Blue Hearts of Mars

by Grotepas, Nicole

  Overall, Dad didn’t have any answers—at least, not about the restrictions. I was beginning to discover that no one did. I hadn’t even found a solid explanation on the Webs, Earth’s or Mars’.

  I got Dad to see it from my perspective, slightly. At first I thought he was going to simply lay down the law and forbid it, telling me that if I was going to live under his roof, I’d be forced to do it his way. Instead, he agreed to meet with Hemingway’s mom and they’d have a conversation. Maybe she had some answers for me about the restrictions.

  I explained that I hadn’t known she was a synthetic-life engineer until Hemingway told Dad. That must mean she was truly Hemingway’s mother, in a sort of non-traditional sense. I could just imagine her, creating him like some kind of guy named Gepetto out of some old fairy tale. I wondered if she had ever been married and if she wasn't able to have real babies or something.

  I bet if I asked her that, she would tell me that Hemingway was a real boy. Just a hunch.

  During our little talk, Dad chided me a bit. He reiterated that you marry who you date. “We’re not dating,” I said. “We’re spending time together.”

  “Dating, spending time together, same thing,” he said. He took my hand and got an even more serious look on his face, “Retta, I know we don’t always get along. I know you miss your mom. I miss her too. But you have to trust me. Nothing’s going to come of this but heartache.”

  “It’s my heart, Dad. And it would get broken by a human boy just the same as by an android. Come to think of it, I don’t even see him as an android. His heart is the same as mine: a heart. That’s all I care about.”

  “That much is obvious,” he nodded, pursing his lips into an expression that told me he was tired of fighting with me. “It’s your life. You’re almost eighteen anyway. But if and when this turns into a fight beyond you and me, remember that I warned you.”

  “What are you talking about? A fight bigger than this?”

  “I mean, I don’t know what will happen if you proceed on this path. I don’t think Hemingway does either. If he did, I’m sure he’d respect the boundaries placed by society between androids and humans.”

  “If they wanted us to stay away from each other, why make them like humans? Why are they so beautiful? Why are they so kind? Why do they let them live among us? It doesn’t make any sense, Dad.”

  “I wish I knew,” he answered, with a frustrated sigh. He shook his head. “But I don’t. I’m just a flower-breeder.”

  The conversation ended there. I went to my room, feeling cold inside and Dad stayed in the front room and kitchen, making himself a midnight snack rather noisily. He was upset. I could tell. But I’d spent my whole life upsetting him, so it wasn’t a new thing.

  I felt extremely alone in my room. I mean, more alone than normal. Dad’s warning—delivered as ominously as possible—had gotten to me and sent me into a gloom spiral. I laid on my bed, wondering what could possibly happen if someone took issue with me spending time with Hemingway. And what if I married him? Or worse, what could happen if I consummated my relationship with him?

  I wanted to. There was no question about that. It was an appealing thought. I mean, I hardly knew what it meant, since I’d never done it. Not even with Stig. No. Sick. I couldn’t even recall wanting to.

  Hemingway made me feel differently about it.

  I began to wonder if a human had ever had sex with an android. Knowing what I knew about the world—which wasn’t much, beyond the cliché expression “if you could imagine it, someone had done it”—I figured they had. When they did, did they explode into a thousand tiny pieces of flesh? Did the android melt into a puddle of metals and skin? Did a squad of law enforcers suddenly appear and arrest both parties?

  The creepy thing was that I could imagine all three scenarios being real possibilities. Everyone knew about the IRS—Information Recovery Services—but how they worked and . . . well, why, was obscured by an ironical lack of information on the subjects.

  A soft tinkling of bells rose through the quiet music I’d put on in my room, which was small, but comfortable. The bed was pushed up against the far wall. There was a glass desk in the corner, a narrow closet for my clothes, and a dresser next to it. Two walls had art on them—flowers, actually, special breeds my dad had done and he hired a photographer to compose three dimensional images of them along with cross-sections and scientific notations. The images rotated. It was pretty cool, in fact, but sometimes I wished I could hang what I wanted to display. It wasn’t worth the fight. The wall above my bed was mostly Gate. The very Gate that was ringing at me.

