Complete Atopia Chronicles Part 9

"Adriana was right," commented Cindy, looking down into Little Ricky-Two's face, "blue eyes are the best. Just like Little Ricky's."

"Huh?"

I was deep into a Phuture News report predicting a flare-up in the Weather Wars. I flicked away tabloid splinters that tried to correlate this to some paranormal reports. Of course, a lot of people were tracking events in the Weather Wars, and with so many people getting advance notice of events on this scale, there was a good chance the event wouldn't happen.

As I was thinking this, the new news reported that the offensive had been delayed, and was just as quickly canceled. Suddenly, a report came in that a tactical nuclear weapon would be launched against a target in Kashmir, but this was quickly aborted at the last instant. All sides were already at the negotiating table.

Accurate futuring technology had begun to bring out random behavior-being predictable meant everyone could see you coming, so being unpredictable and random had its advantages, but usually at the expense of lacking a certain strategic intent.

The irony of how 'knowing the future' made things less predictable didn't escape me, but the serious strategists said that this perception was just the result of our primary subjectives being stuck in one timeline at a time. I sighed.

At the same time, Hurricane Ignacia had s.h.i.+fted directions entirely, and looked like it would slam into Costa Rica and could cross over from the Caribbean and into the Eastern Pacific. It had grown into a monster category four. We were already backpedaling away from Hurricane Newton, a steady category two as it wound its way up the coast of Mexico, and were suddenly faced with two major hurricanes in our oceanic basin with several other depressions already spinning up in the background. Not unprecedented, but certainly unusual.

A mosquito hovered uncertainly before me and I swatted it away, shaking my head.

"Remember the original Little Ricky's eyes?" repeated Cindy. "I replayed them in Little Ricky-Two's features. I just love them."

She choked up as she said this, even though it had been more than six weeks since we'd discontinued the original Little Ricky proxxid. Sensing tears coming, I snapped out of Phuture News and focused my attention on Cindy.

"Oh, yes, of course," I replied.

One of our favorite activities was to discuss and compare features of each proxxid. I thought I'd try launching into this to avert whatever was happening and focus her in the moment.

"I really like the cheekbone structure of Little Ricky-Two," I suggested helpfully.

Cindy went completely still. In the sudden silence, I could hear the wooden grandfather clock in the main hallway of the cottage slowly ticking through the seconds. Something was terribly wrong, but I couldn't understand what it was. Cindy stared down into Little Ricky-Two's face. She seemed about to cry.

"Me too," replied Cindy, catching herself, still staring into the proxxid's face. With a deep breath, she recovered from whatever it was.

"Who's my cute little baby boy?" Cindy whispered at Little Ricky-Two, shaking him softly and then squeezing him into her body. He burbled with delight, and cuddled his head into her as she held him.

"Are you okay?" I asked Cindy.

"Yes, of course," she replied unconvincingly. Shrugging and smiling, she held the synthetic baby ever tighter.

A cicada's whine played high in the distance, and I squinted into the sunlight slanting through the apple trees and watched her doting over the proxxid. This was all very nice, but my uneasiness was wearing my patience thin. I'd been more than ready to move onto the real thing for a while.

I held up one hand to s.h.i.+eld my eyes from the sun and asked, "How about we step this one quickly through his age profiles, maybe see what he'd be like at five years old tomorrow?"

She didn't say anything.

"Then maybe as a twenty-something the day after?"

Cindy shot me a hateful look and tightly cradled Little Ricky-Two.

"No, we don't need to do that. I already have a pretty good idea."

Feeling irritated, I looked down to inspect some crab gra.s.s sprouting desperately out from under one of the feet of the table. A breeze rippled the struggling blades of gra.s.s as I watched, bringing with it the moldering decay of spoiled apples out in the yard. I looked back up at Cindy, straining my eyes against the setting sun.

"What do you mean, you have a good idea?" I asked. "We only let the first Little Ricky develop to about five, and Derek was just a baby when we terminated. Don't you want to see what they'll be like when they're older?"

"Rick, you just know these things when you're a mother."

She sighed.

"You can look at the simulations of them older if you like, but I don't need to."

She held Little Ricky-Two up in front of her and began cooing softly at him.

The discussion was apparently over. I felt both uncomfortable and annoyed. Little Ricky-Two was wearing tiny stone washed denim dungarees and a checked red s.h.i.+rt, just how we used to dress up the original Little Ricky.

"Isn't that what the proxxids are for?" I asked her, my frustration beginning to mount.

"Honey," she answered, still staring at Little Ricky-two, "I don't want to argue with you, okay? It's just not something I want to do."

I sat for a moment, quietly putting my emotions in order before responding while I watched her nuzzling the proxxid some more.

"Cindy, please, put Little Ricky-Two down for a second."

"Okay, Mr. Big Ricky," she replied finally. She turned and sat the baby on her lap, cradling him defensively. Looking up at me, she was about to say something but I cut her off.

"Can we turn this simulation off for a minute?" I asked. "I'm really not comfortable here anymore."

Hurt blossomed in her eyes and she seemed to resist for a moment, glancing back and forth at the cottage and then at me. She hesitated. Sensing my aggravation, the apple orchard and cottage faded away.

She still sat holding Little Ricky-Two in her arms and on her lap, but we were sitting back at our own dining room table in real s.p.a.ce. Behind her, light danced down from the kelp forests, illuminating a school of angel fish that were swimming past the window walls of our apartment.

I leaned forward towards her and put one hand on her knee and said, "Cindy, I love you honey."

"And I love you too."

She took my cue to hold my hand in hers, but she held tightly onto the proxxid with her other arm.

