formulate his message to his rescuer.  He looked up at Gloria with love in his eyes.  She was the first and only human he had ever truly cared for.  He must find a way to communicate with her.