Machinehood

by S. B. Divya

  She combed through multiple internal reports. Synaxel’s databases had a reputation for comprehensiveness. A group of six funders made up its board of directors, creating one of the last remaining pill design firms. As the world’s workforce had decentralized, so too had the corporate structure of the first half of the century. The fewer the decision-makers, the faster they could react, and modern projects moved at electric speed.

  She thought of Briella Jackson covered in blood. Pill funders must be in a panic after the day’s events. God help me, I can’t stop thinking about it. Governments around the world had promised to investigate and offered to bolster protection for funders, but many declined the assistance. Reputation mattered, and having soldiers surround them would discourage protesters. They had to appear open to conscientious objections even as they feared for their lives. The Machinehood attacks were nothing like typical protests, which mostly targeted funders for underpaying contractors, or too much reliance on bot labor, or overcharging for pill designs. A funder with a bad reputation wouldn’t find people willing to work on their projects. Their investments would spiral into failure.

  Nithya’s eyelids twitched. Sita slowed down the text scrolling and closed half of her desktop, but the input still overwhelmed her. With a wave of her hand, Nithya shut the whole thing off and grabbed a flush patch from the kitchen dispenser. Flow improved focus and information processing, but it couldn’t direct her attention, and it would interfere with sleep. She stuck the patch on her throat and ordered a glass of water from the kitchen. Flushing stimulated the body’s immune response by way of the vagus nerve. It always made her throat itch.

  Luis had reprogrammed his and Carma’s alcoves into bedroom walls for the night. If Nithya held still, she could hear the steady breathing of her husband and child, both sound asleep. Good. That meant she had the time to take a pregnancy test with no one banging on the bathroom door. Inside the small washroom, Nithya lifted the blood sampler from its wall cubby and attached a fresh needle to the tip. She strapped it to the inside of her left elbow and pressed start.

  “Sita, test only for pregnancy hormones.”

  No sense wasting a full panel. Her daily drugs included an ovulation suppressant along with the latest antivirals and microbials. The likelihood of pregnancy was so low that she was probably being a paranoid idiot. At least she could hide the results, whichever way they went. Welga had permanent blood monitoring built into her body by the US military, with no chance of hiding anything. Her sister-in-law loudly declaimed that she never wanted to have children. The requirements of her service had allowed her to surgically ensure sterility. Some days, Nithya envied that freedom.

  “Your blood shows elevated levels of hCG, consistent with your previous pregnancy,” Sita announced.

  If she were the swearing type, Nithya would have launched a volley. We cannot afford to have a baby right now. Should she tell Luis before she terminated it? Of course! He had a right to know. He had a right to participate in the decision. But she’d already decided, and he wasn’t going to change her mind. Their religious differences hadn’t mattered when they met, but Luis had rediscovered his Catholic faith after Carma’s birth. He did not believe in abortion. He barely tolerated Nithya’s use of birth control. Why not spare them both the inevitable, horrible fight, and in his case, the guilt? Innocence is bliss.

  “Sita, remind me how much longer I can safely use flow.”

  “Current recommendations are to cease usage as soon as pregnancy is detected. The chance of neurological damage to the fetus increases significantly between pregnancy weeks five and seven.”

  That didn’t leave her much time, but she could put off talking to Luis until the next day. She wouldn’t be able to get the abortifacient until then anyway.

  “Sita, schedule an appointment with my gynecologist and tell them it’s urgent. Ideally, I’d like it for tomorrow, while Luis is away.”

  She dropped the needle into the recycler, then took her lenses out and laid them in the cleaner alongside Luis’s. Her ear and throat jewels went into a dry charger. For the space of three breaths, the world looked and sounded wrong. The feeds added another dimension to her senses, and she had to wait for her brain to adjust to their absence.

  Welga had an advantage there, too, with her devices permanently inside her eyes, ears, and neck, courtesy of the US military. VeeMods—voluntary modders—paid out thousands in their own coin for similar technology and surgery. Must be nice not having to worry about cleaning or charging or repairing them every day.

