Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse by Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, Cory Doctorow

triple fins of intelligence draping down the back of his head, you could tell he was a typical lab rat. All brains, no survival instincts. I wouldn't have stuck mem-adds into my head even for a triple bonus.
    "You've got a dog?" Musharraf asked when we were out of reach of the centaurs.
    "We think so." I led him down into the bunker, past our weapons racks and weight rooms to the common room where we'd stored the dog. The dog looked up at us as we came in, the most movement it had made since Jaak put it in the cage.
    Musharraf stopped short and stared. "Remarkable."
    He knelt in front of the animal's cage and unlocked the door. He held out a handful of pellets. The dog dragged itself upright. Musharraf backed away, giving it room, and the dog followed stiff and wary, snuffling after the pellets. It buried its muzzle in his brown hand, snorting and gobbling at the pellets.
    Musharraf looked up. "And you found it in your tailings pits?"
    "That's right."
    "Remarkable."
    The dog finished the pellets and snuffled his palm for more. Musharraf laughed and stood. "No more for you. Not right now." He opened his DNA kit, pulled out a sampler needle and stuck the dog. The sampler's chamber filled with blood.
    Lisa watched. "You talk to it?"
    Musharraf shrugged. "It's a habit." "But it's not sentient."
    "Well, no, but it likes to hear voices." The chamber finished filling. He withdrew the needle, disconnected the collection chamber and fitted it into the kit. The analysis software blinked alive and the blood disappeared into the heart of the kit with a soft vacuum hiss.
    "How do you know?"
    Musharraf shrugged. "It's a dog. Dogs are that way."
    We all frowned. Musharraf started running tests on the blood, humming tunelessly to himself as he worked. His DNA kit peeped and squawked. Lisa watched him run his tests, clearly pissed off that SesCo had sent out a lab rat to retest what she had already done. It was easy to understand her irritation. A centaur could have run those DNA tests.
    "I'm astounded that you found a dog in your pits," Musharraf muttered.
    Lisa said, "We were going to slag it, but Bunbaum wouldn't let us."
    Musharraf eyed her. "How restrained of you."
    Lisa shrugged. "Orders."
    "Still, I'm sure your thermal surge weapon presented a powerful temptation. How good of you not to slag a starving animal."
    Lisa frowned suspiciously. I started to worry that she might take Musharraf apart. She was crazy enough without people talking down to her. The memory addendums on the back of his head were an awfully tempting target: one slap, down goes the lab rat. I wondered if we sank him in a catchment lake if anyone would notice him missing. A biologist, for Christ's sake.
    Musharraf turned back to his DNA kit, apparently unaware of his hazard. "Did you know that in the past, people believed that we should have compassion for all things on Earth? Not just for ourselves, but for all living things?"
    "So?"
    "I would hope you will have compassion for one foolish scientist and not dismember me today."
    Lisa laughed. I relaxed. Encouraged, Musharraf said, "It truly is remarkable that you found such a specimen amongst your mining operations. I haven't heard of a living specimen in ten or fifteen years."
    "I saw one in a zoo, once," Jaak said.
    "Yes, well, a zoo is the only place for them. And laboratories, of course. They still provide useful genetic data." He was studying the results of the tests, nodding to himself as information scrolled across the kit's screen.
    Jaak grinned. "Who needs animals if you can eat stone?"
    Musharraf began packing up his DNA kit. "Weeviltech. Precisely. We transcended the animal kingdom." He latched his kit closed and nodded to us all. "Well, it's been quite enlightening. Thank you for letting me see your specimen."
    "You're not going to take it with you?"
    Musharraf paused, surprised. "Oh no. I don't think so."
    "It's not a dog, then?"
    "Oh no, it's quite certainly a real dog. But what on Earth would I do with