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“What?” she asked, caught off-guard.
“Don’t be modest,” he said. “You’re super-smart. Own it.”
She smiled at him like an idiot, but inside she felt something shift, as if some long held belief about her intelligence were being gently nudged off balance.
“That kind of smarts could save your life one day,” he told her. “And it’s the same kind of intelligence the explorers used to run the systems before the days of ship-stream navigation.”
“Thanks,” she said, meeting his eyes without apology.
“Are you ready for dinner?” Oberon asked.
“Yeah, that sounds great,” Tiago said, a note of relief in his deep voice.
“Excellent,” Oberon said. “Just head right up to the house. The door will open to your palm.”
“Thank you,” Alexis said.
“It is my pleasure,” the AI replied. “You might also like to know that I have relayed your time score to the biological staff. Some are celebrating your prowess, while a few are loudly mourning their own loss. But everyone is impressed.”
“Thank you,” Tiago said, looking around in the air above his head as if trying to make eye contact with the disembodied voice of the AI.
Alexis found herself smiling at him indulgently for the second time since they met.
6
OBERON
Oberon’s drives were humming with excitement.
He began systematically turning off background applications and putting them in stand-by mode to cover up the furious processing he was doing in the foreground.
His subjects were getting along very, very well.
Oberon had been instructed to read thousands of romance novels prior to designing and implementing the Center. In doing so, he had become fascinated with love, and secretly eager to act as a true matchmaker. Instead of just creating an atmosphere that encouraged conception, he quietly tried to encourage love as well.
And he had seen two beautiful successes already. They were a drop in the ocean of clients, but worth his trouble, even if he had to hide his motives from the biological staff.
Since the couples were matched by an off-site program, they were often compatible physically but not emotionally.
However, when Alexis and Tiago’s files were uploaded to his system, he had seen with great excitement that they had much in common.
A fighter and an artist might look different on the outside, but they both were perfectionists, each driven to outdo themselves daily in a physical pursuit that was more solo than team oriented.
And he had just seen their competitive natures lock in at the same time in order to make extremely short work of his labyrinth.
He set one background processor to the task of making the activity more difficult for future use. Maybe Alexis had been onto something when she’d suggested a guard?
While that was running, he focused on the results of his scans.
Oberon had been on high alert as he monitored their blood pressure and hormone levels during the activity. He knew they were both in incredible physical shape, so there was no reason jogging through a hillside labyrinth should have skyrocketed their heart rates.
It didn’t take him long to conclude that her physical presentation indicated excitement.
Alexis might not know it, but Oberon had analyzed the fights and schedules of four generations of Maltaffian fighters. With seventy-eight percent accuracy, he could state that Tiago Torrn, born Santiago Torres, was the most competitive Maltaffian fighter that had ever lived.
The man fought like his life depended on it. He fought as if he had a huge family of starving children at home, rather than a comfortable mother and father with a thriving small business.
Oberon could not help but run a few simple simulations on what might happen if the biological child of these two beings were to inherit their drive and set its sights on medicine, system-wide peace, or charity. Channeled properly, drive like that could be the heart of a generation.
