Under Their Skin

by Margaret Peterson Haddix

  “It’s not like anyone would believe us anyway,” Nick finally managed to mutter.

  But would they?

  He imagined going in to school the next day and telling everyone, Look closely at our teachers’ eyes. Notice anything weird?

  His friends would just say, Yeah, they’re grown-ups. They’re teachers. Of course they’re weird.

  He couldn’t tell any of his friends.

  “You know you can reach me any time, day or night, if you have any more questions,” the mayor said, handing Eryn a business card. “Of course, I make that guarantee to all my constituents.”

  Eryn did the polite thing and took the card. She shook the mayor’s hand, and then everyone else did too.

  “Well,” Mom said. “Why don’t you two kids go home with Michael, since I need to stop at the grocery to pick up a few things for dinner?”

  Hadn’t Mom run out to the store the night before, when she heard the weather forecast? Wasn’t that what she always did when there was a storm coming?

  Was she making up excuses just to get them to go with Michael? Why?

  “What do you need?” Nick asked, which he was pretty sure wouldn’t seem strange. He was usually interested in food.

  “Milk,” Mom said. “And bread.”

  Nick knew for a fact that there was a full gallon of milk on the top shelf of the refrigerator, and an entire loaf of bread in the pantry. But he didn’t call Mom on it.

  If I call her on that, what if everything else I’m wondering about comes spilling out too? Nick wondered. What if I end up getting her arrested for hiding the secret of Ava and Jackson?

  But why were they still a secret?

  THIRTY-THREE

  Michael’s car was parked on the street, not in the garage, so they had to trudge through more snow to get to it. Eryn barely felt the cold.

  Oh, right, because how can I think about cold when I just found out that my parents are robots, and I’m some science project that came about because humanity went extinct, and my parents never even had to get divorced, except that was how they were “programmed.” And, oh yeah, my mother and stepfather did something illegal that they’re worried about getting in trouble for, and our lives depend on me not telling. . . .

  Was this what it felt like to be hysterical?

  Michael unlocked the car, and they all slid in onto the cold seats. Eryn took the front passenger seat; without even arguing, Nick got in back. The car had been sitting there for so brief a time that Michael only had to run the windshield wipers to clear off the snow.

  “I had this car soundproofed years ago,” Michael said as he cautiously pulled out into the empty, snowy street. “And the windows are specially treated so no one can see in to read our lips. So I can answer any questions you have about Ava and Jackson, and we don’t have to worry about anyone overhearing or figuring out what we say.”

  Who would overhear us anyhow? Eryn wondered. Who would care? The mayor? The governor? The president? Other kids? Other robot-adults? Why is Michael so paranoid he had to soundproof his car? And how could he possibly worry about people reading our lips?

  This was definitely what it felt like to be hysterical.

  “How old are Ava and Jackson?” Nick asked from the backseat. “I mean, exactly. I know they’re sixth graders, but . . . are they eleven? Twelve? Thirteen? Were they held back? Is that why . . .”

  Michael shot a glance over his shoulder at Nick.

  “Ava and Jackson both turned twelve on November fourth,” he said in an impossibly level voice. “They’re a few months younger than the two of you.”

  Eryn scrambled to pull her thoughts together. To think logically.

  “Okay, that messes up everything I was starting to figure out,” she complained. “After Mom said everyone over twelve was a robot, didn’t she say everyone our age or younger is human? Wasn’t that what the scientists said in the video, too? Something about robot kids being phased out as human kids grow up?”

  Michael bit his lip.

  “This is how the original humans set things up,” he said quietly. “That’s what makes Ava and Jackson illegal. There aren’t supposed to be any robot children who are younger than the oldest human children.”

  “Then why don’t you just say Ava and Jackson are thirteen years old?” Nick asked, leaning forward. “Why didn’t you make them be thirteen? Then they’d be legal, right? They’re just—”

  Nick stopped abruptly, ending with a loud gulp. Eryn had the feeling he’d been about to say They’re just robots. Couldn’t you make them any age you wanted? Not really the right thing to say to Michael, who was also a robot.

