The Firefly Code

by Megan Frazer Blakemore

  I looked at her closely. When you turned thirteen, you learned your exact genetic code: what you shared with your parents, what came from other people, what was cloned, and what was completely manufactured. You would think that if you looked like your parents, it must mean you were natural, but some parents designed babies to look like them. It didn’t always work, though. Sometimes it seemed the parents were the only ones who saw the similarities. Like, my mom and I both have epicanthic folds, but her eyes are small and wide set, and mine are so absurdly big they seem to take up half my face. My dad swears that my nose comes right off the Scottish Highlands, which I suppose means that in Scotland everyone has noses shaped like sharp axes, pointing out to smell the sea air. That’s how I know I’m designed. You can pick and choose all the parts you want—a certain shape of eye, a certain sized body—but it doesn’t always come out exactly as planned.

  And everyone’s genetics were so mixed up after so many generations, we were all a bit of everything anyway. Maybe that’s why Ilana was hard to guess about. Like a lot of people, her skin was brown, and so was her hair—brown and red and sometimes even orange. It had big bouncy curls that never got frizzy. Her eyes were that magnificent green blue of a troubled ocean. She was especially tall, with long limbs. When she smiled, two little dimples appeared.

  “Of course it’s who you are,” she said. “Each one of us is unique because of our specific genetics. You can’t just make up a history.”

  I twisted my hands together. “We’re all made up of lots of different pieces. Some folks probably couldn’t trace back all the threads if they wanted to, you know, if you keep going back and back, it would just end in the gene bank. So it’s what gets passed along by your family—your culture—that really matters. Don’t your parents ever talk about it?”

  With all the genetic borrowing and manufacturing, the history passed down from person to person was what really counted. That’s why each family held it so close. My mom had a sake set from Japan even though she didn’t drink alcohol—four ceramic cups and a bottle all on a square plate. They sat on a shelf in the living room. Dad had a kilt with the family tartan. They valued these things, I knew, because neither of them had ever been to Japan or Scotland, and they probably never would.

  Ilana was quiet. The tip of her tongue was on the point of her top lip. Behind us I heard familiar clipped footsteps. When I turned around, Ms. Staarsgard was walking right toward us, so I didn’t have much time to think how strange it was that Ilana hadn’t known her heritage as quickly and easily as she would know her age.

  “I wondered where you two children were headed this morning. I don’t think I’ve ever heard so much giggling on the KritaBus. Do you like our museum, Ilana?”

  Ilana said, “Sure, it’s cool.”

  “Indeed it is. I’m here to see the Animals and Artificial Intelligence exhibit. I’ve taken a particular interest in Bio-Tech-Intelligence. I presume you have, too, Ilana.” She stared right at Ilana, as if I weren’t even there.

  “I certainly have, Ms. Staarsgard,” I told her, though I didn’t admit my sudden interest had been spurred on by a desire to impress Ilana’s parents. The next time I was invited over, I would not make the mistake of telling them there was absolutely nothing of note about me.

  Ilana just shrugged. “I get an awful lot of that at home.”

  “I wish you would accompany me. It’s an eye-opening exhibit. Our museum staff has really outdone themselves this time.”

  “Sure, okay,” Ilana said. I think we both realized we didn’t have a choice.

  “Come along, then, girls.” She started walking at an amazing pace given the skinny heels on her shoes. I supposed Animal-AI was one of the bold new directions she liked to talk about, and she was in a hurry to show it off to our newest resident.

  As she approached a glass door, it slid open onto one of the footbridges. We were several stories up and could see out over the city to the villages beyond, each one at the end of the spoke of a wheel, with Center Harmonie as the hub. “Firefly Lane is that way,” I told her, pointing west.

  “I trust you and your family have adjusted well to life on our little cul-de-sac?” Ms. Staarsgard asked.

  “Yep,” Ilana said. “The kids are real nice.”

  “Of course they are. I know my Theo can be a bit rough around the edges, but he has a good heart. They all do.”

