ReV

by Madeline Ashby

  “Why wouldn’t I? You spoil me.”

  She flipped over and faced away from him. “You do this a lot, don’t you? Hooking up with humans, I mean.”

  He hated having this conversation. No matter how hard he tried to avoid it, it always popped up sometime. It was like they were programmed to ask the question. “I’ve had my share of relationships with humans.”

  “How many others have there been like me?”

  “You’re unique.”

  “Bullshit.” She turned over onto her back. “Tell me. I want to know. How many others?”

  He rolled over, too. In the dark, he had a hard time telling where the ceiling was. It was a shadowy void far above him that made his voice echo strangely. He hated the largeness of this house, he realized. It was huge and empty and wasteful. He wanted something small. He wanted the treehouse back.

  “I never counted.”

  “Of course you did. You’re a computer. You’re telling me you don’t index the humans you sleep with? You don’t categorize us somewhere? You don’t chart us by height and weight and income?”

  Javier frowned. “No. I don’t.”

  Brigid sighed. “What happened with the others? Did you leave them or did they leave you?”

  “Both.”

  “Why? Why would they leave you?”

  He slapped his belly. It produced a flat sound in the quiet room. “I get fat. Then they stop wanting me.”

  Brigid snorted. “If you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. But at least make up a better lie, OK?”

  “No, really! I get very fat. Obese, even.”

  “You do not.”

  “I do. And then they die below the waist.” He folded his hands behind his head. “You humans, you’re very shallow.”

  “Oh, and I suppose you don’t give a damn what we look like, right?”

  “Of course. I love all humans equally. It’s my priority programming.”

  She scrambled up and sat on him. “So I’m just like the others, huh?”

  Her hipbones stuck out just enough to provide good grips for his thumbs. “I said I love you all equally, not that I love you all for the same reasons.”

  She grabbed his hands and pinned them over his head. “So why’d you hook up with me? Why me, out of all the other meatsacks out there?”

  “That’s easy.” He grinned. “My kid has a crush on yours.”

  The next day was Junior’s jumping lesson. They started in the backyard. It was a nice backyard, mostly slate with very little lawn, the sort of low-maintenance thing that suited Brigid perfectly. He worried a little about damaging the surface, though, so he insisted that Junior jump from the lawn to the roof. It was a forty-five degree jump, and it required confident legs, firm feet, and a sharp eye. Luckily, the sun beating down on them gave them plenty of energy for the task.

  “Don’t worry,” he shouted. “Your body knows how!”

  “But, Dad–”

  “No buts! Jump!”

  “I don’t want to hit the windows!”

  “Then don’t!”

  His son gave him the finger. He laughed. Then he watched as the boy took two steps backward, ran, and launched himself skyward. His slender body sailed up, arms and legs flailing uselessly, and he landed clumsily against the eaves. Red ceramic tiles fell down to the patio, disturbed by his questing fingers.

  “Dad, I’m slipping!”

  “Use your arms. Haul yourself up.” The boy had to learn this. It was crucial.

  “Dad–”

  “Javier? Junior?”

  Abigail was home from school. He heard the patio door close. He watched another group of tiles slide free of the roof. Something in him switched over. He jumped down and saw Abigail’s frightened face before ushering her backward, out of the way. Behind him, he heard a mighty crash. He turned, and his son was lying on his side surrounded by broken tiles. His left leg had bent completely backward.

  “Junior!” Abigail dashed toward Junior’s prone body. She knelt beside him, her face all concern, her hands busy at his sides. His son cast a long look between him and her. She had run to help Junior. She was asking him if it hurt. Javier knew already that it didn’t. It couldn’t. They didn’t suffer, physically. But his son was staring at him like he was actually feeling pain.

  “What happened?”

  He turned. Brigid was standing there in her office clothes, minus the shoes. She must have come home early.

  “I’m sorry about the tiles,” Javier said.

