Bioterror! (an Ell Donsaii story #14) by Laurence Dahners

of their thermal cycler and how it was used to amplify minute quantities of DNA or RNA through the polymerase chain reaction. Listening to a child his age talk about highly sophisticated equipment as if he understood it was so astonishing she found she just couldn’t ignore his voice. To her astonishment, the next thing she heard was the boy describing the advantages and disadvantages of their particular model of thermal cycler! Since Carley’d always just thought of it as “the thermal cycler” without considering the possibility that they might want or need a better model, or be particularly happy with the model they had, this was an eye-opening experience for her. He moved on to describing the uses of their robotic pipetter and why he’d have chosen a different model. He assessed their plate shaker to be “perfectly adequate” as better models were exceedingly expensive and not a great deal better. He didn’t like their centrifuge but thought their freeze-drying system was state-of-the-art. Their sonicator didn’t perform as well as the model by Branson. He’d have chosen a homogenizer made by Benchmark Scientific. He didn’t think their incubator was worth the extra money it’d cost. This went on and on. Even their analytical balances were assessed. They were found wanting for an “alarming degree of inaccuracy if not frequently recalibrated.” To Carley’s dismay, his most disparaging comments were reserved for his evaluation of their DNA assembly modules which he said were a generatio