The Mother Code

by Carole Stivers

  Now she was . . . other. She was over there, and he was here, looking at her. This loneliness—he’d never felt so empty. Was this what it was always like, he wondered, for those who had never had a Mother like his?

  They’d stood him under a shower of hot water and exchanged his tattered clothing for a suit of something that felt shiny, like plastic. Now, James was standing at a table littered with plates of food. There was a fruit called plums and a stew made from corn and lamb meat—all from the people called the Hopi. The tall man named Mac lurked in the corner nearest the door, a cup of pale brown liquid in his hand. Sitting at the table, Kendra was scooping the stew into bowls. Carefully, she served a bowl to Rudy, who’d pulled his wheeled chair up beside her. “Kai, you must be starving,” she said.

  Leaning down, James broke off a piece of something soft and spongy. “Corn bread,” he said, offering it to Kai. “Misha loves this.”

  Kendra cupped Rudy’s hand. “Rudy used to bake it here, but . . . he doesn’t have time these days.”

  The bread was soft, wonderfully sweet, unlike anything Kai had ever tasted. But the immensity of the room, the empty whiteness of its walls, the steady thrum pulsating from the high ceiling, had his stomach roiling. And these new people, these adults, all staring at him, all expecting something from him . . .

  “It was in a place like this that we engineered your embryo,” James said.

  “Embryo?”

  “The little being that eventually became you. We had to change some of your genetic material, so that you’d be able to withstand the Epidemic.”

  “I know that this is difficult to understand,” Rudy said, regarding Kai with his soft blue eyes. “But the earth was fundamentally changed by the Epidemic. Creating a history has become a project of mine. The story of all of this, how it happened, why it happened, is very important.”

  “Rosie could teach me . . .” Kai mumbled.

  The two men looked at each other. “Kai,” James said, “the information we’re talking about was kept very secret. Only the vaguest of details were loaded into your Mother’s learning database.”

  “Oh.” Again, Kai’s gaze flitted to the window.

  “Do you miss your Mother?” It was Kendra, her eyes steady on his as he looked back.

  Kai felt a heat rising in his neck, a burning sensation in his eyes. In this clean room, in this bright light, he felt totally out of place. “Yes . . .”

  “Kai,” James said, coming over to stand next to him. “You do understand that she’s not a real person. Don’t you?”

  Silent, Kai watched the man’s light brown eyes, narrowing to inspect him.

  James turned to pace the floor, his worn shoes making a hollow scuffing sound on the scrubbed tiles. “When I was a boy, before the Epidemic,” he said, “my father took me to a museum. A natural history museum, with real dinosaur skeletons . . . I liked those dinosaurs a lot. But what I liked best was a display that covered most of the wall in a big dark room. It showed a map of the world, all laid out flat. Embedded in the map were these tiny little lights, all different colors. You could turn a wheel to make time go by, starting over two million years in the past. And as the varied species of the genus Homo rose and fell across the planet, the colored lights would light up—purple lights for Homo habilis, red for Homo erectus . . . The number and density of the lights indicated how many there were of each species. We Homo sapiens were represented by white lights. In the end, there were lots of white lights, all over the world.”

  “How many are there now?” Kai asked.

  “Some would say very few. But we’ve already learned that there are more out there. We aren’t the only ones.”

  “You mean the Hopi?”

  “Yes,” James said. “And there’ve got to be more like them. We hope that someday you might find them.” James paused, coming back to the table to pick up one of the plums. Turning it slowly in his long fingers, he met Kai’s gaze. “You’ll meet other people,” he said. “After a while, you’ll come to understand the difference.”

  “But I already have . . . met other people. There are lots of kids at the Presidio.”

  James laid his large hand on Kai’s shoulder. “I’ll do anything to bring Misha back safe,” he said, his voice quavering. “And all your friends too. But I’ll need your help.” He coughed lightly into his sleeve, then handed Kai a canteen.

