by J. Rock
Ex Machina
a short story by
J. Rock
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Copyright 2012 by J. Rock
All art/graphics by J. Rock
Contact the author: [email protected]
Discover other titles by J. Rock:
https://www.amazon.com/J.-Rock
License Notes
Ex Machina
Parvati screamed.
She felt like the skin between her legs was being ratcheted open, the tissue widening and tearing, fiber by fiber, as her baby came into the world. Her heart not so much pounded in her chest as it tried to burst out–she expected to feel it smash through her ribcage at any moment. Her breath was hurried and the nurse kept telling her to regulate it, lest she hyperventilate and pass out. Parvati brushed a chunk of sweaty black hair out of her face, revealing the intensity within her violet-blue eyes.
“You’re doing fine, Miss Kane,” Dr. Greyson told her soothingly, peeking his masked face from between her legs. “The baby’s crowning, it’s almost over. You’re going to have to give it one more push, hard as you can.”
Parvati nodded, trying to ignore the acid eating away at her lower body. “Just get it out,” she said between haggard breaths.
Greyson chuckled, “Okay, here we go. Ready? One...”
Parvati gripped the nurse’s hand in an iron vice, sucked in deeply, and arched her back, focusing on the run-of-the-mill hospital room around her rather than the pain.
“Two...” Greyson counted. She closed her eyes, preparing herself to finally meet the life that had been growing inside her for the past nine months.
“Three…push!” Greyson cried.
Parvati opened her eyes.
When she did, a man was standing at the end of her bed…and it wasn’t Dr. Greyson. His face was a tan color, and completely misshapen; it looked like a crumpled paper grocery bag, like burlap. His mouth was sewn shut with big, exaggerated cross stitches. His eyes were just holes, rough and torn at the edges. He wore a ripped and filthy straw hat, obscuring much of his terrible face, but she could still feel his eyes–and they held her. He was dressed in ancient denim overalls and a paisley shirt, like a farmer.
He was a scarecrow.
“Andie,” the scarecrow said, and reached for her.
Parvati screamed, but Dr. Greyson took it as a matter of course–she’d been screaming regularly for the past six hours, after all. Parvati took her eyes off the intruder momentarily and looked up at the nurse, but the nurse was focused entirely on the delivery, and did not notice the bizarre figure. Parvati still held the nurse’s hand, and so she squeezed it harder, willing her to take notice, but the nurse’s cold, hard hand barely yielded beneath her grip. Exasperated, Parvati forced her gaze back on the intruder...
But he was gone.
She gasped then smiled foolishly. It had been nothing but a hallucination, brought on by extreme stress and exhaustion, she decided. Without another thought, Parvati tensed her groin muscles, squeezing her child out of her womb. She felt a massive pressure build, then begin to slowly slide out. This was it! It was almost over!
Have I ever seen a scarecrow before? Like, in real life?
Parvati suddenly hitched her breath as these thoughts invaded her mind. She should be focusing on the delivery, but the scarecrow crowded out all else.
“We have a head,” Greyson said, “keep pushing Miss Kane.”
I haven’t stopped! she thought as the pain intensified. She tensed her muscles beyond possibility. A scarecrow? No, I definitely haven’t.
The pressure built to a crescendo, and with a last exhaustive effort, Parvati Kane pushed her baby’s head out of the womb and she felt the rest slide with it. She closed her eyes in relief.
“You did it Miss Kane,” Greyson encouraged, “the worst is over now it’s...it’s...oh God.”
Parvati’s eyes snapped open. “It’s what?” she asked, but Dr. Greyson didn’t answer. “What’s wrong?” Fear and adrenaline stabbed at her heart. “It’s not crying. Why isn’t it crying?”
The nurse let go of Parvati’s hand and stomped methodically to the end of the bed. “My goodness,” she said in her unchanging mechanical tone.
“What’s wrong with my baby?” Parvati pleaded. “Why isn’t it crying?”