  Eryn tried to cover for her brother.

  “Why did you make them, anyway, if it was illegal?” she asked. “Why take the risk? Why—”

  Now she was on the verge of saying the wrong thing too. Because the next words to come out of her mouth had almost been Why wouldn’t you just do what you’re supposed to do, if you’re a robot? Why would you make robot children if you weren’t programmed to do that?

  It was better to wait for Michael to answer the questions they’d already asked.

  “I understand what you’re asking,” he said softly. “I don’t think you understand the background.”

  But for a long moment, he didn’t go on. He seemed to be concentrating hard on the icy street ahead of him. He was wearing his usual nerdy-professor horn-rimmed glasses; Eryn knew that under his heavy coat he had on his tweed jacket with actual patches on the elbows.

  It was hard to imagine him doing anything illegal.

  It was also hard to think of him as a robot. Almost as hard as it was to think of Mom or Dad that way.

  Ugh. Did that mean she’d gotten used to him as a stepfather?

  “How much did they actually explain in the video?” Michael finally asked. “Did they spell out what happened to all the toddler robot children the year you turned one?”

  “Um . . . no?” Eryn said. “Did they, Nick? The scientists said we’d have a—what was the phrase—a fully human society?—within a century, but . . .”

  She didn’t want to admit she’d had so much trouble paying attention. Maybe the scientists had explained all sorts of things she’d missed.

  “I don’t think they really said,” Nick agreed. “Don’t the robot kids just grow up ahead of us? Didn’t the kids a little older than us turn two the year we turned one, then three when we turned two, then—”

  “No,” Michael said, the word like a knife slashing down.

  Eryn recoiled, squeezing against the passenger-side door. She heard Nick slide over in the back, too.

  “Sorry,” Michael said. “I just . . .” He swallowed hard and seemed to be gritting his teeth. When he spoke again, it was in a calmer tone. “I’ll explain. It’s very difficult to build a robot that can mimic all the growth and changes a typical human child makes between birth and adulthood. Some would say it’s impossible. So the people who set up Project Return of the Snowflakes didn’t even try. But they didn’t want you and the others your age to wonder why there weren’t any kids older than you. So they provided for . . . facsimile robot children . . . that could stay a certain age as long as they were needed. Placeholders that could be easily destroyed.”

  He said the last word like a curse. It froze Eryn in place.

  “The year both of you turned one,” Michael continued, staring straight ahead, “all the toddler robot children were melted down for scrap. The year you turned two, the same thing happened to the two-year-old robots. And so on, and so on, day by day and month by month, robot children being destroyed as soon as the earliest human children reached their particular ages. All the robots who were created to be precisely twelve years old are gone now. So are the ones who were twelve years old and one day. And the ones who were twelve years old and two days. You see how it works? It won�
�t be long before they start destroying the thirteen-year-olds. And then the fourteen-year-olds . . . There’s no age we could claim for Ava and Jackson that wouldn’t make them either illegal—or slated for destruction.”

  Eryn couldn’t let herself think that word—destruction—in connection with Ava and Jackson. Kids she’d been wondering about for months. Her thoughts darted to Milo, the boy who’d invited her and Nick to go sledding. The first robot kid she’d ever met that she’d known was a robot.

  He was probably thirteen. Probably about to be destroyed.

  “That can’t be true!” she argued, facing Michael again. “You’ve got to be lying! We’d notice if kids just a year ahead of us were constantly disappearing!”

  “You probably think you’d notice older kids staying the same age for years on end, too,” Michael said, with a bitter twist to his words. “But think about it. Tell me the name of one kid a grade ahead of you that you’ve known your entire childhood. Or any older kid you stayed in contact with for much longer than a year.”

  “Well, there’s . . . ,” Eryn began. There had to be somebody. But she came up with a blank.

