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It took two bloody weeks for the children to emerge. There was no warning that something was finally about to happen as I sat in my office discussing my least favorite thing, next year’s budget.
“What’s a mill here or a bill there, given the trillions of dollars in revenue this place makes?” I teased Victory’s chief financial officer, Andiko Germaine. It was so much fun, baiting him with inflammatory comments like that.
The soft layers of skin around his throat wobbled a bit as he let out an admonishing “Petra.” His voice was like a guitar string tuned to fear. “Your department is already 10 percent over last year’s budget.”
“Yes, I know. But here’s the thing: we have a whole new group of space tumbler starlets in Asia about to break. They’re going to need more security and a much better anti-gravity tank for rehearsals in Tok—”
My stomach dropped about 30 feet as a series of children flicked into view near my long polished-steel table. The holograms were extraordinarily vivid and still as statues. There must have been 20 imaginary little ones in a long line.
Andiko stared at my gob-smacked face. “Are you alright?” He clearly wasn’t able to view the holos.
“So sorry. Just picked up a really urgent message,” I said, motioning to my invisible mobile screen hovering off to one side of me. “Would you mind awfully ...?”
“I’ll have my assistant contact yours for a follow-up,” he said, putting away his files.
“Why don’t we fly to Paris and talk over lunch next Monday? It’ll be much more civilized.”
He glowered. “That isn’t the kind of T&E that’s permitted for this sort of thing.”
“Oh, shut up. I’ll pay for it mys –” I gasped, making Andiko jump. A completely different series of children had emerged near the door. Christ! It was an even longer line than the first.
“Are you okay?”
“Muscle cramps.”
Andiko’s chin wobbled again. “Dear, dear, dear. So many problems.” He nearly passed through the second group of children on his way to the door, making me squirm. My face was all innocence as he turned back. “Perhaps you need a recommendation for a pharma?”
“That’s kind of you, but mine is already on it.” He would have been amazed to discover that my personal pharmacist was none other than Victory’s head of creative sciences.
I locked my door behind him and stared at the two sets of kids, which were apparently instigated by my proximity to two men that I’d find highly exciting. Or at least the Luceel system thought I would. Who were the Prince Charmings, anyway?
I scratched at the underside of my right forearm, where the Luceel chip was implanted. When Rico put in the quarter-inch piece of metal and plastic, it had been fairly painless. The red cut mark was small, and the itch was nothing. At least that’s what I kept telling myself. Rico said it would go away, eventually.
Good heavens. Was Luceel reacting to Andiko? Was he the hypothetical father? Calm the hell down, I told myself.
Among the line of children by the door, there was a boy who was arresting. He had sunny blonde hair. My bio father, Geoffrey, had hair just like that, so long ago. The kid looked like he might be 12. Those deep-chocolate eyes seemed to say: “I know all the secret passcodes to your financial accounts, and I only stole 50,000 Americos.”
“Oh darling, your middle name will be Trouble, if I get my hands on you. Now how would you like that?” I whispered. The boy’s mischievous expression didn’t change.
As I drew closer to him, a stream of statistics popped into view near his left ear. Looked like he would have the aptitude to pick up foreign languages with great ease, even without learning enhancers. No mobile translation software needed! He also had the kind of left-brain attributes that could make him a brilliant mathematician.
On the other hand, he was likely to develop leukemia. DNA editing would definitely be in order, if I chose the man who had the controlling genes to make that kind of boy. Might be costly. Hellz, don’t hold back. That little handful would be worth the price, or whomever else you decide on.
I called Rico on my mobile, trying to control my breathing, which came and went like I was running a marathon. His hello had an “I’m swamped so this better be good” tone to it. At least he didn’t bother to talk about the damned weather like he usually did.
“It’s happening.”
“What?”
“You have to ask?”
“Oh, right, right. On my way.”
As I waited for Rico to arrive, I studied the next child by the door, and the next, and the next. But none of the others were as exciting as the Geoffrey-like boy.
I moved on to the other grouping by the table. Two of the children were very striking. There was a girl that couldn’t have been more than 10 with wispy white-blonde hair that was so much like my own at that age. Her eyes looked startled, all the more so because they were light bluish-gray, like dove wings.
