"I am not a hypocrite. And I'm not a freak, either. You can save your stories and your platitudes for someone else. I'm not buying it."

Anne rolled her eyes. "Oh, and that's mature. If you don't think about it, it's not a problem, huh? Is that your plan?"

"Thinks about what? I only have your word that I'm a freak. The word of an accomplished liar, I might add."

"My word, the actions of the plants whenever you get near, and the fact that you know what you are. I know why you're being kept in December, why they have you working here. It's not to keep an eye on you Effie, although that's part of it. It's not because you hate plants, although that helps you out some, gives you more freedoms than you might have otherwise enjoyed. It's because when you are near the plants, when you are physically in this building, the plants work better. I've seen your file. They have graphs, they have plotted out the times when you are in the building and when you aren't, and juxtaposed these with the plant production charts. The closer you are to the plants, the better they perform."

"My file? What file?"

Anne sighed. "Our bosses keep files on the odd people. You, me, now, I suppose, and a few other people in December who have demonstrated talents outside the norm." She pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. "I suppose it's not entirely a bad thing, but the thought creeps me out a little, that someone feels the need to monitor me that closely. But anyway, you have a file. It's electronic, it's online, and anything that gets into an electronic database somewhere, I can get it out. I ran across it when I was trying to work out if you were related to the Bluesummers' at all. It was a bit of an interesting read, some fun facts like the plant performance thing."

"I have a file? You read my file? How dare you read my file?"

Anne put her hands up. "I think you're missing the point a little. All I'm getting at is that the plants, or at least the living ones, work better when you are around. My theory is it's because they can hear a bit of life through you, are intrigued by you. Their curiosity wakes them from their typical doldrums, and they work better because they are actually paying attention to their life."

"You read my file."

"Will you get over that? Just wait, I'll have a file soon enough, and you can read my file. Will that make you happy?"

"I want to read my file. You've gotten to read my file, and I didn't even know there was a file out there I had to read." Effie pouted.

Anne sighed. "I can pull it up for you, if you like."

Effie perked up. "Would you? I want to read my file."

She shook her head, but pulled the file up onto her monitor. "Here. All I could find was in this folder, both what they had on you and what I've been able to find out on my own." She stood and offered her chair.

Effie glared at her as they passed the edge of her desk. "I can't believe you went behind my back to research me. How cold and inhuman is that?"

"Well, I could hardly ask you directly, now, could I?"

"That's no excuse," she said absently as she scanned the list of file names. "Wait, they did a gene scan on me? What were they looking for?"

"Plant tags. Genetically, humans and plants are very, very similar. But there are a few places where there are differences between the two."

"Did they find any?"

"Not really. There were a few that are questionable, but the ones they found only have to do with the enhanced mental characteristics. And that's not really surprising, as I found that Bluesummers genes were used in the development of plants in the first place."

"You're kidding me."

"Nope. Plants, being manufactured beings, were created from many gene sources. It just so happens that the Bluesummers family tree provided some of them."

"That's impossible."

"No… actually, it's not. One of the reasons the Bluesummers were on the SEEDS ships in the first place was because they were trying to escape some of the publicity that their contribution to the plant project garnered them. They weren't called Bluesummers then, but as far as I can tell, the family that provided the gene data was yours."

She stopped looking at the files. "Why? You mean, they chose to leave earth? Were the insane?"

Anne shook her head. "No. But they were very harassed. Either they were called witches and mobs formed to try to kill them, or they were pestered by people who thought they could perform miracles. I think they just wanted to live quietly where people didn't know what they could do."

"Huh." She opened a file at random and began to read. After about a minute she closed it and opened another. This one stayed open perhaps fifteen seconds before it was closed in favor of a third file. Effie scowled and started to quickly browse through the files, opening and closing them at random.

"This is all boring," she said finally, slowing her rapid search."

"I know it is. But it's all about you."

"I didn't know I was this boring," she muttered.

"Well, you haven't actually done anything yet. There's just a lot of stuff in there that tries to define your potential. I'm sorry it's not more juicy," she apologized.

Effie glared at her, but without the heat she had shown that morning. "You say I have a file, then expect this to meet what I had imagined? Are you crazy?"

Anne shrugged. "My sanity is questionable at the best of times," she offered in lieu of an apology.