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Rico’s proposition turned out to be so strange that it sent my mind into a chaotic swirl. There was only one thing to do when life got muddled like this. As soon as the workday ended, I hopped in my car and zoomed across the country to a ranch house outside Temecula, California. That was where my father lived.
My car connected with a hypertube, which soared me across the country in about an hour and a half. After I exited the tube’s Los Angeles hub, the car floated down Interstate 15, making it to Temecula in about half an hour. My chest widened with an old joy as I took in the mountains, yellow surfaces speckled with sage bushes and suffused with the rosy tint of early evening. The sprawling one-story house that had been in my family for three generations was dark, but light from windows in the slate-blue barn cut into the gathering dark.
My dad, whom I’d always called Dab, was proudly old fashioned. Air shoes would have pissed him off. So I pulled on some old cowgirl boots and crunched across the gravel to the cadence of bullfrogs, which had survived the Earth’s rising temperatures with certain gene mutations. Their deep, trance-like chant wafted up from the artificial pond my grandfather had built, mingling with the scent of rosemary and lavender.
Above the barn’s double-screen door was a sign that read: “The Bot Shop.” My father specialized in repairing the ones that looked like people, more or less. The barn’s main room was filled to the rafters with broken bots in various sizes and shapes—everything from voluptuous African-warrior-styled sex toys to cooing baby dolls. I had a particular fondness for the clunky old battle-ax nurses with memory afflictions. Nobody in California could put broken robots back on track the way Dab could—maybe nobody in the whole world.
I’d loved playing with the misfits when I was a little girl, especially the ones that people never bothered to pick up and were there for years. How I’d cried when Dab dragged them off to the trash. His soft heart always got the better of him if I carried on long enough. He’d sigh as he put them back on the swinging hooks that revolved around the shop, his mane of rust and silver hair looking like a blaze above his thin body.
Techno-rock music with a sliding thump beat led me to the barn’s back room. Dab was on his guitar, riffing off an old tune. Surprise and love lit his face when he saw me, but there was a certain distance there, too. As much as my father adored me, he treated me with a kind of incredulity.
There was one main question that confounded him: how could he have raised a child who had actively sought to become part of the super-wealthy Elite class from the time she was five? Dab was such a die-hard member of the very slender Middles class. But Elites were even more rarified. The latest stats put them at .005% of the population.
I was the only kid in grade school who wore crisp little blazers and thin bowties, my best simulation of an Elite look, given Dab’s limited budget. Everybody else in my school was into T-shirts blazing out video imagery of esports characters and space dancers.
Working with grinding dedication, I made it through college on a full scholarship. An internship at Victory Star served as a launchpad to rise through the ranks. Eventually, I earned a salary that qualified me as an Elite.
On good days, Dab was just bemused by all this. On bad days it rankled him, that I worked at a company that delivered so much of the content people consumed—and that I was part of a social class that could be so demeaning to everyone else. But not every Elite was that way. Not me.
One time I told Dab my deepest secret. Someday I’d be so powerful that I’d shape what people saw and heard. They’d understand each other more completely, act with more kindness and compassion, if they just held the unadulterated truth in their minds.
He just laughed. “No matter how you slice it, the word ‘shape’ just means ‘control,’ and ‘truth’ is too much for most people to bear, especially the damned Elites. Besides, it doesn’t bring in revenue.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I just don’t think a company like Victory wants to take the kind of gamble you’re talking about.” No amount of arguing would change his opinion that I was naïve, and my plan was destined to fail. “They’ll never let somebody like you into a real seat of power. Your ambition’s out of whack with your morals, Pet.”
“I’ve made it all the way to president of a major division, and nobody’s complained so far,” I’d said. “Yes, I’m keeping certain ideas to myself. But the only way I get to really change Victory—or any other company I might work for—is to watch now and make some waves later. I need to have the right level of influence.”
We never reached a meeting of the minds on that topic. Yet despite our differences of opinion, Dab was the only person I could really talk to about hard things. No matter what, he was on my side. When I was young, he’d sat on the edge of my bed countless times when I couldn’t sleep, saying, “Relax a little. Trust a little.” He’d told me that so many times, I started saying it myself. I needed him now, more than anyone, because Rico had thrown me something so immense; I couldn’t process it.
The old tattoos on my father’s arms were soft as a worn-out handbag as he strummed a ballad so casually it sounded like a conversation. I could feel him wondering why I was there.
“That’s beautiful, Dab,” I said as the song ended. And it was.
“Every year you look more and more like your other father.”
“Can’t help that.” Compact frame, white-blonde hair, gold skin, dark eyes. Yes, it was true. I looked like Geoffrey, my biological dad. It had hurt like hell when he left Dab and me. I was only four when he moved out.
I could still remember lying in the dried yellow grass, looking up into his face as he kissed me good-bye. “Such a little bird,” he’d said in that lilting voice of his. And then he was gone, forever. That was over 40 years ago.
“Jesus that sperm business sucks,” Dab said, bringing me back to the present. The story had broken on the news. He knew how much I longed for a child.
“Victory’s news team keeps hearing rumors that it emanated either from the Antarctic region or Korea,” I said. There had been friction between America and the renegades who had taken over the South Pole. And every few years there was another flare-up with the Asian Commonwealth’s Korean state. Some Congressmen were already threatening trade sanctions and hinting at war. After all, almost a whole new generation of Elite children was at stake.
“But what about you? Still going to try and get preggers?”
“I don’t give up on things.”
“Yep.” Dab lit a fire under a teakettle. He could have just flamed a torch and boiled the water in 20 seconds, but he liked things old school. “Green okay? S’all I got.”
