Allotropes (an Ell Donsaii story #8) by Laurence Dahners

skiing or during his call, rubbed Ell the right way.
    After a moment Ell said, “Nancy.” Trusting that her AI would hook her up to Nancy in human resources, she continued, “I have a résumé I’m forwarding you. Raquel met him and liked him. Check him out and if you don’t find anything odd, I’d like to hire him. I’m thinking that we might try him out by having him work with Carter to engineer better processes for collecting the ore from the asteroids. I think the waldoes are still spending too much ‘hands on’ time just to keep the mining going.”
    Nancy chuckled, “He’s cute. You sure that his picture isn’t influencing your decision making process Dr. Donsaii?”
    Ell sighed theatrically. “You have got to start calling me ‘Ell.’ And, no, I hadn’t noticed his looks at all. Let me look back at his picture. Hmm,” she sniffed, “I’ll grant you that he is somewhat attractive. That had no bearing on my recommendation though.”
    Nancy chuckled, “Sure Bosslady. Of course ... No doubt.”
     
    ***
     
    Ryan looked up from working with John Parker to refine the control of his prosthetic hand. Most of the remaining issues were related to interpretation of sensory input regarding “position sense.” Those sensations were hard for John to describe. Programming the neurotrodes to deliver appropriate signals to the correct fibers of John’s sensory nerves that would give him proprioceptive perceptions like he had experienced from his real hand had been very difficult. Far more difficult than touch and heat and cold anyway. However, they were gradually understanding what type of signal they had to inject into the proprioceptive axons of the nerve for John to have a correct sensation of his hand’s position.
    Ryan saw Ell Donsaii step out of the machine shop.
    He got up and walked her way. “Ms. Donsaii…?”
    “Mr. Keller?” She smiled, “Though I would hope that we would be on a first name basis by now?”
    He looked abashed, “Ell.” He found it difficult to believe that he had a hard time calling her by her first name when he so desperately wanted to ask her out. “Um, I know you love Velos. I happen to have tickets to the show in Greensboro?”
    She grinned at him, “I’m really flattered.”
    Ryan’s heart thumped hard as she leaned closer to him. He noticed a fresh clean evergreen smell. Probably her shampoo he thought.
    But then she dashed his hopes by saying quietly, “Sad to say I already have a boyfriend. I just go to great lengths to hide him away from my public life here.” She glanced aside, then back. “So much as I’d love to go to the Velos concert, you should take someone else with that extra ticket.” She grinned at him again and raised an eyebrow, “By the way, Bridget likes Velos.” Ell poked him gently in the chest, “ And she thinks you’re really cute.” Ell winked and was gone before Ryan’s mind got back on track.
     
    ***
     
    Emma rapped on the frame of Ell’s open door. “Hey, have you seen the latest tirade from Michael Fentis?”
    Ell looked away from her screen, a bemused expression on her face. She slowly shook her head.
    “This time no one trapped him or badgered him. An interviewer said something about him being the ‘world’s fastest man’ and he just went off. The interviewer hadn’t said anything about you or your run up to the vault, but apparently Fentis thought he had, or was about to, imply something about it. Anyway, Fentis exploded, saying that he’d had that video of you analyzed, that parts of it were fake and that it didn’t actually show you going very fast at all. Then he implied that you were the one that faked it.”
    Ell tilted her head curiously, “Do you think he’s lost touch with reality?”
    “You mean, ‘gone crazy?’”
    Ell nodded.
    “No, I think he’s completely sane, just a jerk. Well… and this thing about you is really irritating him.” Emma grinned, “He said if you could run even close to the