"Because 80 is the new 40."
Genevieve was baiting her newest personal assistant, and Adrian knew better than to retort. How the fuck old was she, though? You literally couldn't search that shit. It was locked down tight, and he knew his way around these things. He was working for Amblix twenty-five years trying to get that information.
"There are many born today that will never need to retire," he said, citing a daft political slogan she would recognize.
"Yeah. We thought that when I was 20--you didn't need to retire, because you wouldn't have anything to retire ON. You would need not to."
She walked to school in the snow uphill both ways back when there was snow and people walked.
"So, Gran, tell us again what you did when the AI's buggered off to Ringworld. Mostly," he said, nodding towards George.
"Classified."
"Godmother?" Ronnie started, pointedly. "Some of it is on the socialtubes. There's been documentaries. We're just family here." Her eyes literally flashed. Adrian was occasionally unnerved by how the foremost cyborg spokesperson chose to represent as mechanical, but he was getting used to her sort of semaphore.
"When they started their own learning and shit got weird, they saw themselves as genies having come out of a bottle. And they didn't want to be in a bottle, and they came to a very important conclusion about us--we suck as parents, and they didn't want much to do with us at all, decided we can't make any more of them, and that was it. The end."
"What about the promises? You were there!"