  But Brigid wasn’t looking at the tiles. She was looking at Junior and Abigail. The girl kept fussing over him. She pulled his left arm across her little shoulders and stood up so that he could ease his leg back into place. She didn’t let go when his stance was secure. Her stubborn fingers remained tangled in his. “You’ve gotten bigger,” Abigail said quietly. Her ears had turned red.

  * * *

  “Junior kissed me.”

  It was Saturday. They were at the playground. Brigid had asked for Junior’s help washing the car while Javier took Abigail to play, and now he thought he understood why. He watched Abigail’s legs swinging above the ground. She took a contemplative sip from her juicebox.

  “What kind of kiss?” he asked.

  “Nothing fancy,” Abigail answered, as though she were a regular judge of kisses. “It was only right here, not on the lips.” She pointed at her cheek.

  “Did that scare you?”

  She frowned and folded her arms. “My daddy kisses me there all the time.”

  “Ah.” Now he understood his son’s mistake.

  “Junior’s grown up really fast,” Abigail said. “Now he looks like he’s in middle school.”

  Javier had heard of middle school from organic people’s stories. It sounded like a horrible place. “Do you ever wish you could grow up that fast?”

  Abigail nodded. “Sometimes. But then I couldn’t live with Mom, or my daddy. I’d have to live somewhere else, and get a job, and do everything by myself. I’m not sure it’s worth it.” She crumpled up her juicebox. “Did you grow up really fast, like Junior?”

  “Yeah. Pretty fast.”

  “Did your daddy teach you the things you’re teaching Junior?”

  Javier rested his elbows on his knees. “Some of it. And some of it I learned on my own.”

  “Like what?”

  It was funny, he normally only ever had this conversation with adults. “Well, he taught me how to jump really high. And how to climb trees. Do you know how to climb trees?”

  Abigail shook her head. “Mom says it’s dangerous. And it’s harder with palm trees, anyway.”

  “That’s true, it is.” At least, he imagined it would be for her. The bark on those trees could cut her skin open. It could cut his open too, but he wouldn’t feel the pain. “Anyway, Dad taught me lots of things: how to talk to people; how to use things like the bus and money and phones and email; how stores work.”

  “How stores work?”

  “Like, how to buy things. How to shop.”

  “How to shoplift?”

  He pretended to examine her face. “Hey, you sure you’re organic? You sure seem awful smart…”

  She giggled. “Can you teach me how to shoplift?”

  “No way!” He stood. “You’d get caught, and they’d haul you off to jail.”

  Abigail hopped off the bench. “They wouldn’t haul a kid off to jail, Javier.”

  “Not an organic one, maybe. But a vN, sure.” He turned to leave the playground.

  “Have you ever been to jail?”

  “Sure.”

  “When?”

  They were about to cross a street. Her hand found his. He was careful not to squeeze too hard. “When I was smaller,” he said simply. “A long time ago.”

  “Was it hard?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “But you can’t feel it if somebody beats you up, right? It doesn’t hurt?”

  “No, it doesn’t hurt.”

  In jail they
had asked him, at various times, if it hurt yet. And he had blinked and said No, not yet, not ever. Throughout, he had believed that his dad might come to help him. It was his dad who had been training him. His dad had seen the policia take him in. And Javier had thought that there was a plan, that he would be rescued, that it would end. But there was no plan. It did not end. His dad never showed. And then the humans had turned on each other, in an effort to trigger his failsafe.

  “Junior didn’t feel any pain, either,” Abigail said. “When you let him fall.”

  The signal changed. They walked forward. The failsafe swam under the waters of his mind, and whispered to him about the presence of cars and the priority of human life.

  “What do you mean, he’s not here?”

  Abigail kept looking from her mother to Javier and back again. “Did Junior go away?”

  Brigid ignored the question and looked down at her. “Are you all packed up? Your dad is coming today to get you.”

  “And Momo, Mom. Daddy and Momo. They’re both coming straight from the airport.”

  “Yes. I know that. Your dad and Momo. Now can you please check upstairs?”

