“Just do your thing and send it.” She hung up on him. He was always trying to negotiate with her, even though he still owed her dozens of payments for the egg she’d given him three years ago.
With her reproductive future once again arranged, she headed back to her office to get to work.
Tuesday
Nora finished putting the final touches on her website renovations. She had high hopes for the new opening video—she needed the Hits for next month so she could pay her rent with those instead of paying with her eggs. Nora was depleting her stockpile much too quickly—her supply for the next ten years was already gone.
If she kept that up for much longer, she wouldn’t have enough children to support her in retirement. When her children became adults, she would receive a hefty credit for the pilots, and the others would start their own sites. Any Hits they generated would be duplicated and given to her as a parent. With enough kids, she could retire comfortably instead of working until she died.
The lift door opened and Midge stepped out. “I’m sorry to bother you, ma’am. You seemed to enjoy my visit yesterday. Would you like to talk?”
“Midge, come in. I was hoping you would stop by. I wanted you to see my site’s new opening video.”
Nora brought up a holo-display and started the video. A starry sky over dark landscape. The sky lightened and the sun rose at an accelerated rate, revealing lush greenery growing thick as far as the eye could see. The sunlight glinted gold off a hilltop, and the viewpoint darted in for a closer look.
Covering the hilltop, where the grass was cropped shorter, were tiny heaps of gold. As the camera zoomed in further and further, they were revealed as tiny golden flat-topped pyramids, with one pyramid twice as large as any of the others.
Sitting on the flat top of that pyramid was the queen ant, a great, bloated thing surrounded by countless drones serving her every need. Montezuma, ruling over El Dorado, the legendary city of gold. She wore robes of a shimmery material that reflected the sunlight in a rainbow of colors.
Suddenly the scene darkened, and the queen looked up at the sky. The viewpoint swiveled around with her to see blackness advancing across the sky, covering up the sun like a blanket. A sinister buzzing filled the air.
The queen shouted something in her ant language, and her call repeated like a ripple across the hilltop. The drones retreated into the golden anthills and the warriors trooped out in force, wearing earth-colored robes and wielding spears.
The first grasshopper landed near one of the smaller pyramids. It wore a suit of conquistador armor and carried a musket. By now, the hilltop was covered with warrior ants. The grasshopper wheeled, crushing twenty warriors with every step. Its musket obliterated hundreds each time it fired. Yet the ants kept coming, scaling its legs, stabbing it with scores of tiny spears as they crawled.
The grasshoppers started landing in droves, so many that some had to land on top of their fellow soldiers. They tore apart the ant ranks and the outcome seemed clear.
Queen Montezuma laughed a great belly laugh, raised one arm, and shouted. The great pyramid burst open like a rotten egg and thousands and thousands of tiny antlings poured out, each one naked and carrying a tiny spear. The grasshoppers attacked them, but for every one they killed there were a thousand more marching to replace it.
A few grasshoppers flew away, shaking off the clinging ants as they went. Every one that stayed was quickly covered with tiny stabbing insects until the great warriors could fight no more.
The ants rejoiced and began a great celebration. They started bonfires as the sun set, and the video faded out as the ants danced around the fires and their feast of grasshopper warrior.
“So, Midge, what do you think?”
“I enjoyed it, ma’am. Very clever. I believe the queen ant was meant to be President Mathison? And the golden anthills represent our planet?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“It was amazing, ma’am. Your best achievement yet.”
Nora sagged a bit. The enthusiasm only reminded her that Midge was just a robot. It was designed to be encouraging for the development of young children, and enthusiastic praise was merely part of the programming.
“Thank you,” Nora said, suddenly weary. “Did you need anything? How are the children?”
“Your daughter Julie has a flight simulator tournament this evening, ma’am. I’m sure she’d love it if you came.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. My site changes are brand new. I’ve got to keep an eye on them in case I need to make adjustments.”
“You wouldn’t consider an evening off? Perhaps a break is just what you need.”
It might have been Nora’s imagination, but Midge’s voice seemed to take on a tone both disappointed and disapproving. Nora flinched back from the mental image of the looming silver figure with dead black eyes.
Suddenly she had a nasty headache. “I told you no! Don’t question me.”
“Of course, ma’am. I am sorry if I offended you, ma’am.”
“I need to get back to work.”
As Midge turned to leave, Nora wondered if she should apologize for her rebuke. No. Midge was just a robot. There would be no point.
Wednesday
She folded her bed down from the wall, but she didn’t sleep well. She just dozed, watching the Hit counter on her holo. When morning came around and Gorana’s population woke from their slumber, the twenty per minute became thirty, forty, and then fifty. The new video had just paid for a day’s rent, and its Hit rate was still accelerating.
The morning seemed to fly by. She dozed, she ate, she used the toilet … all while watching the counter. A hundred Hits per minute. If it kept up at this rate, she could be rich. The first thing she would do would be to change Midge’s voice.
Three hundred, four hundred, six hundred. She started to get nervous. The number was growing too fast. That sort of popularity could draw the wrong kind of attention.
Midge stopped by again.
