I have hands. Nice hands. And a pair of eyeballs. Nice eyeballs.
All that’s left is a face, legs, arms, shoulders, chest, back, and a brain.
Yes. That’s all of it. Or him.
I fidget a little. Why am I reluctant to give him a face?
Because, really, how do you do a face? That’s why. That’s part of it, anyway.
There’s something else, though. Once you have a face you have a person. A specific individual.
Adam won’t be Adam until he has a face.
And he won’t get a face until I design one.
I chew on my lower lip. Okay, then.
Brow. Shouldn’t be low, I don’t like low brows. I don’t want it too high, just higher than average.
Where there’s a brow, there’s hair. Blond? Brunette? Redhead?
Rupert Grint has red hair. He seems nice.
Am I looking for nice?
No. Not Rupert nice. A little less nice.
Daniel Craig. He has blond hair. He may be nice in real life, but he doesn’t play nice in the movies. Blond can be cruel.
“This is idiotic,” I say.
“What is?”
I jump. I don’t know the voice. I spin around and see an extremely strange person. He appears to be tattooed everywhere except his face. No, scratch that: He has a tattoo on his brow. Speaking of brows.
“What’s idiotic?” he demands sharply.
“Who are you?”
“I happen to be Dr. Holyfield. I’m in charge of Project 88715.”
“Oh.”
“I would like to know what’s idiotic.”
I’m not intimidated. He wants me to be, he’s frowning, but I’m not easily intimidated. Certainly not in a building with my family’s name on the outside.
“Hair. I was debating hair color,” I explain.
He stares at me like he can’t accept my answer. Like there must be a better answer that I’m just refusing to tell him.
I hold his gaze.
He doesn’t like that, either. Too bad.
“Hair color is irrelevant,” he says at last. “It’s nothing but aesthetics. That’s not why you’re running this simulation. Your mother didn’t task you to discover your preferences in hair color.”
“Huh. Then why did she ‘task’ me?”