  As Nithya settled into bed, Luis sighed and scooted closer. He draped his arm over her waist. His breath warmed the back of her neck. He felt softer against her than when they’d first met, in Phoenix, where she’d gone for her doctorate studies. She’d become curious about the local amateur rocketry club and went to see a launch. Luis had caught her eye right away, with his generous smile and enthusiasm for mechanics. He’d grayed and added some wrinkles since then, but he still had the same easy laugh and steady hands. She relaxed into his embrace and let the rise and fall of his chest lull her to sleep.

  * * *

  Luis was gone when Nithya woke up. He left a message saying that he had an off-site emergency repair gig where the bid was tied to availability. As she brushed out the tangles in Carma’s hair, she wondered if this pregnancy might be a boy. She resisted the urge to check. For two people of different ethnicities, Luis and she had the same dark, curly hair, and Carma had inherited it. Nithya tamed it into two long braids as Carma cried about her aunt.

  “Amma, why can’t I visit Aunty Welga, too?”

  They had blocked Carma’s access to public feeds, but a friend had sent her clips from the attacks. Why couldn’t other parents be more vigilant and conscientious?

  “They’ve put her to sleep,” Nithya replied. “She’ll be in a lot of pain. You won’t be able to talk to her, and it might be scary for you to see her. Anyway, Papa is going mostly because Grandpa will feel better if someone visits Aunty Welga.”

  “Can’t we send her some messages?”

  “Of course. You can record and send anything, but she might not answer for some time.”

  Then, in a near whisper, “Amma, will they come here? I don’t want to get blown up.”

  Nithya put an arm around her child. She kissed the top of Carma’s head and guided her to her alcove. “No, darling, we’re safe here. Don’t worry. They weren’t attacking your aunty. They were after a funder, a wealthy pill designer.”

  “Roopa says we should turn everything off. She says the Machinehood will take over all our WAIs and bots, and they’ll kill us.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Nithya said reflexively.

  But was it? The morning had shed no light on who or what the Machinehood was, adding credibility to the theory of a purely electronic entity. A creature of ones and zeros that didn’t inhabit the real world… could it take over every system? No personal WAI or bot worked without access to the global networks and centralized computing, but modern quantum encryption was impossible to break, or so the experts claimed. Let it go, she told herself firmly. Don’t fall for the bogeyman of sentient AI. Worry about your own work first.

  After getting Carma settled, Nithya had the kitchen make her pills and drugs for the day and said a quick prayer before sitting down with her morning coffee. Since she couldn’t dose up on flow until Luis returned, she looked through Sita’s search results for Welga’s tremors. The generic forms of zips worked by sitting on either end of sensory and motor nerves, bypassing the travel of an electrical signal along an axon. Unlike drugs, which acted passively, pill formulations were tiny machines. They could improve biochemical mechanisms without using the underlying structures.

  More specialized zips, like the ones Welga used, created secondary and tertiary effects. They could deliver additional ions or acetylcholine to neuromuscular junctions. Either one would speed up the communication between peripheral neurons and the brain. Some could improve the synchr
onization across different types of muscle fibers.

  Other advantages came from long-term changes: to the muscle fiber composition; to the density of neurotransmitters, cell membrane gates, and receptors; to the amount of oxygen a muscle fiber could store; to improved heart and lung function. Someone like Welga, who spent a lot of time training her body, would have advantages that no zip could mimic. And—or so Nithya suspected—people who worked in military special forces had access to advanced biogenetic engineering that general queries wouldn’t reveal.

  Any intense activity had a price, though. Muscles needed to recover. Transmitters needed to be taken back into cells or released. Electric potentials needed to be restored. Those processes could also be accelerated, but physics would eventually take over. Long-term, sustained rapid muscle activation wasn’t possible… yet. Pill funders had plenty of projects going to find solutions to that.