  She turned to Nick for help. He had his hand over his mouth, his face twisted in a grimace.

  “Uh, Eryn, he might be right,” Nick said slowly, letting his hand slip. “Doesn’t it seem like the older kids we played with were always moving out of the neighborhood? Or Mom decided they were bad influences and we couldn’t play with them anymore, or their parents sent them away to their grandparents or to some kind of boarding school, or . . .”

  “Or we’re just classic first-borns, like Mom’s always telling us, and we tend to play with younger kids so we can be in charge,” Eryn said. “That doesn’t prove anything!”

  The car skidded a little on black ice, and Michael slowed down even more. The slight jarring must have done something to Eryn’s brain. Awakened it a little.

  “Oh, we’re idiots!” Eryn said. “What about Mom? She’s a middle school psychologist—she deals with teenagers all the time. Real teenagers, not robots. I knew this whole story couldn’t be true!”

  Now she just needed something to make herself un-see the wires hanging out of Mom’s stomach, un-see the ones hanging out of Michael’s ex-wife’s stomach, un-see the entire cyber-innards of Ava and Jackson. . . .

  Eryn gave up trying to make herself see the world as normal again.

  Also, Michael wasn’t grinning and saying Oh, right. You caught me. You found the gaping hole in my story.

  “Your mother has been practicing on robot teenagers for the past twelve years,” Michael said calmly. “The same seventh, eighth, and ninth graders every single year. I have to tell you, she’s terrified of next year, when she’ll have to deal with human teens. From everything she’s read, human teenagers are much less . . . predictable . . . than the robot version.”

  Michael was just inching the car forward. It made Eryn want to scream.

  “But I’ll tell you, the robot babies and toddlers were every bit as cute as the human versions,” Michael said, with an ache in his voice. “The kindergarteners were just as gap-toothed and inquisitive as human kindergarteners. The third-grade robots were just as proud of knowing their times tables. The—”

  “Stop it!” Eryn snapped.

  Michael shook his head, like he couldn’t stop.

  “Now they’re all gone,” he finished, even as he stared bleakly out the windshield.

  “You make it sound like genocide or something,” Nick complained, leaning all the way forward so his head was practically in between Eryn’s and Michael’s. “Like what those bad guys—the Nazis?—did in the last century. I mean, the twentieth century. Whatever. But about destroying the robot children—you robots are the ones doing that yourselves, right? It’s your own fault!”

  Michael clutched the steering wheel so hard his knuckles turned white.

  “It’s how we were programmed,” he said tightly. “And . . . as you and your contemporaries grow to adulthood and beyond, eventually all the robots will be gone. Because just as you and your fellow humans became the only five-year-olds, the only eight-year-olds, the only eleven-year-olds, eventually you’ll be all the fifty-year-olds, all the eighty-year-olds, all the adults. That’s what ‘fully human society’ means. No more robots.”

  Eryn thought about that. Mom and Dad, gone? All the other grown-ups gone too?

  Of course, she’d always known that everyone died eventually, but this seemed worse somehow. Everyone like Mom and Dad would be gone.

  “Oh, come on,” Eryn said, and somehow the words came out sounding more sarcastic than she intended. “I bet you just misunderstood. In the video they said the humans were in danger of going extinct, and there wasn’t much time to make all the arrangements, so of course what they focused on was making sure the human embryos survived. They probably wouldn’t mind if robots continued too . . . somewhere.”

  Even to Eryn’s ears, that sounded like a lame argument. But Michael smiled as if he loved every word she spoke.

  “That,” he said, “is exactly why I created Ava and Jackson. Or, I should say, arranged for my ex-wife Brenda to give birth to them.”

  “Oh,” Nick said. Eryn heard him thump back against his seat, as if he didn’t have the energy to absorb another surprise.

  Michael glanced in the rearview mirror and kept smiling.

