Paradise (Expeditionary Force, #3)

by Craig Alanson

“That is not entirely my fault, Joe. In my matrix is a processor that keeps track of time and events; as you may have noticed my occasional absent-mindedness-” “Ocassional? Occasional?” He ignored me. “-this processor is perhaps not functioning optimally. The truth is, this processor simply cannot believe any of you lesser beings could be smarter than me about anything. It can’t happen, therefore my processor assumes that the data input is garbled, or that I am hallucinating. In order to acknowledge you having any kind of a good idea, I have to manually override this processor. So, emotionally, it is new to me each time.” “Wow. I’m sorry that-” “Also, on my time scale, so much time passes between you having a good idea that it is an exceedingly rare occurrence. Like, every couple hundred million years, an asteroid crashes into Earth. But that kind of thing is not in a typical five day forecast, you know?” “The one constant is that you are an asshole.” “Yes! See, Joe,” he said happily, “there is order in the universe. So, getting back to the subject, what moronic ideas do you wish to waste my time with?”