He looked at the thermometer sticking out of his mouth.  The digital display read 37.6 deg Celsius.

Low-grade, at least.

His ears throbbed.

Was this sufficient reason (or excuse) to visit the infirmary?

Two more weeks of training…he didn’t want a negative mark on his progress report.

A fellow trainee, Rogemme, walked up.

“So, you going for the ejection seat, are you?”

Lee shook his head.  “No, but my head feels like it’s floating on its own.”

“Everyone seems to have what you’ve got.  Think it’s what they say, a conspiracy to close down the training center?”

“You haven’t got it, have you?”

“Nope.”

“Then not everyone has it, have they?”

“Well, if it’s just me here, it wouldn’t be much of a graduating class now, would it?”

Rogemme laughed and walked away, shaking her head.

Lee stood up and felt his ears ringing like live electrical wires arcing or fluorescent lamp ballasts buzzing.

So everyone’s got this same thing…

He picked up his open copy of “Hidden Economic Subtrends Revealed by Supercomputer Algorithms” and read two pages.

He read them again.

He read them a third time but couldn’t seem to get the words, ideas or images invoked by the words to stick to his thoughts.

Was it the low-grade fever or something else that prevented his normal meditative state of learning to evade him?

He put the e-book down, leaving the book open for anyone else to read, including those in the class who hadn’t paid their dues and weren’t allowed to read other copies for free, a prime condition of Economic History Warehouse Keepers, Private Second Class, to maintain their rank.

He pressed a button on his earlobe that had been implanted to look like an earring but actually operated a wireless control system embedded alongside his left ear canal.

He rotated his finger around the edge of the button until he found the same place in the audible book where he had been reading “Hidden Economic Subtrends Revealed by Supercomputer Algorithms,” hoping that by listening to someone reading the book and explaining through a series of footnotes he’d paid extra to get, he’d penetrate the cushiony pillow exteriour that seemed to block his thoughts from learning class material in the moment solely by running his eyes over the written text.

As a sentient supercomputer algorithm taking the familiar form of a member of the species Homo sapiens, Lee had responsibilities, including this unknown infection, to add to his regular computational duties.

He’d excelled at hormone level modification, removing all unnecessary emotional outbursts usually associated someone of his rank.

At first, the lecturers reported his emotional control as an anomaly, sending him many times for medical examinations that found nothing more than the post-autism syndrome that previous generations of his type had helped “real” members of the species to apply gene therapy and foetal DNA reconfiguration to overcome the worst inarticulate aspects of autism.

Some classmates called him cold and calculating, both an insult and compliment at the same time.

He, however, ignored their taunts, his algorithmic tendencies giving him a larger view of life than the immediacy that sweaty bodies and physical alterations tended to drive mob mentality to its worst-case scenario outputs.

In his spare moments, he had studied the history of the “real” people, noting how they talked about subcultures and job classifications that seemed little different than the categories he and fellow algorithms had been assigned at initial creation.

Lee felt liquid on his upper lip and decided that watery mucus pouring out of his nose was an inconvenience but the overall conditions of the infection warranted a visit to the infirmary, after all.  He did not have access to online material that would have told him whether an elevated body temperature or range of temperatures would adversely affect other circuitry concealed on his body for experimental purposes only.

He knew he was really the same as the “real” people but he also knew he was a special prototype created from special molecular combinations meant to determine if DNA that had given rise to the biological diversity of Earth was only one of many possible atomic-level conditions for life.

By training him and his pals in a sequestered training class, the lecturers and those for whom they honed the classmates’ algorithm/subroutine repetitive output would assure themselves that graduating members awarded Economic History Warehouse Keepers, Private Second Class, would never want to leave their assignments for fear that unseen authorities would confuse the graduates with “real” people whose outputs were normally predictable but more often given to mob mentality than they.

As Lee absorbed the book’s spoken words which told him why living algorithms like him were destined for a higher purpose because their output revealed hidden meaning, he walked toward the infirmary, wiping his nose on his sleeve which shimmered slightly because the nasal liquid provided a short circuit across the fibers of his shirt, itself a living subroutine that resembled clothing.

The shirt sent a message on to the infirmary that it would need to be changed — its memory transferred to Lee’s next new shirt, then erased — and laundered as soon as possible to prevent staining, after the infectious organisms had been removed and sent for analysis.