by J. S. Morin
Still in costume, Abby looked just like the archival footage of the Eves from Creator’s lab. Except in those old videos, none looks quite so stiffly furious as Abbigail Fourteen. “That’s the truest rendition anyone’s given yet of my mother’s first exposure to the outside world.”
Leslie, with a vantage well over Abby’s head in her heels, squinted at the studs the actress wore in her portrayal of a human lab rat. “Did you really get spikes drilled into your head for this role?”
“They’re glued on,” Abby replied through gritted teeth. She turned to visit with other patrons.
“But you did shave your head,” Leslie observed to Abby’s back.
Abby froze. “Yeah. Might keep it shaved, too. Nothing’s so frivolous as worrying about hairdos.”
Leslie tensed. Alex felt it in the tightening of her arm around his. He waited until Abby had mixed back into the dwindling crowd before commenting. “Envy is ugly,” he whispered.
Stoke conflict. Draw contrast. Divert emotional energy.
“If she had hair like yours, she’d never have shaved it for a silly play.”
Alex had come to needle his political target. Abbigail Fourteen was so easy to understand she practically came with a readme file. Alex had impugned Eve Fourteen’s reputation, and the dutiful daughter rallied to her aid with a stage play. Sad, really. Pitiful. How could the girl form a meaningful defense with such a limited skill set?
“Want to stay in New York tonight?” Leslie asked as they exited the theater.
Bold. Direct. Tempting.
Alex’s personal code would have normally told him to reject the offer out of hand. But as with his newborn political aspirations, there were times when circumstances shifted, and with them came a new set of priorities. If Alex was to become to the leader of mankind, there would be an expectation for him to act as an example.
To lead humankind, he would have to demonstrate his humanity.
It seemed a reasonable price to pay to have his scientific career within his own control.
“I’d love to,” Alex replied, and he led the way into to one of the automated hotels that catered to tired human visitors. He hoped that between their arrival and the subsequent rituals, he’d have a private moment to look up a refresher on just what was expected of him.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
The hot water from the shower felt so good as it washed away the slick of sweat and the tacky residue of the glue spots all along Abby’s bare scalp. If this had been the olden days, she might have kept the annoying studs on for the run of the show—a week or more—just to save the hassle of reapplying them each performance. But luckily she lived in the modern world where one show was enough for everyone who cared to see it.
There was a recording for anyone who might have missed it through unavoidable circumstances.
Bare skin was so easy to maintain. There was no need for shampoo, and Abby realized halfway through her shower that she was clean. Aside from getting used to cold breezes atop her head and the societal inertia that carried through a millennium via recorded media, there was little reason to grow her hair back.
Mom and the others from Creator’s lab had grown their hair out as much in rebellion as anything. Evelyn11 wanted it short; they let it grow long. Aunt Phoebe in particular had always made a statement with elaborate styling and colors. It occurred to Abby that perhaps she would be spitting in the face of that protest by keeping hers shaved. But after filling Eve14’s shoes for one evening, Abby felt otherwise.
“It’s an homage,” she told herself, voice echoing in the washroom acoustics. “I’m not going to forget, and I’m not going to let everyone else forget what happened back then.”
Thus resolved and finished with her surprisingly brief shower, Abby shut off the water and toweled dry. As the washroom’s humidity controls kicked in, the mirror condensation faded away.
Abby snatched the towel tight around her as an intruder stared back at her. The intruder mimicked her panic. “Oh, it’s me.”
She hardly recognized herself. The person in the mirror could have been any of her aunts or her mother, if they’d shaved bald. A quick glance wasn’t enough to pick out subtle details like the glint from Mom’s optical implants or the faded scar by Aunt Olivia’s lip. Right then, Abby was a blank slate. Mom was twice her age but hardly showed those years.
Abby had always been prone to overthinking things. Action was such a rash course to take compared to thought experiments. But even knowing that, she lost a good half hour just pondering the implications. Without something so basic as her own personal hairstyle, she could pass for any woman in her family.