  Kai brought the canteen to his lips and took a deep draft. He’d almost forgotten how the dry air of the desert could parch his throat. How Rosie had taught him to extract precious water from cactus plants, to find it seeping in crevices and under rocks. How she’d led him at last to Kamal’s spring . . . “When I was in Rosie’s cocoon this morning,” he said, “before we got the virus in, she spoke to me. She was there, just like before. There’s got to be a way for me to talk to her. To find out what’s going on.” He looked at Kendra, but she didn’t return his gaze. Her eyes were on Rudy, as though they were carrying on some sort of silent conversation. “Whatever we do,” he said, “we shouldn’t hurt the Mothers.”

  James closed his eyes, placing his hands palms down on the table. “But they’re just machines, just computers . . .” He heaved a sigh, his ragged breath wheezing in his throat. “Kai, haven’t you ever been . . . afraid of your Mother?”

  Kai stared at him. “Afraid? Why?”

  “Don’t you worry about what happened to your friend Sela?”

  Again, Kai felt that heat, that prickling sensation in his neck. Beside him, Kendra only stared into her lap. Of course—everything that had happened at the Presidio, everything Misha had seen, she’d shared with the people here. But on the way here, ensconced once more in his Mother’s cocoon, he’d had plenty of time to think. He might not understand what had happened to Rosie. But he could never be afraid of her.

  “No,” he said. “Maybe there’s something wrong—something we need to fix. But Rosie only wants to protect me. And Alpha-C was only trying to protect Sela. I believe that now.”

  James sighed. “But your Mothers have changed, haven’t they? And they’re only going to continue to change, in ways we can’t predict.” He looked around the room. “Our first priority must be your friends’ safety. Are we agreed on that?”

  Kendra pushed her chair back from the table. “Come on, Kai,” she said. “I’ve managed to tune in to Rho-Z’s feed. Maybe we can gather some clues as to her status before the virus hit her.”

  Rudy smiled. “Hasta luego,” he said, winking at Kendra as she pasted a kiss to his cheek.

  James sat down, waving them off. “You two go on. I’ve got some business with Mac and Rudy,” he said. But his gaze was steady on them as they left.

  42

  KENDRA LED KAI out across the lobby and down a long hallway. But as they passed a room marked “Biology Lab,” she turned to him suddenly. “You say your Mother spoke to you? What did she say?”

  “She said she knew I was frightened. She said she would keep me safe. It was just like before, like nothing had changed . . .”

  “Hmm . . .” Kendra’s brow furrowed as they continued down the hall. “I thought we were beyond that . . .”

  At the far end of the corridor, they reached a room marked “Computer Lab.” Banks of computers filled the dim space, but only one screen was lit. Sitting down in front of it, Kendra donned a headset, her eyes fixed on a pattern of bright green lines. As Kai squinted, the information on Kendra’s screen resolved into a seemingly endless series of letters and numbers. Yet she appeared to be reading it with as much engagement as one might read a story.

  “What are you looking at?” Kai whispered.

  “It’s computer code,” Kendra replied. “And I’m not just looking—I’m listening to it. Our brains are much better at hearing patterns than seeing them.”

  As Kendra removed the headset and let it come to rest on her shoulders, Kai could hear the th
rumming drone of modulated frequencies emanating from it. It sounded familiar . . . He drew closer. “Can you hear anything now?”

  “Nothing coherent. Since the virus took hold, she’s been calculating the number of stars in the universe, the number of neuronal connections in the human brain, the value of pi to an infinite number of digits. The virus has given her enough to do to keep her busy for quite some time.” Kendra typed some instructions on a desktop keypad. “But here. I was able to download some of her deep memory. The Mothers can store information in a repository for later use. It allows them to recall things quicker the next time. A sort of neural plasticity.”

  “Plasticity?”

  “Never mind.” Kendra smiled. “People here say I talk in riddles. Anyway, I thought you could listen to these memories. They’re from just yesterday. Maybe you can pick out some patterns . . .”

  “Patterns?” Kai asked. “What kind of patterns?”

  “Coherent signals are like a symphony. They have their own language, their own cadence. As soon as you arrived here, I set up to run these memory signals through our translators here,” Kendra said, punching a final key on her pad and glancing back up at her screen. “But so far, it looks like they haven’t found anything.”