  I sat up on my bed. Someone was phoning me. I touched the Gate. It was Hemingway. My heart leapt and I began to smile.

  “Hi,” I said, answering the call.

  “You alright?” he asked. His head was tilted down, brow knit together in a look of concern.

  “Well enough. You?” I touched my hair. It was completely messy, what with wearing a hat at the coffee bar and everything that had happened since.

  He nodded. “Honestly? A bit upset. Your dad made me think about things I somehow overlooked.”

  Fear gripped me. “And?”

  “Maybe we’re being hasty.” He didn’t even hesitate in making that comment about being hasty.

  “We’re not,” I said, leaning toward the Gate and nearly falling off the side of my bed. “Who cares what my dad says? He’s a father. Fathers are always insanely protective of their daughters. He would find a reason to disapprove. If it wasn’t that you’re an android, it would be that you’re male. That you have testosterone. You know this. Fathers hate letting their daughters grow up and be around other men.” I knew I was sounding desperate, but the time for caring about that ended when I first realized I wanted him. It was like he pulled the desperation out of me with his intense eyes and stupidly perfect smile. If I wasn’t so smitten with him, I would have simply hated him for being a model of physical perfection.

  He nodded at how much sense I was making, looking thoughtful. “You’re right. True points. But I don’t want to hurt you, Retta. Being with me can hurt you in ways I can’t even imagine.”

  “My dad wants to meet with your mother,” I said quickly, hoping to steer the conversation away from a possible decision to end things. “I think he wants to know more about you.”

  Hemingway smiled. “Really?”

  “Yeah,” I nodded. Beyond him, I could see the walls of his room. There was another window behind him and a bed with rumpled sheets. It looked like he was sitting in an armchair as he talked to me. The walls that I could see were decorated with images of some of the discovered solar systems and a few notable scientists and LED images of other people I didn't recognize. I realized looking into his room, that there was a lot I didn't know about him. The thought of having him ditch me before I got to know all his intricacies and details made my stomach pitch and roll. “Do you think she’d do that? Meet my dad?”

  He looked away, apparently considering it. “Most likely. She’s really busy. But there’s a chance I could convince her.”

  “I mean, why wouldn’t she? Does she hate people?” I asked it before I could stop myself. I swore mentally and then promised myself I’d never open my mouth without thinking twice.

  Hemingway laughed, surprisingly enough. “No. She really is busy. You can imagine, right?”

  “I guess so.” Relief washed over me. Maybe he was getting used to my tactless blunders.

  “Can I come see you tomorrow?” he asked.

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I think so. My dad told Marta he’d take her to the zoo. We can go with or do something else.”

  “Great. I’ll come by at ten.”

  “Perfect.”

  *****

  We ended up at the library. Dad took Marta to the zoo really early and while that sounded super fun—you know, seeing all the caged animals the first colonists brought from Earth—I didn’t want to be with my family. I wanted to be with Hemingway.

>   The library is one of the huge buildings in the center of the city. It’s made to look like a nautilus shell on its back, with the opening pointing up to the dome, and the whole thing sliced down the middle, so you see all the chambers of the shell. I’ve never seen a nautilus shell in real life, just pictures of them. So as far as I know, the shell looks accurate. Even if it’s not, the library is one of my favorite buildings.

  There’s a fountain out front that recycles its own water. Maybe all fountains do that, I didn’t know. I just know this one did because when some of the upper classes wanted to put it in, there was a big fight about it from the scientist class, like my dad. It was a waste of water, a precious resource that we have too little of. But the pro-fountain people won because they illustrated how it would be so good for morale and not only that, water should sometimes be decorative as well as functional.

