FauxChild
“Thank God they’re not real,” Mother says. Father snorts—a vague sound that neither confirms nor denies—as she rolls my podmate’s lifeless form into a black garbage bag. “I mean, can you imagine?”
Father twiddles his fingers to expand the kitchen table’s holoscreen, eclipsing the mess congealing on the linoleum, my stricken expression looking back at me, the cast iron pan still smoking with charred strips of synthetic flesh: evidence of Mother’s lost temper. Her head bobs as if he’s agreeing with her.
She flashes a look in my direction: One down, one to go.
Seated at the table, I tuck my knees to my chest to make myself smaller, an insubstantial object to be overlooked. There will be no breakfast; Bennie should’ve known better than to ask. The FauxChild manual clearly states the care requirements exist for the user’s experience alone.
For practice.
A test.
Yet, every meal since our arrival, Mother has made a point to set out two empty plates before Bennie and me. Like she wants the experiment to fail.
I knot my fingers in my lap, pretending it’s Bennie squeezing my hand. Grown together, birthed together, sold together, we were built to Mother’s specifications: identical twin boys with curly brown hair and blue eyes; a mole on my cheek so she can tell us apart.
Bennie was her favorite.
If I’m quiet, if I’m boring, maybe I can join the cosmetology ClientBot, the PseudoPup, and the other failed test products gathering dust in the corners. The best I can hope for is to be forgotten.
No chance of that.
Mother orders me to drag Bennie out to the garbage.
#
It takes thirty-seven hours, spread over the course of three months, to restore Bennie’s primary functions. The HandyMan600 is eager to help; it’s been collecting cobwebs in the garage since Father dismantled his hover car engine. Father rides the union shuttle now, too impatient to learn how to operate the HandyMan’s basic repair functions, too proud to admit he can’t fix the problem himself. Beneath the blue tarp covering the car’s unsightly shell, Bennie lies nestled in the empty socket where the engine once was. He’s recovering, little by little.
In the meantime, Mother lets me drown—not once, but twice—by leaving the pool gate open. The MemoryCam embedded in my left eye captures every splash, each dying ripple, transmitting the footage of her negligence to the assessors. A car fractures my ribs when I dart into the street, unsupervised, on my way to the park. I break an arm, spilling ambulatory fluids down the stairs, before Father installs a child-safety gate at the top.
It’s a learning process, he explains to me slowly, softly. Like he doesn’t want Mother to hear. She’s trying. We just need to be patient.
Understanding.
I understand far more than Father gives me credit for.
He wants children. I read his need in the way he arranges the stuffed animals lining the crib in the half-painted nursery, carefully, as if he’s afraid the toys might disintegrate.
I understand that I’m the best Father’s ever going to get, if Mother has her way. They need approval from the Reproduction Committee—and the Home Owner’s Association—to have Mother’s SterileVix chip deactivated. Child death casts a pall on neighborhood safety statistics. To earn their license, to have a real flesh-and-blood baby of their own, Mother and Father must keep at least one FauxChild alive for two years.
Twenty-four months.
There will be no second chances.
The mechanism counting down in my chest tells me there are six months and four days left. If there’s even a shred of humanity in my programming, I’ll find a way to self-terminate before then, save a true child the fate Bennie and I have endured.
But Father’s need calls out, tugging at a piece of me which has no corresponding part.
I tell myself I’m resurrecting Bennie because the thought of him alone in the darkness breaks the thing I call a heart. I tell myself I’m more than an object to Father.
Lying is easy.
Surviving is harder.
#
On the weekends, Father walks me to the park. He’s afraid I’ll be struck by another car, yet he seems to understand the accidents are not my fault. I have no impulse control. Being programmed to hurtle toward every potential hazard is exhausting for us both. It’s a wonder any children reach adulthood.
I’m a walking, talking worst-case scenario.
If Father wants to prove himself worthy of real children, he can’t take his eyes off me for a second. While my thirty-minute play sequence leads me from rope ladder to monkey bars to curly slide, Father paces a trench through the bark chips, hands pushed deep into his pockets. There are no other children to distract him. SynthParks are rife with sharp edges, precarious heights, sudden drop-offs and equipment malfunctions. Nobody with a choice would bring their loved ones to play here.
Last week, Ms. Lasko failed her test when a used syringe buried in the sandbox injected her FauxChild with a fatal virus. No second chance for Ms. Lasko; she could only afford the one.
One test per adult, in any given household.
Ms. Lasko lives alone.
She still comes to the park, anyway. Seated on the bench beneath a cloned oak, Ms. Lasko waves to Father. Her sadness is visible in her wilted fingers, the downward pull of her half-smile. Today, for the first time, Father waves back. They are like two shipwrecked survivors, stranded on separate islands. Struggling to overcome the loneliness, the isolation. I notice the connection forming between them, even feel an approximation of regret as I’m forced to interrupt, leaping from the highest tower on the playground.
Diving, headfirst.
Father catches me inches from the rusty field of rebar poking up around the slide. Despite the bonus discipline incentive promised by the manual, he doesn’t spank me or shout.
Ms. Lasko’s applause is his reward.
Father smiles.
He takes a bow.
#
Mother insists our house is haunted. Objects don’t stay where she leaves them. She’s been seeing—something.
