A few of us from Global Care were lunching out to celebrate our Spring Dividend. Squeezed into one booth, over our cups of matcha, we talked about what we might blow some of it on: Massage? Salsa classes? A rock-climbing trip?
Jane (a sucker for the latest wearables) had to clear last year’s debt with hers. Diwanna needed every dollar of her Dividend for rent because she’d just upgraded to a seventeenth-floor space with a forest view.
“Oh my god, this is so cute. So cute. See?” Cerise pleaded. “You all see?”
I nodded so my Headpiece would show me what she was gushing about: a 3D of the first Reveal of 2060. All the baby was doing was lying on its back and waving its limbs, but it was slowmoed and soundtracked for maximum appeal.
“Girl or boy?” asked Jane.
“They’re not going to drop that till the Naming Party.” Cerise spoke in the dreamy tones of a superfan. “But they’ve already announced their Offset—they’re distributing ten thousand solar stoves.”
“So they should,” grunted Diwanna, “given that they’ve just multiplied their carbon legacies by, like, six.”
The clip was looping in front of my eyes. Those spasmodic arms, those bottomless dark eyes.
“You follow all the royals, Cerise?” asked Nandie.
“No way,” she said defensively. “Mostly just the music and streaming ones. But this time the parents are Beyoncé’s grandson and King William’s granddaughter, so how could I resist?”
I jerked to the left to tell my Headpiece to turn off the footage. I was dizzy, all at once, pulse leaping, skull thumping. “Sorry, sorry, could I—”
Three of them had to clamber out of the booth to release me.
I was on the toilet, face in hands, when I heard someone come in. “Miriam?”
“Just a sec.” I pressed flush-and-wash so Diwanna would think I’d really needed to go and waited for the sprays and airstream to turn off.
But when I emerged, she asked, “Was it the baby?”
“What?”
She turned to the mirror and tidied her hair with a pick. “Look, lots of us have been broody at one point or another.”
“I’m not broody.”
Diwanna’s face showed she didn’t believe me. “I guess it hits quite a few of us in our thirties, especially women. It’s a leftover, like the appendix,” she went on, “one of those fight-or-flight, lizard-brain things that made evolutionary sense back in the day, but now . . . You have to acknowledge the craving, so you can rechannel it into something more positive.”
“You speaking from experience?” I muttered.
“Oh, a flicker or two over the years, but no, I like my life the way it is. Being with Shirelle, our jobs, roller derby, our friends . . . Wouldn’t want to jeopardize any of that.”
“Well, I really just felt sick, just now,” I lied. My hand went up to the Phri in my earlobe, as if to check it hadn’t fallen out. “And by the way, that was one ugly baby.”
Diwanna laughed. “Aren’t they all like that, though? Those oversize heads and stumpy limbs . . . Give me my wildlife feeds any day.”
And we went back to the table.
The next morning was a write-off: team building. Twice a year they made us engineers from Functionality interrupt our work on bot design to play games with the soft-skills types from Communications and Brand Vision, in the vain hope of increasing mutual respect.
“Headpieces off, everyone,” said Carlotta (team leader). “Let’s take it old school and start with Two Truths and a Lie.”
Sergio came up with a funny statement about being allergic to fruit, and only Keisha guessed that it was true. One point to Sergio for everyone he fooled, and one to Keisha for spotting his lie (which was something about bench-pressing 150).
When it was my turn, I read my three statements in a bland voice from the tablet in front of me: “I am a Scorpio. I can juggle four balls.” The third bullet point said I’ve always wanted to go to the North Pole, which was a fact, but my eyes skipped right over that one to the blank space underneath, and what my mouth said was, “I’ve always wanted to have a baby.”
There was a silence, and then a few giggles.
I forced my face to stay neutral. I didn’t look at Diwanna. I hadn’t planned this, but I supposed it was my way of apologizing for bullshitting her in the bathroom.
“Sure, Miriam, maybe in, what, forty years or so, if you’re still able?” joked Zach.
I produced a smirk to match his.
Forty years, because of last week’s big-hoopla announcement that global population had been rightsized back down to six billion like in 1999 (the year my parents were born), a little ahead of schedule. We were expected to get down to Optimum—three billion—by the start of the twenty-second century, and at that point, the plan was to start repopulating again but only at a no-growth, steady-state, sustainable level. I’d be seventy by then.
“Anyway,” said Diwanna, “the baby thing’s clearly the lie.”
That was kind of her, to shield me.
Nobody disagreed.
Diwanna asked, “Do I get an extra point for calling it?”
“Nope,” said Carlotta. “One for everyone who guessed right, none for Miriam. Your turn, Daniel.”
When we divided into breakout groups for brainstorming (“how to boost connectedness, fun, and wellness at Global Care”), mine was the one with only two members. I didn’t know the Communications guy from Adam, and his badge was half covered by his long, thick hair: Nate, Nathan? Nick, Neil, Niall? I slightly warmed to the guy for not caring about being in fashion.
“So”—I covered a yawn—“any thoughts to get the ball rolling?”
He said, “You’re not really a Scorpio, are you?”
I blinked. “I am, actually. November third.”
“Then the juggling was your lie.”
It would have been easy to deny it. “Well, you got me,” I said under my breath.
He shoved back his hair. NED, said his badge. “I’m the same,” he told me.
I wasn’t 100 percent sure I’d heard him right. It wasn’t something I’d ever heard a guy say before. The ears could play tricks. What else could the phrase have been, though: I’m saying? I’m insane?
“Now you’re staring like I’m a freak,” Ned pointed out.
“Sorry.” I dropped my eyes. Then looked up at him again. He had a big nose, a little askew, a strong nose. I grinned and said, “I guess we’re both freaks.”
“Breakout Group Five, how’re we doing?” asked Carlotta from across the room.
“Good,” Ned and I assured her simultaneously.
It was me who suggested the two of us get lunch, but it was Ned who led the way to a veg bar that was kind of grungy and far enough from the office that we could talk without being overheard.
Almost nice enough to sit out, I suggested.
This was debatable, but the two of us carried our steel bento boxes out into the watery sunshine and picked a bench tucked away in the xeriscaping, out of earshot of the seniors working out in the playground. The two of us still had our Headpieces turned off, even though we were on break. Birds trilled in the bushes.