Everyone In Silico | Page 5

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 "It's too outdated to be of use to any other department," she thought out loud.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 and narcotic within everyone's sight.
Thinking of those long nights and fucked-up mornings, Nicky felt a wave of nostalgia. To fight how suddenly alone she felt, she asked the computer for some fast and melodic music. She started a new Cerberus fluke and began to work on its organs, hiding everything except the problem lungs and heart. Maybe I could get a little more room by getting rid of the spleen...
A few hours later her watch spoke. "Hey Nicky, I'm at the door."
"Oh, hey JK. Down in a second."
A ladder and three flights of stairs later, she could see his big frame silhouetted in the