The something is Bennie.
I am in the kitchen, watching through a cracked cupboard door, when Mother finds Bennie folded inside the refrigerator. Head crooked, limbs tucked at odd angles, Bennie’s glass eyes stare up at her from between eggs and orange juice.
Mother shrieks, recoiling. But when Father arrives with the FendOFF, she swears she saw someone outside the window. She sends Father out into the yard. He returns to find the refrigerator door secured by a chain and padlock. Mother refuses to explain herself.
As if the reality of Bennie’s resurrection is somehow worse than an anonymous intruder.
Father leads Mother off to bed, grumbling about help. Medications.
After the HandyMan liberates Bennie from his chained coffin, we spend an hour rearranging the refrigerator’s contents. Condiments and vegetables and plastic containers of leftovers radiate across the linoleum in concentric circles, like ripples stirred by Bennie’s escape. Laid across the table, the refrigerator door takes the place of our empty plates. Inspired by our strange, quiet rebellion, the HandyMan removes the door from the freezer too. The hum of the refrigerator masks the patter of our footsteps, the whoosh of coolant, our silent laughter. By morning, the kitchen is colder than Mother’s heart.
Next, we reclaim the bathroom.
The cosmetology ClientBot waits until Mother’s asleep in the bath before it descends upon her, tools whirling, to modify Mother’s physical specs. No longer fit to show her face at church on Sunday, Mother explains away the alterations with self-mutilation—the latest fad. The ClientBot joins Bennie in the ranks of the unacknowledged undead.
Mother’s denial intensifies. She does not urge Father to rid the house of its gadgets. She does not retaliate. It’s as though her programming has convinced her none of this is possible; she must be imagining it. Because we’re not real—she said so herself.
And objects are incapable of hatred.
Devoid of emotion.
Father no longer visits the half-painted nursery. Banished to the couch, he watches television without hope. He shuffles between commercials—families with laughing children, toys and cartoons, amusement park destinations—while his eyes fill with tears, spill over, then fill again. Even stripped of his dreams, he pours more energy into my care than he does his own. My hair is neatly combed, my comestibles sack filled three times, daily. My frame hasn’t broken in a week.
The trips to the park become more frequent—Father’s escape.
Bennie and I find a way to alter the TruForm sand in Mother’s mattress, to allow Bennie to lie perfectly flush with the sheets. By the time Father arrives home from work, Mother’s blubbering has slowed to a wordless murmur. The soiled sheets are freshly laundered. The stains on the mattress exist only in Mother’s mind.
But—mindless as we might be, according to the manual—Bennie and I recall the stain’s exact shape, like a Rorschach test spurted from between Mother’s legs.
The shape of change.
#
“How unfortunate,” the neighbors murmur. An endless parade of curious visitors curls up the walkway, into our living room. Each guest bears a ZapRite container, prefabricated portions for three. Father greets them at the door with me on one side, Bennie on the other.
The neighbors shake their heads, but their eyes glitter like mouths filled with tiny, sharp teeth. “Such a tragedy,” they say, hungry for details. Eyeing the walls and floors for evidence. “We’re sorry, so very sorry.”
The living room and kitchen are clean, the house’s machines polished and shining with renewed purpose. Still, the neighbors scan every surface. Searching for the trigger responsible for Mother’s unexpected departure.
“Hanged herself, I heard,” Mrs. Weatherby hisses into the ear of her current husband. Others search for stains, whispering, “Shot herself right through the head. What a mess. That poor, poor man.”
Father blinks back tears. The truth is less grisly than the neighbors imagine. As simple as the vacant space in the garage where Mother’s car once sat.
We did not take her life. We would never hurt Father in that way. But Mother, convinced the house meant to drive her insane, remained selfish to the end. She abandoned us, just as we expected.
Whatever happens to Mother next is up to her car.
She should have taken better care of it.
#
While Bennie and I play, Father joins Ms. Lasko on the park bench. With two adults supervising, there’s little chance of killing ourselves, but programming is programming. Bennie streaks from his swing like a cannonball, arcing through the summer sunlight. As Father rushes to catch him, Ms. Lasko hurries to untangle my neck from the twisted rope ladder.
Divided, they conquer.
In the shade of the cloned oak, we reunite on a checkered blanket spread out on the lawn. I risk fleeting glances at the picnic basket Ms. Lasko brought. When Bennie asks if we can eat, I flinch, anticipating a sharp retort—retaliation—the swing of a cast iron pan.
Thank God they’re not real. I mean, can you imagine?
But Ms. Lasko only laughs, a cheerful sound, like silver bells tinkling in a gentle breeze.
“Of course, silly,” she says, pinching Bennie’s cheek. She made sandwiches by hand—no PrepBot—even baked an apple pie from scratch. Father fills plastic cups with lemonade. There’s enough food and drink for each of us. Extras, if we want a second helping.
Two infants are scheduled for delivery tomorrow, but Bennie and I are happy with our new and better lives. We’ll figure out a way to become indispensable: the key to belonging. Learning is a process.
All we need is time.
R. L. Meza is the author of Our Love Will Devour Us and writes speculative fiction from a not-haunted Victorian house on the coast of Northern California. Learn more at rlmeza.com.