  After that, several more fountains went in. Like the one where I saw Hemingway throwing in a cappa. I still wonder what he wished for.

  We stopped at the fountain in front of the library and he threw in another cappa and gave me one to do the same. I sat on the edge and tossed it in. The sculptures at the center of the fountain were the two moons, one in a crescent shape, the other shaped like a star—because that’s how it looks to us. Water shot out of them and cascaded over their ridges and contours.

  “What did you wish for?” Hemingway asked.

  “Can’t say,” I said. “Won’t come true.”

  “You think so?” he asked, sitting down next to me.

  I shrugged. “It’s a risk I’m not willing to take. Tell me what you wished for.”

  “It’s the same wish I’ve had for a long time. That’s a clue. I won’t tell you what it is, though,” he said with a tiny smile.

  Nodding, I said, “Oh, I get it. You’re wishing to take over the world. Brilliant. I think you’d make an excellent dictator.” I kept a straight-face as I said it.

  He laughed. “Well, I always thought I’d have a similar style to Kim Jong-il.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Kim Jong-il. He was a terrible dictator during the twentieth century. His people starved but he had them convinced he was taking care of them.” He stared at me. I knew my face looked totally blank. “Sorry, I forget sometimes,” he said, finally.

  “Forget what? That some of us have terrible memories and lack an encyclopedic knowledge of history?” I smiled and gave his shoulder a squeeze. It was all I dared to do, at the moment, even though I wanted to kiss him. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Should we go inside?”

  I stood up. He took my hand and we headed for the large glass doors.

  Maybe some people thought the structure gaudy. I squinted up at the largest chamber and sighed. I thought it was beautiful. I knew from Earth-science that there were places on Earth where deserts had once been ocean bottoms and people could find ancient seashells in the sand. So the giant seashell building in the middle of the Martian desert seemed fitting to me. Perhaps there had once been oceans where New Helsinki now was.

  The library only held a few books. They were costly to send from Earth, and so far, no one had set up a printing shop. It wasn’t incredibly viable, not with the glass interfaces that could access the Web. Each chamber of the library was dedicated to a subject and there were things besides books that you could see. Like in the ancient Earth history chamber, there was a dinosaur skeleton. In the fiction sections, there were wax models of famous characters, like Sherlock Holmes holding an old magnifying glass up to his eye, Romeo and Juliet in a loose embrace, and Genghis Kahn.

  Hemingway laughed at the wax figure of Genghis Kahn.

  “What?” I asked.

  “It’s just, well, you know, right?” he prompted. I shook my head. “Genghis Kahn was real. Not a fictional character. He was a Mongolian tribal leader. It’s just funny that he’s on display here as though he belongs to the fictional world.” He was standing next to the figure, which was dressed in robes and holding a sword.

  “Maybe they didn’t know?”

  “Yeah. Perhaps it’s an oversight. It just seems disrespectful to reduce him to standing among the fictional characters.”

  “I’m sure Romeo and Juliet don’t mind. They’re probably wishing he’d come along and slaughter their families so they can be together,” I said with a laugh, touching the puffy sleeve on the Romeo statue.

  “Poor kids. Their world just didn’t understand them,” Hemingway said, making a tsk-tsk sound and leaning toward Juliet’s face. “She looks so real.”

  “Kind of creepy.”

  “The world never understands love, does it?” Hemingway said, giving me a meaningful glance before strolling away from the Romeo and Juliet display. I caught up to him.

  “Not from the perspective of literature. But maybe that’s just because drama makes a better story,” I said.

  The next chamber was a visual history of robotics. I choked and looked around, wondering if there was a way to escape the room before things got too uncomfortable. “Hey,” I said, trying to get Hemingway to stop and turn around. “Let’s try the history of media. There are really old record players in there. Records! Do we even know what those are?” But Hemingway kept going.

