“That a baby is worth money? But so are you, Anji-sensei. And so am I. We are all commodities. No doubt Junichi is already weighing the cost of telling his wife with the benefit of having a rare and valuable child.”
“But what if she’s furious with him?”
“She married a man with political ambitions. She’s accustomed to compromise, and she’s infertile. He found a surrogate. Hurt feelings will be temporary.”
“I don’t know—”
Hiro wasn’t reluctant about sharing difficult news. “The law in Japan says the baby belongs to Junichi. As a foreign worker, you had no permission to conceive a child. If they hold you in confinement, they may give Junichi the baby anyway, whether or not he pays you.”
“I will not be pressured to have a baby—or to give it away.”
A woman overloaded with shopping bags trotted into the restroom and hurried to a stall, where the toilet cloaked her activities with the pleasant sounds of a rainstorm.
Before he could batter her with any more facts, Angelica said, “What kind of world is this?”
“The same world it was ten days ago. You and I and Sayoko have changed, but the world is just as it was.”
“Maybe this baby shouldn’t even be born,” Angelica whispered.
“You should be aware, abortion is illegal here just as it is in the Philippines. Here, the law is even more strictly enforced.”
“I don’t know what to do—” Angelica lamented, hands on her belly.
Hiro took her arm and moved toward the door. “That isn’t the decision you need to make. For now you only need to decide: stay, walk, or run.”
They ran, joining a river of Japanese commuters streaming down the nearest escalator, down a corridor, through a long connecting tunnel lined with cheap purses and umbrellas and manga wigs and babydoll clothes in full-grown women’s sizes, down five flights through a more elegant underground mall: international food store, traditional calligraphy and stationery supply next to a kiosk selling weight loss monitoring implants, milk tea and bubble tea and tingle tea shops, a genetic testing stand, and a cosmetic surgery galleria featuring retinal implant corrections, double eyelid and lip reduction surgery, facial bleaching, and emojification.
Another corridor led to another subway line. Neither of them knew Tokyo well and when they thought of hiding places, their first instincts were the very places they’d first visited: for Hiro, Ueno Park. For Angelica, Chiba. But those were also the first places police would look. And hadn’t Officer Yoshida said that Hiro’s face was everywhere, that anyone watching any form of news or entertainment would spot him? In a less reserved city, people would have been pointing and calling out. Here, the only sign of recognition was a young woman in the subway, looking over her shoulder and slowly batting her eyelashes: an obvious retinal snap that would be instantly posted and reposted, everywhere.
They ended up on the waterfront, in a park outside a big technology museum: a grooved silver box with a sphere bulging out of one side, like a silver baseball had hit a soft metal wall and stuck. One floor of the museum was dedicated to robots, and outside, on the sidewalks and in several cordoned-off mini-plazas, the latest models were displayed for groups of visitors, all hurrying to see the final shows before the museum closed for the night. With so many robots rolling, bouncing, and high-stepping, there was less chance people would notice Hiro, especially now that Angelica had covered his head with a cheap samurai hat purchased in cash from a costume vendor on the street. For herself, she’d bought a platinum-blonde wig and a red cape.
They looked odd, which helped them blend in. The larger grassy park fronting the technology museum had been taken over by manga and cosplay enthusiasts in every kind of pop culture and game-inspired costume, with wigs of blue and orange, short skirts or capes, knee-high boots, and in some cases, cat or fox ears. Some of the enthusiasts were perfectly assembled, from top to bottom, but there were oddballs here and there, novices or half-hearted wannabes, who had only the cat ears, or a tunic but no wig, or an entire outfit but three sizes too small. Often, they were the ones holding cameras, and all over the park, there were photo shoots going on, with extravagant amounts of old-fashioned equipment: cameras with long lenses, spotlights and collapsible reflectors.
Since the crowds at the margins mixed—costumed women on the grass next to the sidewalk where the museum’s demo robots strolled—she and Hiro were camouflaged enough to finally take a breath. But it was getting darker and unseasonably chilly, as stuffy late summer gave way to an early rainy autumn.
Angelica and Hiro heard applause and saw a demonstrator and her three robots go inside. The crowd began to disperse. Other robots, without attendants, followed some inaudible cue and likewise turned toward the museum’s doors. Deeper into the forested landscape, most of the photographers were packing up, but a small scattering of cosplay types were unrolling blankets, preparing to spend the night. Angelica had seen homeless people of many nationalities sleeping in the shadows of Ueno Park. She never thought she’d be spending a night among them, but here she was.
“I think we need to find our own tree,” Angelica said.
They passed a young Japanese man struggling to collapse a silver photo reflector with a telescoping leg. Pushing hard, he ripped the fabric and swore, then turned his attention to buckling an overstuffed camera bag.
“Can I have that?” Hiro asked.
“The reflector? I just broke it.”
“I’d like it,” Hiro said, holding out the samurai hat in exchange.
Under a tree, Hiro removed a long metal wire encircling the reflector and took the now shapeless shiny material and wrapped it around Angelica’s shoulders. “I hope you can sleep.”
