At twelve weeks, having doubled in size in the last seven days, Giraud massed 28 grams, somewhat less than a generous shot of the whiskey he’d one day love. He had gotten fists, and fingerprints, and his general body shape was a little more human. He’d been drinking in the tank’s biosynthetic amniotic fluid, and routinely pissed it out again—proving his kidneys were starting to work, a process that would never stop, in spite of his future abuses to his body, until he did. His intestines were growing, and began to fill his abdomen. His nerve cells were proliferating, synapses getting organized enough to react to stimuli, but unaware at any higher level—the nerves had no myelin sheath as yet, and that limited their function considerably. Consciousness was nowhere in the picture. His cells all had other jobs to do, mostly that of dividing like mad, according to the map in their nuclei. If it said cooperate, they cooperated. If it said make skin, they made skin, in its varied layers and detail.
