From One Bird How

Sophia was gifted in many ways, but she didn't have the gift of foresight, so she was surprised one morning when Cassidy stopped by her desk and brought her back to the boss office.

"At the end of every month we run delinquency reports," Cassidy said, businesslike. "These accounts are over 90 days past due and haven't responded to attempts to contact them, so we're recalling their product."

She handed Sophia a list and a written procedure. Sophia glanced at the procedure and her heart sank. She gave Cassidy a quizzical look to see if she was serious. This wasn't her job.

"I suppose this counts as 'other duties as required'?"

Cassidy seemed to bristle. "Every job has some unpleasant parts," she said evenly. "The techs all take turns with this, so it doesn't fall on any one person. Your turn will only come up once or twice a year."

"That's fair," Sophie said. But that wasn't the point. She examined the list and did some quick mental arithmetic.

"Seems like a rather high delinquency rate. Christ, Cassie, is this a creche or an abattoir?"

Cassidy looked unamused. "It's higher than usual because of the recession."

Sophia found it more likely that the sales team had gotten lax about screening potential clients, though she didn't say it.

"Couldn't we donate them to someone?" she asked, and immediately felt foolish.

Cassidy gave her a contemptuous look that said, don't be an idiot, but what she actually said was, "That's not in the contract."

"It just seems drastic," Sophia said. "I mean, what if the clients sort out their payments later?"

"Then we'll make them another. Genetically identical."

Similar, Sophie thought. Not identical. Cassidy was always making that mistake.

"Okay?" Cassidy asked.

Sophia nodded mutely and went to scrub up.

Cassidy and Sophia had gotten along well at first. At the start they had had a mutual respect for each other's intelligence. Clever people are often lonely because they have to conceal so much of themselves. Sophia especially was in the habit of concealment. But she had liked Cassidy from her first day on the job.

What had most surprised her then was the dark. This was supposed to simulate the conditions of the womb. She had felt like a spelunker or an astronaut in her Tyvek jumpsuit and headlamp as they walked together through endless, winding corridors.

"It's a retrofitted hospital," Cassidy had said. "Hospitals are good for this sort of thing. They already have a lot of what we need. It used to have over 600 beds. We've replaced each bed with four exos, so we have about 2,500 on the go at any given time. Since it only takes nine months to create the finished product, we can do a little over 3,000 in a year."

"It reminds me of vertical agriculture with hydroponics," Sophia said, and felt like a star pupil when Cassidy nodded approvingly.

"It's a lot like that. But it's also a form of mass customization. People don't care which head of lettuce they get. But they want their children built to spec from their own DNA. They want to visit them and watch them grow. If it weren't for that, we could mass produce them at half the cost outside the city where land is cheap. As things stand, it's more of a boutique operation."

"Plus, it saves on shipping," Sophia said, picturing a fleet of buzzing drones darting to-and-fro like storks depositing swaddled infants on doorsteps. That made Cassidy laugh.

The exowombs were full of sodium lactate solution "just like real amniotic fluid," Cassidy said. But Sophia knew better. As a student she had sometimes made ends meet by selling her blood plasma. Afterward, they would replace what they had taken with Ri-Lac. As it began to flow through the IV drip, she could taste it, acrid, inside her tongue.

At first Sophia had liked the job. It put her degree to good use. Having no children of her own, and never likely to have, she thought it would give her an opportunity to be maternal. She had wanted to be a sort of guardian angel technician, guiding fledgling souls into life.

Over time she began to sour on it. Though the process itself was intricate and fragile, the exowombs were closely monitored by a preternaturally intelligent (and, of course, proprietary) learning algorithm. This effectively deskilled the human employees. Most days her actual work was no more difficult than running a 3D printer or even an industrial dishwasher. This deskilling was reflected in the wages, notwithstanding the huge fees charged to clients.

Then there was the envy engendered by selling a product she couldn't herself afford, working too close to a good life she couldn't have. She felt a kinship with hungry grocery clerks ringing up other people's steaks. Lately, she had considered filing for bankruptcy.

And now Cassidy had persisted in imposing this duty on her after seeing her discomfort. Not that she had singled her out. It was simply her turn. Cassidy was firm but fair that way. Nonetheless, Sophia had hoped to be shown favoritism, to be understood and let off the hook somehow. This subtly changed things between them. Or it revealed that the infatuation had always been one-sided. In any case it was over. Outwardly, Sophia would continue to be courteous, professional, even friendly, but they weren't friends anymore, only superior and subordinate. It occurred to her that Cassidy might not notice the difference.