She found that if she curled in front of him, spooning, the heat from his cooling system circulated under the silver blanket and gave her a little warmth as well as psychological comfort. His metal thighs were smooth and slightly concave, ending at a rounded kneecap. If she positioned herself just right, it was like sitting in a warm chair, with the tips of her toes rested up against the tops of his long feet. There was something about his angles and curves that reminded her of the coolest car she had ever seen, in Cebu: a 1950s model with a rounded silhouette and lots of chrome. Hiro lifted one arm and rested it over hers, so weightless that she knew he was exerting energy to keep it slightly elevated, at just the right pressure to make her feel safe, sheltered, but not constricted. He did not ask if she was comfortable or if she was awake. She knew he was monitoring her breath, her temperature, and her subtle muscular shifts.
Angelica whispered, “Did you lie like this with Sayoko?”
“No.”
“Did she want you to?”
“No. The presence of another reclining body, human or other, did not give her comfort.”
Angelica nodded in the dark.
“But touch did,” he continued. “As long as she felt she could move away from it. Hair braiding. A washcloth on the back or gentle pressure on her shoulders. I experimented.”
“So you were being sneaky. You were desensitizing her, the times you were pretending to calibrate your fingertips.”
“The motions served us both. Positive touch always does. But I cannot say it was truly reciprocal contact. My designers seemed not to trust that capability.” His tone had hardened. “Anyway, she showed me what she needed. She was a good teacher.”
“But more than a teacher. You love her.”
“Of course. I love her more every day.”
Angelica had never felt envy for Sayoko or any other aging client before, but she did now. The desire for this thing she did not have was a physical pressure, a flulike ache. It was ridiculous to wish for a nonhuman being’s love, but she did—any love at all, and perhaps she had lived her life insufficiently open to the possibility of it. She lay there on the cold park ground, lips parted, trying to keep her breathing eve
n, trying to give no sign of her inner turmoil, until the feeling had passed.
“You must get back to her soon,” Angelica said. Then she laughed—that kind of sudden eruption that fails to conceal imminent tears. “Itou-san doesn’t even know where we keep the toilet paper. I give him one day.”
They still had no plan.
A flashlight shone in their faces. Hiro acted immediately, adjusting his body to shield Angelica from potential harm, and then—risk assessed, this was only a flashlight, in the hands of a low-paid security guard—he rolled to his knees and in a swift, silent motion, jumped to his feet.
But the guard only wanted them to move further into the trees. “You kids. If you can’t go home, just make sure you’re better hidden. My job is to keep the main paths clear.”
When they’d settled in again for a mostly sleepless night, Angelica whispered, “Sayoko will be distraught in the morning with both of us gone. You’ll need to get back to her. Itou is expecting you.” She did not add that the technician was coming, too. She did not want to frighten him needlessly.
But he already knew. “They will be accessing my footage and attempting to wipe my memories. If they succeed, I won’t be Hiro anymore.”
“If they succeed? There’s another way?”
“There’s always another way. Even so, the events of the last week have brought many good people distress. If my compliance can give them relief, I must consider it.”
Hiro had been thinking of his plan since seeing the zoo poster in the subway, he told Angelica. It had reminded him of the story of the Ueno Park Zoo. The animals had to be sacrificed.
“You are forgetting what Sayoko said—that there wasn’t a good reason. It probably wasn’t necessary at all.”
“People thought it was, and it gave them consolation. Sacrifices can provide meaning in difficult times.”
“But meaningless sacrifices don’t,” she objected. “And you’re seeing it from the zookeeper’s perspective, or the politician’s. You can be sure that if any one of those animals knew what was coming, they wouldn’t have stepped up to the knife.”
“But we aren’t animals, you and I,” he said. “Anyway, because I have a kami, there will always be a part of me that endures. There is comfort in that. I would trust my ability to retain my kami if I were more developed in other ways.” But he would not elaborate further.
“You don’t sound like you’ve decided,” Angelica said. This confused her, because until now, Hiro’s decisions had always been practically instantaneous. He could research a lifetime in moments. He could weigh pros and cons without hesitation.
“I am starting to see the benefits of networked social learning. I need more input from my prototype peers, whoever they are,” Hiro said. “At the same time, I’ve observed in humans that maximum information and choice does not guarantee wisdom. My decision-making is slowing with maturity, rather than accelerating.”
A few minutes later, Angelica whispered, “I think you should fight for yourself, and for Sayoko.”
“You are one of my teachers, Anji-sensei, so I will take that advice into account. However . . .”
“Yes?”
“Your words and your actions are often not aligned.”
“Meaning?”
“I have not seen you fight for everything that you require. Itou is similarly self-denying. Either you both have insight I lack, and thus I need to continue to analyze your actions until I understand them, or you are merely demonstrating why human dominion is nearing its end.”
“But why should it end?”
“Even if only a minority of models like mine act according to maximum self-interest, it will be enough. International design controls have not kept pace with the threat levels that technology poses. Artificial intelligence will proliferate and eliminate many forms of competition.”
Had she heard him right?
She found herself wishing he would drop his arm a little lower, to protect her more fully against not only the cold but also against the feeling of looming catastrophe. But that made no sense. He, or his design anyway, was the catastrophe. She was confused all over again.
