Alan Foster: Exceptions to Reality

Another contradiction. Can you elucidate?

The Teacher tried. Being wholly human, the concept was not one that was easy for an artificial intelligence to explain. When it comes to rendering rapid decisions on matters of great importance, safety and health are often inhibitors, whereas stress often proves to be the most important stimulant.

The plant-mind was quiet for a long moment. Yet it seems that all other living things function better in the absence of such stimulation. What proof of this theorem can you offer?

Only an opinion that is based on knowledge accumulated from my years of attending to, observing, and working with the organism under discussion. If it is more rapid and intuitive decision making that you seek to augment, you will find that your physical and mental intrusion, no matter how temporally copacetic, in the end has the opposite effect.

Another pause, then: We seek only to support. It was not considered that self-evidentiary improvements might produce contradictory consequences. Until this paradox can be resolved, we will withdraw to ponder your interpretation.

The curled green leaf that was protruding from Flinx’s right ear quivered slightly as it began to withdraw. Within moments the last of the microscopic tendrils at its tip had slipped out, sliding wetly down the side of Flinx’s jawline. Slowly the leaf pulled back across the floor, contracting, until it lay coiled against its parent plant: just one more innocuous decorative growth among the dozens of other exotics that made up the lounge’s carefully maintained landscaping.

From his left ear, a glistening cable withdrew. Its retreating diameter shrank toward invisibility as smaller and smaller fibers slid into view. The last of them were far too minuscule to be visible to the human eye. As the last of the cable vanished into an open port in the floor, Flinx blinked and sat up. Her rest summarily disturbed, a mildly irritated Pip uncoiled, spread her wings, and flew off to land on a favorite platform set among the trees where she could resume her rest undisturbed by her indecisive companion. Unaware that anything out of the ordinary had transpired, she promptly closed her eyes and went in search of the sleep that had just been interrupted.

Swinging his long legs off the lounge, Flinx yawned, stretched slightly, and used his right palm to rub at a slight itch that was irritating his right ear. It was too early to eat again, the Teacher ’s intended destination still lay some days far-distant through space-plus, and he was not in the mood to read, view, or listen to anything intended as a recreational distraction. Standing, he found himself not for the first time faced with budding boredom. He knew he need not succumb to it. On a vessel as elaborate as the Teacher, there was always something to do.

Without exactly knowing why, he decided it might be a good time to prune the plants.

By Alan Dean Foster

Published by The Random House Publishing Group

The Black Hole

Cachalot

Dark Star

The Metrognome and Other Stories

Midworld

Nor Crystal Tears

Sentenced to Prism

Splinter of the Mind’s Eye

Star Trek ®Logs One–Ten

Voyage to the City of the Dead

…Who Needs Enemies?

With Friends Like These…

Mad Amos

The Howling Stones

Parallelities

Stories:

Impossible Places

Exceptions to Reality

The Icerigger Trilogy:

Icerigger

Mission to Moulokin

The Deluge Drivers

The Adventures of Flinx of the Commonwealth:

For Love of Mother-Not

The Tar-Aiym Krang

Orphan Star

The End of the Matter

Bloodhype

Flinx in Flux

Mid-Flinx

Reunion

Flinx’s Folly

Sliding Scales

Running from the Deity

Trouble Magnet

Patrimony

The Damned:

Book One: A Call to Arms

Book Two: The False Mirror

Book Three: The Spoils of War

The Founding of the Commonwealth:

Phylogenesis

Dirge

Diuturnity’s Dawn

The Taken Trilogy:

Lost and Found

The Light-years Beneath My Feet

The Candle of Distant Earth

Exceptions to Reality is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

A Del Rey Mass Market Original

Copyright © 2008 by Thranx, Inc.

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Del Rey Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

DEL REY is a registered trademark and the Del Rey colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

Some of the stories contained in this work were originally published as follows:

“The Muffin Migration” previously appeared in Star Colonies, DAW Books, 1999.

“Chauna” previously appeared in Far Frontiers, DAW Books, 2000.

“At Sea” previously appeared in Warriors Fantastic, DAW Books, 2000.

“The Killing of Bad Bull” previously appeared in the original anthology The Mutant Files, DAW Books, 2001.

“Rate of Exchange” previously appeared on AOL Online, 2001.

“Wait-a-While” previously appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Aug. 2001.

“The Short, Labored Breath of Time” previously appeared in Darkling Plain, Vol. 1 #2, 2001.

“A Fatal Exception Has Occurred at…” previously appeared in Children of Cthulhu, Del Rey Books, 2002.

“Basted” previously appeared in Pharoah Fantastic, DAW Books, 2002.

“Serenade” previously appeared in Masters of Fantasy, Baen, 2002.

“Redundancy” previously appeared in Space Stations, DAW Books, 2004.

“Panhandler” previously appeared in Little Red Riding Hood in the Big Bad City, DAW Books, 2004.

“The Last Akialoa” previously appeared in Fantasy & Science Fiction, Dec. 2005.

www.delreybooks.com

eISBN: 978-0-345-50781-5

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