“Dr. McLure.” “Yes?” “Dr. McLure.” Donna. She’d been with me forever, since we were study partners back at Stanford. She was an active type, unlike me, she loved surfing and go-cart racing and even skydived on occasion. She was a perpetually tan, smiling, bright-eyed woman with a first-class mind. She insisted on calling me by my full title and also on my calling her by her first name, as if to emphasize that I was her employer. It made me uncomfortable. She was an unnatural white that day, though. Her eyes seemed glazed, as if she was drunk, and for a moment I thought she must be. She was panting, as if out of breath. “I did something I … It was a … Oh, God.” I had been leaning over to read from a data table on my monitor. I turned to her now, giving her all my attention. “What’s the matter?” She made a strange face then, somewhere between pride and tears. She was afraid, but not sure if she should be. “I supplied donor cells.” We were only using donor cells for one thing: as the raw material for biots.