Seven children over, there was an auburn-haired toddler in bunny rabbit pajamas with a sleepy sweetness. His data showed he’d be smart enough. Still, there was a pesky little marker indicating he might develop obsessive-compulsive disorder. More DNA edits would be necessary.
I went back over to the startle-eyed girl to read her stats. She had very high IQ and emotional intelligence as well as a great aptitude for visual artistry and communication. There were no physical problems of any kind. Correction: The girl would be like that, if she were conceived.
# # #
“HAVE YOU TESTED THIS on anyone else?” I’d asked Rico when he first explained the technology to me.
“Of course. It’s been in the clinical trial stage for some time now.”
“Give me some names. I want to speak with someone who’s been through this.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Why? Are you afraid of what they’ll say?”
The dead spot in his eyes intensified. “You’ll have to play by my rules or don’t play at all. I don’t want anyone to influence how you react to this.”
He resisted all my arguments. Finally, I stopped pestering him. There were other things to think about. This experiment wasn’t all about me, after all. Luceel could mean so much if it ever went on the market.
The sperm-bank crisis was emotionally devastating to so many couples who couldn’t conceive healthy children by natural means, and to single women who didn’t have the right male companion to rely upon.
The virus was infecting sperm banks, but not the little squigglies inside men. There was one solution: hire a stud for an extremely fast artificial insemination or take him to bed a few times. Needless to say, many women found the latter option a lot more fun. So a vast influx of young men had joined the stud business claiming that their sperm had been health inspected.
Hire-a-wanger companies like Seven Beaches were asking for atrocious amounts of money now. They were all slimeballs masquerading as do-gooders as far as I was concerned. Who really knew what the studs’ gene makeup was? All the documentation about their sperm could be faked.
What I was doing, in helping Rico to test Luceel, might result in an alternative that would be a massive relief to so many people. I could see myself at a press conference, holding a child—an imaginary child sprung to life—as Rico announced the launch of Luceel on the market. And beside me would stand my new husband. He’d be fearless, utterly delicious to gaze upon, and have a sharp-edged humor that would lead to some sparring matches between us and the sexual frisson I so loved.
Our little family would be feted at celebrations all over the planet. And my bravery, as a vital part of the Luceel incubation process, would give me so much fame. Eventually, I’d be ... let me see ... how about CEO of a fantastic Fortune 100 company? Maybe even CEO of Victory Star, when my boss, Whit Whitman, stepped aside.
Yes, it was a whacked-out fantasy, but I needed one to go through with this. Who knew what would happen?
# # #
RICO RUSHED IN MY OFFICE, suit jacket askew. He could have been a doctor on a mission to some hellhole. “How many?” he barked.
“Enough to start my own children’s choir.”
“Well, I’ll be. You got options! Where are they?”
He wanted a description of everything he couldn’t see. No detail about the children was too small. He consumed my words with such a lively elation, filled with the realization that his great experiment was getting closer to completion.
My curiosity about the men triggering the holo children deepened. No one working in the offices around me had ever seemed remotely appealing. “Where are these men behind the visions? Who are they?” I asked.
“We’ve been over this. I don’t know. They could be in the next room over or as far as three floors below this one—or the one floor above. But you’ll know them when you see them. Who were you with when they emerged?”
“Andiko,” I despaired.
Rico grimaced. “He couldn’t be one of them. Don’t worry.”
“The thing is, I tried to envision what this would be like when you explained it. Now that I see these—these hypothetical offspring—I wonder if the geneticists really can manipulate the sperm and create anyone similar to what I’m seeing.”
Rico shrugged. “Might turn out even better than what you want.”
He took my pulse and checked my eyes through a little metal device that looked like a cross between a pistol and a bent pipe. “Alert me if things get out of hand.”
We’d already discussed the potential side effects: big mood swings, uncontrollable weeping, new allergies, a more-than-usual dependency on alcohol and drugs.
“I just love being your personal guinea pig,” I breathed dramatically.
He laughed. “Give it time.”
“You do recall that I don’t have much of that?”
“It won’t take long. You’ll see. That ole love lightning is gonna strike in no time at all.”
