The oldest girl threw the reader toward her victim with a weak underhand. “I don’t know why you’re acting so hurt,” she said, folding her arms and jiggling away. “You don’t even have real feelings.”
“Yeah, I don’t have real fat, either, tubby! Or real acne! Enjoy your teen years,
Behind him, he heard applause. When he turned, he saw a redhaired woman leaning against the tree. She wore business clothes with an incongruous pair of climbing slippers. The fabric of her tights had gone loose and wrinkled down around her ankles, like the skin of an old woman. Her applause died abruptly as the little freckled girl ran up and hugged her fiercely around the waist.
“I’m sorry I’m late,” the mother said. She nodded at Javier. “Thanks for looking after her.”
“I wasn’t.”
Javier gestured and Junior slid down out of his tree. Unlike the organic girl, Junior didn’t hug him; he jammed his little hands in the pockets of his stolen clothes and looked the older woman over from top to bottom. Her eyebrows rose.
“Well!” She bent down to Junior’s height. The kid’s eyes darted for the open buttons of her blouse and widened considerably; Javier smothered a smile. “What do you think, little man? Do I pass inspection?”
Junior grinned.
She straightened. Her eyes met Javier’s. “I suppose coming from a vN, that’s quite the compliment.”
“We aim to please,” he said.
Moments later, they were in her car.
It started with a meal. It usually did. From silent prison guards in Nicaragua to singing cruise directors in Panama, from American girls dancing in Mexico and now this grown American woman in her own car in her own country, they started it with eating. Humans enjoyed feeding vN. They liked the special wrappers with the cartoon robots on the front. (They folded them into origami unicorns, because they thought that was clever.) They liked asking about whether he could taste. (He could, but his tongue read texture better than flavour.) They liked calculating how much he’d need to iterate again. (A lot.) This time, the food came as a thank-you. But the importance of food in the relationship was almost universal among humans. It was important that Junior learn this, and the other subtleties of organic interaction. Javier’s last companion had called their relationship “one big HCI problem.” Javier had no idea what that meant, but he suspected that embedding Junior in a human household for a while would help him avoid it.
“We could get delivery,” Brigid said. That was her name. She pronounced it with a silent G.
He nodded. “That’s fine with us.”
He checked the rearview. The kid was doing all right; Abigail was showing him a game. Its glow diffused across their faces and made them, for the moment, the same colour. But Junior’s eyes weren’t on the game. They were on the little girl’s face.
“He’s adorable,” Brigid said. “How old is he?”
Javier checked the dashboard. “Three days.”
The house was a big, fake hacienda with the floors and walls and ceilings all the same vanilla ice cream colour. Javier felt as though he’d stepped into a giant, echoing egg. Light followed Brigid as she entered each room, and now Javier saw bare patches on the plaster and the scratch marks of heavy furniture dragged across pearly tile. Someone had moved out. Probably Abigail’s father. Javier’s life had just gotten enormously easier.
“I hope you don’t mind the Electric Sheep …”
Brigid handed him her compact. In it was a menu for a chain specializing in vN food. (“It’s the food you’ve been dreaming of!”) Actually, vN items were only half the Sheep’s menu; the place was a meat market for organics and synthetics. Javier had eaten there but only a handful of times, mostly at resorts, and mostly with people who wanted to know what he thought of it “from his perspective.” He chose a Toaster Party and a Hasta La Vista for himself and Junior. When the orders went through, a little lamb with an extension cord for a collar
“It’s good we ran into you,” Brigid said. “Abby hasn’t exactly been very social, lately. I think this is the longest conversation she’s had with, well,
Javier nodded like he understood. It was best to interrupt her now, while she still had some story to tell. Otherwise she’d get it out of her system too soon. “I’m sorry, but if you don’t mind …” He put a hand to his belly. “There’s a reason they call it labour, you know?”
Brigid blushed. “Oh my God, of course! Let’s get you laid, uh, down somewhere.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I mean, um, that didn’t quite come out right—”
Oh, she was so cute.
“It’s been a long day—”
She was practically glowing.
“And I normally don’t bring strays home, but you were so nice—”
He knew songs that went this way.
“Anyway, we normally use the guest room for storage, I mean I was sleeping in it for a while before everything … But if it’s just a nap …”
He followed her upstairs to the master bedroom. It was silent and cool, and the sheets smelled like new plastic and discount shopping. He woke there hours later, when the food was cold and her body was warm, and both were within easy reach.
The next morning Brigid kept looking at him and giggling. It was like she’d gotten away with something, like she’d spent the night in a club and not in her own bed, like she wasn’t the one making the rules she’d apparently just broken. The laughter took ten years off her face. She had creams for the rest, and applied them.
Downstairs, Abigail sat at the kitchen bar with her orange juice and cereal. Her legs swung under her barstool, back and forth, back and forth. She seemed to be rehearsing for a later role as a bored girl in a coffee shop: reading something on her scroll, her chin cradled in the pit of her left hand as she paged through with her right index finger, utterly oblivious to the noise of the display mounted behind her or Junior’s enthusiastic responses to the educational show playing there. It was funny—he’d just seen the mother lose ten years, but now he saw the daughter gaining them back. She looked so old this morning, so tired.
“My daddy is going out with a vN, too,” Abigail said, not looking up from her reader.
Javier yanked open the fridge. “That so?”
“Yup. He was going out with her
Well, that explained some things. Javier pushed aside the milk and orange juice cartons and found the remainder of the vN food. Best to be as nonchalant with the girl as she’d been with him. “What kind of model? This other vN, I mean.”
“I don’t know about the clade, but the model was used for nursing in Japan.”
He nodded. “They had a problem with old people, there.”
“Did you know that Japan has a whole city just for robots? It’s called Mecha. Like that place that Muslim people go to sometimes, but with an H instead of a C.”
Javier set about preparing a plate for Junior. He made sure the kid got the biggest chunks of rofu. “I know about Mecha,” he said. “It’s in Nagasaki Harbour. It’s the same spot they put the white folks a long time ago. Bigger now, though.”
Abigail nodded. “My daddy sent me pictures. He’s on a trip there right now. That’s why I’m here all week.” She quickly sketched a command into her reader with her finger, then shoved the scroll his way. Floating on its soft surface, Javier saw a Japanese-style vN standing beside a curvy white reception-bot with a happy LCD smile and braids sculpted from plastic and enamel. They were both in old-fashioned clothes, the smart robot and the stupid one: the vN wore a lavender kimono with a pink sash, and the receptionist wore “wooden” clogs.
“Don’t you think she’s pretty?” Abigail asked. “Everybody always says how pretty she is, when I show them the pictures.”
“She’s all right. She’s a vN.”
Abigail smiled. “You think my mom is prettier?”
“Your mom is human. Of course I do.”
“So you like humans the best?”
