Theory of Bastards

by Audrey Schulman

  But Goliath only flinched. Carefully he pried Id off, put her on the ground and patted her butt to get her away from him.

  Frankie stared. On her Lenses, she called up the information she had on Id. Name, date of birth, gender, mother, vaccinations. Nothing about paternity. She pulled up the info for the other bonobos, scanning each record, seeing the maternal name listed every time, but never the paternal.

  In the last 24 hours, she’d watched Houdina mate with any male who was willing: Goliath, Ralph and Mr. Mister. Probably none of them knew which one of them was the father of Id or the other juveniles. The males had to treat all the babies as their own.

  Promiscuity defeating infanticide.

  This work to reduce infanticide might be why a female bonobo advertised her fertility for so much of each month, her pink sexual swelling lasting for week after week, hiding the timing of her ovulation so all the males might feel they were the father of the next baby.

  Having no infanticide would be a huge win for the females. However if even one female became slightly picky about whom she mated with—selecting for instance a male with faster reactions or a stronger immune system—she might have children who survived longer to have more offspring. Being utterly un-choosey was antithetical to evolution.

  A few minutes later, the keeper stepped out onto the balcony with her buckets of fruit. All the males stood up and the females reached for them. Frankie held her breath, intent on the ensuing melee, the pink female swellings bouncing with the motion.

  She needed some way to see through the females’ charade of fertility to figure out if—when it really counted—they were secretly being selective.

  DAY 9

  Thirteen

  Stotts stopped by where Frankie sat in her folding chair in front of the bonobo enclosure.

  Ma’am, he said.

  There was a pause.

  She asked, When exactly are they ovulating?

  He was looking at the tourists. His eyes froze and he ventured, The bonobos . . . ?

  She looked at him, Of course.

  He said relieved, I’ve no idea.

  Behind him, she saw a tourist studying him, a brunette, her head tilted.

  Well, Frankie asked, Who does?

  From the woman’s concentration, Frankie assumed she must have met him at some point, be trying to place him.

  No one, he answered.

  Surprised Frankie repeated, No one?

  Then she saw the woman’s gaze flick down his body.

  He was faced away, oblivious. He said, The exact timing of their ovulation is concealed.

  Frankie scanned the crowd, looking the men over, then returning to Stotts. He was tall and had a runner’s build. Although she wasn’t a fan of the buzzcut, it did showcase his blue eyes and bone structure.

  At her expression he said, What? It’s the same as with humans.

  She felt an illogical jolt of pride. She got to work with him.

  He said, The point of it being concealed is to have it be secret.

  It suddenly felt awkward to be sitting down talking to him. She rose to her feet, standing next to him. If she were honest she would admit she stood perhaps an inch closer than she would have otherwise.

  Glancing over, she saw the brunette had turned away, speaking to the young girl whose hand she held.

  Frankie said, I need to un-conceal it. Most copulations don’t matter. But those during ovulation, that’s different.

  Stotts paused, absorbing what she’d said. In the past she’d noted this male unwillingness to think of sex as having any other purpose than, well . . . sex. It seemed to her this reluctance was probably an adaption as impactful on human development as opposable thumbs. So far, however, she hadn’t come up with a way to test the theory.

  She said, To figure out when humans are ovulating, you get them to pee in a cup or you take blood.

  And this was when the woman glanced back, her eyes landing on Frankie for the first time—her bony limbs outlined by stretchy fabric, her posture hunched.

  The woman’s expression shifted to pity.

  Frankie blinked.

  Watching the bonobos Stotts said, Good luck with that.

  *

  Frankie sat at the living room table, reading about bonobos’ menstrual cycle and reproduction. The way she attacked a difficult question was through a process a bit like digestion. The first stage involved research, taking great bites of the material, chewing actively on the problem from every angle, until she’d swallowed all she could about the field.

  If an answer didn’t come to her during this learning phase, she let the subject settle inside her. She no longer thought about it consciously, allowing instead some dark and muscled lobe of her brain to take over. The issue was broken down into components and absorbed, images from the material occasionally appearing in her thoughts like neuronal burps. Every once in awhile she’d flip through her notes, having no expectations but going through the ritual in order to goose her brain along. After her mind had worked on the problem like this for long enough—a few days, a month, maybe a whole year—the answer would suddenly hit her. The solution glittering and fully realized, as obvious as though someone much smarter had handed it to her, frustrated with how long she was taking.

  What was known about the fertility of female bonobos sounded remarkably similar to that of female humans: the length of the menstrual cycle (33 days), pregnancy (eight months), sexual maturity (nine years) and menopause (late 40s). Beyond this very general information, scientific knowledge was limited to what could be gleaned from fewer than 100 individuals in captivity. Data about the species in the wild was limited, at first because of the nearly constant wars in the area, then more recently because no researcher had been able to find any remaining living subjects. Overall, the lack of information was stunning—this species so closely related to humans. Much more was known about reproduction in caribou or naked mole rats.

