Spice...
And everything nice...
************************************************
Washu was paging through some old feeling a bit maudlin, her chin resting on her hand as she flipped from one view to the next with the other. She knew she was depressed -- after all, she was the Greatest Scientific Genius in the Universe -- but the knowledge didn't save her from the depression.
Every so often, whenever she remembered what had happened to her child, she got like this. Knowing, she tried to prepare, and would keep herself as busy as possible, staving off the unwanted feelings with work and experiments. But she'd not had anything in reserve this time, and the feelings had caught her out.
"Hmmp," she grumped. "Cellular destabilization ray... archive. Galaxy domination plan #143,846... oh, yes. Required too much lime jello. Delete. Voynich Manuscript translation... delete. Eh? How'd this get in here?"
Showing on the screen were side-by-side pictures of Ryouko and Ryo-ohki. One of the earlier attempts to do something about the depression, rather than just suffer through it, Ryouko had not been an unmitigated success.
'But then again,' she gently smiled to herself, 'what child is? They're their own, even from the beginning.'
Lost in memories, Washu went through the motions of setting up the conditions for their genesis once again, reminding herself of the effort, the uncertainty, and finally the creation of each one, individual and new-born. Their first steps, their first tentative connection, their-
"WAAASHHUUUU-CHAAAANNNN!!!"
"GWAAHHHH!!" Washu's hands scraped across the keyboards in front of her as Mihoshi's guile-less face popped around from right behind her. "What is *wrong* with you! Why'd you do that!?"
"I'm sorry, Washu-chan!" the bubbly blonde immediately clouded over and started sniffling. "Sasami-chan just asked me to come and get you for dinner because it's ready and I came in through the door because it wasn't locked and I just wanted to tell you that I'm here but I am really really sorry that I scared you and I promise that I won't do it again if you promise that you don't hate me? Please?"
Washu just pinched the bridge of her nose with one hand and sighed. "All right. Just give me a second to close down, and I'll follow you- NOT THAT WAY!"
Mihoshi, who had started towards the door in exactly the opposite direction, turned to look back at the diminutive redhead and promptly tripped over her own shadow. "Whoopsie!"
Washu later reflected that it wasn't really the row of carbuoys trailing off into the distance that she'd knocked over like dominos that were the problem, nor the electrical cables that she'd pulled free when trying to regain her feet, nor even the power surge to the computer that the cables disconnecting had caused. It was really the fire that had set off the suppression system that she'd installed, covering everything in a thick white foam reminiscent of whipped cream -- so that when she chased the ditzy blonde out of her lab in a rage it had looked for all the world like a furious strawberry shortcake running after a terrified butterscotch sundae.
************************************
Washu had trusted the automatic systems to activate and clean up the mess themselves. She hadn't, however, counted on the computer executing the last command she'd given it. Although since she didn't *know* she'd given the command, and her lab *was* approximately the same size as the Earth, she could be forgiven for not realizing just what was going on in there right now.
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(Posted Mon, 28 Mar 2005 21:58)
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らんま1/2 © Rumiko Takahashi
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