Still wrapped in a towel despite being long since dry, Abby headed down to the kitchen for a bite to eat. It was well past midnight, but that didn’t mean much when she kept her own schedule. An evening performance in New York followed by an autopilot skyroamer trip back to Paris had eaten the hours and the daylight. In fact, dawn couldn’t be too far off, now that Abby considered it.
Discarded on the kitchen table upon her arrival, she noticed a message on her portable computer. The sender was Dad.
Without hesitation, Abby popped open the message.
CONGRATS, PUMPKIN! SO PROUD. WISH I COULD HAVE BEEN THERE.
Abby felt the same, but she knew why he hadn’t come. There was no way Mom was going to sit through a reenactment of those dark days. Setting them to music wouldn’t have earned Abby any points, either. And much as the story would have been more historically accurate with the protagonist’s cooperation, Mom still wouldn’t even give an interview for the play.
Buried in the simple message, there must have been a read trigger. Because not a minute later, there was an incoming call on the Social.
Checking that there wasn’t a video option enabled, Abby sat down on the couch in just her towel and answered. “Hey, Dad. What’re you doing up?’
“You know me. I don’t need much sleep,” Dad replied. “I caught the live feed of your play. Excellent work!”
“You’re not sore about Nigel playing you?” she asked warily.
“You kidding?” Dad said. “I never looked so good. I’m considering getting him to play me at committee hearings and doctor’s visits.”
Abby cringed before she asked, “Mom watch, by any chance?”
Dad sighed. “Nah. She let me alone to watch in peace, though. I gave her my glowing review, and she said to pass along her congratulations.”
Wow, Mom. Way to praise. Nice to know you approved and watched in absentia. Especially since it was her reputation Abby was protecting.
“You think I offended her?” Abby asked.
“Oh, Pumpkin. Don’t worry about your mother. She’s just being an old lady. I know what you’re trying to do for her, and I appreciate it.”
“I just hope it’s enough…”
“Enough?” Dad asked, his cheery, supportive wall cracking for the first time. “You think one play is going to win over popular opinion while your mom’s credibility gets dragged back and forth over the barbed wire daily?”
“Well,” Abby said, stalling for time. Really, it was a matter of degrees of success. She anticipated a swell of support for Mom. Robots weren’t as prone to forgetfulness—or selective memory—as humans. But those voters Alex courted were human. “Shoot. No. I guess I was hoping exposing Alex’s lies about Mom would make his whole case for elections crumble. Probably not going to happen that way, huh?”
“Listen, Pumpkin,” Dad said, lowering his voice. “There is a whole wide world out there besides Paris and New York. It’s a world filled with factories that make humans and laboratories where they play with dark energy. Probably a bunch of other crazy stuff, too, but I don’t follow science news. Point is, there’s a lot more at stake here than one play can fix—no matter how spectacularly awesome it might be or how catchy the songs are. If you don’t like the way the world is heading, you’re going to have to do more than hint at where you’d rather see it sail.”
“You’re mixing metaphors again,” Abby pointed out.
“Short version: Alex is going to win the election,” Dad said. “That is, unless you do something personal about it.”
“Why can’t Mom just—”
“I tried,” Dad snapped. A breath later, he was calm again. “I tried. You know how stubborn your mom can get. She has too much to do. She trusts the system she’s built. If she wasted her time, she’d just be derelict in her job and prove she didn’t belong as chairwoman. I’ve heard every argument, but it all boils down to this: she hasn’t got the stomach for Human Era politics, and that’s what Alex is using.”
“If Mom sees that, why can’t anyone else?”
“Everyone sees it. But it’s fair game. Democracy is a contest of charisma loosely wrapped around ideas. Your mom thinks the Second Human Era is smarter than the first.”
