Everyone In Silico | Page 4

down on the belt.
It came to $8.343, so she held her watch up to the payplate 'til it dinged and the belt
started up.
"Mmm, thanks!" The voice echoed in the empty depot as the stained belt moved the bag
towards its black maw. She headed for the door, happy to leave the stinky and somehow
creepy place. The recorded voice sounded hungrier than it had when there were even a
few people lined up in there. She waited unconsciously for the "That was delicious!"
recording to play as she pushed the door open.
Instead she got, "Pee-yoo! Don't you wish you could have just said, Empty Garbage?"
followed Nicky out on to the street. The "Go for Self!" tagline was cut off by the closing
door.
She smelled her hands (fine) and glanced back at the green garbage can icon glowing in
the half-light. As she headed home through the empty streets, she felt a little lonely. Since
she had moved here, most of the kids her age who hadn't left Vancouver had moved to

apartments around Commercial Drive. But Nicky felt that moving to the Drive, still busy
with people, would be kind of living in denial. Plus, there was no way she could afford as
much space there.
She heard squeaking when she got in and remembered she hadn't fed the flukes. Nicky
walked into her living room and looked in the fluke cage. Two of them were sleeping, but
the other one was doing his best to wake them up.
"How-are-you-my-little-meal-tickets?" Nicky said in her best imitation of Simone's
baby-voice, reaching into the bag of Critter Kibble. She fed the one that was running
around, panting with his big eyes glazed over, and the other two blinked awake. "Oh yeah,
now you're awake. Where were you when I was taking in the groceries?" The flukes
looked at her and started to whine.
She chucked the other two pellets in the cage and rolled up the food bag. Checking the
time, she decided to get something done before JK arrived, so she headed up to the third
floor.
She caught a glimpse of her new haircut in a mirror. Do I look like an idiot with this hair?
she wondered. She had had a shoulder-length ragged cut for ages, and she needed a
change - but she half suspected she'd done it to dramatically mark the end of her
relationship. Kathy would have hated it, she thought giddily.
On the top floor stairwell, she stepped up on the wooden chair, pushed open the hatch and
pulled down the well-oiled ladder that led up to her laboratory.
The lights came on gradually as she stamped down the hatch. She looked up with some
regret at the covered skylight and window, even though it would have been pitch black
outside by now. She remembered being excited by the skylight when she had first found
the house, figuring it was perfect for a bedroom. But Kathy complained of having to
climb down in the middle of the night to go to the washroom - it was a pain, but still, it
would have been so cool to wake up to the sun - and so the lab ended up here instead.
When Kathy ended up moving to Frisco, Nicky couldn't be bothered moving all the lab
equipment out. What had started out as a small operation with an EasyBake and a shaky
table had expanded into quite a bit of stuff.
Wedged against the slanted roof was a long silver counter with tons of beakers and vials
and other antiques that Nicky had a soft spot for. Her computer setup was also outdated,
but stable - like the rest of the equipment, she had scooped it up when the genetics
department was phased out.
She called up her active in silico experiments - two had been birthed alive. One was a
three-headed fluke she had called Cerberus, and the other had a single eye in the middle
of its forehead. She focused in on the Cyclops fluke first, noting with satisfaction that it
was blinking normally - the last version had been birthed with a messed-up eyelid. She
called up the Cerberus fluke. It wasn't doing as well, only one of the three heads
breathing normally.

She zoomed in on the organs and got the computer to diagnose. The heart glowed red,
125% the normal rate. The lungs were within normal parameters this time, although still a
little off. Nicky sighed. Maybe three heads aren't better than one...
She went back to the Cyclops and introduced different stimuli. The model fluke barked
happily when it was introduced to food pellets, sexual partners, and petting. It looked
good to Nicky, so she decompiled the dog into its spawning ingredients. To free up