14

It’s been a long time since Silvana last left the ComU, a couple of years or more, so it’s no surprise that everything’s changed almost beyond recognition. Luckily, Sebastian has registered the visit as a service of the Center so she’s been assigned a driver, otherwise she would almost certainly have gotten lost. In the past you could count on one hand the number of buildings in which you could fly around in an aero’car—the general hospital, multistory parking lots and not much else—but now flying outdoors is the exception to the rule. Maybe it’s for the best, the brightness bothers her, she’s not used to it anymore. Of course, with a ceiling overhead the feeling of entrapment is heightened, with so many vehicles and landing platforms that it’s claustrophobic.

It was right under her nose all the time but she hadn’t realized that the buildings grew in layers, adding on residents until they took on the form of these half-mile blocks. If they’re shocking for her, imagine how shocked the poor little girl must be. She’s confident that she’ll meet her today, despite not having been able to set up anything concrete with the mother. Most of all she must remember that she’s been hired as a therapist; her personal interest in the potential archaic feelings of the girl will have to stay hidden, she can’t show it at any point during the interview.

As she’d guessed, the home is located in a well-to-do neighborhood, and the entrance the driver points out to her is one of the nicest ones around: on a high level with a private platform. Once Silvana has connected with the owner’s ROB, she receives free license to dock there and, if she wants, she can leave the aero’car parked there until it’s time to leave.

She’s not in the habit of visiting people at home and feels a little unsure of herself as she walks up to the house, not knowing how to greet the smartly dressed client waiting at the door. But Lu, before Silvana has reached her, is already going back into the house and beckoning for her to follow. Most of the walls are yellow and the furniture is so dazzling that it’s like being back outside again. Worse still, the suspended armchairs they sit down in are the same color, and they’re so hard to look at she has to find some kind of neutral space where she can rest her eyes, which she finds between her feet.

The obvious nervousness Lu demonstrates while she explains her daughter’s eccentricities puts her at ease: she doesn’t need to worry about the impression she might be making, she’s clearly not making one. It’s hard enough for this woman to string a sentence together, let alone pay attention to someone else at the same time. She begins to think they might as well have exchanged information over the net, and that it’ll only have been worth coming if in the end she gets to meet Celia.

As soon as she gets a chance to ask, she finds out that the school is nearby, and that the girl will be coming home in less than half an hour. She can wait for her, if she wants, or she can connect with the monitoring circuit reserved for parents and observe what she’s doing right now. Silvana hesitates for an instant. She should decline the offer without a second thought: she’s denounced technology that violates privacy so many times, for how it undermines the privacy of the weakest among us; if someone from the ComU were to catch her spying, she would die of shame. But the opportunity is too tempting to refuse so she justifies her decision by telling herself that observing a spontaneous situation will help her diagnose the problem and, at the end of the day, it’ll be for Celia’s own good.

A few minutes later ROBul informs them that, as the girl isn’t showing up on any of the static cameras, they’ve sent a SEEKer to look for her. Lu can’t believe it, after she had insisted that Celia try to be like the others and slip under the radar. Her teacher had warned Lu that if she didn’t adapt soon she would have to change schools. It occurs to Silvana that if you want to slip under the radar, what better way than hiding from the cameras, but she doesn’t say anything, convinced that Lu wouldn’t take it well, and maybe wouldn’t even understand. Gratuitous humor wasn’t exactly widespread in the pro-techno community.

Finally the SEEKer sends them some images of Celia. She’s in a large space that Lu identifies as the socialization classroom. She has a wide-awake expression and light brown, very straight hair tied back in a ponytail, and looks just like she expected. The only difference is that she hadn’t imagined her with freckles, you don’t see faces like that anymore; strangely it gives her a touch of mischief, as if the freckles made her brighter, smarter. Next to her, also sitting on the floor, a girl with short, curly blonde hair is hugging her knees, and appears to be crying.

“Oh no, we’re going to end up fighting again,” Lu exclaims, for once forgetting about her airs and graces. “Who knows what she’ll have said to that little angel.”

“Can we hear what they’re saying?”

“No, no. It would violate the rights of the child, you should know that,” she says, giving her a suspicious look.

“Sorry, but I don’t understand: the images are public but the sounds are private?”