  In the meantime, fifteen to thirty minutes of zip-fueled activity—like the fights Welga engaged in—could leave behind badly damaged cells. That was where juvers helped. Some of Nithya’s first projects related to muscle-fiber rejuvenation. Later designs acted as prophylactics if the user took them at the correct time. According to Sita’s reports, the dominant research at the moment focused on mitogens. Those could stimulate the reproduction of satellite cells, the first step in the chain of skeletal muscle repair. Welga had once described the zip comedown to Nithya as a combination of hangover and soreness, almost like having the flu. The new, mitogenic class of juver would reduce or eliminate that effect.

  Nithya sat back, digesting the information. Welga’s symptoms pointed at hyperexcitation, but none of the data on the newest juver or zip designs showed that as a side effect. It had been common in the early days, sending people into uncontrollable twitching or cramping. The kind of large-scale tremor that Nithya saw in Welga usually indicated a problem at the source: in the brain. But Welga’s biodata showed a correlation between zip usage and involuntary movement in her limbs. It contained no information about other areas of her body.

  “Sita, send a request to Welga’s agent for cerebral activity logs. If they don’t exist, ask if Welga can take some diagnostic pills to monitor that region.”

  “I’ve sent the request. Reminder: Your gynecologist appointment is in five minutes.”

  Nithya expanded her view of Luis’s feed. He stood next to an engine with tools strewn on the floor and his body swathed in a clean-room suit. She opened an audio channel to him.

  “You look busy,” she said, keeping her tone light to hide her irritation. She had assumed he’d be at the hospital with Welga.

  Luis chuckled. “They’re paying me for two more hours to replace some valves. Sorry about the surprise. I know I’m keeping you from your work, but this rocketry gig offered me double my usual rate. And it’s good experience for the club. I’ll stop by the hospital on my way home.”

  She could forgive him for double pay. “It’s all right. I have smaller tasks I can do without flow. You’ll return in four hours, then?”

  “Definitely.”

  She muted the audio and minimized his feed. The lack of progress on her project was frustrating, but at least she didn’t have to hide in the bathroom for her appointment. She stretched and got a glass of water before opening a call channel with her gynecologist. They spent two minutes exchanging pleasantries about Carma before getting to business.

  “You are definitely pregnant, four and a half weeks along. And now that I’m aware of your pregnancy, I’m obligated to track your pill usage,” the doctor said. She gestured apologetically. “Legal reasons that didn’t exist when you were pregnant the first time. I know you’re better informed than most and won’t take risks, but I have to follow procedure. I’ll need your permission to install a tracker with your agent.”

  “Permission granted,” Nithya said. “Though you shouldn’t need it for long. I’d like to terminate.”

  “Oh? Can I ask why?”

  “Because we depend on my income. My husband isn’t getting as many gigs as he used to, and I’ve built my reputation these last five years. If I drop this project unfinished, Synaxel won’t contract with me again. They’re the biggest funders of juver designs, and they’ve been reliably giving me work for two years now.”

  “Okay,” her doctor said with a smile. “You don’t have to convince me. I was idly curious.”

  Nithya tried to return the expression.

  “You’ll need a combination of termination drugs and monitoring pills so I can check for complications. I can send the authorization to your kitchen. You’ll be able to dispense at your convenience. Plan to take a day for—oh, one moment. It looks like I need co-permission from your husband.”

  “What?”

  A document popped into Nithya’s view.

  “Sorry, my system only now flagged it. Because your spouse is also a legal resident of Arizona, USA, the law there requires that you obtain his consent before you can terminate a pregnancy. Have him record it on this document and send it over. I don’t need to speak with him.”

  “Okay.”

  “As I was saying, plan for a day of rest after the initial dosage. You should be fine to resume your activities after that.”

  “Thank you.”

  Nithya sighed after the call ended. Bloody Americans and their conservative ways. Luis wouldn’t give his consent. She buried her face in her hands. What to do now? Another ten minutes and Carma would have her first recess.

  “Sita, what are the regulations on flow usage per my doctor’s instructions?”

