She bounces back, pushing her hair out of her face. It's my gesture, a one-handed rake, and it makes my eyes sting. “Can we go now?”
“Gonna get a coat?”
“Yes, Mother.” Complete with stuck-out tongue. Leah goes after a clean sweater and I follow her, and she's back on topic like a ferret down a rabbithole. “You and Ellie — I'm used to Dad having girlfriends. But it's just—”
“Not like regular girlfriends?”
“Aunt Jenny. It's a little embarrassing, but… It's usually more — un trou de passage, you know?”
“Leah!”
“Sorry.”
“Marde.” And then I think about what I was doing at her age. “Oh, hell, kid. You're old enough to know what a cheap lay is. And what a not-so-cheap one is, too. Neither Elspeth or I could ever come between your father and you.” I grin. “Honey — old, fat people need sex, too.”
Her lips twitch, and she giggles. “It's such a big deal?”
“You can live without it. But very few people actually want to. Is there a boy you've got your eye on? Because if there is, maybe we should talk about some other things, too.”
“When there is…” She roots around in the laundry basket until she finds a red sweater shot with silver threads. “Does this match?”
“You're asking me?” I gesture down at my stained jeans and the plain white blouse I'm wearing. I make the eye contact and hold it. “When there is, Leah, you'll tell me before you do anything serious?”
“So you can sic Dad on him?”
“So I can teach you how to take care of yourself.”
After a brief hesitation, she nods and laughs, but it trails off. The Hyperex I've taken in preparation for tonight's simulation makes every movement of her long legs in those gaudy pants trail seams of light. Her hands are like white butterflies.
“Leah, what's wrong?”
“Elspeth's not going to be leaving because of you, is she?”
Oh. I'm irrationally jealous, a sharp spike I never quite felt over Gabe. I bite down on it, hard, until it passes. Mine. Dammit. Mine. “No,” I say. “I don't think so.”
She raises her arms, tugs the sweater down. I go to smooth it in the back and straighten her collar. “Good,” she says. “I like her.” And then she turns around suddenly and is all boneless puppy in my arms, her face pressed to my chest. “I don't want you to go away again.”
Oh, sweetheart. “Next time I go, you might be coming with me. How you doing about Monday?”
“Scared green,” she says, drawing away. “They didn't give us much warning, did they? And it was awful when you did it.”
“I've got other problems. A spinal cord that's severed in two places, for one thing. You won't have to be on a ventilator. Or confined to a bed for most of it, though I guess you can expect some sensory effects.”
She looks up at me and pushes her hair behind an ear delicate as a cat's. “I think you're really brave, Aunt Jenny.”
I toss her jacket to her and grab my own. This could have gone much worse. “I'm just too stubborn to quit, cherie. Your dad: he's the one who's brave.”
3:00 PM
Friday 17 November, 2062
Bloor Street
Toronto, Ontario
Genie stopped with her hand resting on the edge of Papa's office door, still in her school clothes. The door was open a crack; she picked out Ellie's voice beyond and froze, one foot in midair, torn between backing away and walking in to let them know that she was home. She balanced on one foot to tug her sock up, telling herself it wasn't really trying to overhear. But it was a good excuse not to go in until they finished talking, so she spent a minute making extra sure her shoe strap lay flat.
“… what had Valens's panties in such a bunch?” Elspeth.
And then Papa. “I eavesdropped a little. Riel put Holmes on the grill. The prime minister might pull support for the program. Force Fred to retire or reassign him. He's been in the doghouse over the Chinese infiltration of the Mars mission for a good ten years now. I'm sure there's someplace very cold and dark that needs a colonel or three.”
“Shit.”
“Yes. I don't know what I'll do for Genie if I don't have NDMC access for her.”
Silence, then, and Genie decided it was a good time to walk in. While it was quiet. Before they caught her. She didn't meet Papa's eyes as he stood up from the chair. Elspeth had been sitting across from him: she spun around and got up, too.
“Hi,” Elspeth said.
Genie put the foot down and let hair fall across her face. She let go of the door and walked into the room. “Hi.”
Diagrams and colored lines hung in the air between Papa and Ellie, twisting slowly over the big desk. Genie saw the projectors flickering, colored lights under the interface plate. “AI stuff?”
“We're very dull,” Papa answered. “Nothing but work.”
“That's why he needs you.” Ellie came over to give her a hug and then held her chair so Genie could sit.
Genie grinned but the grin dropped away. Her stomach felt funny again. Worry, she decided, tasting the tension in the air.
“Excuse us while we talk shop a bit more?” Elspeth walked around the desk to stand beside Papa. She stuck her finger into the diagram and wiggled it until the threads writhed and rearranged. “The problem is we're trying to extrapolate the conditions under which an AI will self-generate from a sample of one. We might have better luck figuring out why they don't form, but — all I know for sure is we can make Richards.”
Papa smiled at Genie and then down at Elspeth, but the second smile was twisted and wry. “I don't see a way around it. Maybe we should just start with a fresh crop of artificial personalities and see what happens. Is there any reason they have to be based on real people?”
Elspeth suddenly focused. “No. No, there's not. The original research wasn't even focused on making an AI — it was strictly A-Life stuff. Richard was an accident.”
“Hah.” Papa grinned wider, but Genie could tell he was hiding something, some trouble, and she rested her chin on her hands. “Then I think we have a starting point.”
1700 Hours
Friday 16 November, 2062
Allen-Shipman Research Facility
St. George Street
Toronto, Ontario
I lean on one-way glass in the observation and training room and look down into a lab sunk a few feet below ground level. I stand watch over a row of seven chairs — they look like dentists' chairs — in four of which lie sleeping children. Leah and three boys: two dark, one fair.
Sleeping children, except their eyelashes do not flutter. Their hands don't stir. The glossy gray cables of the neural VR interfaces drape their breasts like fat, suckling serpents. Their faces have fallen slack as no living person's ever should, and the sight awakens that old chill in my belly. Shadows surround Leah's eyes like bruises. They lie as if dead, these children, navigating the unimaginable steppes of space in a fancied but coldly practical dance. They look dead.
I never want her to see me that way.
A red-haired technician moves among them, smoothing hair and moistening lips. She brushes aside an escaped strand of Leah's hair and I turn away. I have work to do, and in a moment the technician will come up the short flight of steps and down the corridor and join me in the observation room. Where I am supposed to be designing the real-time training protocols these kids will confront once their augmented reflexes are in place. I'm here to teach them how to fly. As soon as I finish learning how to do it myself. Or maybe sooner.