PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 190 Blindsight
anaerobic pathways wouldn't suffice."
Nobody offered any suggestions.
"Anyway," he said, "So endeth the lesson. If you want gory
details, check ConSensus." He wiggled the fingers of his free
hand: the spectral dissection vanished. "I'll keep working, but if
you want any real answers go get me a live one." He butted out his
cigarette against the bulkhead and stared defiantly around the
drum.
The others hardly reacted; their topologies still sparkled from the
revelations of a few minutes before. Perhaps Cunningam's pet
peeve was more important to the Big Picture; perhaps, in a
reductionist universe, biochemical basics should always take
priority over the finer points of ETI and interspecies etiquette. But
Bates and the Gang were time-lagged, processing earlier
revelations. Not just processing, either: wallowing. They clung to
Cunningham's findings like convicted felons who'd just discovered
they might be freed on a technicality.
Because the scrambler was dead at our hands, no doubt about it.
But it wasn't an alien, not really. It wasn't intelligent. It was just a
blood cell with waldoes. It was dumb as a stick.
And property damage is so much easier to live with than murder.
"Problems cannot be solved at the same level of awareness that created
them"
—Einstein
Robert Paglino had set me up with Chelsea in the first place.
Maybe he felt responsible when the relationship started jumping
the rails. Or maybe Chelsea, Madam Fix-It that she was, had
approached him for an intervention. For whatever reason, it was
obvious the moment we took our seats at QuBit's that his invitation
had not been entirely social.