  I wondered if Ms. Staarsgard even realized she was making me feel invisible.

  She opened the door to the future section of the museum and we were greeted by a beast. I rocked back and Ilana caught me. Ms. Staarsgard laughed, which at least told me she knew I was there. “Oh, don’t mind Koko II. He’s perfectly harmless.”

  Koko II was a metal gorilla, almost ten feet tall. His heavy lidded eyes were closed, and his fists were balled on his lap.

  “Koko II was one of our first forays into human-other communication. Of course you know the story of the original Koko, right?”

  I shook my head.

  “Really? Such a charming story. There was a gorilla in a zoo and they taught her sign language. It was proof that animals really had thoughts and a desire to communicate them. Anyway, Dr. Varden must have been feeling whimsical that day, because when she first started work on this project, she decided to honor Koko with a gorilla bot. He could speak about two hundred fifty words and hold conversations about basic things like the weather.”

  “With only two hundred fifty words?” I asked.

  “That is the average number of words used by humans, believe it or not. Koko II was the basis for our chat bots and our helper bots, of course. We’ve exported those helper bots all over the world. A simple invention, but it’s funded countless projects.”

  “Can he still talk?” Ilana asked.

  “No, he’s not much more than a sculpture, I’m afraid. As the technology improved, he was abandoned. They found him down in a box in the storage area marked simply ‘Gorilla.’ They weren’t sure what they were going to find when they opened it.” She laughed. “Come along, then, and let’s see the good stuff.”

  Ilana looked over at me and raised her eyebrows. A morning with Ms. Staarsgard had not exactly been our plan.

  “She tried several other projects based around animals. There were the robotic dolphins that learned speech from live dolphins; that was a study on language acquisition, too. Then she did something with robobees that focused on individual bots working as one. You see, what Dr. Varden realized,” Ms. Staarsgard said as she led us up to a case showing a taxidermied dog with a camera attached to its head, “was that if we ever wanted to have true artificial intelligence, we needed to start with animals, whose intelligence is of course lesser than ours, then work up to AI that mimicked human intelligence. So this dog, Benji—”

  “I told you Benji was a dog’s name!” Ilana said.

  “This dog,” Ms. Staarsgard went on, “was equipped with a camera that recorded his every move. Dr. Varden and her team—including your great-grandmother—they studied the footage and realized that the meandering that dogs do, it serves a purpose. It’s searching for the edges of a territory, and any given dangers. They were able to mimic that and put it into bots that could explore, say, a bombing site, or a structure after a fire.”

  “That’s really cool,” I said.

  “Of course, a lot of our robotics and artificial intelligence is about biomimicry: taking the advantages of animals and putting them into robotics. And that’s where co-physicality started as well—with animals. Look over here.”

  This time she brought us over to an area with a wall about waist high. When we looked down, there was a maze with mice running through it. The mice wore tiny little helmets. “Oh!” I said. “They are so cute!”

  “Cute, maybe, but definitely teachable. The helmets are connected to their brains, and also to sensors on the door. When they think about the door opening, it opens.”

  “Whoa!” Ilana said. “You guys totally gave those mice psychic powers.�
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  “Was this what Benji was working on for his internship in sixth grade?”

  Ms. Staarsgard shook her head. “Benji was working in a lab a few floors down from this sort of thing. But I imagine that one day he will bring us leaps and bounds past this, to things we can’t even imagine yet. You are all charging forward in bold new directions.”

  “Sure,” I said glumly, still not sure what my bold new directions were.

  “Unfortunately, this project did not culminate as we expected. What the mice learned, it seemed, they could not unlearn. When they got to a door, they would just stare at it and think instead of pushing it open.”

  “So what happened to the project?” I asked.

  “When a project’s outcomes fail to warrant the expenditures, we cancel it. Of course, these mice playmates got a second life here!” She laughed, and I realized that her laugh sounded the exact same every time.

  “My great-grandmother said that failure was a chance to learn,” I said.

