Sheldon blinked. He hadn’t programmed that word. The device had inferred it from phonetic proximity.
“In a moment, Mother. I’m reverse-engineering the phoneme synthesizer.”
“Emotional lachrymation is a stress response,” Sheldon said. “But yes. Weird.”
“Same thing, sometimes.”
Missy smirked. “You did good, weirdo.”
He marched across the yard to the Sparks’ farm. Billy was sitting on the porch, trying to whistle and failing—his lips trembling, his throat catching on every exhale.