“I agree,” Abby said without hesitation. There were faults galore in modern society, but a lack of intellect was certainly not one of them.
“Me too,” Dad allowed, “but that’s not the point. Politics wasn’t about smarts in those days. I can’t go out there and shill for Eve. I barely rate above Charlie7 on the social least-wanted lists. But you can. You can campaign for the world you want to see.”
“I’m a mess,” Abby said. “I’m barely keeping one career together.”
“You’re not a mess,” Dad assured her with paternal naivety. If only he knew half of what Abby ingested from week to week. “I believe in you. You’re a born public figure.”
“Same as every other clone,” Abby muttered.
“I don’t mean like that,” Dad put in quickly. “You’re filled with ideas. You’re overflowing with them. But you bottle them up and only leak certain ones onto a computer screen when you need a new play or song. Share your view of the world with people. Paint a picture of the way things could be, and you’ll discover that more of them want a hopeful future than a heap of complaints about the way things are.”
Abby huffed. Did she have a hopeful vision for the future of Earth? She had plenty of predictions about where it was headed. Her social circle often kicked around ideas for utopian living. But that was merely a mixture of ennui and booze talking.
With a thoughtful frown, Abby considered that point. Governments had been founded on far less stable footing in the past.
“Any ideas where to start?” she asked since Dad seemed ready with all the answers today.
“You need to be where everyone is looking…”
Chapter Thirty-Nine
It was a warm breezy day in the prairie. Alex Truman stood on the fuselage of his skyroamer, looking out over the crowd that had gathered at Kansas Agrarian Zone 017 - Distribution & Processing Center 23. Everyone was so keen on the Eve14 story in the five days since the stage play version that he felt it only appropriate to appropriate one of the sets from the play and take ownership of it in real-world terms.
A haphazard fleet of aircraft scattered the wheat fields, crushing crops that were weeks from being ready to harvest. Small price to pay for arranging this gathering. Most of the parked vehicles were standard skyroamers. A few had been custom modified beyond the basic human-comfort standards. There were also two mobile habitats of a sort that were growing popular among the less homebound emancipated humans parked on the outskirts of the gathering, along with an agrarian hauler that Dr. Toby had obtained from one of his namesakes.
In all, Alex counted fifty-one attendees. But Gerry with the camera was the one who mattered most. While everyone present would hear his words and see his reactions up close and personal, the broader audience he hoped to reach was gathering around portable computers and living room media screens.
“Friends,” he called out, spreading his arms high overhead. He paused long enough for the buzz of conversation to die down. “Welcome to my object lesson in production control. In the late Human Era but before the digital revolution, there was a system of population management that put all the tools of civilization in the hands of a powerful few. Today, I show you how to break that cycle of dependence.”
Milling at the edges of the crowd, Alex’s friends separated from the audience and headed for the main ground-level entrance to the agrarian facility. Automatons streamed in and out from the fields and orchards within a hundred kilometers of the site. Slow-moving haulers flew through openings in the upper floors. Irene and Xander toted a steel beam over to the main doors, wobbling under the weight, as Wendy followed along with a welding torch.
“Right now, robots control everything,” Alex said, voice amplified through a system at his feet that modulated the sound wave to be clearly heard throughout the area. “Agrarian Committee… all robots. Logistics Committee… all robots. Processed Foods Committee… all five members of that esteemed club are robots. I could go on, but you all know the ending of that story. The robots have the means to feed us or starve us.”
“They wouldn’t starve us!” someone in the crowd shouted.
Predictable. Anticipated.
Alex had practically written the outburst into his own remarks, but he hadn’t needed to.
Alex spread his hands. “I’m not suggesting that they would. All I’m saying is that they could. And that should frighten you. Our food supply is managed in concert with the hand-fed animals that still don’t live in self-sustaining biomes. It hasn’t happened yet, but what if a sudden explosion in wild populations required an unexpected influx of processed food? What if through some automated protocol, our meal supply was diverted to the Amazon jungle or the wilds of Indonesia? What would we do for food without the robots making their deliveries?”