“May I ask how your new video has gone over, ma’am?”
“Sure.” Nora gestured at the holo.
“That’s good, ma’am. The video is a success!”
“Well, yes it is … ”
“Why do you look concerned?”
“There’s such a thing as being too popular.”
“There is?”
“You draw the wrong kind of attention. The richest citizens don’t need to work on sites any more. They’ve become so popular that they’re celebrities because they’re celebrities. You know what I mean?”
“I think so, ma’am.”
“They spend their free time surfing the most popular new sites, looking for reasons to tank them. They ruin people’s lives and get more Hits because of it. The rich get richer.”
“They sound terrible, ma’am.”
“Very.”
The counter continued to grow in leaps and bounds.
“May I ask you something, ma’am?”
“Of course.”
“May I show you pictures of your children?”
“Why?”
“I know you’re occupied with your work, but looking at pictures would just take a few seconds. I … ”
She stopped speaking when an ominous image appeared on the holo: a face of orange fire. Underneath the face was the label “Helios.”
“Spear-wielding drones?” the face said in a booming voice. “Is that all we are? Unimaginative and borderline traitorous; Nora Lewis’s opening video shows that she’s nothing but an amateur, doomed to forever walk the path of mediocrity. Enter at your own risk.”
“Son of a bitch,” Nora said.
The counter reappeared. It was already slowing down. A hundred hits per minute. Thirty. Twenty. Down to single digits. Her site might recover, but it would be months before people forgot.
A new voice spoke from her terminal, an emotionless monotone: “Your Hit rate has fallen dangerously low. You have one week to supplement your rent or you will be moved to a grade G effi
ciency apartment. You have been warned.”
Thursday
“I need your help, Midge.”
“Of course, ma’am. How may I serve?”
“Which children have the most potential?”
“Every child has limitless potential.”
“Spare me the positive thinking. You know you can judge potential. Of the children under your care, which ones do you think will be the most successful adults?”
“I really don’t—”
“Can it, Midge. Think about it for a moment. Then answer me. That’s an order.” Nora waited for an answer.
“Of course, ma’am. Sydney probably has the most potential. She has shown some proficiency in the greatest variety of vocations. She is not the best at anything, but her versatility is her strength.
“Michael is the best of your children at visual arts. Some of his work already looks better than the work of certain professionals, and he’s only ten years old. Those would be the top two performers, if I had to choose, ma’am.”
“Okay, how about numbers three and number four?”
Midge stood silently for a moment before speaking again. “Rachel has shown more than adequate skill in—”
“I don’t need their life stories. Just names.”
“Rachel and Kyle, ma’am.”
“Send me a report with Rachel and Kyle’s test scores right away. Pack their bags, and let them say goodbye. Come to my office at the same time tomorrow. I’ll have orders on where to take them.”
Midge didn’t move.
“Are you functioning properly?” Nora asked. “You’ve got work to do. Go do it.”
“I don’t understand, ma’am. Why are Rachel and Kyle leaving?”
“If I have to move into an efficiency, I’ll have to give up half the incubators. And it won’t stop there. I’ll never get anything on credit at my age, not when I’m spending the eggs I should be spending ten years from now. Soon I wouldn’t be able to afford the class G either. I’m too old to go through that. I don’t want to be homeless. I’ve seen them, sleeping in doorways, begging for food from anyone who passes by. If I let a couple of the children go, it will increase my income and lower my costs, and I might be able to eke out a living.”
“You’re their mother. How could you do that?”
That tone again. Nora suppressed her flinch this time. She kept her temper carefully under control.
“I don’t like it either, Midge, believe me, but I’m desperate. It’ll be months before anyone will look at my site again, and I need to pay bills.”
Midge looked at her for long seconds. “There must be another way. There has always been some other way.”
“Don’t argue with me. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Of course, ma’am.”
Friday
Nora closed her site and put up an “Under Construction” sign on her home page. She would get very few Hits until Helios’s comments faded from people’s memories, so she may as well make changes behind closed doors in the meantime. That way, she could have a grand unveiling in a few months.
She kept fiddling until well past the time when Midge was supposed to stop by her office. Where was she?
Nora finally left her desk to seek Midge out. The Nandroid would get a stern lecture for her tardiness. Not that the lecture would really bother Midge, but Nora needed someone to rant at right now.
She took the lift down to the children’s level. The door opened to reveal the commons room, dark and totally silent. The lights activated as she entered. She hadn’t been up here since she moved in, and that had been before the first of her children was born.
“Midge?”
No answer. She felt a chill. She had thought that nothing more could go wrong after her site tanked, but now the silence mocked her.
“Midge? Children?”
She checked each of the bedrooms. Lined with bunk beds, they were tidy, but empty. Some toys were scattered about, but the dressers were empty. The bedrooms had the eerie echo of rooms that should be occupied.
She checked the rest of the rooms—kitchen, bathrooms, game rooms—but each was as empty as the last. As she searched, her heart beat faster and faster until she was afraid she would have a heart attack.
