THE TEACHER

The hydralisk regarded her warily as she peered into the screen. Loew requested
a brief diagnostic from the monitoring system. PPO lobes were all online and
functioning normally.
Dennis sat motionless for the next ten minutes as she ran logs from the last week
of feeds. Nothing at all like the spike. Loew was going to have to put pressure on Bayma
and the rest of the signals crew to make sure that this was a transcription error and not
something originating from the lobes themselves. Loew needed more bandwidth on
monitoring processes, but with the emperor picking up the bill, that wouldn't be a
problem.
"Okay. Dinnertime," she said after swiping out the last command, confident that
the anomaly was nothing that needed immediate attention. Besides, there were much
larger fish to fry.
She entered a code on the wall plate, and a door slid open. There was a platter of
cubed meat, vat grown, marbled with fat. She put it down an arm's length from her.
"Wait," she said firmly.
Dennis crouched, eyes fixed on a spot between her and the food so that he could
keep his vision on both. He trembled faintly, wanting to lunge but holding back.
"Good boy!" she said with more excitement than necessary.
Dennis fell upon the metal platter, scraping it across the concrete floor as he
gulped deliberately, without hurry. Teeth clicked together, percussive over the grinding
sound.
15