My five military caste donor-parents and nineteen vat-siblings would use that phrase to mock me, relentlessly, when—at year five—I chose to spend every minute of our two free hours during the day to study alien lifeforms.
My sibs did as our rents encouraged by choosing to read biographies of exalted military strategists, logistic recounts of military campaigns, and to put in extra time training in the four-meter-tall exo-armor or the multi-ton mechanized war-armor. Not me. I had gotten enough of that in the constant training in our non-sleeping hours.
Now, as none of my sibs could, I stood on the white misty banks of Kelmer-5’s largest sea appreciating the way the mist always whited out natural vision beyond five meters.
The white-out would have my sibs on edge. As much as I’ve tried to grow as an individual, I can’t help but think about them and the collective.
They’d be keeping a weather eye on the radar mappings that—when unimpeded over the sea—swept out to five kilometers. They’d be searching the hundred meters from the shoreline up to the banyan-like trees that ranged up the ridge behind us. They’d be scanning for enemies, tracking lifeforms like the chirping birds in the trees in case they turned hostile, and minding the locations of their fellow combat-squadmates. They’d also bemoan the dense O₃ stratosphere that kept enough ultraviolet light away from the surface that their mili-exo-armor’s UV option would be almost as useless as the naked eye.
Unlike me, they wouldn’t appreciate the way the warm fig-scented O₂-rich air pressed through exo-armor vents—when opened—to weigh on our SCUBA-like undersuits. They’d also mock the meter-shorter and slimmer sci-exo-armor. Hell, they probably would’ve kept the mili-armor on instead of taking the respirator and leaving the armor idle a few meters behind. They’d never strap their loose O₂ tank between their scant breasts to revel in the cool upper layers of green-black algae-rich mud crowding around their undersuit-bootied ankles like it did to me and my nineteen fellow all human—or vat-born human—sci-squadmates.
Familiar with the terrain, all of my sci-squadmates were also walking sci-armor-free in the mud ten meters from the shallow cobalt blue water line, which was five meters from the sea shelf. Like me, they were checking up on various measuring instruments and experiments.
When staking study-claim years ago, I had chosen a spot closest to an inlet that was exactly fifty meters away from my fellow scientists. It was the furthest that protocol allowed. Because of my military upbringing and bearing, they preferred to have me as far from them as possible, and frankly, that was the way I liked it, too.
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