  “You are allowed two per day until five weeks of gestational age, one per day for week six, none after that.”

  She had ten days before the cutoff. That meant nine to convince Luis plus one day to abort and recover if she didn’t want to lose flow time. With a heavy sigh, she pulled up the data for the Synaxel project. No sense putting it off if she was down to two pills per day anyway.

  * * *

  That night, as Nithya returned from her second trip to the bathroom, Luis rolled toward her. Moonlight reflected off the lenses of his glasses.

  “What are you watching?” she asked as she lay down.

  “The hospital feed.” Luis sighed and took her hand in his. “The only time Welga’s been hurt this bad was when she survived that mission in Marrakech. Shield work isn’t supposed to be dangerous. If this Machinehood thing is serious, if she dies… what will we do? Who’s going to look after Papa? And when he’s gone… it’ll just be me.”

  Nithya gave his hand a reassuring squeeze, then scooted closer to lay her head on his chest. Both of her parents had died after she became an adult, and their loss still grieved her, but it hadn’t left the kind of scars that Luis and Welga carried. Their mother, Laila, had died when Luis was ten, Welga thirteen. He bore the grief of that in his insecurity about his family, especially after Welga barely returned alive from the Maghreb. Nithya and Luis had been married only two years at that point. She’d learned since then how to reassure her husband.

  “We can have your father move in here,” Nithya said. “Now that my parents are gone, there’s enough space. But why borrow so much trouble? Your father’s health is good. Welga will heal. The Machinehood can’t stay hidden for long, not in this day. Governments are already involved. I doubt that Welga will be in harm’s way again, and she has only three months of this work remaining.”

  “I suppose so.” Luis shook his head as he placed the glasses on the wall cradle. “This crazy idea of hers to do a food business—I don’t know what she’s thinking. I wish she would see reason and build a gig reputation like the rest of us. It’s like she’s stuck as a teenager, wanting to make a difference in the world and having no idea how. First the Marines, then shielding. Now food.”

  “You’re the stable one. She can be the risk-taker,” Nithya said lightly.

  Welga traveled often and never visited them for long, but she kept her feeds so open that Nithya felt as if she knew her well.


  “I’m the younger brother. She’s supposed to be the responsible one,” Luis grumbled. “This new thing could cost all her savings. Papa told me that she’s been sending him coin for the house repairs.”

  “She has? For how long?”

  “I don’t know, but if Welga can’t help him, then what? It’s not like we can afford it.”

  Especially not if we keep this baby. In the dark quiet of midnight, Nithya couldn’t contain the pressure of her secret. “I’m pregnant.”

  “What?” Luis propped himself on an elbow. His expression softened. “That’s wonderful! That’ll be something to cheer everyone up. But… how? I thought you were on birth control with your dailies.”

  “There’s a point-two percent chance of failure with regular use of flow. We beat the odds.”

  Luis lay back on his pillow. “At least we have some good news to balance out the bad.” He grinned. “A baby… now I really can’t sleep.”

  Nithya closed her eyes and gathered her resolve around herself—armor for the upcoming battle. “I don’t want it.”

  “Sleep?”

  “The pregnancy.”

  The silence that followed had a weight she couldn’t bear. Nithya kept her eyes closed.

  “I thought we were done with this discussion when you got pregnant with Carma,” he said, his voice one step above a whisper.

  She swallowed the tears, but a sniffle escaped.

  Luis sighed. “When your mother died, you said you wanted another baby. That maybe her soul would be reborn in her grandchild. What if this is God’s way of making that happen?”

  “Don’t throw my grief in my face! You don’t believe in reincarnation. And it’s not a good time. I need to be working, earning. I lost an entire year of expertise because of Carma.”

  “So you’ve decided? Then why involve me at all? You know what I believe. Abortion is a sin. Bad enough that you’re using hormones. You can’t ask me to end a God-given life!”

  “I haven’t. Let’s push it off for a week. I can stall on my projects that long, stay off flow. I’ll say that I’m not well to explain the slowdown.”