Just speaking for myself, I hate suspense. I don’t like the anxiety of anticipation. Whatever weird, creepy plan Donaldson had in store for me, I wanted to face it and get it over with. If it wasn’t inevitable, I’d put up a fight. If it *was* inevitable, avoiding it wouldn’t help.

“We’re in the middle of outer space, so you’d think that SOMETHING weird or out-of-this-world would happen every couple of days. But NOTHING! Nothing ever happens here. You are the single biggest event since we left Earth, and I doubt that anything’s going to top you for a long, long time.”

As we ate, a question occurred to me. “Couldn’t we -- couldn’t someone
take my corrupted profile and fix it? Or take one of me now and edit it,
to change me from female back to male?”

“Don’t worry!” she said with a laugh. “This was a very common test, way back when.
It was often mentioned in comedy routines of that era, so I’m sure that it doesn’t hurt at all.
In fact, from what I read, some men quite enjoyed it.”