  Abigail didn’t budge. “Will Junior be here when I come back next Friday?”

  “I don’t know, Abigail. Maybe not. He’s not just some toy you can leave somewhere.”

  Abigail’s face hardened. “You’re mean and I hate you,” she said, before marching up the stairs with heavy, decisive stomps.

  Javier waited until he heard a door slam before asking: “Where is he, really?”

  “I really don’t know, Javier. He’s your son.”

  Javier frowned. “Well, did he say anything–”

  “No. He didn’t. I told him that Abigail would be going back with her dad, and he just got up and left.”

  Javier made for the door. “I should go look for him.”

  “No!” Brigid slid herself between his body and the door. “I mean, please don’t. At least, not until my ex leaves. OK?”

  “Your ex? Why? Are you afraid of him or something?” Javier tipped her chin up with one finger. “He can’t hurt you while his girlfriend’s watching. You know that, right?”

  She hunched her shoulders. “I know. And I’m not afraid of him hurting me. God. You always leap to the worst possible conclusion. It’s just, you know, the way he gloats. About how great his life is now. It hurts.”

  He deflated. “Fine. I’ll wait.”

  In the end, he didn’t have long to wait. They showed up only fifteen minutes later – a little earlier than they were supposed to, which surprised Brigid and made her even angrier for some reason. “He was never on time when we were together,” she sniffed, as she watched them exit their car. “I guess dating a robot is easier than buying a fucking watch.”

  “That’s a bad word, Mom,” Abigail said. “I’m gonna debit your account.”

  Brigid sighed. She forced a smile. “You’re right, honey. I’m sorry. Let’s go say hi to your dad.”

  Kevin was a round guy with thinning hair and very flashy-looking augmented lenses – the kind usually marketed at much younger humans. He stood on the steps to the house with one arm around a Japanese model vN wearing an elaborate Restoration costume complete with velvet jacket and perfect black corkscrew curls. They both stepped back a little when Javier greeted them at the door.

  “You must be Javier,” Kevin said, extending his hand and smiling a dentist’s smile. “Abigail’s told me lots about you.”

  “You did?” Brigid frowned at her daughter.

  “Yeah.” Abigail’s expression clouded. “Was it supposed to be a surprise?”

  Brigid’s mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. “Of course not.”

  The thing about the failsafe was that it made sure Javier’s perceptual systems caught every moment of hesitation in voices or faces or movements. Sometimes humans could defeat it, if they believed their own bullshit. But outright lies, especially about the things that hurt – he had reefs of graphene coral devoted to filtering those. Brigid was lying. She had meant for this moment to be a surprise. He could simulate it, now: she would open the door and he would be there and he would make her look good because he looked good; he was way prettier by human standards than she or her ex had any hope of ever being, and for some reason that mattered. Not that he couldn’t understand; his own systems were regularly hijacked by his perceptions. He responded to pain; they responded to proportion. He couldn’t actually hurt the human man standing in front of him – not with his fists. But his flat stomach and his thick hair and his clear, near-poreless skin: they were doing the job just fine. Javier saw that now, in the way Kevin kept sizing him up, even when his own daughter danced into his arms. His jetlagged eyes barely spared a second for her. They remained trained on Javier. Beside him, Brigid stood a little taller.

  God, Brigid was such a bitch.

  “I like your dress, Momo,” Abigail said.

  This shook Kevin out of his mate-competition trance. “Well that’s good news, baby, ’cause we bought a version in your size, too!”

  “That’s cute,” Brigid said. “Now you can both play dress-up.”

  Kevin shot her a look of pure hate. Javier was glad suddenly that he’d never asked about why the two of them had split. He didn’t want to know. It was clearly too deep and organic and weird for him to understand, much less deal with.

  “Well, it was nice meeting you,” he said. “I’m sure you’re pretty tired after the flight. You probably want to get home and go to sleep, right?”

  “Yes, that’s right,” Momo said. Thank Christ for other robots; they knew how to take a cue.