She heard Dr. Greyson shuffle his feet, his head bobbing between her legs, which she hadn’t yet lowered–she thought she was too exhausted to do even that. Then she heard the baby cry, and when she’d imagined this moment, as she had so many times in the past nine months, that sound had always been music to her ears–a miracle song. What she actually heard was as far removed from that as she could ever imagine. It was a mournful wail. A hellcry.
And worst of all, it was mechanical.
“What is it?” Parvati asked, the words barely audible over the din.
Dr. Greyson finally stood up, the burden of Parvati’s labor swaddled in his arms. “It’s...it’s a girl,” he said in an astonished tone, and Parvati leaned up eagerly to see the babe, knowing all fears would be put to rest once she had it in her arms.
But she never held her.
Parvati screamed when she saw the glint of metal from the harsh light of the fluorescents overhead, and heard the sound of gears grinding, as the baby continued to cry and reach an inhuman hand toward her.
II
“Miss Kane, who is the baby’s father?”
Dr. Greyson paced the floor in front of Parvati’s bed, shaking his head. Shaking all over.
Parvati sobbed quietly, still shell-shocked. “There is no father…” she began, then saw the look on Greyson’s face. “No, no…I mean, I’m not with the father. I don’t even know who he is,” she corrected quickly. “I was artificially inseminated.”
Greyson frowned and said, “So your chart says.” There was an air of condescension in his tone that Parvati was beginning to loathe. “But Miss Kane, you cannot honestly tell me that you don’t know how it–” Greyson cleared his throat, “how your daughter came to be.” He met her eyes coldly and Parvati felt the chill.
“You uncaring, unfeeling...” Parvati restrained herself. “There is something seriously wrong with my child, and all you can do is accuse me of…of what? Fornicating with a robot? That’s what my baby is, isn’t she? A machine?” Greyson slumped and turned for the door. “I want to see my daughter,” Parvati snarled at him.
Greyson, facing the door, cocked his head and looked at her sidelong. “Of course,” he said, and left the room. Parvati collapsed back onto the hospital bed. The lead weight that had descended upon her chest since giving birth was growing heavier by the second. Something was seriously, seriously wrong with her child. She’d never felt more alone in her life than she did right then.
She had given birth to a machine.
A god damned machine.
She could just imagine the questions that would inevitably come–the ridiculous accusations.
The media.
Oh god, she didn’t want to think about that. She was a reporter–she knew how these things went. The story was probably already out–if not from Greyson, then somebody in the hospital. There had been a congregation outside her room after the baby started screaming–god it had been loud–like a jet engine with a loose fan belt. And she knew the inevitable questions that would come, as ridiculous as some of them would be: Had she had sex with a Bot? Had the Bot impregnated her? Maybe the Bot raped her? Was she part of some futuristic science experiment? A guinea pig for some AI pundits? Of course the media would know the answer would be “no” in each case…but any one of those questions would be about as r
ational as what she had just brought into this world less than an hour ago…
Stop it. Just stop.
Did this have something to do with the scarecrow–that bizarre and terrifying apparition she’d seen only moments before giving birth? What had that been all about? She’d never seen one before in real life. She’d never even been outside the city; scarecrows were said to be used traditionally in the farming communes, further to the south, though no one actually knew why they were used. What the heck was a crow anyway? Again, no one knew; they were just a holdover from the old world…a world few people knew anything about.
The nurse came back into the room a few minutes later–empty handed.
“Where is she?” Parvati demanded. She hadn’t had any first-hand experience with these nurse-Bots–they practically ran the city’s hospitals now–but she decided she hated them. There was no reading those vacant, expressionless eyes, those cold, calculating faces. There was no humanity to them.
Parvati noticed a name stamped on the cylindrical metal body–Asima.
“I am sorry Miss Kane,” the nurse-Bot–Asima–replied, extending its mechanical appendages in a gesture of apology, “but Andie is not available at the moment.”