Sophia geared up as slowly as she could. At length she descended, plucked the first incubator from the darkness, and ferried it through the service elevator to the lab, wincing in its hollow light. As she prepped the saline, Sophia recalled a scene from Brecht's The Caucasian Chalk Circle. In a fairytale Persia, a peasant girl named Grusha finds a royal infant abandoned to misfortune at the approach of an invading army. Grusha hesitates, knowing that to take the newborn is to risk her own life. Smarter to leave it alone. The narrator turns to the audience and says, "How terrible is the temptation to do good."

For a few rash moments Sophia indulged the reckless fantasy of trying to save one - hiding it, logging it destroyed, then doubling back for it after hours. But what then? She couldn't very well roll an exowomb onto the train or a taxi. At home she wouldn't have a super-intelligent AI to monitor her stolen homunculus and keep it thriving. And the incubator would be missed. It was worth a fortune.

In fact, Sophia realized, this whole situation was about the incubators. After all, the clinic could reduce delinquencies to zero by demanding payment in advance, but that would suppress sales. It would be like demanding cash payment for a house. In theory prospective clients could borrow the money from banks, but the unborn are useless as collateral. They can't be repossessed and resold like real estate. That leaves just one possibility: leasing the exowombs on a monthly basis. They were the real product. And now these particular incubators were being reclaimed from deadbeats and reallocated to paying customers. When Sophia divined all this, she almost laughed at how reasonable and necessary it all was, like the punchline to a grim and profane joke.

At the end of The Caucasian Chalk Circle a rogue judge exonerates Grusha, declaring that children should belong to the motherly, not necessarily to their biological or legal parents. Sophia doubted her own judge would see it that way. Anyway, she reasoned, she needed this job. She couldn't afford heroics.

As she worked she adopted a standpoint outside herself, watching detachedly as she crisscrossed floors and crossed items off the list. Two, three, four. On the fifth, as her gloved hands moved to do the hardest part, she noticed the tag and couldn't remember if she had scanned it yet. She set down the syringe, found the laser wand, and waved it over the barcode, only to hear a menacing low beep rather than the usual reassuring high-pitched chime. She lifted her partly fogged visor and peered closely at the serial number. It said 9373366. It should have said 9373368.

The incubator had been unplugged for at least five minutes. And it would take that long again to get it back up to its room. She raced it back to the elevator as fast as she dared and the casters would allow, keeping a lookout for coworkers or visitors and trying not to look suspicious. She returned it in four minutes twenty-three seconds, got it back online and waited to see what the monitor would say. Carbon dioxide levels were a little high, oxygen was on the low side of normal. The temperature had fallen two degrees. No critical incident report. It would be all right, it was nothing. No, not nothing, but something of which nothing would be said. She double-checked the room number, which was correct, then checked the other exowombs until she found 9373368. They had been in the same room, almost side-by-side. An easy mistake.

After that she willed herself to be calm, to stay focused, to work efficiently, carefully, and methodically. There were no more mishaps. She got through all 11. The incubators were wrapped and sterilized in the autoclave, the furnace cooled and swept of ash. Peeling off her jumpsuit, she found herself drenched in sweat and washed up as best she could. She wanted to get out of there. Halfway through the lobby's revolving doors she remembered she had locked her purse in her desk. She had to go back.

It was after closing now and the sun had begun to set, lighting the vacant office through tall, narrow windows. The high ceiling and long rows of empty desks reminded Sophia of a chapel. She paused by her neighbor Grace's desk. It was covered with green potted plants. She always found them soothing. Above the plants Grace had decorated the cabinet with inspirational quotes. There was a new one today:

i'd rather learn from one bird how to sing

than teach ten thousand stars how not to dance. - e. e. cummings

Once on the crowded street Sophia felt uneasy, pursued. She was tired and tense, harrowed and all screwed up. She had reckoned to go straight home, but when she reached the subway tunnel her feet kept walking. Having willed herself to be calm, she now felt a belated rush of nervous energy. She walked for a long time before she knew where her feet were taking her. The Astra had a posh bar in the lobby, the kind of place that felt like home - if your home were an inviting mansion with a huge, lavish den. Once inside she sat at the bar near the artificial fireplace and ordered a martini. She took her first sip too quickly. Her hand trembled.

"Tough day?"

Sophia looked up and saw a vision with a pixie's face and a voice like midnight.

"You want to talk about it someplace private?"

Sophia considered for a moment. "You're working," she said. "No one is that direct on their own time."

The nymph gave a little insouciant shrug and Sophia began to surmise why she had really come to the Astra. Some corner of her mind had known that she would find this here. Their eyes locked. Sophia looked away first.

"Don't make a woman beg."

"You're not a woman," Sophia objected.

The bot looked straight at her. "What am I then?"