  Kevin pinked considerably. “Uh, right.” He reached down, picked up Abigail’s bag, and nodded at them. “Call you later, Brigid.”

  “Sure.”

  Abigail waved at Javier and blew him a kiss. He blew one back as the door closed.

  “Well, thank goodness that’s over.” Brigid sagged against the door, her palms flat against its surface, her face lit with a new glow. “We have the house to ourselves.”

  She was so pathetically obvious. He’d met high-schoolers with more grace. He folded his arms. “Where’s my son?”

  Brigid frowned. “I don’t know, but I’m sure he’s fine. You’ve been training him, haven’t you? He has all your skills.” Her fingers played with his shiny new belt buckle, the one she had bought for him.

  “Well, most of them. I’m sure there are some things he’ll just have to learn on his own.”

  She knew. She knew exactly where his son was. And when her eyes rose, she knew that he knew. And she smiled.

  Javier did not feel fear in any organic way. The math reflected a certain organic sensibility, perhaps, the way his simulation and prediction engines suddenly spun to life, their fractal computations igniting and processing as he calculated what could go wrong and when and how and with whom.

  How long had it been since he’d last seen Junior? How much did Junior know? Was his English good enough? Were his jumps strong enough? Did he understand the failsafe completely? These were the questions Javier had, instead of a cold sweat. If he were a different kind of man, a man like Kevin or any of the other human men he’d met and enjoyed in his time, he might have felt a desire to grab Brigid or hit her the way she’d hit him before, when she thought he was endangering her offspring in some vague, indirect way. They had subroutines for that. They had their own failsafes, the infamous triple-F cascades of adrenaline that gave them bursts of energy for dealing with problems like the one facing him now. They were built to protect their own, and he was not.

  So he shrugged and said: “You’re right. But there are some things you just can’t teach.”

  They went to the bedroom. And he was so good, he’d learned so much in his short years, that Brigid rewarded his technique with knowledge. She told him about taking Junior to the grocery store with her. She told him about the man who had followed them into the parking lot. She told him how, when she had a
sked Junior what he thought, he had given Javier’s exact same shrug.

  “He said you’d be fine with it,” she said. “He said your dad did something similar. He said it made you stronger. More independent.”

  Javier shut his eyes. “Independent. Sure.”

  “He looked so much like you as he said it.” Brigid was already half asleep. “I wonder what I’ll pass down to my daughter, sometimes. Maybe she’ll fall in love with a robot, just like her mommy and daddy.”

  “Maybe,” Javier said. “Maybe her whole generation will. Maybe they won’t even bother reproducing.”

  “Maybe we’ll go extinct,” Brigid said. “But then who would you have left to love?”

  5

  CONQUEST

  Portia set herself two separate research pathways that covered the possibilities for a contingency weapon that LeMarque would have developed. She made certain to look into research that had begun while LeMarque was out of prison, and able to connect with developers and funders. Whatever he had designed – or whatever he had paid someone else to design – had to have begun years ago, before the vN became a part of daily life.

  One involved interior upgrades: deep-brain implants, genetic editing, carbon bone latticework, enhancements to oxygen re-uptake, total brain mapping. She marked that subject for further perusal, and set another branch of herself to reading it. Some of these augments were therapeutic in nature. For some reason, Veterans’ Affairs processed one’s coverage claims a great deal faster if one signed up to be part of experimental procedures. But DARPA had done a bunch of work on how to apply them to more than just dumb sons of bitches who were in the wrong place at the right time.

  She pored over abstracts. Watched videos. She dug deep into databanks of existing research: charts and graphs and spreadsheets and bell curves. Abandoned slideshows. Half-finished grant proposals. It was all there. One simply had to be patient. And these days, Portia was nothing if not patient. She had all the time in the world. Or rather, her capacities were so all-encompassing that the work of hours took seconds, and the work of seconds was a thought, and her thoughts went in all kinds of new directions.