  Although she was trying to concentrate, the movement and color shifts of the E-musement on the wall kept dragging her eyes away. Words a foot tall twirled and twinkled: Cyberattack. This were followed by Chicago Stock Exchange materializing from left to right, 3-D and glittering.

  Like any animal, humans turn toward movement. All screens was geared to this weakness, objects constantly swirling and shimmering. Everything displayed on the screen was high-def and color-heightened. The avatar was especially vivid. Her complexion was perfect, her clothing luxurious and crisp, her motions graceful, her diction perfect. An uber-human, she sat there, a little taller and healthier than anyone living.

  Frankie had wondered for years if humans had gotten impatient with biological evolution and thus invented avatars. Now, everyone could stare all day long at the screen, admiring this preferred version of their successors.

  The detail that Frankie focused on was the avatar’s spine. Even lounging in her chair, her neck and back were gracefully arched, suggesting years of yoga. From Frankie’s disease and all those internal adhesions, her own posture was closer to that of a half-evolved human. She thought of the brunette’s look of pity, then got up to retrieve an old towel rod she’d spotted in the closet. She positioned the rod across the small of her back, like a banister she was leaning against, and hooked her arms over the far side to hold it in place. The pressure arched her back. The surgeon had removed every adhesion he could find; nanogels healing it all rapidly. Stretching now would stop the scars from tightening into a knot. Using her elbows, she rolled the rod up her back, attempting to iron her back out, bit by bit.

  The avatar watched this, continuing to talk, taking no offense that her voice was muted. She could easily be typecast as the supportive mom in any sitcom, the worried foil for all her comedic kids.

  Frankie rolled the rod higher, while focused on reading the research on her Lenses. The stretching wasn’t getting very far, something tuggin
g on her left side. The point was not to push it so far she ripped any stitches. She leaned into the pain like into a wind, balancing against it. She had only two more studies on bonobos to read. After that she would review ovulation among the other great apes including Homo sapiens. Since they were all so closely related, the information might be pertinent to bonobos too.

  When she looked over next, the avatar was interviewing an executive on a split screen about the cyberattack. Across his chest floated the text: Tyler Shank, CEO Chicago Stock Exchange. Although well dressed and coiffed, he was clearly not an avatar: heavy, his hair thinning, his skin moist. Frankie could guess what he was saying even with the volume off; his expression telegraphing it all. He was admitting a mistake had been made and professing sorrow. Now his voice was becoming deeper and more confident as he explained a solution had been found. Greater vigilance was promised, customer trust implicitly expected.

  Text dissolved onto the screen, the man’s chest labeled Poly-roach. For an instant Frankie thought the news site had resorted to name calling, until the man’s image dissolved to show a different human. Poly-roach must have been the intro to the next scene.

  If avatars over the years had become longer and lankier, like greyhounds or gazelles, then humans (the ones who couldn’t afford genetic or surgical augmentation) had begun to resemble groundhogs—a certain meaty compression, a tendency to breathe through the mouth. This was certainly true of the next person being interviewed. He sat at his desk, wearing an old Linux T-shirt, a large screen behind his head displaying computer code, the poly-roach expert.

  For more than a decade, computer viruses had been polymorphic: able to change themselves to avoid detection, rewriting their own code to appear part of the program they’d infiltrated. The viruses had become better at this morphing over time—able to shapeshift endlessly, making it difficult to verify if a program was ever virus free. However that ability alone hadn’t caused the scope of the current problem. That had come a decade ago when hackers gave viruses the ability to learn.

  Since then, every experience made them smarter. With each program they touched, each antivirus they survived, they amassed more knowledge and skills, able to recognize and resist antiviruses they’d never seen, figuring out the weak spot in every code.

  People began to call the new type of viruses “cockroaches,” since they’d evolved to the point where they couldn’t be exterminated no matter what products were applied. Antiviruses got rebranded as roach-spray. Because of the speed with which the polymorphic roaches learned, these sprays had to be updated daily, then hourly. Still the poly-roaches chewed on the edge of the digital world: causing childish pranks or stealing information or disabling critical infrastructure. The grid or Quark could go offline at any time, devices acting haywire, for minutes or even hours at a time, until the situation could be sprayed down. Poly-roaches and the weather had become the kind of difficulty that strangers chatted about while in an elevator.

  This groundhog of a man was talking rapidly. He gestured with his hands like an Italian, his expression intent, his entire body working to communicate with the viewer.

  Shown on a split screen, the avatar looked concerned. The segment seemed long, just the two of them talking. A surprising lack of graphics or product placement.

  Frankie realized she was staring at the screen like some aimless teenager. Tired and still physically recovering, she was easily distracted.

  She moved her chair so she wasn’t facing that way. Sitting there, rolling the towel rod up her spine, she focused on the information on her Lenses.

  *

  Mama was styling Goliath’s hair, brushing it back from his forehead and curling the hair out below his ears. She appeared to be attempting a Jackie-Kennedy bouffant.

  After several minutes of work, Mama leaned back to examine the overall effect. She frowned and patted at the hair on his neck, trying to flatten it. When it wouldn’t flatten, she grabbed a hank of it and yanked it out. Goliath yipped and clapped a hand to his neck. She wiped the hair off her palm and then grabbed some more hair. After the third chunk, she gave up, discouraged.