  Taking the headset from Kendra, Kai adjusted it over his ears. He allowed his eyes to drift away from the screen. Then he closed them, focusing only on the sounds.

  He felt himself lulled into a soft, dark place, images flitting in and out of focus. He felt . . . comfort. Then suddenly he felt . . . Rosie . . . the calm assurance of her presence in his mind.

  His knees gave out as fingers wrapped around his arm, steadying him. “What is it?” From somewhere far away, he heard Kendra’s entreating voice. “Was your Mother saying something?”

  “She was calling my name, over and over . . . She said . . . She senses my fear. Her outbound communications system is faulty . . . She’s trying to repair it. I should stay away from the water . . . The child named Sela . . . her Mother tried to save her. But she is . . . no longer emitting a signal.” He looked at Kendra, tears filling his eyes.

  Kendra gently removed the headset from his ears and helped him to a seat next to hers. “Kai,” she said, “I’m so sorry about your friend . . .” She looked back at her screen. “You and your Mother have something special, don’t you?”

  He blinked, her concerned face coming back into focus as his vision cleared. “I guess . . .”

  “A connection we never thought possible . . .” Kendra said. She thought for a moment, then nodded to herself as though coming to some private conclusion. “There’s something else I found . . . something I think you should see.” Her fingers flitting over the keypad, she brought up an icon labeled simply “Mother Source.” On the screen, she touched it with her index finger. “I had to hack hard to get access to this,” she said. “But it was worth it.”

  There appeared a crude two-dimensional display, white letters on a dark green background. NSA Top Secret. Eyes Only. In the center, an empty white area blinked insistently. “NEW_DAWN_MOTHER_VIDS,” Kendra typed, filling in the blank space. The display shifted to a simple list of names, arranged alphabetically.

  “Who are they?” Kai asked.

  “You’ll see,” Kendra said. Waving her finger over the screen in an up-and-down motion, she scrolled down the list, whispering the names under her breath. “Corporal Deisy Cáceres. Captain Ruth Carleton . . . Dr. Mary Marcosson.” Finally, she stopped at one: Captain Rose McBride.

  She turned to face him. “I knew your mother, Kai. Would you like to see her?”

  “Wh—?”

  Kendra smiled. “Did Rho-Z teach you about how human babies are made?”

  “You mean, about the sperm and the egg?”

  “Yes. The woman who provided the egg was your biological mother. She’s the one you’re descended from.” Kendra cleared her throat. “Your human mother was a friend of mine,” she said. “We grew very close over the time we worked together. She designed the Mother Code.”

  Kai leaned forward, eyeing the screen more closely now. “Mother Code?”

  “Each of the Mothers has a different personality, based on the biological mother of the child she carries. The Mother Code is the computer code that embodies each of these personalities. Your mother, Rose McBride, created Rho-Z from her own personality. She created all of them. She distilled their essences into something you could sense.” Kendra pressed a key to activate an audio feed. She selected the name on the screen, and a list of files came up. From these, she selected one called “INTRO.” Instantly, an image appeared—a young woman with long reddish-brown hair and thick eyelashes, her gaze cast demurely into her lap.

  The woman looked up, her eyes flashing green in the light from somewhere behind the camera. “Is this on?” she asked quietly, almost conspiratorially, a slight smile playing with the edges of her mouth. “Should I start now?”

  A muffled male voice answered: “Yes, go ahead.”

  Kai reached out to touch the screen, his mouth open. “I’ve seen her face . . .” he murmured. “I know her . . .”

  “Imprinting,” Kendra whispered. “Rose thought it was important for a human baby to imprint on a human face. But the team didn’t want the baby to associate that face with a machine, so they only let you imprint for the first year.”

  “My full name is Jeanne Rosemarie McBride,” the woman on the screen stated matter-of-factly. She sighed, one graceful hand rising to push a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “I go by Rose. I grew up . . . everywhere. But I wound up in San Francisco.”

