"And it walks around while pregn—while it’s incubating?" Mrs. Crowther asked.
"We call Alina ‘she’," Dr. Ogilvy said. "It humanizes the experience for you. Yes. She’ll be walking around. She’ll be living with you, consuming food at your table to process for your child. She’ll interact with you both on a daily basis. Your family and neighbors will get to know her. You might even have a baby shower."
Mrs. Crowther flinched. "Baby shower? For a robot?"
"For you, honey," Mr. Crowther said. "She’s just carrying it, but you’re the mom-to-be. You’ll be the center of attention. I promise."
Alina’s decision trees told her it would be appropriate to nod, so she did.
Mrs. Crowther looked doubtful. "Maybe we should just let the machines carry it here. I don’t know if I want it in my house. It—she—seems so bland."
The chair under Dr. Ogilvy creaked as he leaned forward. "She doesn’t have a personality profile loaded yet. You choose the options. Shy, extroverted? Witty, educated, quiet, unobtrusive? You pick her intelligence level and hobbies. Her last couple wanted her to speak Italian and excel at cooking."
"I can cook just fine," Mrs. Crowther said bitterly. "I just can’t get pregnant again. We’ve been trying for twenty-seven months now."
"That’s exactly what Alina is for," Dr. Ogilvy said smoothly. "Think about it, Joyce. Nine months from today, you could be holding your son or daughter. Your waistline won’t change an inch. Your hormones will be steady and calm. You won’t have the trauma of childbirth or the risk of post-partum depression. Your child will be brought into this world in a safe, secure, extremely successful robot incubator."
Mr. Crowther put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. "Sounds ideal to me, sweetheart."
Mrs. Crowther lifted her chin. She gave a tiny nod.
Alina was impregnated the next day. The fertilized egg instantly attached to her artificial endometrium and began to divide. Forty-eight hours after that, she was loaded into a van, transported across the continent, and delivered to the Crowthers with a blue corsage pinned to her wrist. The corsage held a handwritten note from Dr. Ogilvy: "Congratulations on your future baby boy!"
Mr. Crowther said, "Let’s name him Owen," and Mrs. Crowther said, "Show it to its room."
The Crowthers’ house was a two-story Mediterranean-style villa with hardwood floors and oil paintings of rustic landscapes. Alina’s room was on the second floor, adjacent to the nursery. She wasn’t allowed in the nursery. Her room had a bed, although she didn’t require one. It had a walk-in closet where she kept a different skirt and blouse for every day of the week. Her breakfast was delivered every morning, each meal perfectly calculated for the fetus’s benefit. After eating, she sat in a rocking chair by the window and gazed at the crystal blue swimming pool below. No one ever swam in its waters—not in the winter, when the hills were brown; not in the summer, when the hills were still brown and the maids complained of drought.
Lunch was delivered promptly at noon. Afterward Alina emptied her waste port and returned to the chair again. She didn’t think or dream or speculate; she didn’t grow bored or restless or impatient; she had no insecurities to wrestle with, no resentments to harbor, no agenda to pursue. She monitored the fetus and adjusted hormones, nutrients, and antibodies as needed. She watched the faint ripples of pool water when the pump kicked in. She analyzed the colors in its depths as the sun moved across the sky.
Late each evening Mr. Crowther would gather her at dinner. They ate in the large kitchen, with its gleaming marble counters and heavy smell of spices. Mr. Crowther asked about the baby and talked about his own childhood growing up in Schenectady. He would put his hand on her growing stomach and listen to her project the baby’s heartbeat through a speaker in her chest. He apologized for Mrs. Crowther.
"We had a daughter, but she drowned," he said. "And another, but she was stillborn. You’re our third chance at happiness. Maybe having a boy will bring good luck."
Alina had been programmed for optimism. "I’m sure it will, sir."
In her sixth month, after a dinner in which he consumed a bottle of wine, Mr. Crowther walked Alina back to her room and, once inside, leaned forward until his mouth was only inches from hers. His skin was flushed, his pupils wide. "Do you mind… I mean, I know you don’t… but would it be okay for me to kiss you? Could I do that and you wouldn’t tell Mrs. Crowther?"
"I’m programmed to be honest if she asks," Alina said.
Mr. Crowther kissed her anyway. She measured the pressure and temperature of his lips and waited for him to stop.
"Well," he said, eventually. "Body of a sexbot, demeanor like a cold fish."
‘Yes, sir," she replied.
On the fourth day of her thirty-fifth week, her womb transmitted a completion signal to Dr. Ogilvy’s office. A midwife-technician arrived six hours later. Alina stretched out for the first and only time on the bed in her room. Mr. Crowther entered his identification code. Mrs. Crowther entered hers. The skin over Alina’s belly slid back to reveal a hatch, and the hatch popped open to reveal baby Owen squirming in a puddle of earthy-smelling fluids. Alina could have reached down and cut the cord herself, but the technician did it.
"Congratulations!" The midwife lifted Owen and deftly began to clean him. "Happy birthday, Mom and baby. Do you want Alina to nurse him, or is she coming back with me?"
"We have formula," Mrs. Crowther said. "Take it back."
The next morning she was back in the maintenance bay, her milk extracted and recycled. A technician named Scott flushed out her nipple tubes. He said she was his favorite mashup between a sexbot and a toaster oven.
"I’ve never heard anyone say that before," she said.
‘You’re not programmed with a long-term memory." He stepped back and said, "Okay, let’s see how your aim is. Hit me with both barrels, baby."
She took aim and soaked the front of his jacket.
"Excellent," he said. "Go get knocked up, and we’ll see you in nine months."
Dan Poole and Mark Dubay were a gay couple who paid for an egg from an anonymous donor. They each provided sperm but asked the laboratory to randomly pick whose would get used. "She’s going to be both of ours regardless," Mark said confidently, and Dan agreed, and so Alina was forbidden from revealing that it was Dan’s DNA she could detect in the fetus. Both men were of African descent, and the egg had come from a similar donor. Alina mixed up hot chocolate and added just enough cream to illustrate the baby’s probable skin color.
"Our little café au lait," Dan said, which is how the baby earned her nickname.
Their house was a large, L-shaped ranch set in the countryside of central Georgia, surrounded by forests and streams. They both worked from home. Greenhouse science, they said. They had opted for her to be energetic, polylingual, knowledgeable about wines, and good with dogs. Every day Alina took a long walk with either Mark or Dan and one of their three Dobermans.
"Are you happy being a pregnant robot?" Dan asked one day as they walked along a stream.
"Yes, sir."
"Really?" Dan threw a stick for one of the dogs to fetch. "Can you be happy?"
"I’m programmed to say it and portray it in appropriate circumstances," she replied. "You seem eager for me to say yes, so I said yes."
"But you don’t have any emotions of your own."