Alicia stared at the other woman, almost afraid to breathe for fear it would shatter the feeling of finally seeing a clear path through the barbed wire snarl of doubt and contradiction J.I.’s rule had subjected her to. Before she could unloosen her tongue a smiling black nurse appeared at reception and called, “Alicia Montondo?”
The moment of truth had arrived. The wait was over.
“Uh, here,” she answered.
The other woman gave her hands a final encouraging squeeze, then let them go. Alicia started to rise, realized that the magazine was still open on her lap.
She gazed down at the photo which had stared back at her before. It showed what many would consider the ideal—and only proper—family: the beaming dad, the adoring mom snugged under his arm, a chubby baby smiling from her lap; the sort of life and future she would never be able to provide for her child. She still hadn’t read the caption and learned who they were and why they were pictured, unable to get past what they represented.
She closed the magazine and tossed it onto the table as she stood up. As she began to turn away her eye was caught by the picture on the front cover.
Delores Sanderson, the first gay female Vice-President.
A shiver went through her as she realized that instead could be a possible future for her child. She turned back toward the woman who had sat beside her. “I never did ask you your name.”
“Minerva,” she answered with a benevolent smile.
Alicia stared. “Like the goddess of wisdom?”
The woman chuckled and shrugged modestly. “Well, my friends call me Minnie and my charge cards are nearly always maxxed out.”
Alicia licked her lips, trying to find words for how she felt. “Thanks, Minnie. I—I can’t tell you how glad I am I met you.”
“Go,” she said with a laugh, picking up her needlework. “Go and blessed be both you and your child.”
Alicia nodded, then headed toward the waiting nurse, on the way crossing paths with a striking blonde in jeans and a sweatshirt. Already she was thinking of passing on the simple wisdom she’d been given to a pregnant friend who had been avoiding coming to a place such as this, almost certainly for the same reason it had been such an agonizing dilemma for her.
Just as the nurse began leading her toward the doctor’s office she stopped and turned for one last look at Minnie.
Her chair was empty. Nor was she anywhere to be seen in the waiting room.
Alicia frowned, then shook her head. She probably had been waiting for that blonde, and now they’ve gone home, that’s all.
Probably.
Alicia laughed and ran to catch up with the nurse, glad she no longer had to wait to begin the process of making the critical decisions about the future of the son or daughter she carried.
Not that she was going to ask that either, but if turned out to be a girl, she already knew what her name would be.
A name for wisdom.
“Artificial life is the most powerful tool in modern computer modeling,” proclaimed Jeremiah Braun-Higgins with a grandiose sweep of both arms. “These small autonomous programs are coded so they can change slightly as they replicate, and that lets them evolve new capabilities in response to their environment.” He was about to describe how A-Life could simulate the whole evolution of organic life when he felt a sharp kick under the table.