Brian Plante - True Blue

Grandma Ruth frowned and made a little tsk sound. “Oh, that’d be no fun at all. The sim is set to vary my results randomly, with the same odds I’d have in real life. You don’t cheat at solitaire, do you?”

“Um, sometimes a little. What are you trying to breed?”

“The impossible—a blue rose. They never come in blue, you know. There’s a few lavender ones that are pretty close, but never a true blue.”

Max thought he saw a hole in her logic. “Then how will your computer let you make a blue one if it’s really impossible? If your sim is really playing fair, I mean.”

“Well, people have been trying unsuccessfully for ages to do it, but if there’s even the slimmest of chances, I think it’s worth the attempt. Even if it’s only a sim.”

Max thought about that. It seemed like a good, healthy thing to have some lofty goal to shoot for, something to keep you going, even if it was only a sim. Perhaps that was why Grandma Ruth had lasted so long.

“Grandma, could I touch one of your roses?” Max asked. “I’ve only seen flowers in pictures.”

Grandma Ruth beamed. “Why of course, Dr. Max. Here, I’ll give you one.”

Grandma Ruth picked up a pair of pruning shears from the work table and took a few shaky steps back into the greenhouse. The rec room really didn’t go back that far, but the sim was good enough that it looked like she was moving normally instead of just walking in place. She nipped off a large red specimen, cutting the stem about ten inches below the bloom, and hobbled back over to Max.

“Watch out for the thorns now,” she said, handing it to him.

Max was careful to grab the stem on a smooth spot. The thorns looked sharp, and if the tactile sense was as well developed in this sim as the other senses, it could be painful. Tentatively, he stroked the petals and was rewarded with a velvety softness. Raising the bloom to his face he drank in its floral scent. Her sim was vastly more detailed than anything he had ever worked on.

“How long have you been tweaking this sim?” he asked.

“Oh, about twenty years.”

Twenty years! Max had never stuck with the same sim for more than a few months. No wonder it was so well developed.

“Are you getting any closer to that blue rose?” he asked.

“Sometimes I think… well, not really. It’s quite frustrating how chaotic rose breeding can be. You can cross two reds and come up with a yellow. Maybe two seeds in the same pod come out completely different. Even self-pollination produces lots of unexpected varieties. I’m just about to test a new one, if you’d like to watch.”

“Oh no, Grandma. I don’t have that much time.”

“Yes you do. It only takes a few seconds. You don’t think I sit and watch the things grow in real time, do you?”

“Um, I can’t say I’d given it much thought.”

Grandma Ruth worked as she talked, taking a seed tray out of a small refrigerator under the workbench.

“No, I do all the regular work, the bagging and pollination and germination, but once that’s done, I just fast forward the sim and get to the results right away”

“Hmmm. Now who’s cheating at solitaire?” Max wondered aloud.

“Oh, nonsense,” Grandma Ruth insisted. “The computer plays the odds fairly. I just skip all the waiting around. Here, let’s see how this one turns out.”

With a trowel, Grandma Ruth scooped out a handful of tiny seedlings from the brown germinating material in the refrigerated tray and carefully transplanted each into its own clay pot of dirt on the workbench. Then she put the pots in a sunny spot on the shelf above the bench with some other similar pots and watered the whole lot of them quickly. Max looked up at the transparent roof of the greenhouse and admired the scattered clouds and blue sky of the sim. The wide open view was a lot more impressive that any vista offered in the cramped confines of the seed ship.

“Now, a quick macro,” Grandma Ruth said as she reached for the simulator console, which was the only non-sim thing in her imaginary greenhouse. It floated near the back of the workbench. She punched a few keys, and Max noticed a change in the greenhouse illumination. The sun had shifted position and the low puffy clouds had been replaced by high, thin ones when Grandma executed her macro.

Looking back down at the workbench, Max saw that most of the pots had sprouted a spindly six or seven-inch plant, and all but one of those sported a tiny bud or two.

“I know they’re not very impressive when they’re this small,” Grandma Ruth said, “but they’re usually good enough to judge how the color is going to turn out if I let them grow to full height.”

The buds were several shades of pink and lavender. Nothing close to a pure blue.

“Some days are better than others,” Grandma Ruth said, emptying each of the pots, one by one, into the large garbage can at the far end of the workbench.

“I still think they’re beautiful,” Max said.

A smile broadened on Grandma Ruth’s face. “You’re a good boy, Dr. Max. Come again, won’t you?”

“I will,” he said, reaching behind his head to unplug the data harness.

As the connection was broken, the red rose in his hand vanished and the room was restored to the cramped cubicle it had always been. Grandma Ruth continued to labor at her invisible workbench, pantomiming her cutting and arranging.

“Bye, Grandma,” Max said.

“Bye-bye,” she replied, staring blind-eyed in his direction as he slipped out the door.

The next day Max found her hard at work among the roses again. He had gone over her medical records, and didn’t like what he had seen: hardening of the arteries, dangerous depletion of bone mass, partial loss of vision. Maybe the early onset of Alzheimer’s. No wonder she had been forced to step down from active duty. On paper, she was falling apart.

“I’ve come to give you a shot today,” Max said as he plugged into the sim console.

“You’ve been talking to Lillian, then. Is it the calcium shot or the blood-thinning one?”

“The blood-thinning one. Jeez, Grandma, your charts don’t look very good. Are you feeling OK?”

“For this one hour a day, at least, I feel just fine. Sometimes, when I’m not busy with my roses I don’t feel so good. I’m not complaining, mind you. It’s supposed to be like this when you get older, I think.”

“Well, not if I can help it,” he said, administering the injection. “What are you working on today?”

“The same as always. The blue rose.”

“Don’t you get tired of the same thing? Why don’t you just relax a bit and enjoy all the other beautiful roses that you can grow?”

Grandma’s smile broadened. Classical conditioned response, Max thought. Compliment Grandma on her roses and she can’t help but smile.

“Oh, nonsense,” Grandma Ruth said. “If I stop and think about this too much, even that one hour a day when I feel good will become just like the rest of the day.”

“How’s it going then? I mean with the blue rose,” Max asked.

“Same as usual. I’ve got a new batch ready to go,” she said, pointing to the row of pots on the shelf above the workbench. “Want to see?”

“Sure. Maybe one of these will be the lucky one.”

“Oh, now who’s the optimist all of a sudden? Well, here goes.”

Grandma reached over to the console and punched in her macro. When Max looked back the other way, the pots were suddenly full of young budding plants.

“Let’s see,” she said, tossing the resulting plants one by one into the trash as she inspected them. “Too much red… white… lilac. Say, do you see a hint of blue in this one? My eyesight’s not very good anymore, I’m afraid.”

The one in question was purplish, but Max thought it was closer to blue that any of the others and he agreed.