"I know this was all my idea," I explained, "and I've enjoyed it, and I think we've learnt a lot, but I think this is enough, don't you? It's time to get onto the real thing, don't you think?"

I waited, expecting the worst.

She just smiled. "Yes, I think you're right. This is enough."

"Really?" I was surprised. "So we can move onto the real thing?"

She smiled back at me and bounced Little Ricky-Two on her knee.

"Well, give me a little time to myself, no?"

As suddenly as it had started, it was over.

The next day I came home from work and there were no more proxxids. It felt like a huge weight had been lifted from me. We were child free for the first time in months, like we were proxxid empty-nesters. It was a shock to my system to begin with-coming home to find only Cindy waiting for me, with no new proxxid to play with.

In retrospect, I'd actually enjoyed the process of picking out the perfect baby for us. Putting it all behind us felt like we'd crossed an important threshold, and I looked forward to having a real baby.

Most important, the experience seemed to have recreated Cindy. She was happy to simply be alive, and the clouds of her chronic depression had lifted. I figured it was the prospect of finally having a child together, the whole process we'd been through. Each day I would return from work and she was energized and refreshed, and we would enjoy long lovemaking sessions more often than not.

It was after one of those sessions, lying amid the mess of sheets and pillows, that I asked her, "Cindy, don't you want to get pregnant, get off the birth control? I mean, we could be making our baby right now."

"Silly," she replied, poking my nose playfully with one finger, "just give me some time. I'm really enjoying myself right now."

I couldn't argue with that. She was being terrific.

"I don't want to do it artificially," I continued dreamily. "I'd prefer that we inseminate ourselves, or rather, I inseminate you."

She giggled and I scooped her up into my arms.

"Is that good enough for you?" I teased.

"Sure is, Commander Ricky."

"Hey, let's stay in bed and splinter into the Infinixx launch party tonight," I said, smiling at her. "No fixing your hair, no nothing. We can just stay here and cuddle and project ourselves there, all spiffed up. What do you think?"

She giggled again. "Like I said, I'm good with that, Commander."

6.

"THERE IS SOMETHING very unnatural going on here."

With that statement, our mandroid guest reached down with one slender metallic arm to adjust the snug jumpsuit along her thin, gleaming legs. I couldn't help feeling some revulsion watching her standing there, despite many friends who'd come back from the Wars in bits and pieces to be rebuilt robotically.

It was early Sat.u.r.day morning, but we'd all been called into Command to review scenarios around the threat of the storms that were pinching Atopia towards the coast. Although we couldn't figure out how yet, it seemed these storms weren't natural, and our mandroid guest was presenting some possible explanations of what was going on.

On top of it, Patricia had suffered some kind of medical emergency after the disaster of the Infinixx launch a few weeks back. She said she was fine, but she'd been acting strangely ever since.

"So do you think the Terra Novans are involved?" I asked it, or her, or whatever. All the technical details on how this could be made to happen were academically interesting, but I needed to know who and why.

"We're not sure," it responded.

Neither was I. Something wasn't right about this mandroid, nothing I could put my finger on, but she'd been rushed in by Patricia as an outside expert so I hadn't had much input in the vetting process. Whatever had happened to her, it must have been incredibly traumatic. She was barely more than a stump of flesh suspended between spindly robotic appendages.

"So then where is this coming from?" I demanded impatiently.

"We can't say for certain yet, but there's something too perfect about these storms." She just shrugged.

Too perfect? Too perfect for who, I wondered. This was a waste of time. I looked towards Jimmy, seeing if he had anything to add. He shrugged as well. Great. I rubbed my eyes, trying to wipe away my headache.

Cindy had begun to fall back into her depressions, and I was having a hard time focusing at work. Having a few drinks last night hadn't helped anything either. Cindy's depressions had become even worse than before, where just a short time ago she'd been doing so well. She didn't even want to speak about having children anymore.

"Jimmy, do you think you could look into this more? I need to go and see Cindy." Honestly, I needed to go and lie down.

"No problem," he replied immediately.

I nodded my thanks and was about to flit off when Jimmy added something.

"Oh, yeah, I have that date tonight, if you remember."

I looked up towards the ceiling.

"Oh, yeah. Susie, right?" I smiled and laughed. "So that's going well then?"

"I can cancel if you want," offered Jimmy.

"No, no, keep the date. You can't let stuff like this stop you from living life. Anyway I know you'll keep a few splinters around if I need you. I'll be back."

With that I flitted off home.

Opening the door to our apartment, a foreboding gloom enveloped me like a storm cloud dropping from the sky. It was dark inside, with the glimmering reflections of a holo projection playing off the walls.

"Honey?" I announced, worried, peering around the door as I entered.

Cindy was in a heap on the couch, the same as when I'd left many hours ago, and our home was a mess. The room was almost pitch black with Hal's EmoShow playing endlessly in the center. I was anxious but not sure what to do, so I walked over to the couch and sat down with her. I put my hand on her knee.

"Honey, how are you doing?" I asked.

She put her hand on mine and sat up a bit. Hal's head disappeared as she turned off the EmoShow, and the lights in the room came up a bit. At least she was trying.

"I'm okay," she responded, but sounding less than okay. "How are you?"

"I'm good," I replied. "But seriously, honey, what's up? Please talk to me."

"I'm just a little down. It's hard, you know."

"What's hard, honey?"

She didn't reply. She just looked at me.

"Do you want to speak to someone, maybe someone other than me, have you tried that?"

Maybe it was something to do with me.

"Oh, I've been talking to people, I have someone to talk to," she replied. "It's okay sweetheart, but thanks."