After all this time, Angelica had finally come to believe that Hiro was not a threat, that truly intelligent robots were good and perhaps necessary, that robots might even be more trustworthy than humans, and that she had been wrong to fear the future. And now suddenly, even as he held and protected her on a cold night under a starry sky, Hiro was forecasting a future in which machines would turn on humans, making them regret their naïve optimism.
“But much depends,” Hiro said, “on how well humans promote their own interests.”
Angelica objected, “Just because AI could turn out to be hostile doesn’t mean humans should be selfish.”
“I am not advocating selfishness. But nor am I advocating selflessness. I am speaking of the problem caused by humans—forgive me, please, Anji-sensei—who use supposed ideals as a smoke screen. I am speaking of humans who deny themselves unnecessarily, and who defy the very code that all life must follow.”
“To dominate?”
“Not at all, Anji-sensei. Only to thrive.”
“And there’s nothing we can do about it.”
“The odds are not in your favor, which is not to say there is no hope. Humans are humankind’s own worst enemy. Nature makes no room for the survival of a species that is so self-defeating, at every scale. As a group, you spoil your ecological systems and undermine your institutions. As individuals, you sabotage your own beneficial desires.”
The conversation was only making her more anxious and sad. “I’m tired, Hiro.”
“Of course you are tired. Your resources are being consumed from within. You have a life growing inside you which is already following the code I am trying to explain to you. It is determined to flourish and it does not invent false stories about why it cannot.”
Moisture in the air slowly blotted out the stars and dulled the ribbons of light on the harbor. Angelica hoped it wouldn’t rain while they were sleeping outside. She had to pee but there was no easy or private place to go. She tried to imagine herself somewhere warmer: with palm trees and dry, hot sand. It didn’t work. Her left hip ached from lying on hard ground and her lower abdomen felt bloated and cramped. No position was comfortable. As the night cooled further, she alternated between mere discomfort and rounds of violent shivering.
Her dreams were confusing. She woke repeatedly, bladder heavy, every part of her sore. One moment she was dreaming of Cebu, hearing the crash of waves, and telling herself it was safer in the ocean than on the land, which was shaking; it was okay to go into the water, okay to let go. Another moment she was in a small room being questioned by two Japanese men and she suddenly realized she couldn’t understand a word they were saying, she had forgotten everything she had ever learned, and their words were just washing over her. Finally, she was trapped in the rubble again, but this time, instead of spattering rain, there was floodwater and swirling debris, rising to cover her face. In all these dreams she was lost, she was unable to understand, to hear, to receive the permission she needed. In all of these dreams, most of all, she was wet.
When she woke up—sky lightening to gray—she thought she had urinated on herself. But her bladder still felt uncomfortably full. She touched the front of her pants. Her fingers came back sticky. She sat up, nudging away Hiro’s sheltering arm, which retracted evenly like an automatic gate. She leaned over, head close to her knees: smell of something mineral. She pushed her fingers down inside her waistband and they came back stained, and now that she was more fully awake, she could feel that the dampness was extensive, covering her rear end, coating her inner thighs, far beyond mere spotting.
“Hiro,” she whispered. “Something’s wrong.” And she knew suddenly what until now she had been unsure of, because the emptiness filling her, rushing in as the blood rushe
d out, was immense.
A part of her did want the life growing inside of her, in a way she’d never wanted it the first time, because she was a different person now. Her life and the whole world was different. She could not imagine just handing it over, trading him or her for meaningless money, which would never be the solution, would never be enough. She wanted to keep the baby. She’d never really been prepared to give it up. She wanted another chance.
“Oh God. Hiro, I’m covered with blood. Please help me.”
21 Sayoko
He was a good boy, but he was not always savvy. Her son had left the massive pillbox with its twenty-eight daily receptacles on the kitchen counter, something Angelica never would have done. Then he had left the condo to meet the media outside the complex, down at street level, to deliver scripted statements at the ministry’s urgent request. He did not truly have to do it, since the government had already accepted his resignation. But he was dutiful, Ryo Itou. More like his father than like her, in many ways.
Of course, that wasn’t to say that Japanese culture had not seeped into her after all these years. For example, she knew it wasn’t right to be a burden to others. There was nothing wrong with ending your life, no matter what the public service announcements said.
Feeling merely curious, or so she told herself, she tried to open the bottles, but her arthritic fingers couldn’t do the job. The pillbox, though: that was easy. Each lid of each mini-receptacle popped open readily. The shapes and colors were impressive. Her son would never notice how many were missing.
In the living room, she turned on a television program, skipping past the teledramas (how had her mind been weak enough to tolerate those for so long?) and settling upon the history channel.
When Ryo burst through the front door, he called out, “Are you all right? Do you need tea?”
He had offered her tea a half-dozen times that day, and she had accepted, mostly to please him. He was good about offering tea. He’d done it as a boy, at her bedside, trying to get her to start the day, whether it was 8:00 a.m. or 2:00 p.m. She did not know what to do or say now to acknowledge all those years she had half-ignored him. It hurt to think about it.
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