Nanobots, Murder, and Other Family Problems

Sat 06/18 17:26:54 PDT

The after-images of the training session linger, and I stagger as I emerge from the Research Center. The headaches for this are so much worse than the ones from the calibration. I check the diagnostic view, still open in my overlay. My brain is changing again, but it's not damaged. Maybe I should listen to Father and ease back when it hurts, but I don't see myself mastering this thing that way. I lean for a moment against the gray brick wall of the building until the pain subsides back to its baseline throbbing.

I'm tempted to talk to Evan about it, but then I'd probably need to explain why I'm pushing myself this way. No. I'll be OK. I take a deep breath and steady myself.

My schedule says that I've got an all-hands meeting tonight at six, so I head to the cafeteria to get a bite before that starts. I'm not sure what an all-hands meeting is. I guess I'll find out when I get there.

Tonight's main course is pasta with grilled chicken in a creamy sauce, bland as usual but still one of the better meals of the dozen they rotate between. Evan and Louise are sitting at our usual table laughing about something. Evan sees me and waves me over.

"Hey Noah, things go all right today? This was your last day with the vision emulators, right?"

I nod as I take my seat. "It could have gone worse, but it wasn't the way I'd want to spend a Saturday," I tell him. "How was the trip to Lake Mead?"

"Good. I still can't waterski for anything, but it's fun to try."

Louise looks away.

"You skip it again, Louise?"

"Of course she did," Evan answers for her. "She's much too busy coming up with her secret something that will save the world to have fun once a week."

"So tell me how things went in the lab," Louise says, changing the subject.

"We spent a lot of time on the exercises where you do multiple eyes at once. That wasn't fun. I'm not built to have 360-degree vision."

"Oh, yeah, I remember doing that," Evan says, making a disgusted face. "Never done it since. I stick to a single eye if I even do that much."

Louise laughs. "It's not that hard, you just have to get used to it. I run my eyes with a panoramic view most of the time."

"So that's why we can never sneak up on you," Evan says. "Where do you keep them? I never see the optical clusters floating around you."

"I made some improvements," she says. "Mine run smaller than the defaults. They're in my hair, here and here."

I look where she points. There's nothing there. "I can't see anything."

"Exactly the point," she declares proudly.

"Oh. Cool. Can you show me how you do that?"

"Sure," she says with a smile. "Once you get some real hardware."

"Anyway. I'm glad that's over and I can self-pace a little more. Father drives us hard in there."

Evan and Louise both agree. I feel bad lying to them. Evan is the best friend I've ever had, if you don't count Mom. And Louise is a close second, ever since that night she helped me sneak back into the dorms. But I can't let them know how hard I'm pushing myself. They'll worry and tell Father about it.

"Any idea what the meeting tonight is about?" I ask them.

"Some big announcement," Evan says. "Chad knows, but no one else does."

"Where is Chad, anyway?" I ask, looking around.

"Must be over there already, helping get things set up."