3
UPSTAIRS IN the research lab, Melati returned to the odd normality of the work she had been doing when she took a break to get some tea, during which she had been called away.
The lab hadn’t produced any construct cohorts for ten months. They had put cultures in storage and she and Dr Chee had been working out some kinks in the mindbase memory module that would improve the young constructs’ start to life. She had been reading up on published papers dealing with the early education of constructs.
It was all long-term research work that had no urgency behind it. Fine-tuning processes that they normally never got around to doing, because none of their normal activities were taking place.
While it was nice to get a break in the hectic schedule of production, the constant pressure to look