“Sure.”
“Of course, there is another option.”
Anger shot through me. Dab had been working on my guilt for months, trying to get me to adopt a Chav child. There was a little flame of longing in me to do just that. But if I adopted a kid from the vast lower ranks of society, it would be frowned upon by the Elites. It was a law of society. I could be the most popular person in Victory’s highest echelon, but a Chav child would sabotage my reputation and everything I was trying to achieve. It was maddening that Dab was pulling my heartstrings. I couldn’t, absolutely wouldn’t fall into that argument now.
I swallowed my irritation as Dab poured out the tea. “Rico’s suggested a new solution.”
“Which is?”
“He’s developed a really weird technology. He calls it Luceel. After his mother.”
Dab cracked up.
“I don’t know if I really want to do this or not.”
“Lay it on me. What’s the problem?”
My father avoided technology as best he could, so I explained things a little more simply than I would with most people. “You know that data kind of hovers around us in space. People with the right research technology can access all this information instantly, with hardly any effort, wherever we are. There’s not much anybody can keep private anymore, not even their dreams.” The vision of that Brazilian hunk in the Victory elevator flitted to mind, but I quickly tamped it down.
“Go on.”
“Companies can delve into data reserves and find out almost everything there is to know about us—university grades, family history, what we ate for breakfast last Saturday, every little thing we look at on our mobiles. You name it.”
“I’m not a Neanderthal, Pet.”
“No, but you are a little ...”
“Backward.”
“Thank you.”
“And proud of it. Go on.”
“Okay. Rico has figured out how to determine information about the controlling genes in the sperm that men carry around, what kinds of children they’re likely to produce.”
“A wireless sperm analysis?” Dab said acidly.
“You could put it that way.”
“And exactly how did he manage that?”
“He’s hacked into certain medical data pools, very private stuff.”
“So he’s breaking the law.”
“For now. But all this could change if people realize what access to this info could mean.”
“How does he intend to help you with this unlawful activity?”
“He wants to implant a micro-computer chip in my arm. It would recognize data about the sperm of every male that’s near me—which men have sperm that’s normal and which ones don’t. No sperm banks needed; we’d be able to go straight to the healthy ‘source.’ But that’s not all. The Luceel chip will look at a certain man’s personal interests—what intrigues him, what he’s passionate about. Then it would compare that data with what it knows about me. Bottom line, it can figure out not only the sperm thing but also if there’s anyone with the right mental and sexual chemistry that would be in sync with my own—someone I could fall in love with.”
“Jesus H. Christ. Why can’t you just find some guy you’re attracted to, have the bloke’s sperm tested, and hope to high heaven you hit the sperm jackpot?”
“Way too chancy. That hasn’t worked so far, and I don’t have much time. Luceel could speed things up. It wouldn’t just analyze the people I talk to. I could walk into a restaurant, and it might register a match with somebody several tables away that I would never meet under normal circumstances. Or maybe somebody I pass on the street.”
Dab’s skepticism was growing darker. But I plowed ahead, explaining that when the chip hit upon the right prospects, it was able to create holograms of children that my possible lovers and I might conceive. “I’d see visions of a variety of probable children that I could create with any one man, so I’d know what they’d be like. But I’m the only person that would view the holograms. Rico calls them imaginary children.”
“Ha!”
“I wouldn’t just see them. There would be data readouts about the kid’s aptitude, talents, probable health issues, all that kind of stuff.”
“You sure this isn’t imaginary technology? Sounds like some plot to make you go insane.”
“No, Rico’s on my side. He’s never lied to me.”
“As far as you know. But let’s not go there right now. Pet, we both know that two kids from the same two people can look and act completely different, with different attitudes, types of intelligence. Your Uncle Joe and I look like we come from two different planets.”
They behaved that way too. But this was no time to get into that. “The system shows a variety of different possibilities, not just one. Suppose there’s one child I see that I’m really, really drawn to—and I’m able to interest my chosen mate, and he wants that sort of child too. Well, some geneticists can help us. Rico has connections to them. If he describes what we’re after, the geneticists can analyze my lover’s sperm and my eggs, then select the ones that will give us what we want, maybe not exactly, but pretty close.”
“You really believe Rico can do this?”
“Yeah. He’s a genius.” I sipped my tea. “Could be exciting.”
“Or land you in jail.”
“Not likely. It’s all being tested at a time when this damned sperm crisis is undermining the hopes of so many childless people. This could be a solution.”
“Would this Luceel business hurt you in any way?”
There was the computer chip to consider. Rico said it would sting like a bad spider bite after it was inserted, but the pain would decrease with time. I wasn’t going to lie, but I wasn’t going to worry Dab, either. So I just said, “Not much.”
He scowled at me. “You do what you want. You always run headlong into stuff.”
“And I’ve regretted it now and then. But I really want to try this.”
Dab’s hair seemed to flare out suddenly. He was really irate now. “You come here and make me hash this out with you, and you knew what you were going to do all along? Christ!”
I hugged him hard. “I’m sorry, Dabby. I really didn’t. Not until now.”
Dabby. When was the last time I said that? When was the last time we touched? His voice turned thick with that realization as he pulled back to look at me, water pooling in his eyes. “What if this screws up your whole idea of really changing things? What if this experiment goes haywire and damages you physically? It could wreck your career.”
A little spike of fear and anger shot up. “No! That will never happen. I’ll call the whole thing off if things start to go south.”
Dab looked skeptical, but he didn’t say a word. I just had to control what was about to happen to me—as best as anyone could control anything.