Rozenboim was as mad about it as a guy like him can get. He was ranked high enough to have considerable veto power over the assignment of crew. But Command made us take Ottie. He was our new Safety Officer.
“Let’s see how it goes,” I said. And “look, Rosie”—we were playing two-handed pinochle in his cabin—“I think I just won this trick!”
***
Never trust a man your dog don’t…
Or your purslane.
Three-quarters of the station’s lab area held Bronner’s hydroponics unit. My synthetic neuron culturing project had the rest.
We were sitting together tasting an early crop.
“Quite the negative achievement,” I said, “to be disliked by the salad.”
We disliked Ottie too and despite our advantage in possessing the faculty of speech, we just couldn’t say why. It’s natural to have preferences but we’re all well experienced and not so foolish to think any mission can be a sort of insular club.
And Ottie was capable enough, so far as we could tell this early out, and had every right to enter the labs, familiarize himself with our work, to try to understand it. That’s perfectly collegial behavior.
But everything he did irked us.
“It’s still just a subtle effect though, Bronnie. Think of it as an interesting challenge.”
***
My own challenge was supposed to be keeping my batches of brainlets in hand. They were industrial-grade only. But even synthetic life doesn’t like to be thwarted and honestly, neither do I.
I deactivated most mutations but the cleverest ones I kept. Once they’d been properly imprinted I started on simple lessons.
Number theory’s an awfully big concept for little consciousnesses confined to small cylinders whirling around in a lab. You’ve got to give them frames of reference. So I began to teach them crochet while we listened to the Goldberg Variations. They were quite lovely children in their way. Delightfully responsive and one might even sense a certain affection.
The universe is built like this, I’d tell them, and you are too. Soon they were devising patterns explicating Fibonacci sequences and I used one to work up a scarf for Bronnie’s birthday.
***
It was only an accident. There’d been no malicious intent when Ottie knocked over that coffee and a little bit splashed on Bronnie.
But the silk yarn had been gradient dyed and the color changes were factored into the design, and now the effect was ruined.
“I’ll make another one,” I said. “It really isn’t a problem.”
***
Merely the tiniest little spike in brainwaves I’d had when our celebration was interrupted. I was back to myself in a moment and I didn’t expect what happened to Ottie a week or so later.
Cerebral hemorrhage. Not a mark on him. Alive and then he wasn’t. Rozenboim had him put into cryostorage so his family could do a nice Earthly burial when we got back.
I retrained my handful of miscreants so they'd forget their delinquent youth. You have to be careful with kids. They soon grow minds of their own. You need to make sure they have the right moral foundations.
—