"True enough. Well, meeting aliens is only one possibility; maybe they'll develop AI or something."

"That does sound like the sort of thing they'd do."

"General sort of thing, yeah. Hard to predict specifics without having met 'em yet."

"Yeah, maybe they'll all take after their uncle Lucky."

"I think all is pretty unlikely. Ooh, maybe one of them'll take after Mom enough to revolutionize genetic engineering."

"Oh?"

"Mom's a brilliant geneticist."

"Aha."

"Her work's mostly theoretical, though, no amazing advances in hybrid crops yet or anything."

"Yet," he echoes.

"She's only forty-six, there's time."

"Yeah."

"And she's been kind of--slowed down--since Dad died."

Nod.

"The worst part is we don't even know how. He went for a walk one night and just never came back, the police obviously thought he just up and left us but he would've never, and after he failed to turn up anywhere for long enough they had to issue a death certificate, but..."

"...Did I just step on a landmine?"

"No, sorry, just - reminded us of the Nelson family drama, but it'd seem kind of like a dick move to respond to that with 'well we don't know what happened to ours coming or going'..."

"Feel free to tell me to fuck off if you don't like the question, but is it more complicated than 'your mom had a one-night stand'?"

"She disappeared for a few months and came back pregnant, when she confided in a friend about what had happened the friend had her committed, and now she won't talk about it to anybody ever at all no exceptions. And we know it wasn't a one-night stand because every so often she'll drop a comment like 'you get that from your father' or 'your father would be proud', and then stonewall all followup questions..."

"Some friend."

"Yeah."

"I wish..." she shakes her head. "Well. If wishes were horses."

"Mm?"