Redemption Prep - Samuel Miller Page 0,28
work of one of our own.”
Neesha swallowed. She’d submitted a version of Apex for consideration, and even though her original rat tests hadn’t gone well, no one else in the class was even close to a product.
Yangborne’s eyes scanned the room, up to the back row, landing on her for a moment before falling back to the front-right corner. Leia beamed back at him.
“Leia, what are we going to give our subjects tonight to boost their neural activity?”
“Oxytocin,” she said proudly.
Neesha felt like the wind had been knocked out of her. Oxytocin was a naturally occurring hormone. Leia didn’t even know how to synthesize complex compounds.
“Oxytocin, indeed! To those of you in the back of the room who aren’t familiar, oxytocin is a naturally occurring hormone in humans that boosts neural activity, acting as a kind of mailman for some of our most important neural activity. Its presence makes us more inclined to trust, be affectionate, and understand others.
“Humans started producing it when we started having children. We’ve found recently it releases during activities like maternal care, paternal care, kissing a baby’s forehead, hugging. It really is a miracle hormone—if you’ve got people who aren’t getting along, you hit them with a puff of this, and boom. They’re understanding, they’re listening, they’re kissing, they love each other. Like MDMA without having to dance all the time.”
“What’s MDMA?” someone in the front asked.
“Doesn’t matter. Point is, it’s the most important chemical in the human body. Many would say it’s the reason humans ever evolved past the primate stage. We started caring for our children, started caring for other people’s children, started caring for our brothers and sisters, started caring for random people, and before you know it, we’ve built a whole complex architecture of emotional perception we call empathy. And that has become the only reason we do anything, beyond survival.”
The class wasn’t nearly as excited as he wanted them to be, so Yangborne drummed his fingers on the desk a few times. “It’s also the hormone your body releases during orgasm!”
“Except,” Neesha said, raising her hand and speaking without waiting to be called on, “if it’s naturally occurring, how come we’re giving Leia credit for inventing it?”
The class laughed.
“Leia,” Yangborne said with another gross little smile in her direction, “has created a booster that is effective with rats. It activates exactly the parts of their brain we want to be activating, and she’s proven it with research. Well done, Leia.”
A few people clapped. Leia buried her head, feigning like she was above the attention.
Neesha took few deep breaths to keep her face from flushing red. Not only was it ridiculous that Leia would get credit for something that was already actively existing in all their brains, but Apex stimulated way more neural activity, and she had the proof. The problem was, it wasn’t with rats, and she couldn’t show it yet.
“So be ready tonight. Wear a nice shirt, in case we have to take a picture.” He nodded to the wall on the right, covered by framed photos of Redemption classes of old, surrounding successful experiments and discoveries. “We’ll start at nine, come early if you want a seat—”
A loud buzz from the corner of the room interrupted him. Several students jumped. Yangborne made his way over to the radio dock on the wall and plugged it in, then flipped a switch. “Hello?”
There was a crackling, then a woman’s voice. “Carl, do you have a class in right now?”
The school had a closed-circuit radio feed, physically wired into the building by the Robo students, that allowed the heads of the schools to communicate directly. They all had docks in their offices and classrooms, so occasionally, Yangborne would leave his on and transmitting while his boom box played country radio. Once during a lab session, Dr. Richardson came flying in and ripped his boom box from the wall, because it was broadcasting “Achy Breaky Heart” to the other offices.
“Just my Year Fours, go ahead.”
“Would you mind talking to all your students about the sweep last night?” It was a high voice, either Dr. Richardson or Dr. Roux. “We decided we’d rather have it come directly from instructors, to help people with the news.”
“Sure thing.” He flipped the switch off, and the crackling stopped, then turned back to the class.
“I’m sure most of you already know this, but Emmalynn Donahue from Human hasn’t been seen since last night. If you know anything, anything at all, please go to the office in the