Everyone In Silico | Page 5

some
memory, she went back to the sick puppy and deleted it. The computer, as it always did
when deleting, made a tinny scream. It was just a morbid thing the EasyCut programmer
put in, but it always reminded Nicky of the first time she heard it.
It had been in the first week of classes, when they were all getting trained on the
equipment. Her professor, a tiny outspoken Asian woman, was showing them how the in
silico programs were used.
"Now when I was a little girl, we were still dealing directly with the meat. None of this
computer simulation crap. We'd use in vitro fertilization, being very very careful. But
things still went wrong. And when it did, you'd have to take the sick little creature and
terminate it." She deleted the current experiment and the computer screamed. She smiled
as the small crowd of students jolted back. "Newbies," she mocked. As Cho pushed by
them to the next piece of equipment, Nicky noticed her earlobes kicking.
Nicky remembered being more surprised by Professor Cho's highly modified earlobes
than she was at the scream. She'd never seen club kickers in real life - the early body
modification that pulsed with sound had been unfashionable for more than 20 years. After
she got over the shock, Nicky decided it was gutsy - still later, she thought it hinted at
why Cho stayed in genetics when it had ceased being scientifically relevant. She just
didn't care what people thought.
At the end of Nicky's second year her department was shut down, and Nicky had made an
appointment to see Cho supposedly for direction on which stream to take now.
Cho had been working on an in silico experiment of a tri-lunged horse when she came in.
She had waved Nicky into a chair and made a few more adjustments before closing the
horse. When it blinked out, Cho leaned back in her chair and tilted her head.
"I'm kind of surprised to see you here," Cho had said.
Nicky just looked at the professor's small smile, trying not to stare at her dancing
earlobes.
"You struck me more as someone who knew what she wanted to do," Cho continued.
"While the people who've been in this office lately are a mess. But this's been coming for
a long time. There haven't been any jobs in genetics for a decade... except teaching jobs.
We're lucky the school is allowing students to transfer some of their credits. When the
arts were phased out, they didn't even get that."
Nicky wondered at the prof's defensiveness. Was it because she'd been dealing with

angry students all week, or was it the knee-jerk reaction of the professional know-it-all?
She decided to cut to the chase. "What's going to happen to the lab equipment?"
Cho looked like she hadn't considered it. "It's too outdated to be of use to any other
department," she thought out loud. "They'll junk it, I suppose."
Keeping her face neutral, Nicky said, "I've got a couple of experiments I'd like to finish,
and I don't have access to anything like that."
Cho nodded, her eyes suddenly hard. She touched the bridge of her nose. "Hmm. Yes,
well... I'd be putting myself at risk if anything unorthodox was to happen to them..."
Nicky was suddenly very glad that she hadn't ever talked to Cho about personal matters.
"I looked at the prices for them used, and they're way too much. I'm going to have to
move out of my place as it is."
"My situation isn't very good either," Cho said with discomfort. "Your parents?"
"They've cut me off," Nicky said, preferring not to elaborate.
Something in Cho deflated. "Yeah, me too. There're no jobs in a digital world for us dirty
meat-workers," she murmured. "Information Architecture, young lady, that's what I
suggest."
"Yeah," Nicky said, trying to keep her voice respectful. "That's what my mom said."
A few weeks later, Nicky had a fully functional lab in her attic. A little slow, but it was a
stable system with Genome 2035 installed. The EasyBake oven was handy to have - no
more having to send out her experiments to be compiled. And if the beakers and test
tubes she had scored cluttered up the place a little, they at least gave her a sense of
history.
Not just ancient history, either. They reminded her of first year, working late late late to
finish an experiment alongside other students. Someone would inevitably cook up
something in one of them to break the tension - and there was a lot of that, with the stress
of deadlines, the limited equipment, and the egos. At some point, for incentive, someone
would come from the chemistry lab and set a steaming beaker of something yummy