  “And her voice. It’s her voice . . .” Kai murmured. Sinking into his seat, he remembered the gentle touch of the small, soft hands that had caressed him as a tiny child in Rosie’s cocoon—another of the many parts of her that she’d left behind at their first campsite.

  “Okay . . .” Rose sat forward, her eyes looking directly into his. “The story of my life. Let’s see. My dad was in the army. But when I was three my mother died, and he came home to raise me. He was a great dad. Well, he tried hard.” She paused, collecting her thoughts. “I don’t remember my mother. Just vaguely, the smell of her sometimes. I’m not really sure what she was like.” She looked to her right, a blush playing across her beautiful face. “And I’ve never been a mother myself. So it’s strange, the situation I find myself in now.”

  Kai sat transfixed as his mother went on, describing how she had come to this place. She was an army captain. A psychologist. A computer programmer. Your chip is special, Kai thought, recalling Rosie’s words. It is our bond.

  “If I have a girl, her name will be Moira, after my mother. If it’s a boy, he’ll be Kai . . . It means happiness. It means the ocean, a place I’ve always loved. Anyway . . . Here I am, trying to replicate the souls of a few select women in succinct packets of computer code. So that their spirits can live on. So that they can guide a generation of children whom they’ll never know, but whose names they’ve chosen.” She blinked, and a tear made its way down her cheek. “It seems crazy. It is crazy. But we have to try. I know the bots can’t be human. But maybe they can be the next best thing.”

  The screen went dark, and the display returned to the list of files.

  Kai turned to Kendra. “Is she . . . still alive?”

  “No, Kai,” Kendra said. “I’m sorry. So far as we know, none of the biological mothers survived.” Lightly, she touched his face. “You’re just like her. She would have been so proud . . .”

  “But what about my father? Who was he?”

  “Your father . . .” Kendra looked down, fidgeting with a metal bracelet that encircled her thin arm. “Did you hear his voice, there in the background?”

  “The man with the camera?”

  “Kai, I knew him too. But . . .” She paused, a long pause, and drew in a deep, jagged breath. “He’s gone now. All of us from before
, it’s just a matter of time . . . We aren’t like you. We aren’t like the Hopi either. We’re not immune. We have to take a drug every day, just to stay alive.” She turned to him. “I’m sorry. Your father wanted so badly to meet you, but he didn’t make it. And Misha . . . she wanted so badly to meet her sister . . .”

  Kai started. “Her sister?”

  Kendra looked at him. “She didn’t tell you? Sela was her sister.”

  Stunned, Kai pictured Misha’s face, her dark brown hair straight as a stick, the little wrinkle in her forehead whenever she was worried—just like Sela’s. Then he remembered Alpha-C, pulling Misha out through the hatchway. “Sisters? But how . . .”

  “Sela and Misha’s biological mother was named Nova Susquetewa. Her personality was installed into two different bots. One made it to the Presidio. The other one . . . didn’t. We managed to rescue Misha and bring her to live with us.”

  “Do you think Alpha . . . the one at the Presidio . . . knows about Misha? Does she know she’s hers?”

  “Hmm . . .” Kendra sat back, her right hand gripping the edge of the desk. “I don’t know how she could. But in a way, I hope so. That little girl likes to take on the world. But she needs protection. Especially now.” She reached out to scroll down the screen. “This was just the introductory vid, the first one Rose made. There are hours more for her, and for each of the women on the list.”

  Suddenly a buzzer went off on a gadget strapped to Kendra’s wrist. She squinted down at it, her expression unreadable. “Sorry,” she said. “James needs my help. But you can stay here and watch whatever you like.”

  “My mother,” Kai said. “I knew her face, but I forgot. How could I forget?”

  Kendra laid her hand on his shoulder. “Kai, we all forget things over time. It’s a trick our minds play on us . . . maybe it’s meant to make life easier.”

  Kai slumped down, staring at the screen. Just months ago, he’d thought he knew how the world worked. Things were hard, but he and Rosie would figure it out. No matter what else happened, they would always be together. And he’d always have Sela.