“Come on! Who said anything about it being public?” She seems to be outraged, it must be a hot-button issue. “Parents have a right to check on the physical integrity of their children at any time, that’s all. If someone breaks that rule, with lip-reading programs or any other tricks, their connection to the circuit is cut off forever.” She pauses to catch her breath. “So tell me … what experience do you have as a therapist with unfrozen children?”

“Hardly any have been unfrozen at this age, I guess you know that. The experienced therapists have worked with babies and can’t get a handle on this case. They’ve assigned it to me precisely because I’m a specialist in the emotions of the past”—she’s already said too much—“and I’ll be able to do more than a normal therapist. I sent you my credentials, did you get them?”

“Yes, but I assumed you’d dealt with cases like my daughter’s.”

“Look, the girls are standing up.” Silvana hasn’t taken her eyes off the monitor the whole time. “What lovely hair.”

Lu’s face tightens:

“She just had to let it down, didn’t she … No, in the end they’ll make me cut it.”

It’s almost like Celia has heard her, just then she gathers her hair and fastens it back with a turban.

“What’s the problem?”

“Do you think she’s avoiding standing out behaving like that? I’m starting to see the experience you’ve had with girls this age.”

“Celia must be different in a lot of ways … I didn’t know hair was so important,” she says with contempt.

“Think about it, it’s the first thing you noticed.”

Like a boomerang, her assault has come right back at her with total innocence. Instinctively, she changes the subject:

“What are those figures they keep bumping into, they look like mannequins.”

“They’re for practicing socialization.” She stops for a moment as if she can’t be bothered to explain it. “They stage a situation and the kids have to practice until they learn to behave properly automatically. It’s one of the most innovative activities in the school, they call it social-conduct training; they recommended it for Celia and it’s been good for her, in just a few days she’s caught up with the rest.”

It occurs to Silvana that it’s like learning to drive, only that instead of controlling a machine that navigates among other machines, it’s navigation among people that is automated, but again she holds back the comment. Who knows, maybe this practice isn’t so stupid, considering how bad things have gotten. Nothing could be more pathetic than the statues she’s encountered recently in her classes; maybe mechanizing certain things would unblock them.

The monitor is switched off and ROBul communicates that Celia has left school and, taking into account the state of the traffic, it estimates that she will be home in seventeen minutes.

“Perfect, I can wait until she gets here,” Silvana jumps in, anticipating a possible intervention on Lu’s part.

“We agreed the therapy would start next week. I haven’t said anything to the little girl yet.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll start the sessions like we said, today will just be an introduction. And do me a favor, don’t say anything about therapy. She must have been through enough already with her illness without people calling her ill again now.”

“How should I introduce you then?”

“Leave it to me.” She’s taken control of the situation and, for the next few minutes, she hopes to push the conversation toward what she’s interested in.

This way she finds out that the teacher has labeled Celia a rebel because, ignoring his advice, she insists on competing with machines. She wastes time playing at being a calculator and a spellchecker instead of making an effort to learn the content she’s been assigned. Among her classmates, of course, she’s become known for her skills of deduction, which has made her a leader. But that doesn’t help her academic attainment, which is very poor.

It was the EDUsys that started sending out alarm signals because she didn’t use it as she was supposed to. Apparently she hasn’t taken to the net’s search mechanisms and, faced with a question, she stops and thinks about it, trying to make up an answer, instead of trusting what other people have thought before. “Imagine if we all had to start from scratch!” the teacher exclaimed, annoyed. He himself doesn’t have most of the knowledge they are working on, he told her with pride, that’s what EDUsys is for, lesson planning and doing the tedious work of evaluation, writing reports and keeping a record of each student. It also suggests to the teacher where he should invest his time in order to effectively facilitate interaction between the group and the system; but it’s him who makes decisions, and the delicate subjects, like negotiating with other schools to hold joint sessions on advanced topics, are managed by him personally. It’s a cutting-edge school, capable of reprogramming activities in real time according to how the day is going; she won’t find a better one, and she doesn’t want to look for one either.

Caught up in the academic issues, Lu won’t let herself be pushed into the emotional and familial ambit where Silvana wants to take her. On the contrary, she makes it very clear that Silvana’s being hired to help her daughter adapt to school. Nothing more. Just making her a little more docile will solve most of her problems. She has no doubt there is a great range of techniques available to mold character, and hopes that Silvana will be able to put them into practice. Indeed, she imagines Silvana will have to work hand in hand with ROBbie, because everyone knows that if the child turns out to be a rule-breaker, the robot must learn to restrain them, to counteract their impulses, put them on the right track … Robots are customizable for a reason, they have to complement their PROPs to make a good team.