“Was that what the other women experienced?” Not that he’d tell me.
Rico smiled. “Stiff upper lip and all that.” And he was gone. It was as if he couldn’t get away fast enough.
I stepped outside the office door and nearly jumped in shock. Ten more holograms of kids were hovering in the corridor. Where was the man behind them? I walked past a long line of cubicles, gazing at the various middle-management men glued to their work on invisible screens. Nope. No romantic buzzers were going off in my head.
I went down a floor, where some of the A-list talent tended to hang out with program producers, several of whom weren’t hard to look at. But the imaginary children were nowhere to be seen. Traveling up a floor above my own gave me similar results.
I went back to my own area. The holo children were still outside my door, silent as the grave. Then something gurgled. A chill fingered my skin. It was coming from the office cube of my first assistant, Meekoo. The petit woman was watching a home monitor screen focused on her baby boy eating a soggy piece of toast.
Meekoo read my face with the sharp sensitivity of a Middle who was only too aware of how easy it would be to replace her with a bot. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to disturb.”
“No worries. I’m just—jumpy these days.” If Andiko had his way with the budget, he’d force me to lay her off. But I would do everything in my power not to let that happen.
Meekoo’s belly was protruding. Pregnant already, six months after the first one was born. It was maddening, how fucking fertile some women could be, with the right man.
I went back in my office. The startled girl was still there, so riveting to look at. Her hair was like dried grass, bleached to a silvery gold—like the fields around my childhood home in Temecula. And there was a tiny raspberry-colored birthmark on her right cheek. My maternal instincts blossomed. This was my child. Mine! She really was such an odd duck: scrawny, gangly even, almost like a Chav.
I sat down suddenly. A Chav? Where did that come from? Definitely not! Falling in love with a Chav would be like committing double suicide—career and social. If only that didn’t matter.
Her skin looked like old ivory under a streetlight at midnight. Only an Elite could look that way, I assured myself. Now that the light from the windows was fading, her astonished eyes looked even more blue-toned. That’s how mine must have looked on that day long ago when Geoffrey left Dab and me for good.
I would never have the child’s red beauty mark removed. “Promise. It’s what makes you you,” I whispered to her. “And I’ll never leave you. Never.” I sensed the child burning back a trusting love.
Good God. I was going ‘round the bend.
# # #
IT FELT LIKE I WAS leading a double life in the weeks that followed. There was so much work, with the launch of nine new major esports brands and a new season of “Blast!,” our top-rated space-tumbler competition series. I went on trips to Europe and Asia with my top team members, meeting with the managing directors in Victory’s regional hubs. They oversaw versions of the new content tailored to specific locations and cultures.
Through it all, the variety of would-be daughters and sons kept growing. All told, I saw visions of around 25 sets of children in three weeks. Several showed up on multiple occasions. They appeared at random moments wherever I went.
They were so distracting that I didn’t always handle situations in the best way. There was one particularly embarrassing meeting. I was with my longtime mentor, Whit Whitman, along with a few other members of Victory Star’s senior team, including Rico. We were seated around Whit’s huge conference table, and there was a big debate going on.
Aerola Industries, an aircraft manufacturer and one of Victory’s largest advertisers, wanted one of its spokespeople to become a news anchor on one of our main channels. They would slip a few Aerola marketing messages in with the journalism every now and then. The number of people watching Victory’s news shows was way down, as was its advertising revenue. Nuhope was eating our lunch. So the idea was taken seriously. But as far as I was concerned, it was bloody ludicrous.
“What if one of Aerola’s warcraft bombs the shite out of some poor village of innocent Chav? Is their announcer going to talk about that?” I asked.
“As if anyone cared about the Chav,” sneered Victory’s President of Sales and Promotion, Harry Thurston.
“Okay, let me rephrase,” I said. “What if they obliterate a community of Elite? In fact, let’s make it your neighborhood, Harry. Does that make more sense to—” I stifled a gasp as a row of children emerged. A plump little girl near the door was dazzlingly bright. She had such a devilish grin. But then I saw it: her intestines were hanging out of her middle. And one hand looked like a miniature cauliflower.