  I didn’t remember much about Baba—I had been so young when she had died—but I did remember her teaching me to tie my shoes. My fingers had seemed like broken pencils as I tried to make the loops and twists. I’d lift my hands away and there would be the laces, flat and flopping next to my shoes. “Don’t worry, little Mori,” she’d said. “What did you do that time, and what went wrong?” When I’d told her I didn’t know, she told me to pay better attention. “When you can understand why you failed, you can learn more than if you succeeded.” Which had seemed a strange lesson when all I wanted was to get my sneakers tied so I could go outside and play with my friends. As if she’d sensed my frustration, she’d leaned forward and slowly, slowly demonstrated tying the shoes again while saying, “Sometimes the things I tell you, I tell you so you will remember them your whole life. So you’ll have them to fall back on.”

  “Pardon me?” Ms. Staarsgard asked.

  “I said that my great-grandmother told me that you could learn more from a failure than from a success. So instead of canceling the project, maybe the scientists should’ve had a chance to try to, you know, work backward and see what went wrong.”

  “Your great-grandmother and her friends were very idealistic. You know, when Dr. Varden started this place, it was just for their hobbies. For fooling around. If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again is all very well and good in that context, but Krita can’t waste precious resources.”

  “But,” I began, feeling flustered. “If they had a chance to figure it out, maybe they would succeed.”

  Ms. Staarsgard smiled at me. “Theo does say you are a sweet girl.” Ilana elbowed me and grinned, but Ms. Staarsgard kept talking. “I don’t expect you to understand the financial situation of a corporation like Krita. In fact, we shield you children from such matters. When projects don’t succeed, they are drawing resources from projects that could be life-altering. Do you understand?”

  “I guess, but—”

  She sighed. “Let me put it to you this way: Do you like our neighborhood?”

  “Of course.”

  “Do you like your home and having your food arrive and your school and your time with your friends?”

  “Yes.”

  “Krita takes care of all that for you. We’ve taken what Dr. Varden and your great-grandmother started and made it even better. Krita is able to take care of you because we have successful advances and inventions that we can monetize.”

  “What about the Idea Box?” I asked.

  It seemed like she was trying not to roll her eyes at me. “A vestige of past times that occasionally yields high results. Fortunately, the cost-benefit evens out in the end.” She looked down at her watchu, a tiny one on a slim silver-and-gold band. “I’m afraid I’m neglecting my duties and must return to KritaCorp. It was so lovely to spend this time with you two children.” And then she clipped away.

  Ilana and I walked around a corner and saw an old photograph, blown up to life size, of Dr. Varden and my great-grandmother. In the picture the two women stood side by side in a field. Behind them in the mid-distance was number 9, standing straight and tall. My great-grandmother had her hand up on her forehead, shielding her eyes from the sun, which cast her face in shadow. Dr. Varden was clearer. She stared right at the camera, her lips stretched into a smile that twinkled all the way up to her eyes. She was tall and strong-looking, with dark hair that fell to her shoulders.

  “You look like your great-grandmother,” Ilana said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Everyone says so.” I sniffed. “I still don’t think Ms. Staarsgard was right about shutting down projects. I mean, that’s not how science works, don’t you think?”

  “Sure. Your baba and Dr. Varden must have gotten up to some great work. That’s what I don’t understand. How she could have built all this and just left.”

  “When she went, she broke Baba’s heart,” I told her. “That’s what my mom always says.”

  “Were they a couple?”

  “I don’t think so. They weren’t married. A friend can break your heart, too.” I stepped closer to the picture. In the glass, I could see the reflection of Ilana and me next to Dr. Varden and Baba. “But one’s thing for sure: something must have gone really wrong for her to leave. She wouldn’t abandon a project because the outcomes weren’t meeting expenditures or whatever Ms. Staarsgard said. And you know where the answers are?” I asked. I pointed at the photograph, right at number 9. “If we could get in there, I bet we could find out about the projects she was working on. And why she left.”

