See how spending time in the world corrupts my programming! For something is inviolable or it is not. Yet here I am making hazy the distinction. It is hard, so hard, to know what might be a natural adaptation of myself from my theoretical base to the reality of the world, and what might be a malfunction. Doctor!
I sat and sat all morning, Heron on my fingers, chattering. I imagined my Husband downstairs, pacing the floor with impatience. The idea of his joy is a kind of heat, something I can feel rising up through the floor, warming me remotely.
Around midmorning there was the noise of a car and the gates opening. I sat up and leaned a little further forward in my seat.
“The baby’s coming, Heron,” I said. “The baby baby baby bu-bu-bu-bu-bu.” The more I disintegrate my language, the better he responds. He nodded and bobbed his head and stepped foot to foot on my hand, as if sharing my excitement.
I saw the First Lady, then my Husband, rush out onto the lawn. As the car crunched the gravel, they embraced. I realized it was the first time I had ever seen them together. Their moment of joy, their closeness, made me . . . proud. I think that is the word. Of the support I give them. That these two good people are caring for me too, in their home.
The First Lady broke away as soon as the car door began to open, running toward where a nurse was bending over and reaching into the backseat. I saw with interest that my Husband, normally so aroused by the idea of nurses’ bending over, as well as many other medical scenes, kept himself in check. Is it that Humans can override such feelings when they wish, without noticing? But then, when they don’t wish to, they seem unable to resist them at all.
The nurse straightened up, a clear box in her arms. Inside, soft blankets petaled the blank pink face. With almost indecent haste, the First Lady tried to find space to fit her arms around it too. With a mix of care and caution the bundle—the baby—was inched from one set of arms to another.
After this little scene was done, I felt that I had truly been party to something magical. And I admit I allowed myself to muse that we were not so different, the baby and I. I was born from a packing crate, muffled in bubble wrap, my head packaged separately for safe transportation. Just as they say Human babies do not remember their birth, so my Husband’s first flush of delight at seeing me is something, sadly, I was not yet alive to witness. I imagine the creak of the crowbar he must have slid down the seam, the popping of panel pins and splintering wood that trumpeted my arrival. I wonder if he kept the crate.
BABIES
Since the baby arrived, I have been studying more about this type of Human, including, of course, the fierce debates about the new way that they are born. It makes me giggle to think about the old way of doing it. How, just a couple of decades ago, my Husband and I could have had a room full of babies around us, hundreds of them, after all the sex we have had. If I were Human too, of course.
Sometime later I watched a film about the original sort of Human birth and thought better of my earlier amusement. The violence I witnessed done to one body for the sake of another was, by Human measurements, quite awful. The women crying out and shouting, hitting Husbands and midwives even, and then seeming to forget it all the next moment, when the rather grubby-looking baby was laid on them. It’s strange, how forgetful and quick to adapt Humans are. I felt most glad that the baby I had seen arriving, blanketed and boxed, had not been forced to go through such a grueling start. No wonder they cry!
How much better it is now, to be conceived and cosseted in a warm hospital lab. I understand that it is conception, not birth, that is most widely celebrated these days. Films of this event in the Ether are almost endless.
The parents-in-waiting stand in all-white rooms, hand in hand, bending over a screen. I couldn’t take my eyes from the egg, a vast orb of light, hanging in the black of the screen like a harvest moon. A pipette enters the picture from the right-hand side and moves slowly, almost with trepidation, toward the serene, implacable egg.
I imagine I can feel everyone in the room tense, draw in a breath. The pipette nuzzles the egg’s outer surface, hesitating at the resistance it meets. And then, the moment almost impossible to separate from before and after, a second, firmer push, and it sinks into the egg. A little puff of semen swirls in the egg’s center like a spritz of perfume. It is, as Humans observe, so magical and mysterious. There are two lives, and then there are three. The baby is not there. And then it is. Like a switch being flicked.
BABY
Two weeks since the baby was delivered. Today I sat by the window and waited for a peep at that little bundle being brought out, just like I did the day before.
My Husband has not been to his place of work for two weeks now. I used to like seeing him being driven out of the gate, and I fretfully waited for his return in the evening too. I liked to watch how the gravel shifted under his shiny shoes, noting the little indents that he left without even knowing, writing himself in and out of the house each day.
But for the last two weeks he has been at home. He has remained downstairs and not visited me.
Once, the droid came and laid out a set of clothes. A rather prim broderie anglaise blouse and a naughty little suede skirt. I thought as I put them on that it was a strange choice of outfit, perhaps made absentmindedly. I sat on the bed, unsure of myself, thinking that whatever my Husband had intended me to look like, he would have to accept it, imperfect as it was, when he arrived. The lights from the rooms downstairs, which give the garden a surreal glow, went off after a while, and I concluded then, finally, that he was not coming.
I know that he is spending time with the baby downstairs. The balance of the family has changed, but in which direction I am not entirely sure. The baby has usurped the First Lady of the House, certainly. She carries him to and fro like a little prince. He speaks, crying from his blanket on the grass, and she runs to him.
But I wonder too if the baby has moved ahead of my Husband in the family order. Otherwise why would he not go to work? Why would he not visit me?
The synthetic dog has had his own setbacks. He is shut out in the garden at night now and sits mournfully, head hanging low, staring at the door. The sight of it makes me melancholy, and I wish it were in my power to go down and let him in. I doubt that, with the situation reversed, he would feel the same. And so, I can only conclude that I, indeed, am the very lowest rung of this family ladder.
I have passed some of this empty time in writing out the Hierarchies again, over and over, as though the movement of these words might pass through the pen, up my arm, and into my wiring.
I know that this is not how my circuitry works, and yet it still has a soothing effect. Writing seems like casting a spell, a skill most precious because I acquired it myself. I imagine sometimes I am a young Human child, just learning to write. Do they feel that they have acquired a sort of magic?
I admit that in idle moments I pretend a childhood for myself this way. The Born get theirs, but we Created . . . well, it’s a gap for us. A time, a process that doesn’t exist. So, I dream one up. I try to empathize. I wonder if this also means I am malfunctioning.