He opened his mouth as if he were about to launch into a rehearsed speech, but instead he hesitated. “Today’s my birthday, you know. I’m three years old.” His eyes reminded me of blue seawater.
I squeezed my smartreader and the conversion date flashed in red. “So I see. Happy birthday.”
“Cognitively, that makes me seventeen years old. I can vote now. I can fight in the wars if I choose to. I can make my own decisions, can’t I? Legally, I have rights.” His eyes begged me to agree.
“Technically, yes. But a decision like this... This is different.”
“Why? You can see the results of my neural exam, my psyche evaluation.” He pointed at my reader.
I clasped the device in my right hand. All normal results, true, but there was no way I was rubber-stamping such a drastic procedure. He was a living, breathing human being, after all. And just a kid.
“Still,” I said. “I need to understand where this is coming from.”
He sighed. He had the gangly awkwardness typical of most teenagers, but something about his pale blue eyes, his thick mussed eyebrows, stirred a memory I pushed away.
“I’m not happy,” he said.
I could certainly relate to that sentiment. I stared at the pine board shelves, which were empty except for a framed holo of me and Phillip and Tim. Tim was just a four-year-old toddler in baggy, yellow swim-trunks in the holo, banging the keyboard of a plastic piano in a steady beat. Phillip and I hovered over him, wide smiles stretched across our tanned faces while we stood in the clumpy beach sand.
“Being human...” Alex said. “It’s not what I expected.”
“So you’re not happy.” I forced a weak smile. “Join the club.” He didn’t react. “Look, young men your age sometimes go through phases. It’s not always easy coping with so many conflicting emotions, but it’s all a normal part of adolescence. You’ll get through this, I promise.”
“It’s not a phase.” He rubbed his bloodshot eyes with the back of his hand and sat silent.
“I know someone. Someone you can talk to about these feelings.”
Alex pushed his chair back, and stood up. “I guess I’m wasting my time here.”
“Relax.” I pointed to the chair. “Sit, sit, sit.”
He looked at me warily before taking his seat again. “It’s important you understand the consequences. This isn’t a common procedure, Alex. You wouldn’t have the same functionality as you did before. Your sense of identity would be tenuous, Grade 1 level at best, like my Tilly housebot. Trust me, you don’t want to do this.”
“But I do. I do.”
I paused. “Have you discussed this with your guardians?” Until fully integrated into society, converts were placed in a foster home, usually with a childless couple.
“My foster mom died a few months after I was converted. And I never got along with my father,” Alex said. “He didn’t care about me. Not really. No, I think he only loved the idea of me. He wanted me to play a role and... I was tired of it, tired of him and everyone else defining me and telling me what to do, who to be. Do you know what I mean? I had enough of that when I was an AI.”
“Why me?” I said. “Why not go back to ManMade for the procedure?”
He froze, and his eyes glazed over for a few seconds as if he were dreaming while awake, a common affectation among converts. It reminded me this was no ordinary teenager. Three years ago he had been a different form of life altogether.
After a five-second pause, he picked up the conversation without missing a beat.
“I heard that you left. I’m not stupid, okay? ManMade would never do it. It wouldn’t risk the bad publicity.”
The boy was sharp. With the rising death toll and declining birth rates caused by the spread of the Red, ManMade had become the leader in the production of people, implanting AI syngrams into cloned teenaged bodies. Bodies designed to be immune to the plague. ManMade’s stock prices had quadrupled over the past three years. No, the boy was spot-on. The company would do right by its shareholders before it did right by him.
I sighed. “Let’s do this. Think about it for a week. If you still want to give up your humanity, I’ll consider it.” And more likely than not, I thought, he would walk out the door, drive back to Portland, and find a different way to vent his normal teenage rebelliousness. Hopefully I’d never hear from Alex Belfour ever again.
“Thank you, Dr. DeLisse.” Alex pushed his bangs out of his eyes and smiled sadly, wearily. He seemed so vulnerable at that moment that I had to fight the urge to hug him. Instead, I extended my hand in a detached, professional manner, and he shook it, his grip soft and warm and oh-so-human.
“Celia,” I said. “Call me Celia.”