A cry of pained horror shot out of me before I knew what I was doing. In another day and age, that wouldn’t have happened. But the inflammation around the chip insertion was raging by then, and I hadn’t been sleeping that well. Everyone turned around toward the door, trying to see what was making me so upset. I managed to get myself under control as they swung back around and stared at me with cool confusion.
“Petra?” Whit rumbled. “Are you okay?”
“Yes, yes. Absolutely,” I said brightly. “And I just had the most amazing thought. There’s this esports game my content people have been incubating that might be absolutely perfect for an Aerola host. It has aircraft galore.” I rattled on, silently telling myself to make sure the team added plenty of aircraft. Eventually, everyone liked the idea. But as we dispersed after the meeting, Harry gave me a smirk, then caught up with Whit. The two men strode down the hall like the best of chums. Jealousy curled through me.
It was a tossup who wanted to be Victory’s next CEO more: me or Harry. And the motherfucker obviously felt he’d found a chink in my armor.
Rico caught up with me at the elevator. “Nice recovery.”
“Yeah? Well, I feel like an ice skater that just fell on her bum.”
“I’d better give you a checkup.”
“Yes, please.”
When we got to my office, I shut down Victory’s surveillance monitors. He pulled out his little pipe device and looked through it into my eyes and ears. “What did you really see?”
I gave him a recounting of the deformed girl. “This better end soon,” I said. “People will think I’m going crazy if they don’t already.”
“Let ‘em. Wait ‘til they find out what we’ve been up to. You, me and Luceel are about to change the whole worl’.”
“I just can’t wrap my head around all this. I’ve seen more than 25 different lines of children since we started. How could I fall in love with so many men?” Rico shot me an impatient look. “For God’s sake, Rico. That’s a perfectly legitimate question.”
“Not if you know how love really works.”
“Please. Do fill me in.” I wanted to add “Asshole.”
His smile told me he got that part. “People have always assumed that when they find a so-called ideal mate, there aren’t any other options. ‘One and only’ and all that. But Luceel proves it ain’t true. The ole love game is kind of like playing pool. People just happen to put one ball in the pocket rather than another because it’s more convenient. But a lot of them would be good.”
“Yes, well, my proverbial balls certainly are elusive.”
“Maybe you aren’t studying the options closely enough, or maybe you’re crossing too many possibilities off the list. Luceel doesn’t judge income level, for example.”
“Oh, goody. Maybe he’s the janitor. I’ll just pop downstairs for a pipe cleaning.”
A long, luxurious laugh rippled out of Rico as he unwrapped my bandage, but it stopped quickly as he saw the inflamed cut. “Jeez Louise! None of the salves I’ve given you are working?”
“No. Listen, I know this may seem mildly insane, but there’s one little girl I keep seeing that I feel really connected to. She’s got these rather astonished eyes that speak to me. I’m dying to find out who’s triggering her vision.” As he put on a fresh bandage, I described the child: a thick white-blonde cloud of hair, the smoky eyes, the scrawny physique.
“Where do you see her?”
“Over there.” I pointed to my steel conference table.
Rico walked over to it, then his eyes drifted out the window. An odd look shadowed his face as if someone had just splashed soup on his shirt. He pivoted back toward me and took in my questioning expression. “I just remembered. There is another balm I could give you. I’ll have one of my bots drop it off later today.”
“Thanks,” I said as he put his little pipe device in his satchel and prepared to leave. “Listen, Rico. I know you’re in charge of this. But don’t you think it would make sense to use Trilat?”
He darkened quickly with a little cocktail of impatience and fear. “No. That’s a terrible idea.”
It didn’t make sense. After all, Advanced Trilateration, often referred to as Trilat forecasting, might make all the difference in the world. It was kind of like the Kogeny system but different. For one thing, Kogeny was specifically geared to advertisers, like the one that read my data and figured out that I wanted a child, triggering that disgusting promo with the Brazilian stud. Kogeny didn’t give the advertisers any information about the identity of people it was targeting with promotions. The deets were all hidden away in the mega-computers that ran the system. Or so the company that controlled Kogeny claimed. I was always a little skeptical.
