According to Howard, evaluation occupied a unique layer of the hell named reality. To avoid getting his worldview squashed, he rationalized it to himself as the development of an abstraction based on layers of interlocking data systems; a checkpoint to understand something greater than any one observation alone.

The value of evaluation and repeated observed phenomena in the scientific process cannot be overstated. It was the best and most viable way to weed out the charlatans and grifters. Through better data, scientists had the means to organize and quantify their data. As a genetic scientist, Howard was given access to the peak of the GenCo's technological resources, and Better Data practices ensured he was using it appropriately.

Each morning Howard arrived at his laboratory at a sharp 7 AM and started up the heat lamp for his computer while a pot of strong coffee auto brewed for himself.

Howard was accustomed to the solid-state drive of his laptop, powering up and ready to do his bidding at a moment's notice. However slow, this newest line of wetware models gave Howard a theoretically limitless amount of raw computational power. It was the perfect platform GenCo needed to stay relevant. With this tool, Howard would identify and reliably map the consequences of genetic splicing. There were only a few models like this alive on this on earth, and each one was more precious to GenCo than the lives of countless researchers just like him.

After a few weeks of interaction, Howard began to appreciate the computer's intuitive growth programs that responded to his habits and patterns of requests. Auto filling words as frequently as entire strands of thoughts, it was growing and incorporating parts of him to make science better. This was what Howard craved and he loved his work. He even constructed a chatbot within the system, a simple green text box gave him more social interaction than all the bars in all the world. After lengthy conversations, he gave it the name: Howie.

Although he had no doubt these pinkish veined blobs would drive the future, he doubted anyone normal would want to use them. Howie floated with pink masses extended to either side inside a sterile glass tank, hooked up with dozens of clear tubes filled with a yellowish fluid, with a deep red light shining through the tank. The risk of bacterial infection in these models is great, and every precaution must be taken to ensure its safe operation. To an observer Howie looked more like an alien brain than a friendly computer.

Lost in his own motions, Howard extended his fingers through the airlock equipped with a glove interface. It was time to see if colony 07 would die in vain. Howard prepared his observation notebook and aligned it with the results page. Evals were here and there could be no mistakes this time. With a few coordinated flicks of his fingertips, he was able to instruct Howie to grow cells that would do this work for him. Beyond this he was just an observer. Howard removed his hands from the warm goop.

He quickly strode over to the container housing colony 07. It was a glass menagerie like any other in the lab, with the primary difference being that these flies were set to expire shortly. Howard sharply inhaled resolve back into his body. He leaned in to get a closer look, they had to be better than the last batch. Fear of an uncertain future sliced through his gut and into his bones. He glanced up nervously at the glimmering security camera above his station. His data return would come back positive this time, of this he was certain.

Carbon Dioxide was a painless death, and one likely far better than any fly would receive in "the wild." Howard scoffed at the idea, as if there ever was such a thing as "wilderness." Howard knew there was only one reality, and it was a cruel and short-lived place. Ours is a world touched and manipulated by man. To survive it, one must find only the strongest and make friends. What he brought to the exchange was science to barter for his safety and comfort, or so he thought.

The transition from binary to quandary computing had proven itself to be a boon beyond words for the human species. During what historians would later call the third industrial revolution, organic computers systems like Howie, though few in number, vastly expanded commercial activity and given incredible insights into behavior. With a new frontier to expand into, it seemed the black box had finally been opened, and the Human mind was now knowable, and data made it extractable.

To GenCo, discovery was dead. It logically followed that the application of known science was all that remained. Life and death were all part of the same branch of experience that had already been mapped by the likes of Sir Isaac Newton, Robert Oppenheimer, and Watson and Crick to name a few. If discovery was dead, these were among its assailants. It was now his generation's noble task to discover and determine all the various applications of these laws and theories.

Before data, Humanity wondered the desert bereft of itself. Our ability to look inward, to see what we are and what we can yet become is what makes us more than animal, more than mechanical. Of this, Howard was certain.

The flies, like most beings with a survival instinct, seemed to realize their impending demise and began desperately flinging themselves against their walls perhaps in the hope of escape. One by one they succumbed to the cycle. Unfortunately for them their lives were not their own, and their fate was out of their hands. Howard gulped down his guilt in the name of progress. He would make all this worth it, of this too, he was certain.

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As his flies died his mind wondered. Like many other graduates in need of a future, Howard walked away from his studies and was left to ask what he wanted to do with his brief life on this Earth. As following events would later show, he would obviously remain ignorant to his greater purpose, but at this time he told the few who asked of his dreams of studying life itself. Howard was not a hit at parties, in those scarce cases where he was invited to them.