  “Our entire robot society was created with the intent of raising and nurturing children,” he said. “It was such a paradox of our programming that we were designed for parenthood but we were never allowed to raise children of our own, robots like us—not all the way from birth to adulthood, anyway. The only robot children any of us were allowed had to stay stuck at the same age their entire lives. And then be destroyed so young . . .”

  Don’t you count us as your own children? Eryn wanted to ask. But she kept silent. Even with Michael driving slowly, they were almost to Lipman Park. They had only a little longer to hear Michael’s story.

  “So a few of us got together, way back at the beginning,” Michael said. “Your parents were in that group from the start. Your mom contributed psychological insights; your father had more of the mechanical skills. And I was the lead programmer. We began experimenting with ways to make robot children who could grow up from birth on, normally and naturally.”

  What’s normal or natural about a robot? Eryn thought.

  But again, she didn’t say anything, and neither did Nick.

  “We knew our actions could be seen as treason by the wider society, but we were determined,” Michael continued. “We were certain that once we proved it was possible, we could convince everyone else we had the right idea. Then, we thought, we could modify the original plans, and eventually there would be generations of robots raising robot children right next door to humans raising human children. . . . We had to operate in secret, but everything was going so well.”

  “Was?” Nick asked faintly from the backseat.

  “When Ava and Jackson hit adolescence, all their programming fell apart,” Michael said, and now his smile vanished. “We’d been able to pass them off as human before that—they were even going to a regular school! We’d hacked into all sorts of listings to make that possible. We thought this year would be the point when we could test the kids’ ability to seem human around the clock, and even live with stepsiblings—with you! Ava and Jackson, they’re why your mom and I got married.”

  Oh, how romantic of you, Eryn thought, feeling hurt on Mom’s behalf.

  But what did she expect? Mom and Michael were robots.

  “We’d already checked into getting a marriage license,” Michael said. “We’d told our bosses. We were . . . publicly committed to a certain path. Then, right before we told you kids, everything with Ava and Jackson started going wrong. Now we can’t even let them out of the house. We have to keep them a bigger secret than
ever.”

  The tense way he said that made Eryn’s stomach hurt.

  “You have a soundproofed car,” Nick said, still speaking softly. That wasn’t like him. Eryn couldn’t tell if he was terrified or traumatized. Or both. “You say it even protects against lip-reading. But what good does any of that do? Couldn’t a robot have supersonic hearing? Or X-ray vision? Mom acted like someone might hear us inside our own house!”

  “We’re being extra, extra cautious,” Michael said. “Robots aren’t supposed to have any better sight or hearing than normal human beings. But what if somebody’s breaking those rules the way we’re breaking the rule about robotic children? And . . . robots do have ways of keeping track of each other that humans don’t have. Think of it as being like how computers are linked on the Internet. We can keep some things private, but . . .”

  But there are computer hackers, Eryn thought. Like you.

  Were there robot-brain hackers, too?

  Eryn didn’t want to ask that question. But she remembered how Milo and the other neighborhood sledders had shown up so quickly after Nick and Eryn found out Mom was a robot.

  “Michael, what if your secret’s already out?” she gasped. She saw Michael tense beside her. “These kids from our neighborhood—older, robot kids—they showed up at our door to test us, like, right after we started asking questions about Ava and Jackson. It was like someone had called them.”

  Michael slumped down again and let out a sigh.

  “You scared me there for a minute,” he said. “That’s not a sign of any problem—your mother was the one who summoned those kids. Indirectly. She sent out an alert that it was time for the first viewing of the video, and part of that protocol is for the child or children in question to be tested. To see if they can be trusted not to tell other kids everything they know.”

  “Oh,” Eryn said.

  Michael may have been more relaxed now, but somehow she didn’t feel any better.

  “So it’s like there are really two big secrets we know now,” Nick said. “One about the extinction and the robots and the whole Project Snowflake, which we’re not allowed to talk about with any other humans. Not until the other kids are ready and see the video themselves. And the other secret is about Ava and Jackson, which we’re not allowed to tell anyone.”