Free Inquisitor by Mitchell Hogan Page B

stand it.”
    “Stand what?”
    “Nothing. Well, I mean…” Charlotte hugged herself, arms across her chest. “I am not allowed outside. They… always forbid me, to keep me safe, they said. If I go out… will I be safe? What if I am hurt? What if I am made… not alive?”
    “That’s part of life,” said Angel gently. “We do all we can ourselves to remain safe, and society, along with technology, has made it much easier to avoid and recover from any mishaps. But it still happens. Safety can be a hindrance. Some people…” Angel gave a short laugh. “I’ve known people who relished the thought of danger, the possibility they might die. It added a sense of excitement for them, as if nothing else could motivate them to be their best.”
    “Ah… I think I see. The uninspiring existence of safety.”
    She certainly has a comprehensive vocabulary , thought Angel. And she was definitely a smart girl for one so young, being able to put together a program like this. “That’s one way of putting it. For some, safety is stifling. But not for the majority.”
    Charlotte-Rose’s green eyes bore into hers. “Do you think people can grow, I mean truly mature, if they are coddled?”
    Angel shrugged. “Maybe not. I don’t think we would be the society we are today if everyone was afraid of taking risks. Evolution guided us to what we were, but we have guided ourselves since. There came a stage where our mind rose above the evolutionary cycle. Our intelligence did this; we learned how to alter our environment. Then we changed it to remove the very risks and dangers that made us who we are. We… almost stopped evolving.”
    “Without taking risks, we cannot become greater than we are.”
    “I didn’t mean to sound like a Genevolve.”
    “I’ve heard that term before somewhere. I…” The girl tilted her head to the left, eyes squinted in thought—another gesture that looked extraneous to Angel. “I don’t know where, though. But I know very little about them. I’ll have to find out more.”
    “I’ve run into a few over the years. Can’t say they’re better than any other people I know, but they’re definitely more arrogant.” Apart from all being sociopathic murderers. They’d all killed to remove problems, her partners being among them.
    Angel toyed with the gold communication device on the table in front of her. She spun it in a circle to see if the girl noticed. Charlotte-Rose didn’t say anything, which probably meant the program didn’t have a way of visually scanning its surroundings from the gadget.
    She stood and picked up the device. “I’ll find a hotel room to hole up in. I need to get safe rather than talk. Will you be around to discuss things in a little while?”
    “Um… how long is that?”
    “Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”
    “Yes.”
    “Good.”
    Angel left the table and paid for her meal using her emergency credits.
    •
    This time, she chose a dingy hotel in the center of a seedy district. The room was pay by the hour, and she paid for it to be cleaned again and set up with fresh linens. After waiting patiently for the automatons to do their work, she found herself sitting on a lounge, staring at the double bed, not sure whether she should use it. She pulled the gold communication device out of her pocket and held it in one hand.
    “I’ve done some research on Genevolves,” chirped Charlotte-Rose. “But I’ve only found pieces. As I said, I have limited access at the moment.”
    “They’re humans who decided we should be evolving faster, further,” Angel clarified. “Their founder pointed to the two percent difference between our DNA and that of the apes we were closely related to. He wondered how advanced another species would be if they were two percent different to humans, then came up with the idea of trying to genetically alter human DNA to see what he could create.”
    “What happened to him?”
    “He was executed. Once other scientists found out what he was