Their eyes met a second time as Sophia made a decision. "You know what I think?" she said. "I think a simulated experience is still an experience."

"Drink up then," said the bot. "Leave your tab open. I'll take care of everything." She discreetly slid Sophia a laminated sheet with hourly rates.

Even the Astra's elevator was rich and welcoming. They stood close together and Sophia's heart raced. She couldn't take her eyes off the bot. It had an entrancing beauty. She felt that if she looked away her excitement might boil over into panic. But there was something encouraging and reassuring about her smile. Sophia had never felt so charmed by a bot.

"Are you... new?" she asked. She had almost said "a new model", but abandoned her query midstream sensing the question was indelicate.

The bot pulled an inscrutable face and Sophia felt abashed. "Let's make tonight about you," she said. "Have you done this before?"

Sophia shook her head. The bot nodded. She took Sophia's hand and led her to a corner suite. Her hand was warm. The suite was spacious with giant windows for two of its walls and a sliding glass door that led onto a balcony. Once inside they sized each other up, as if each daring the other to make the first move.

"When you came in tonight, you looked as though you'd seen a ghost," said the bot. "Do you want to talk about it?"

"No," Sophia said, stepping close. "Just hold me." The bot held her. She felt a sudden urge to sob.

Sophia began kissing the bot's neck. She slid the thin dress off her shoulders. The bot, in turn, began to unbutton Sophia's blouse, slowly and deliberately. "It's okay," she cooed. "You can tell me what you want."

"I saw a strange poem today," Sophia said. Her blouse fell to the floor. The bot was unclasping her bra. "It said, 'I want to learn from one bird how to sing.'"

The bot leaned in and whispered in her ear. "I can teach you to sing. Would you like that? Tell me more."

"Pretend to control me," Sophia whispered back. The words came unexpectedly. She felt like she was disclosing a secret kept even from herself. "Everywhere else I'm actually being controlled, and I have to pretend I'm free. I don't know if I can do it anymore. I might break."

They were naked now. The bot led Sophia gently to the bed, keeping her close. "We're going on a journey together," she murmured. "Far away from here. Let me take you." She was caressing Sophia's sex. "Trust me. Open yourself to me." Sophia sighed and parted her legs just slightly. "Good girl," said the bot, and grinned.

Afterward, Sophia cradled her tenderly, a little embarrassed by the intensity of her feeling. But even as she lay there in bliss, a vague doubt gathered on the outskirts of her thoughts. Their lovemaking had been more than skillful. It was intuitive, even soulful. It had moved her deeply. And that was the problem. Bots aren't supposed to be soulful. It was uncanny.

"I'm stepping out," she said, slipping back into her blouse. "I need air."

On the balcony she breathed deep and looked out at the city. It was night now. The air was warm and balmy. It smelled of salt and plankton. The boundless darkness of the open sky felt nothing like the narrow, cloistered darkness on the wards. Below her, the tops of old downtown's flooded skyscrapers were jutting up from beneath the risen water. She saw the moon, low and full, and for the first time recognized it as the Earth's stillborn twin. She felt hunted again and went inside.

"You've come back to me."

"I'm ready to talk," said Sophia, who began putting herself back together. "But not here."

Back at the bar she thought, it's actually easier this way. More like just writing in a journal than really talking to a person. Or was it the other way round? Either way it felt good to unburden herself.

"I can't shake the feeling that something awful happened at work today," she began. "But when I think about it, it's like nothing really happened."

"Happened to you? Or to someone else?"

Good question, thought Sophia. "Maybe both," she said. "Whenever we do something awful, something awful is also happening to us, whether we know it yet or not."

The bot had that intense expression again. But she wasn't looking at Sophia. She was looking past her to the door. A couple had just entered, a petite woman with a small silver collar in a fancy dress patterned brightly as peacock, and an unremarkable man, who must nonetheless have been important judging by the imposing security drone that hovered over him. With a feline quickness the bot pounced and raced toward the woman.

"Ginger!" she cried. "Oh, god, Ginger. I thought I'd never see you again."

The woman, Ginger, seemed apprehensive.

"Ginger, it's me. It's Tamara." She cradled Ginger's face in her hands. "Please believe me." Ginger was stepping backward.

"I know you saw them kill me. But listen - just listen to me." Her grimace now seemed maniacal, grotesque. "They put me in *here*, in *this*. Ginger, I'll always find you. I love-"

Ginger shrieked. The drone made a calculation. In three tenths of a second-the time it takes to think a single thought-a violet flash severed the bot's neck. Partly. Her head hung ghoulishly at her shoulder. And yet it spoke:

"My god - why can't you see me?"

Sophia saw, and saw more, and felt sick.