  She wandered off while Goliath sat there, whining, his hand cupping the back of his neck.

  *

  The keeper noticed Stotts’ face was pointed at her, his mouth moving. She stepped forward and placed two fingertips to the side of his trachea to feel the vibration of his voice, looking at his mouth to see the shape of his words. This combination let her read lips most accurately.

  Two years ago, when the Foundation’s minimal insurance finally started paying for kinetic implants, she’d gotten one. The implant was inserted under the surface of her tongue, an area dense with neurons that could be retrained.

  The implant translated sound into movement and pressure, her mouth transformed into an ear. Sharp sounds felt sharp, soft sounds soft, the direction of a noise implied through location on her tongue. A loud echo would bounce from one side of her mouth to the other.

  In the beginning the implant only told her that sound was occurring and that she already knew. Mostly the constant sensation was annoying. She found herself moving her tongue around like a horse playing with a bit, scratching noise away on the edges of her teeth.

  But synesthesia can be trained. The nerves rewired. One day her brain figured the code out. One moment she was walking through a door and her tongue was simply itchy; the next she heard through her tongue the metallic snick of the door behind her.

  A bird called and she turned to face the sound.

  Over the next few days, she tasted sound constantly, the crackle of glass breaking in her mouth, a cow’s vibrant moo, the rumble of a car. All in all, it wasn’t what she remembered or thought she remembered from childhood, before she’d woken up one morning with the flu to find she was abruptly stone deaf. Her memory of sound was of only one noise at a time: her mother talking, a bell ringing, her father’s laugh.

  Now as an adult, hearing again after decades, she learned sound happened everywhere, interrupting itself, ubiquitous and tiring. Perhaps because her brain had to work so hard translating her tongue’s input into sound, it didn’t have capacity left to edit out the background noise. All of it delivered with just as much import: the rustle of air through her lungs, the gurgle of her gut, a person talking to her, the wind overhead. Used to so many years of silence, her mind jittered at this constant input. She felt as though she stood on a noisy fairground, carnival barkers yelling on all sides for her attention.

  Exhausted by this, she turned the implant off earlier each night and turned it on a little later each morning, until one day she stopped turning it on at all. She returned instead to listening with her eyes and, when she could, with her fingers.

  She waited, her fingers on Stotts’ neck and watched his mouth.

  Knowing that her touching his neck helped her lip-read, he didn’t step back. He simply repeated his words, In the enclosure, there’s some diarrhea. I don’t know which bonobo is sick.

  She said, It’s Stella. She’s not sick. She eats too many mangos.

  With each word, she worked on enunciation, reconstructing the feel of it from memory, making sure her lips or tongue didn’t drag.

  She paused then, wondering if what she’d said was enough, was clear.

  Talkative people gave her a headache, making her concentrate just to comprehend chitchat. Stotts, she didn’t mind as much. He was succinct and allowed her to rest her fingers on his neck. Perhaps in Syria, holding a rifle, walking down a street toward what might be an I.E.D., he’d learned not to be bothered by the small stuff.

  In general, the Midwest was a bad place for deaf people: stoic expressions, hands motionless, personal space large. Most people didn’t allow her to touch them, forcing her to read their lips. She wished instead she’d been born somewhere in the Mediterranean, where people touched one another easily and stood close, where they emoted with hands
and eyes and shoulders, where everyone employed some type of sign language.

  She could see from his expression he’d understood her words.

  She turned away, having conveyed what was necessary.

  Fourteen

  Frankie sat down in Stotts’ chair wanting to see the Moments up close. After a minute of watching the images, she realized this side of the cube (the side only Stotts normally saw) showed all the images she’d seen from the other side as well as two more private ones.

  The Moment of Tess, maybe two years old, wearing Winnie-the-Pooh footie pajamas, her face yellowish and gasping. She was struggling with the oxygen mask, shoving it away with both hands, terrified of anything blocking her mouth and nose.

  The Moment of his wife holding a sleeping Tess, rocking her, staring at the viewer. She was tired and at bay and very very angry.

  Frankie didn’t know why Stotts had chosen to have these Moments on his desk where he could see them each day, what he was working to understand or remember. When she heard someone in the hall walking her way, she moved back fast to her spot on the couch.

  *

  That afternoon there was no video at all from the cameras on the far side of the enclosure. Every time more than one bonobo moved behind the cement hill, Frankie would call up the video on her Lenses, but see just static. She sent another sharp text to Bellows telling him to get the cameras fixed, now.

  She was frustrated. She hadn’t figured out a way yet to determine which females were ovulating. Now she couldn’t even see all the matings. Until she could manage both, she wouldn’t be able to get enough information to come up with a hypothesis, much less start to test the theory. She was wasting time.

  Her EarDrums beeped within three minutes. The note from Bellows rolled across her Lenses; he had four people working on it. He apologized deeply, would keep her up to date as the issue developed and he urged her to inform him of anything else he could do to facilitate her work.