Trilat, on the other hand, was a blatant surveillance tool, privacy be damned. It accessed government and corporate security monitoring systems to pinpoint the movements of specific individuals. Once a “targeted person” was identified, and their behaviors analyzed, the system could also use a combination of algorithms and predictive analytics to figure out where the person was likely to be at a particular moment in the future. It was damned expensive technology, but Rico had amaz resources.
I wasn’t willing to let it go. “Here’s my thinking: the whole process could be so much faster if we use Trilat. We could discover that a certain man is always nearby when a certain imaginary child emerges.”
“I said no. Absolutely not.”
I rubbed my wound. “What are you so –”
“DON’T DO THAT!”
“Jesus, Rico. Get a fucking grip.” I was his boss. How could he yell at me that way?
“I’m sorry,” he said, softening. “You’ve got to understand. It would muddy the waters to mix any other technology into this experiment. Give Luceel time to do its work.”
“I want this metal torture thing out of my body. I’ll give it one more week. If I can’t find the right guy, it comes out.”
“It could take longer than that.”
“I don’t care.”
Not that I was sure I’d actually end the experiment. Deep in the night, my mind churned with the notion I could possibly love 25 different men. That seemed insane. “Relax a little. Trust a little,” I chanted, again and again.
Even without Trilat, I had to suss out whoever was triggering the hypothetical children in a more deliberate, systematic way. That was clear. In the days that followed, I scrutinized the men in the range of Luceel very carefully, without making them aware of my detective work. Thankfully, the little intestine girl never popped up again.
I was able to make some good educated guesses. In particular, there was one little boy with a buzz cut and sparkly eyes that was a mini duplicate of a controller in Andiko’s unit, Eduard. Bit of an egghead, but his dry wit always made me laugh. It was easy to find excuses to visit Andiko when I knew Eduard would be around.
I allowed my hair to swirl more sensually and dressed more casually, with warm colors and an occasional cleavage or leg showing through. It didn’t take Eduard long to notice my interest. Sure, he was attracted too; that was easy to see. But we both knew he would be way over his “pay grade” with me. It was politically incorrect to even flirt with a woman so much further up the corporate ladder. It didn’t seem like we could ever get over that hurdle.
There were a few other guys that seemed like they might be instigating the visions. But my mind kept bouncing back to that startle-eyed girl. What man was she connected to?
Whit called me into his office one day on some lame pretext, but eventually he asked, “Entering a new phase of life?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve changed your look.” It wasn’t a compliment. “And you seem rather odd. Distracted and ...”
“What?”
“Well, discombobulated.”
“I haven’t heard that word in so long,” I said as lightly as I could. But it was awful, coming from the man who, in earlier years, had sent me around the world to find über-talented performers for Victory’s various content. I’d hardly slept for three years, going to clubs, theaters, stadiums, under the spell of Whit’s great desire to build up a pool of stars like none other. And we pretty much did that. As he ascended to the CEO post, he promoted me again and again.
“I certainly never expected to apply the word to you,” he rumbled.
“I’m sorry, Whit. You’re right. I’m not as centered as I should be. This will end, now.” My words were filled with sincerity, but I couldn’t answer the “why?” in his eyes. If I told him about Rico’s experiment on me, it wouldn’t land well.
Whit accepted my promise to get back on track with his trademark, ever-gracious charm. But there wouldn’t be another warning. My rising career trajectory could easily take a dive.
Maybe it would be good to leave, I told myself. Why do you even want to work for a company that would consider turning an advertiser spokesperson into a news anchor?
Because I can change things, I answered myself.
Maybe it was all a lost cause, to put more truth in the content Victory served up so that everyone—Chavs and all—would find more compassion for each other. And I wanted much more out of my career, more power, prestige, pots of gold. My triple P’s, as I called them.
The idea that these things might never be realized made me ache for a child all the more, to have that unconditional love in my life, to shape at least one person’s way of looking at the world. If only I could find the man who was triggering the startle-eyed girl, the man I would love completely, a real soul mate!
This was insane. Was I turning into emotional mush, a caricature of one of Victory’s obsessive, bodice-ripping soap-opera stars?
No. I was an idealist with the persistence of a pit bull. I’d stick it out at Victory and do everything I could to steer it in the right direction. And I would find this man.