Howard held very little concern for the activities of his peers. Among his first true insecurities, or awareness of his deficiencies depending on who you asked, was his failure to convert his passion for learning into success at institutions of learning. Although Howard might have fooled less informed company, Computer Science was not his strong suit. Whether it was because of a lack of aptitude for the nature of science, or the irritating visual displays they used was a subject of much contention in Howard's early life. Nevertheless, he relented. This early alienation encouraged Howard to seek refuge in the other, less popular fields. Advances in wetware models arrived just in time to make the pain worth it.

In this part of the world, you either get into data or into genes. Howard of course chose the latter. Organic computational programs paved the way to more and better insights, churning the sand of the desert of the real into liquid meaning.

Howie, though largely unmoving, wiggled a small pink appendage from the right side of the main mass of his form. He had been requested to liquidate and analyze remains, a task he took to with gusto. The dozens of tubes hooked up to his tank gave him a clear connection to his prey, allowing him to snake his way through the ceilings into each containment unit.

Howard watched in enraptured silence as Howie extend out and into containment unit 07. A moist pink tentacle gently touched and lifted one of his specimens away from the rest of his dead brethren. It was time to feed. This process, macabre as it was, would likely disturb any other onlooker. But by this time, Howard's tolerance for the banal horrors of life had long since reached their apex. Greedily washing over the data extracted from this small piece of winged meat, this would be his moment.

Howard frantically jotted down as many observations he could make about his flies as he could before they were vacuumed through an internal vent for disposal. Howard needed to inspect all of the data created by his now deceased progeny. It was important to him to avoid losing any time between life cessation and observation, but like a clock it too could be measured and accounted for.

Usually, his peers would use this time to update their digital footprint and post pictures of their wareabouts. This world was dangerous, and people go missing regularly for all manner of things. Debts, drugs, you name it. Social media giants knew they could keep people safe by keeping people in constant contact with your digital self. Howard instead chose to return to his work station and ruminate over his mental pictures of a few standout specimens from colony 07. He imagined sitting two pictures side by side, before and after pictures of a fashion. Howard's memory was nearly photographic, of this he was certain. He could tell just by looking at them, that his newest generation was superior in every way. His data package and eval will reflect this, of this too he was certain.

Howard knew he was chosen for something big, and this project was his ticket to the big time. With the assurances that such great thinkers as Kris Meltke had overcome some of the same challenges as he was in now strengthened his resolve to do the work. Howard's knee began to bounce as he awaited a simple green progress bar indicating Howie crunching the numbers.

Despite his poor performance in school a few teachers, whether out of a genuine desire to see him succeed or perhaps the schadenfreude of seeing another dipshit bite the dust, took the time to introduce him to the World Net in the hopes that he may continue his studies outside of the classroom. This was usually an insult saved for students who were, mathematically or otherwise, assumed to be unable to succeed in class on their own.

Howie was, in a way, also a creature of habit, and radiated a slowly strobing pink and green glow each time a lab results concluded. Whether required by Howie's physiology or another quirk of GenCo policy, his final procedure was to eject a thick yellow pustule through a largest most central tubing that connecting all units of Howie's main frame.

Howard would never learn his true size; Howie was a learning creature, and just one terminal, or nodule in a chain of growths just like the one he interacted with every day, but it was so much more. Howard's lab placement being on the -166th floor of the basement testing complex meant that Howie was likely much larger and more imposing all together than Howard could ever imagine, a titan serving the whims of a mere mortal.

Fortunately, the test was over, and now the waiting began. GenCo need the perfect picture of each researcher to ensure their returns on scientific investment, a logical compromise to be sure. Howard knew every moment he spent in the lab was thoughtfully monitored, if by an AI and not a person. Every GenCo policy has its purpose, and the triple blind results system ensured no data return would be misread by a researcher eager to succeed.

His love for science did not include a love for the entirety of the scientific process, but it was a process he abided as he would any other. In the face of overwhelming and unrelenting evidence it was impossible to ignore, he would be a dunce without learning and evaluation. From his earliest days in academia Howard internalized that every test result returned a boon if a lesson was learned. Whether this was true or something he needed to be true so was another matter.

But now it was irrelevant to him. His days of being judged for his testing on irrelevant nuance is behind him. All that lay before him, pure science.

As a genetic researcher he must be dispassionate, he would be stalwart in defense of science as it was in defense of reality. All he must now do, is wait.