It started with a meal. It usually did. From silent prison guards in Nicaragua to singing cruise directors in Panama, from American girls dancing in Mexico and now this grown American woman in her own car in her own country, they started it with eating. Humans enjoyed feeding vN. They liked the special wrappers with the cartoon robots on the front. (They folded them into origami unicorns, because they thought that was clever.) They liked asking about whether he could taste. (He could, but his tongue read texture better than flavour.) They liked calculating how much he’d need to iterate again. (A lot.) This time, the food came as a thank-you. But the importance of food in the relationship was almost universal among humans. It was important that Junior learn this, and the other subtleties of organic interaction. Javier’s last companion had called their relationship “one big HCI problem.” Javier had no idea what that meant, but he suspected that embedding Junior in a human household for a while would help him avoid it.
“We could get delivery,” Brigid said. That was her name. She pronounced it with a silent G.
He nodded. “That’s fine with us.”
He checked the rearview. The kid was doing all right; Abigail was showing him a game. Its glow diffused across their faces and made them, for the moment, the same colour. But Junior’s eyes weren’t on the game. They were on the little girl’s face.
“He’s adorable,” Brigid said. “How old is he?”
Javier checked the dashboard. “Three days.”
The house was a big, fake hacienda with the floors and walls and ceilings all the same vanilla ice cream colour. Javier felt as though he’d stepped into a giant, echoing egg. Light followed Brigid as she entered each room, and now Javier saw bare patches on the plaster and the scratch marks of heavy furniture dragged across pearly tile. Someone had moved out. Probably Abigail’s father. Javier’s life had just gotten enormously easier.
“I hope you don’t mind the Electric Sheep …”
Brigid handed him her compact. In it was a menu for a chain specializing in vN food. (“It’s the food you’ve been dreaming of!”) Actually, vN items were only half the Sheep’s menu; the place was a meat market for organics and synthetics. Javier had eaten there but only a handful of times, mostly at resorts, and mostly with people who wanted to know what he thought of it “from his perspective.” He chose a Toaster Party and a Hasta La Vista for himself and Junior. When the orders went through, a little lamb with an extension cord for a collar
“It’s good we ran into you,” Brigid said. “Abby hasn’t exactly been very social, lately. I think this is the longest conversation she’s had with, well,
Javier nodded like he understood. It was best to interrupt her now, while she still had some story to tell. Otherwise she’d get it out of her system too soon. “I’m sorry, but if you don’t mind …” He put a hand to his belly. “There’s a reason they call it labour, you know?”
Brigid blushed. “Oh my God, of course! Let’s get you laid, uh, down somewhere.” Her eyes squeezed shut. “I mean, um, that didn’t quite come out right—”
Oh, she was so cute.
“It’s been a long day—”
She was practically glowing.
“And I normally don’t bring strays home, but you were so nice—”
He knew songs that went this way.
“Anyway, we normally use the guest room for storage, I mean I was sleeping in it for a while before everything … But if it’s just a nap …”
He followed her upstairs to the master bedroom. It was silent and cool, and the sheets smelled like new plastic and discount shopping. He woke there hours later, when the food was cold and her body was warm, and both were within easy reach.
The next morning Brigid kept looking at him and giggling. It was like she’d gotten away with something, like she’d spent the night in a club and not in her own bed, like she wasn’t the one making the rules she’d apparently just broken. The laughter took ten years off her face. She had creams for the rest, and applied them.
Downstairs, Abigail sat at the kitchen bar with her orange juice and cereal. Her legs swung under her barstool, back and forth, back and forth. She seemed to be rehearsing for a later role as a bored girl in a coffee shop: reading something on her scroll, her chin cradled in the pit of her left hand as she paged through with her right index finger, utterly oblivious to the noise of the display mounted behind her or Junior’s enthusiastic responses to the educational show playing there. It was funny—he’d just seen the mother lose ten years, but now he saw the daughter gaining them back. She looked so old this morning, so tired.
“My daddy is going out with a vN, too,” Abigail said, not looking up from her reader.
Javier yanked open the fridge. “That so?”
“Yup. He was going out with her