  It wasn’t like this stuff was new to him, was it? I mean, his mind came from the encyclopedia of all history. He knew everything. And evidently had perfect recall, judging from how he was constantly bringing up random facts like that one about Genghis Kahn. I went to his side where he stood in front of a display about transistors. I was really rusty on this stuff, and honestly, before I met Hemingway, I didn’t care about it. The display would have been laughable to me.

  He moved slowly, staring intently at each object and the electronic placards next to them—small Gates with scrolling type. There were displays about air muscles, muscle wires, and electroactive polymers, going up to the big advancements starting with the first types of robots until the exhibit came to the extremely real, biological robotic engineering.

  Hemingway was silent and withdrawn. Anxiety started to churn my stomach. Was he going to freak out? I took a deep breath and went to his side, took his hand, and gave it a squeeze. “You alright?” I asked. It was very grown up and mature of me, I felt. And I was secretly proud of myself.

  He nodded. “Just, seeing the history of my people, displayed like this, as though, well, you know. As though all that we are is a bunch of parts. It’s weird. Kind of hurts.”

  He turned and stared down at me. His eyes were on fire. It looked like there were tears welling up in them. “It’s incredibly insensitive of them,” I said. And I meant it. Why was there an exhibit about androids as though they weren’t alive and living as a segment of our society? I fumed inwardly.

  “We’re more than that, you know?” He studied my face. “You do know, don’t you?”

  “Of course,” I said quickly. “I look at that stuff and it’s totally alien from you and who you are. I don’t even think of you as being related to that history. You’re part of my history.”

  “Let’s go. I hate it in here.” He pulled me away and I hurried along with him.

  7: On the Subject of Procreation

  Hemingway’s mother was tall, for a woman. She had frizzy red hair and wore a pair of eyeglasses that constantly slipped down to the end of her nose. Hardly anyone wore eyeglasses anymore, so it seemed to be a fashion statement, or a refusal to accept the present, that kind of thing.

  I liked her immediately despite the feeling that she was aloof and no-nonsense.

  The four of us met at a restaurant in the posh section of the city early in the evening. Dad, me, Hemingway, and his mother. Hemingway said she was cautious like that, and didn’t invite just anyone over to their place. But I’m not just anyone, I thought to myself. I didn’t say anything of course. Simply nodded like that made complete sense.

  “Well, I think I’ll be having the GE steak and locally grown potatoes,” Hemingway’s mother said, turning off
her menu and looking around to see if anyone else had finished deciding.

  I’m a vegetarian. And even genetically-engineered meats gross me out. And yes, I was enjoying Hemingway’s mother, but now I was going to have to find a way to not look at her plate. Or risk spewing my own dinner all over the table.

  I sighed and found a soup and salad that were totally kosher for a vegetarian. I turned off my menu and watched Hemingway reading his. His eyebrows were kissing in the middle of his forehead and one hand was lightly caressing his chin while the other held the menu. My dad had picked his dinner before we even arrived. He was very familiar with this restaurant. They served everything and had been around almost since the beginning of the colonies. The menu was a veritable book. Sometimes I wondered how they kept that much food around.

  The server came and all of us ordered, even Hemingway, who appeared to have a decision-making problem. He went last so he could have more time to decide.

  After that, they brought us some fancily cut carrots to dip in a creamy sauce and then we sat there, staring at each other. My dad appeared to be sizing up Hemingway’s mother, Sonja Koskinen. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking. He just sat there with his elbows on the table, looking at her over his fists that were balled up in front of his mouth.

  It was becoming uncomfortable for me. Sonja just watched Dad herself, a slight smile touching the corner of her frost-lipsticked mouth. She was a red-head with that swarthy kind of complexion, not the very pale type that you usually see. I guess if you thought about it, there was something alluring about her. As soon as the thought crossed my mind, I felt the fire rushing to my cheeks and I cleared my throat, realizing maybe that’s what my dad was thinking.

  I had to break this up before he got any ideas and ruined everything.

  “So uh, I’m very happy to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot about you from Hemingway,” I began, interrupting the staring contest.