Free Ell Donsaii 13: DNA by Laurence Dahners

are way better.”
    Again, his parents looked at one another. This time his father answered, “When you started asking so many difficult questions, we decided we should invest in a high end AI for you.”
    “Oh, okay.” He smiled broadly at them, “Thanks!”
     
    ***
     
    That night, after Zage had gone to bed, Shan turned to Ell, “What if the kid thinks to ask Osprey just how ‘high end’ an AI he is?”
    Ell shook her head, “I don’t want to try to tell the AI to lie to the kid. AI’s aren’t very good at it.”
    “And if he asks, and the AI tells Zage that he’s got one of only three AIs in the world currently powered by Kylen supercomputers?”
    Ell sank back into the couch, staring into the distance. “Maybe I’ll tell him that Ell Donsaii found out how smart he was and she offered to buy it for him.”
    “Even though she’s never met him?”
    Ell shrugged, “She’s met his mom. She’s rich and felt charitable towards Raquel’s genius child?” Ell’s eyes turned up towards where her son’s bedroom was located in the floor above. “Or,” she said sadly, “maybe that question will be the turning point after which we should tell Zage about our little secret.” After a moment, she continued, “I need to tell you about a little incident we had today. The security team is going to start following you and Zage as well as me.”
    She described the incident to him. Shan’s comment started with, “Aw crap…”
     
    ***
     
    Heading home for the evening, Turner stopped on his way through the lab, “Vanessa, sorry it’s taken me so long to get back to you about the paper. I thought you’d already sent it in, so I just now got around to your message. Good thing you read through it one more time and found that math error. Those other citations were good too. That last paragraph though…” He shook his head, “You’ve had some amazing ideas for further work. While I congratulate you on those, we don’t want to give a roadmap to all the other labs out there. Some of the bigger research groups might beat us to some important results with you pointing the way so elegantly.” He shrugged, “Essentially, the only change I made was to cut some of that last paragraph to keep it from giving away so much.”
    He turned to go, but then turned back, “I really should congratulate you on those ideas. You keep having insights like that and you’re going to go a long ways in this field. Good job.”
    Vanessa stopped him with his hand on the doorknob, “Um, Dr. Turner?”
    He turned back, a questioning look on his face.
    “Zage made those changes.”
    Turner looked like someone had punched him in the stomach, “What?!”
    “That last paragraph, it came from the Kinrais boy.”
    Turner shook his head, “I don’t believe that! Somebody must’ve helped him. His dad’s, what, a mathematician?”
    Vanessa nodded.
    “What’s his mother do?”
    “I don’t know. She works out at D5R and I know they do some biomedical research, but none of it seems to be microbial or to have much to do with the gut. When I asked the kid, he didn’t seem really sure what his mom does, but he seems to think she’s some kind of a gofer for Donsaii. Apparently the mom spends a lot of time going here and there troubleshooting things for the company.”
    Turner stood for a moment, thinking. Then he said, “I think you better ask the kid who helped him. We don’t want them coming after us later claiming they should’ve gotten credit.”
    Vanessa shrugged, “I’ll ask him, but…”
    “But, what”
    “He really is that smart,” she said quietly. “He came in the other day and sequenced his own DNA to look for viral gene insertions.”
    Turner’s eyes narrowed, “He’s using our sequencer! He shouldn’t be doing that, besides, who’s paying for it?”
    “His dad deposited some money into the research account for his expenses.”
    “And is it enough to cover repairs when the kid breaks the sequencer?! For