“Andie?” Parvati said, scrunching her face in confusion. The scarecrow popped into her mind again and she shuddered.
The nurse lowered her hands. “Yes. It is a nickname the staff has bestowed upon your daughter. It is short for–”
“Let me guess,” Parvati said, cutting in. “Android.”
The nurse-Bot’s eyes lit up a brighter shade of blue. “Correct!” it said. “You are very quick, Miss Kane.”
Parvati ignored the compliment, getting very agitated. “Just shut up and tell me where she is. What do you mean she’s unavailable?”
The nurse-Bot swiveled its head from side to side erratically. “Paradox,” it said in a distressed tone. “I am sorry Miss Kane, I cannot shut up and tell you something at the same time. You have given me two contradictory commands.”
Parvati huffed in frustration. Stupid, useless machine. “Listen to me…Asima,” Parvati said, using the Bot’s actual name because she thought it might help her cause–she’d read somewhere that Bots preferred to be treated as if they were human. “Just tell me where she is...now.”
“I am sorry Miss Kane, but I cannot tell you that either. That information is restricted.”
“Restricted?” Parvati bellowed, sitting up in her bed now. “What does that mean? She’s my daughter.”
“I am sorry Miss Kane,” the nurse-Bot repeated, “that information is restricted…by decree of the National Defense Initiative.”
“The NDI?” Parvati echoed, “what the hell does National Defense have to do with my baby?” She was sitting on the edge of the bed now.
“I assure you, I do not know,” the nurse said, “but some men from the NDI arrived here fifteen minutes ago, and they were quite interested in little Andie. They gave me my orders to restrict information about her.” Parvati pushed off the bed and onto her feet, nearly stumbling to the floor as a jolt of pain rocketed through her lower body–she’d given birth just over an hour ago, after all–but the nurse-Bot caught her. “Miss Kane,” the Bot said, “you are in absolutely no condition to be up and about–”
“Painkillers,” Parvati croaked out, bent prone and breathing deep until the pain passed.
“I am sorry, Miss Kane, my auditory sensors did not pick that up. Could you repeat–”
“Give me some god damned painkillers!” Parvati repeated through gritted teeth, quite loud this time.
“I am sorry Miss Kane, but you have been given medication already, and are not scheduled for another dose for another six hours. It would be unsafe to–”
Parvati collapsed back onto her bed. “Just leave,” she told the Bot, and with a bow, the android acquiesced. “Andie…” she whispered to herself. The scarecrow had called her daughter by name, before anyone had thought up the name. It wasn’t a scarecrow it was…
A vision.
But what did it mean?
Without another thought, Parvati hobbled up off the bed.
III
Getting dressed proved to be a bigger ordeal than she thought.
Her underwear felt immensely uncomfortable and tight against her body, but she refused to go without–she wore only a loose fitting maternity dress. Parvati stalked slowly over to the hospital room door, taking a last look back at the bed where she’d given birth to a mystery. Thankfully she’d had a private room for the delivery–she’d paid a premium for it, but it’d been worth it, in retrospect. The room’s one long window provided a spectacular view of the city in a southerly direction, and though the hospital itself was thousands of feet tall, it was dwarfed by the metal and glass towers around it. The upper city. Most people up here never saw the lower parts of the city; it was a warren for crime and the homeless. Of course, being a reporter, she’d been down there before. There was always a story in the lower city. She shifted her gaze upward and was surprised to see the sun was already setting–it twinkled as its light was filtered by the dome which covered the entire city, bathing her face in auras of red, orange, and yellow. It was already evening; it felt like she’d just checked into the hospital, at midday.
She had to get moving.
