Eve & Adam (Eve & Adam #1)(11)

It’s not that I think I’m some kind of prize.

No, wait, that’s not true. I do think I’m some kind of prize. I’m smart and occasionally funny and I’m pretty. I don’t see why I should spend long dates with some guy who expresses himself in single syllables and wants to go to slasher movies.

Which does not answer the question: male or female?

I also don’t understand why I should let some guy fondle me when I know the relationship has no future. I don’t need to be groped that badly.

So I’ve been on exactly three dates. The first when I was fourteen. The most recent two years ago.

A guy tried to kiss me once. I didn’t let him.

I live that part of my life vicariously through Aislin.

I hear her stories. And I admit I’m fascinated most of the time. Sometimes kind of appalled. And then fascinated again.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to be her. To be that … experimental. To be that “what the hell?”. To actually have detailed, well-informed opinions on questions having to do with kissing. Or whatever.

I have no opinion on chest hair versus no chest hair. Aislin could write a treatise on that alone.

So. Who do I want to create with my new simulated godlike powers?

Male or female?

I sigh. I squirm in my wheelchair.

Who am I kidding?

Male.





– 11 –





SOLO


I can’t get into Eve’s file on Project 88715 yet. It’s encrypted.

She just finished up a half hour ago, but I’ve already checked out the surveillance video. I can watch her face as she stares intently at the screen. I can even see myself, staring intently at … her. And Terra, being her predictably insane self, raving on about world domination.

I’ve been able to access—and edit—this kind of file for a couple of years now. I don’t edit out the merely embarrassing, I make the minimal edits to conceal the degree to which I have penetrated security.

It bugs me that I can’t get into Eve’s working file. It’s that new security protocol. A lot of the newer stuff is beyond my reach. But I have enough to bring the Food and Drug Administration down like a hurricane on this place.

Soon I may have enough to bring the FBI.

Do I want Terra Spiker to go to prison? The question makes me a little uncomfortable. She has sure as hell broken the law. Many laws.

It’s time for school. It’s Saturday, but I slacked off all week and I need to catch up. It won’t take long; it never does. I click on the window for the online high school. I replaced the generic logo of the school with a picture of a guy sleeping. Which I guess says what I feel about it.

On my screen I get a video feed of a lecture on the Manhattan Project. Ancient history about the first atomic bomb.

The reading for this unit is on the right side of the screen in a window. There are numerous links in the text that open audio or video or text.

The lecturer drones into my headphones. I click on a link that shows a loop of an atomic bomb exploding.

A request for chat pops up. It’s a kid I know online. He, she, or it goes by the name FerryRat7734.

FerryRat7734: What’s vertical?

SnakePlissken: You could just say, “What’s up?”

I don’t know if FerryRat actually meant to write FurryRat. I don’t ask questions of people I meet online. I figure they have a right to be whoever or whatever they want to be.

My online name is SnakePlissken. There’s a reason for that. It’s the only character I’ve ever come across who shares my last name. Plissken. Google just the word “Plissken” and that’s who you come up with. I don’t appear in Google. I am invisible. That’s deliberate.

FerryRat7734: Is it just me or are they teaching us how to make an atomic bomb?

SnakePlissken: The science is easy enough. The engineering’s a bitch.

FerryRat7734: So can you do me a favor? Send me your notes on the next week’s lectures?

SnakePlissken: You going on vacay?

FerryRat7734: I wish. I have a procedure.

I sit back. The teacher is droning on. A second dialog box opens up with someone saying “How do you spell Openhimer?” I should answer that question, not ask FerryRat one of my own. I can sense I’m opening a can of worms. But how do you not follow up on something like that?

SnakePlissken: What procedure?

FerryRat7734: You don’t want to know. Trust me.

I say that’s not true, although it is. And I repeat the question.

Lung transplant. FerryRat has cystic fibrosis, a genetic disease. Lung transplant is the final, desperation move.

SnakePlissken: Damn.

FerryRat7734: Exactly. So take notes, okay? I’m not dead yet.

SnakePlissken: Will do.

What else am I going to say? Someone tells you they’re dying, what do you say? You say yes, I’ll take notes.

It dawns on me for the first time that a lot of these online students that I know only by their handles, only from pop-up chat boxes, may be sick in one way or another.

It embarrasses me that I’ve never even considered this before.

“Slightly self-absorbed are you, Solo?” I mutter.

I sit through the rest of the lecture and then the natural history lesson after that.

Then I have work. Today I’m helping to prep visitors’ suites for a conference. We have those about once a month. A bunch of Big Brains and Even Bigger Bucks fly in and we wine and dine and lecture them about the wonders of biotech and what a great investment Spiker is.