An unexpected voice called out from the front of the crowd. “I’d go dig up my garden and live on basil and mint leaves until I could talk some sense into the committees.”
Abbigail Fourteen climbed up onto the skyroamer beside Alex. She had been the one to answer his rhetorical question.
But where had she come from? Thinking quickly, Alex scanned the spectators. He’d thought little enough of it at the time, but having Theresa Twenty in the audience had been a tiny coup that warmed Alex’s heart in the moments leading up to the rally. Where was Theresa now?
Gone.
A wig. It must have been. That had been Abby in disguise.
Oh, well played.
Alex chuckled uneasily along with the crowd’s more genuine mirth. “Point taken. We’d probably find a way to live through it. But this whole discussion is allegorical. I can accept that human control of the food system may be less efficient. It might lead to hiccups and mismanagement. But I guarantee you we won’t get forgotten about, deprioritized, or—Fraley forbid—have control of the food supply used as a hostage to control us.”
Alex pointed, and his friends leapt into action. Sliding closed the main gate to the agrarian factory via manual override, they blocked off the flow of automaton workers. The ones trying to rectify the barrier were stymied by Leslie and Stephen, who took advantage of their human-avoidance protocols to impede them merely by stepping into the way. Meanwhile, Wendy welded a bar in place to keep them from re-opening the gate.
Problem solving wasn’t in the circuits of these mindless humanoid tools.
“Cute,” Abby said, keeping her voice raised to get caught on Alex’s amplifier. He considered shielding the mic to silence her but knew the optics of such an unsporting act wouldn’t play well to the crowd.
Unafraid. Roll with the unexpected. Adapt. Prevail.
“But I wouldn’t think intentionally sabotaging the food chain would be the way to make your point.”
“As I said earlier: a practical demonstration.”
“Practical would be starting your own farm and doing better than the robots,” Abby argued to a chorus of snickers. Abby leaned in front of Alex, placing an arm across his shoulders. Alex stiffened at her touch but kept his composure. “Besides, who wants to manage the industrial farms? I see… painters, inventors, media personalities out here in the crowd. Raise
your hand if you want to give up your day job and program farm-bots.”
No hands went up.
Problem. Refuted premise. Missing assumption.
His skin crawled with the unwelcome familiarity of his adversary. The hand on his shoulder bled alien warmth through the fabric of his shirt. Fighting back an urge to thrust her away—an urge that no doubt would have been political suicide if caught on camera—he focused on the cold, dry facts of his argument.
Political theory suggested that food security was a primal worry of sapient creatures. A man might accept servitude if it meant his family would get fed. The entire feudal system had been built around that notion. The communist revolutions had relied on that fundamental truism.
Had the robots bred a generation that didn’t know enough to fear starvation? So it would seem.
“There are plenty of agricultural factories,” Alex explained stiffly. “Would you rather I shut down Kanto? This is all for educational purposes.”
“Lotta weapons for a classroom,” Abby pointed out, drawing attention to the dark energy weapons strapped to the forearms of Alex’s loyalists. The same gesture resulted in Abby disentangling herself from his person.
Relief. Personal space reestablished.
With a tight sigh to realign his wits, Alex redoubled his efforts on the debate, assessing Abby’s words without her proximity interfering.
Cagey. Attempting to shift narrative. Possibly successful. Unfortunate. Stronger tactics required.
“Who came here to listen to Abbigail Fourteen, daughter of our misguided ruler Eve?” Alex asked the crowd. He raised his hand as an example that no one else mimicked.
Guiding question. Silence. Predictable. Pause for effect.
But Abby beat him to the punch. Her timing was off, but that seemed less important to her strategy than stealing the initiative. “Who came to glorify vandalism and listen to a condescending lesson in creating straw man arguments?”