That’s the last thing Silvana expected to hear, that she’ll have to train a robot! It’s really hard to bite her tongue and not let her different point of view spill out. She’s afraid that, if she contradicts the woman, she’ll be fired before she’s started, and she would at least like to meet Celia. What an ordeal she must be going through with this mother, the poor thing. Or maybe not, in which case, she would have to give up the job herself. Although it’s interesting for her investigations, there’s always a limit.

She glances at her watch impatiently and, as if responding to the signal, ROBul comes in to announce the girl’s arrival. They stand up at the same time, but only Lu goes to meet her daughter, having gestured to Silvana to wait a moment.

Perhaps because she’s been staring at the opening for some time, partly expectantly and partly because she’s seeking a refuge from the offensive yellow walls, or maybe it’s because the dark silhouette that suddenly appears there is nice to look at, Celia’s shy entrance, full of curiosity, makes a great impression on Silvana’s retina and beyond. Without the turban and with her shining hair tied back in a braid, she looks taller and more slender than she’d imagined from the pictures. What’s more, since she’s used to seeing her students’ rigid and inexpressive bodies, she finds the flexibility with which she moves fascinating. Behind her, Lu initiates the introduction:

“Silvana was interested to meet you, she’s …”

“I’m an emotions masseuse,” she says, standing up. “It sounds a bit weird right? But we call it that.”

Celia’s black pupils seem to X-ray her, stopping her in her tracks: she mustn’t make a wrong move.

“She’ll help you with your studies,” Lu intervenes, uncomfortable with the silence and making it clear that she does not intend to sit down.

“Yes, of course, but you’ll have to help me out as well.”

A note of naivety cracks Celia’s serious stance, and the little girl she really is peeks through:

“Pardon?”

“You see, I’m interested in people who lived a long time ago and maybe you can help me to understand them better,” she admits, ignoring what Lu may or may not think about it.

“Didn’t you say you were a masseuse?”

“Yes, but that has a different meaning now …”—she searches for the right words—“than before you traveled through time, I mean.”

She’s obviously said the right thing, because, abandoning all her reticence, the girl comes closer and asks, curiously:

“You know how to travel through time?”

Lu’s impatience has reached its limit.

“You can talk about that during your sessions. Silvana was waiting to see you, but she has to go.”

If she wants to come back she would do well to follow this instruction, and it’s come at an opportune moment, because she has no idea how to answer. As she moves toward the door, she notices that Celia wants to follow, but her mother stops her, and the girl resigns herself to a goodbye wave, which she hurriedly returns.

Against all odds, Lu doesn’t let her leave accompanied only by ROBul; instead she joins them and, before Silvana gets onto the platform, she holds her back for a second: she wants to ask her something. Silvana didn’t see this coming, before they had time to kill and now there’s something urgent to talk about.

“I just got a communication from the clinic saying we’ve been invited to a get-together …”—she looks at her ROB’s embedded screen uneasily—“an inter-century adoption get-together. Do you know what it’s for?”

“Well, no … but I have some idea,” she rectifies quickly. “It’s good to meet other children who are in the same situation. For them and for their mothers. They tend to have similar problems, and seeing how other people have resolved them can help.”

“So you would advise us to go.” She looks concerned. “Could you come with us?”

“Of course, I’d love to.” It would be an opportunity to make contact with other unfrozen teenagers, she thinks, before immediately withdrawing the thought, as if it were a betrayal of Celia.

After reserving Sunday two weeks from now in her calendar, confirming that they have four sessions before then, and finally saying goodbye to Lu, Silvana allows herself to think over what has just happened. What kind of commitment has she made with this child that could possibly stop her from meeting other kids? It makes no sense at all, but she felt it. She must have gotten so involved with obsolete sentiments that she’s entered into their orbit herself. But her reading isn’t the cause, it’s more likely the black pupils that had captivated her, clearly communicating that all their fragile hopes rested with her. She feels she can’t fail them and, at the same time, she feels she’s in unknown territory where her own baggage won’t be of much help. She’s the newcomer here.