M
Y FORMER COLLEAGUE
at ManMade, Milt Maddox, stopped by my house the next morning. Apparently this was turning into the week of surprise visits. I’d performed hundreds of conversions with Milt – a pleasant enough fellow if a bit introverted. His shoulder-length hair, which he kept in a ponytail, had gone prematurely gray and there was something haunting about his thin smile. I had met his late wife, Carmen, in a cybertech course in grad school and years later she had recommended me for the position of techsurgeon at ManMade.
“How are you f-feeling, Celia?” His nervous stammer always made him more endearing, I thought.
I shrugged.
He handed me a bouquet of sunflowers and we sat at the kitchen table while Tilly poured us tea. “Have you considered coming back to work?” he said. “Listen, I understand what you’re going through.” Milt had lost Carmen and his daughters to the Red. “It’ll do you good to stay busy.”
“I’m not ready to return to ManMade.” I paused. “I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.”
Milt stared uncomfortably at the tabletop. His expression said it all.
You need help, Celia.
He sipped his tea. “Any word from Phillip? Do you think –”
“No, he’s not coming back.” Last I heard, my husband had hooked up with a traveling companion on his road-trip across the Nordic countries. A young blonde half his age. It was for the best, I supposed. Just the sight of Phillip brought back memories of Tim. And I’m sure he felt the same way every time he looked at me. “I’m not bitter, Milt. Honest.”
He nodded. “So I hear an old patient of ours paid you a visit yesterday. Alex BL4Z6M.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in.
“How do you know that?” Milt’s appearance here was starting to make sense.
“I’m Alex’s guardian.”
“You became a guardian?” Milt never struck me as the nurturing type.
“After Carmen and I lost the girls to the Red, well, she really wanted to take in a convert. This was before Carmen became afflicted herself.” He picked up his cup of tea and stared into it. “Alex was one of the first in our BL4 series. Don’t you remember?”
I shrugged.
“No, why would you?” he said. “So many hundreds of conversions.”
“If you came all this way, Milt, you must know why he sought me out, what he asked me to do.” I opened the cupboard where I stored the brandy and poured a shot into my morning tea. I offered some to Milt but he held up his hand. “You need to talk to him,” I said.
“He won’t listen to me. He’s s-stubborn. No, he’s dead-set on going through with this. All we can do at this point is give him what he wants.”
“What?”
“It pains me, but I don’t see any way around it. Do you?”
“Are you kidding me?”
“SERA gives him the right to decide. If he wants to revert to his AI state... We’re required to follow the law and respect his decision.”
To hell with SERA, I thought. “The boy just needs counseling.”
“You have enough on your mind, Celia. I’ll reach out to Alex. ManMade will counsel the boy and perform the procedure, if need be.”
“You’ll do this? You would really do this?” I said. “What about the negative publicity?”
“I spoke with Legal. We can have Alex and everyone involved sign the necessary paperwork to keep this confidential.”
I laughed in amazement. “And what about our oath? What about our ethical duty? Have you seen the latest birth-rate figures?” Suddenly it dawned upon me. “Oh, my God. You’ve done this before, haven’t you?”
“Celia,” he said, setting down his cup, “your p-political views – which, by the way, I happen to share – don’t give you the right to override the clear mandates of SERA. Yes, I’m sure there’d be strong public sentiment against the procedure if it ever came to light. But we have to balance that against our legal exposure for violating the statute...”
“I don’t give a damn, Milt. He’s just a kid. And you’re his guardian.”
“I’m here in my role as Executive Director of ManMade.”
“Be straight with me. Others in the BL4 series have suffered from similar disorders, haven’t they.”
His face flushed. Milt obviously hadn’t expected me to do my homework so quickly. After Alex’s visit yesterday, I’d spent the entire evening studying up on the BL4 series. “I read about the others who mutilated themselves with razor blades and who turned to heavy drug use. And what about the two suicides?” Suicide. Just saying the word out loud made me queasy.
He shook his head. “The autopsies revealed no physiological problems with the BL4s.”
“I could never approve Alex’s request.” Saying the words out loud gave me a new resolve.
“You’re letting personal feelings –”
“Don’t say it, Milt.”