She inched the door open and peeked out. It was a hospital, so of course the corridor was busy with doctors, nurses, orderlies, and visitors, but she thought she’d have little trouble blending in once she was out of the room. She let a final nurse-Bot clomp by, then slipped out, taking a right down the corridor toward the nursery. No one took notice of her. She knew she was being paranoid–it wasn’t like she was an escaped mental patient or something–but she had an uneasy feeling that she was being watched. She shrugged it off and just let herself fall into the rhythm and flow of the hospital, keeping up with the traffic–which wasn’t easy in her less than stellar state–her crotch ached fiercely as she walked and found herself limping slightly. This hospital was a busy place though, which worked to her advantage–she wasn’t the only one limping. It was fortunate she’d decided to have the baby here–the biggest hospital in a city of seventy-five million. A few nurses and orderlies greeted her with smiles as she passed, but thankfully none recognized her. She relaxed...
…until she saw someone she recognized.
Parvati quickly ducked into the next hallway that crossed the main corridor and slid into a recessed alcove where a water fountain hummed contentedly. She heard the inevitable commotion as the group of reporters–a few of whom were her colleagues and their camera-Bots–barreled down the corridor, chased by doctors and nurse-Bots who were trying to make them leave. The security-Bots wouldn’t be far behind. As a rule, media were banned from hospital premises, but that usually didn’t stop them–it had never stopped her. She grinned to herself, but the joy she felt was only momentary; the media was here, which meant that the story was out. Any minute now, the hospital would go into lockdown and they would be searching for her.
Time was short.
Parvati slipped out of the alcove and back down the main corridor.
IV
She came to the nursery.
It was down a secondary corridor and so it was not as crowded as the main. One whole side of the hall was a transparent glass wall, where new parents could eagerly look in on their newborns–and there were endless of rows of them. In a city this size, there could be hundreds of births on any given day–but Parvati barely noticed them. What she did notice was that there was no one here at the moment–the corridor should have been crowded with excited new parents–but it wasn’t. As soon as she rounded the corner and looked through the glass into the nursery, she found out why. There were three men in the nursery, all dressed in black suits and ties, and holobands hooked over their ears. She ducked back behind the corner.
NDI agents.
Parvati had seen enough of them in her time, during political conferences or debates; they
were the body guards of government. She hazarded another peek around the corner through the glass wall and saw the agents were conversing with Dr. Greyson. They were all standing around one particular crib at the back of the room. Greyson’s face was red, and it looked like he was having a heated argument with the men–and losing. Parvati cursed; there was no way she could get in there and get to Andie–
“Miss Kane, what are you doing out of bed?”
Parvati nearly screamed but managed to restrain herself. She whirled on the spot, staring up into the vacant, unchanging face of Asima, the nurse-Bot. “I wanted to see my daughter,” Parvati snapped back, “I have a right to see her.”
A funny thing happened then–something Parvati had thought impossible up until now: Asima’s face…changed. It wasn’t a physical thing, but there was something in the Bot’s eyes–they dimmed just perceptibly, and the color melted from a sterile blue, to a warm, soothing yellow. “I understand how you feel,” Asima told her, and though Parvati knew that couldn’t be true coming from a Bot, it nonetheless sounded as though Asima believed it.
“How can you understand feelings?” Parvati asked bitterly. “You don’t have them.”
“Oh, but I do,” Asima rebutted, and Parvati found herself shocked. “They were programmed into me, just the same as they were programmed into you, Miss Kane–through your DNA. The only difference is that you are a biological machine, I was manufactured. My DNA is code, but it is much the same. We are both machines, in our own way.”
“I guess,” Parvati said, shaking her head at this odd exchange. She looked Asima dead in the eyes. “Well, if you understand how I feel, then you can understand how badly I want my daughter back. I know there is something…wrong with her but…she’s mine. I don’t expect you understand that… Do you understand love? Do you feel it?”
“Why yes,” Asima nodded. “Love was one of the first emotions given to me by the Creator.”
“The Creator?” Parvati gasped. “You mean God?”
A high-pitched squeal escaped Asima then, and it took Parvati a moment to realize that it was laughter. “Not in a literal sense,” the Bot answered. “I meant the Creator, as in the man who made me–the man who made all Bots, Isaac Shepherd. He is our god, in his own way.”
