Javier did not feel fear in any organic way. The math reflected a certain organic sensibility, perhaps, the way his simulation and prediction engines suddenly spun to life, their fractal computations igniting and processing as he calculated what could go wrong and when and how and with whom. How long had it been since he’d last seen Junior? How much did Junior know? Was his English good enough? Were his jumps strong enough? Did he understand the failsafe completely? These were the questions Javier had, instead of a cold sweat. If he were a different kind of man, a man like Kevin or any of the other human men he’d met and enjoyed in his time, he might have felt a desire to grab Brigid or hit her the way she’d hit him earlier, when she thought he was endangering her offspring in some vague, indirect way. They had subroutines for that. They had their own failsafes, the infamous triple-F cascades of adrenaline that gave them bursts of energy for dealing with problems like the one facing him now. They were built to protect their own, and he was not.
So he shrugged and said: “You’re right. There are some things you just can’t teach.”
They went to the bedroom. And he was so good, he’d learned so much in his short years, that Brigid rewarded his technique with knowledge. She told him about taking Junior to the grocery store with her. She told him about the man who had followed them into the parking lot. She told him how, when she had asked Junior what he thought, he had given Javier’s exact same shrug.
“He said you’d be fine with it,” she said. “He said your dad did something similar. He said it made you stronger. More independent.”
Javier shut his eyes. “Independent. Sure.”
“He looked so much like you as he said it.” Brigid was already half asleep. “I wonder what I’ll pass down to my daughter, sometimes. Maybe she’ll fall in love with a robot, just like her mommy and daddy.”
“Maybe,” Javier said. “Maybe her whole generation will. Maybe they won’t even bother reproducing.”
“Maybe we’ll go extinct,” Brigid said. “But then who would you have left to love?”