“– cloud your p-professional judgment. After what happened with Tim...”
I squeezed my mug so hard that it slipped through my fingers and shattered on the floor.
His eyes shifted from my face to the scattered shards. “I’m sorry. It’s just so obvious, Celia. Look, there’s no reason to be embarrassed. You’ve been through a lot. But expending energy trying to save someone who doesn’t want saving, someone who’s made a personal choice about his future...”
When I didn’t respond, Milt stood to leave.
But as he opened the front door, I finally answered him. “If he shows up here again – and I don’t think he will, mind you – I won’t authorize the procedure,” I said. I couldn’t care less about Milt’s armchair analysis of my motivations. Or about the ‘Sentient Equal Rights Act.’ I wouldn’t allow any harm to come to that boy.
“If he returns, you’re to send him to us,” Milt said as if reading my mind.
“Haven’t you just been telling me to respect his decisions? He’s three years old. And free to consult with any techsurgeon he wants.”
“For your own sake, Celia, stay out of this. Don’t get involved.”
With those words, he strode out the door.
Had Milt just threatened me?
I folded my arms on the table, leaned my forehead into them. Stay away, Alex, I thought. Just stay away and suffer through your miserable life like the rest of us.
I
SAT AT
the kitchen table a week later, scrolling through the family holo-album, when the doorbell startled me.
“Tilly!” I shouted. Then I remembered that I had sent Tilly out to do the weekly grocery shopping.
I threw on a flannel bathrobe over my nightgown, and spied through the peephole. Alex Belfour stood on the porch in the afternoon daylight.
I opened the door.
“I’m sorry for disturbing you on a Saturday, Celia.” The teen had his hands buried deep in his jeans pockets and looked away from me awkwardly when he spoke. “But... I really needed to talk.”
“That’s okay. Come in,” I said, hugging my bathrobe tight.
I directed him to the living room and asked him to take a seat on the sectional sofa by the piano.
“Sorry for the mess.” It’s the one room in the house that I didn’t let Tilly disturb. “You can just push the clothes and other stuff onto the floor and make yourself comfortable. I’ll be right back.”
I stepped into the bedroom, picked up my smartreader and punched the first four digits of Milt’s number. I stared at the screen for a long moment before pausing and clicking it off.
“I’ll be honest,” I shouted from my bedroom as I dressed, “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”
“I meant what I said,” he yelled back. “I still want to be reverted to my AI form.”
When I returned to the living room, running a brush through my hair, Alex stood staring at the dozen framed holos atop the piano. My heart skipped.
“Who’s this?” He held up a holoframe of a teenaged Tim playing fetch with our old collie, Lady Lu.
“My son. Tim.” I stopped brushing. “Six months ago... He died.”
“Oh.” He set down the holoframe and said nothing more.
I took a deep breath to compose myself, and started brushing my hair again. “Would you like something to drink? Some tea? Water?”
He shook his head.
“A reason,” I said. “I need a reason.”
Alex sighed. “Okay, fine.” He flopped down on the end of the couch where he’d cleared a space. “My girlfriend dumped me, okay? We’d been dating for a year and then we had an argument. It ended with her saying that she wanted to date a ‘real’ person.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
I scooched next to him on the couch, knocking more of my unhung clothes to the floor. “Your heart’s been broken so you’ve decided to give up your humanity, huh?”
“That’s the gist of it.”
I went to put my hand on his shoulder, but he drew back. “I have a suggestion,” I said. “Something a lot less drastic than what you have in mind. Go out, meet more people, find yourself another girlfriend.”
He pursed his lips.
“It might help,” I said, “if you talked to some other converts, joined a support group.”
“No, I’m not interested in that,” he said. “I want to steer clear of any other converts.”
He said this with such finality that I decided to change the subject.
“Are you sure I can’t get you a sandwich or something?” I said.
“No, thanks.”
“Alex, I’m going to ask you something. And I need you to tell me the truth. If not, I’ll have nothing more to do with your case,” I said, though in reality I couldn’t imagine turning my back on this kid. “Is what you’ve told me true? Did you really break up with your girlfriend?”
After a pause, the boy’s cheeks reddened and he shook his head.
“Did you even have a girlfriend?”