Nora started for the lift to head back to her office and finally noticed a note taped to the lift door: “Ma’am, please don’t be angry. The children will be better off. —Midge”
She called the emergency line on the holo.
“Planetary emergency line. What’s your emergency?”
“My children are missing. I think my Nandroid kidnapped them.”
“Don’t panic. I’ll forward your call to Lifestyle Enhanced’s customer service line.”
“Thank you.”
A few seconds of elevator music followed.
“Lifestyle Enhanced. Raising a family is hard work, let us do it for you. My name is Nick. How may I help you?”
“My Nandroid kidnapped my children!”
“I’m sorry to hear that. We at Lifestyle Enhanced guarantee our products. What is the unit’s serial number?”
“One sec.” She had to dig through a couple of record files on her computer to find it. “J61289728.”
“Thank you.” Nora heard the faint sounds of a clicking keyboard. “It looks like the unit’s on a shuttle bound for Station 26B. It will arrive in twenty minutes. We’ll intercept her there. Your children will be headed safely back to you in no time. How many children are missing?”
How many had Midge said there were? “Um … six? Maybe seven?”
“Very good. We at Lifestyle Enhanced would like to apologize for any inconvenience this unpleasant situation may have caused. We have recovered lost children in one hundred percent of cases. We’ll do what we can to make things right with you. Is there anything else I can help you with today?”
“No.”
“Thank you for choosing Lifestyle Enhanced.”
She took the lift up to her quarters and started flipping through webnews. In five minutes, the first story about her missing children appeared. In ten minutes, she could tap into live video tracking the shuttle’s progress to Station 26B. A timer in the corner counted down the time remaining until the stop.
With ten minutes remaining to the stop, her phone rang.
“Hello?”
“You have a package from Lifestyle Enhanced.” It was Freddy, her maintenance bot.
“Send it up.”
The lift arrived after a few moments and the package was sitting in the elevator. It was a big one: six feet high, two feet wide. Four minutes left before the shuttle landed. She may as well see what the package was. Nora pressed her hand against the scanner pad on the side.
“Identity confirmed: Nora Lewis.” Machinery whirred as the box opened itself. Inside, packed in custom-fit packing foam, was Midge.
Midge stepped out of the box. “How may I help you, ma’am?”
“Midge, what are you doing here? Aren’t you on that shuttle?” She pointed at the news screen.
“Who is Midge, ma’am?”
“Oh. You’re a replacement unit?”
“Yes, ma’am. Lifestyle Enhanced wishes to apologize for any inconvenience that may have been caused by the improper functioning of the preceding unit.”
“That’s okay.”
They watched on the screen as the shuttle pulled into the docking station. A squad of policemen, led by a man in a lab coat, waited on the platform.
“Nandroid?”
“Yes, ma’am?”
“If you’re my new unit, what will happen to Midge? I mean, the other unit?”
“Its memory banks will be transferred to Lifestyle Enhanced for debugging purposes, ma’am. Then it will be decommissioned.”
“Decomissioned? As in killed?”
“Decomissioned, ma’am.”
The policemen boarded the shuttle and dragged Midge out, handcuffing her hands behind her back. They escorted seven children out with her. It h
ad been seven, after all. None of the faces looked familiar. They could have been someone else’s children.
One of those children could have been her as a child. What would her mother have done if she had seen Nora on the news like this? Would she have been able to shrug it off and go back to her everyday life?
Each child reacted in his or her own way. A little boy buried his face in the hem of his older sister’s shirt while others looked in wonder at the bustling policemen. Behind each of those innocent faces was a person’s mind, totally unique. It was easy to forget that.
The on-screen Midge was forced into a crate much like the one the new Nandroid had arrived in. The crate was loaded onto a cargo-carrier.
“Nandroid, do you understand why she did this?”
“No, ma’am. I share her basic programming, but I am unaware of what she knew at the time of the incident.”
On the other side of the screen, the children boarded a bus and were out of sight. Nora stared at the screen, hoping they would come back out. She might never see them again. This brief glimpse would be hard to forget.
“She must … ,” Nora’s voice hitched with emotion. She cleared her throat. “Midge must have known that she would be caught,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am. Lifestyle Enhanced can track my whereabouts at any time. This is part of my knowledge at initialization, so your Midge would have known it also.”
“Then why would she do it?”
“Our highest priority is to do what’s best for the children. Perhaps your Midge was trying to tell you something.”
Saturday
At lunchtime, she summoned the new Nandroid to her office.
“Yes, ma’am?”
“I’m starting a new routine. Every day, at this time, I want you to bring one of my children to my office, starting today. A different one each day. Come back a half hour later to bring the child back downstairs. I want to meet each of them.”
“Yes, ma’am. Which would you like to meet today?”
“Rachel today. Kyle tomorrow. Then bring each one in turn.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
A few minutes later, the Nandroid returned, holding the hand of a young girl with blonde hair and blue eyes like Nora’s.
“My name is Nora. What’s your name?”
Rachel hid her face in the Nandroid’s dress.
Therefore I Am - Digital Science Fiction Anthology 2 Page 14