Mind Over Ship Read Online Free Page A

by,” she said, but her sidebob was curled up in a trembling ball of nerves.
     
    THAT QUITE WORE me out,
Andrea said, once again in her warm, dark, syrupy tank.
    Yes, we see that
, E-P replied.
You’ll have a rest break before our next meeting, but tell us, any insights to share?
    Were you able to move any furniture into Nicholas’s realm?
    No, his security was too alert. Why do you ask?
    There’s something odd about their relationship. Not your usual human/mentar sponsorship.
    We’ll look into it. Anything else?
    Andrea reached out and touched the glassine side of her tank, caressing its smooth surface with bony fingers.
Yes, one more impression. She’s a sensuous person. Tell me, what brand of body oil or skin cream does she prefer?
    Borealis Botanicals
. After a moment, E-P said,
Yes, a fine vehicle. We’ll look into that as well. Now rest, dear.
    One more thing. I feel my time is near.
    The mentar paused a moment, and then it said,
We’ll place the order
.
    Thank you.

 
     
Replacement Order
     
     
    The order rumbled throughout the underground facility, rousting subunits by the score from the chilly slumber of standby status. Subems diagnosed both themselves and their component machines. Motors whirred, pressures rose, and instruments self-aligned to nano-tolerances. Several million jiffies later, the controlling midem declared the laboratory fully operational.
    At once, all three stitching chambers prepped themselves with skeletal scaffolding blanks. Their print heads chittered to life. First they laid down the bones, building them from organic feedstock, 4096 molecules per stitch, a thousand stitches per second. Then they dressed the finished skeletons with organs, printing them in place. They knit muscle fibers, entrails, circulatory lines, nerves. They constructed hearts already containing the blood they would soon pump.
    Seventy hours later, the stitchers went off-line, the chamber doors opened, and the print run was removed, still cold, to the bonding bay. The bay was a small space where the raw bodies could continue their internal assembly undisturbed for another forty-eight hours. Then medbeitors wheeled the bodies into the “delivery” room where they were jolted to life.
    Only two of the Andreas passed inspection. The third exhibited a faulty nervous system and was handed off for sanitary disposal. The lab midem sent a fulfillment notice up the chain.
     
     
Total Body Makeover
     
     
    Oliver TUG browsed the Thievery Gallery of the Persuasion Channel for their new interviewee. The rows of postage-stamp mug shots were no help: one brutalized face looked much like another, and there were so
many
of them. Oliver searched manually by dates and key words and after a few passes found the kid. The banner over his mug read, “WRECKER,” and the Ransom/Reward link below read, “He stole from us, and we want it back.” The thief, himself, looked to be about twelve years old, but he was a retroboy. He was a member of a gang that had caused a TUG moving and storage van to crash and then stole its contents before the traffic policearrived. At least, the TUGs assumed this retroboy was a wrecker. They had scant evidence, the boy hadn’t actually copped to anything yet, and no one had offered to ransom him.
    As it happened, the moving van in question had contained ordinary house hold goods, not some more sensitive cargo, but that was beside the point. No one should get the impression that they could mess with the TUGs and get away with it.
    Oliver pointed at the boy’s mug, and the frame expanded into a life-size hologram of the impromptu interview room. The room was actually a nitproof tent they had constructed in a very secure warehouse. They had delivered the boy to the tent in a nitproof bag. As far as the police were concerned, the boy fell off the grid in a public null room in Oak Park, halfway across the city. In the tent, the boy was lying on a tarp, and his legs were shackled in makeshift