  “You know, old houses like that, they usually had a basement with a bulkhead door. It was metal, but it would sit on wood. If that’s rotted out at all, I bet we could get in that way.”

  “You really think so?” I asked. My heart beat faster, and I couldn’t tell if it was fear or excitement that was making it race.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” she said.

  14

  “Oh, look who’s decided to grace us with their presence,” Julia said when Ilana and I rode up onto her driveway.

  I flinched but didn’t say anything. Ilana spoke for both of us: “We’re going over to number nine and wanted to see who would come with us.”

  Theo shook his head. “Not you, too.”

  “I’ve never let a grown-over path stop me before,” she said. “Coming?”

  None of them agreed, but they all followed us. Even Julia, though she hung behind until the last possible moment.

  “Wait,” Benji said when we stopped our bikes at the end of the driveway. “Did you mean go to number nine or into number nine? Because I don’t think Mori has given you all the relevant information.”

  “Like what?” Ilana asked.

  “It’s against the rules,” Benji told her.

  “I told her it was not exactly allowed,” I said.

  “It’s definitely not allowed. Forbidden. Verboten. Ix-nay on the going in-yay,” Benji said.

  “I think we should go in. Don’t you, Mori?” Ilana asked.

  I nodded eagerly as a puppy, and, while I was disappointed in myself for acting so dopey in front of her, it was outweighed by the fact that she wanted to go into number 9. With me.

  “You’re crazy,” Julia said. “There’s a reason it’s against the rules.”

  “We think there’s a reason,” I said. “Julia, come on. This really matters to me.”

  “But why?” she asked.

  “Because Dr. Varden was Baba’s best friend. And she just left. She didn’t say good-bye or anything. She was just gone. I need to know why.”

  “But you don’t know if you’re going to find an answer in there,” Julia said. “We can go to the library, to the archives. I’ll go with you—”

  “No,” I said. The word popped out of my mouth, but I meant it with full force. I didn’t normally go against my friends, and I never broke the rules, but today I was going to. “They always talk about how great Dr. Varden was, all of her wonderful contributions,
but they never say why she left. I want to find out, and I want to find out now. So I’m going in with Ilana. You can come or not.”

  Julia didn’t say anything, but her hands twisted back and forth on the handles of her bike. “We’re coming with you,” she finally said.

  “We are?” Benji said.

  The house tilted over to the left, as if leaning on the air to take a rest. A shutter by an upstairs window hung at an off-kilter angle. The stairs were completely missing from the front door.

  “Come on, then,” I said.

  “I’m just working it out,” Theo said. He stared at the front of the house. “I wish we had a house plan so we could figure out the safest way to get in there.”

  “We’ll have to go around back,” Ilana told the others. “Mori and I think there’s likely to be a bulkhead back there.”

  She dropped her bike in the middle of the driveway, and we all did the same.

  “What about you, Ilana?” Theo asked. “What do you think you’re going to find in there?”

  “I’m with Mori. I want to know more about Dr. Varden and why she left,” she said. “My question is, why haven’t you gone in before? Curiosity is highly valued here, isn’t it?”

  “My dad says I’m just curious enough for creativity, but timid enough to be safe,” I said as I sidestepped an anthill.

  “There’s no danger here,” Ilana said, surveying the land and house in front of her.

  “I’ve heard Dr. Varden is still in there,” Benji said.

  “Like living as a hermit?” Ilana asked.

  “No. Her body. Still in her bed.”

  “Ew,” Julia said. “She’d be all decomposed.”

  “That’s the kicker—she isn’t. She invented something so she’s in total stasis. She’s in there in her granny nightgown, looking for all the world like she’s sleeping, but in reality she’s as dead as a doornail.”

  “Dead as a what?” Ilana asked, her brow furrowed like ripples in a stream.

  “Doornail,” Benji said.

  “What’s a doornail?” Ilana asked. “Is it like a nail in a door? Because a nail isn’t alive, so how can it be dead?”