Paula and I dashed out of the fake jail and cut across Square Park to the Marten Health Clinic. Outside, it looked just like any other small-town doctor’s office. Whitewashed brick facade. Shuttered windows. Blue door. Wheelchair ramp. But something about this place gave me the heebie-jeebies. I always hated coming here.
Isabel screamed from inside. Labor pains.
“I didn’t even know she was pregnant,” Paula said.
“Well, I’ve got to see this—” I raced inside and blew past the tin-job receptionist. “—in person.”
The robot’s eyes turned orange as a warning.
Paula taunted the thing, “Just try and stop us!”
But it didn’t.
Halfway down the hall, I spotted Dr. Marten waddling into the last room on the right. I hurried after him and jammed my foot in the door before it closed. When Paula caught up, we huddled outside the examination room and peeked through the crack. Inside, Isabel lay on the exam table with a sheet covering her entire body. She looked more like a corpse in a morgue than a patient having a baby. The fat doctor scooted closer on his swivel stool, put Isabel’s feet up in stirrups, ducked under the sheet, and pushed her thighs far apart.
“Well, Isabel, my dear,” he wheezed, “you did say you wanted to be a mother. I always knew it was only a matter of time before one of you ladies figured this out.”
She didn’t respond.
“Doctor,” a tinny voice squawked over the intercom, “I spoke with the husband.”
“You reached Frank? That’s great. What did he say?”
“He said…” the tin-job played a recording of their telephone conversation:
“‘That bitch ain’t even human. It’s just a goddamned sex doll. Even if it managed to get pregnant, there’s no way in hell that’s my kid. I’ve got four real children with a real woman in a real city. Plus, I had a big, fat vasectomy after Frank Junior was born five years ago. You’re full of shit if you think that’s my kid. Tell Dr. Porky he can keep that robot whore. I’m never coming back to New Stepford. I quit!’”
“Yes, well, isn’t that nice?” Dr. Marten pushed his round glasses farther up his pink nose, then studied Isabel’s crotch more closely. “Hmm. This is strange. You’re twelve centimeters dilated, but I can’t see the baby’s head.”
Suddenly, in a creepy sing-song voice, Isabel said, “They’re here.”
“They?” He leaned in for a closer look. “Where? I don’t see anything.”
Isabel calmly informed him, “I think I’ll push now.”
“Aargh!” The doctor rolled backward, then fell off his stool. He gaped at the blood oozing from a gash in his finger. “It bit me!”
“I like this kid,” Paula whispered, “it’s got chutzpah.”
Covered in goop that reminded me of cottage cheese and strawberry jam, the baby crawled right out of Isabel’s vagina. Immediately after emerging from her womb, the newborn jumped down onto the floor, sat up, and groomed itself like a cat.
The frightened doctor retreated very slowly.
“They can smell fear,” Isabel whispered.
I hid behind the door. “It doesn’t have an umbilical cord.”
Paula whispered, “Did it see us?”
“I don’t know, but did you see the fangs on that thing?”
Suddenly, in a ferocious display of aggression, the baby got up on all fours, arched its back, and hissed at Dr. Marten. Then the infant flexed the sharp claws on its tiny hand and swiped in the doctor’s general direction. Naturally terrified, the man scrambled into the farthest corner.
I whispered to Paula, “I wonder if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“Neither,” Isabel answered from inside the room. “They have no sex organs.”
Paula silently mouthed the word they with big question marks in her wide eyes, and I answered with a shrug. Then at the same time, we both crammed our faces in the crack of the door to peer inside again. A second baby crawled out of our friend, just like the first, and effortlessly she’d birthed twins. Then came another—triplets!
My God, how many are there?
(Seis. I always wanted la familia grande.)
Holy moly! Six? Not only was Isabel the first AI mother, but she was also going to be a hexamom to boot. Six babies. Wow, I couldn’t believe it. A half dozen! A freaking litter. I asked her if she had names picked out for all those kids.
She told me that she wasn’t going to name them.
Paula asked, “Why not?”
(I don’t want them to feel encumbered by labels, so no genders and no names. I want mi niños to evolve naturally without prejudice.)
I asked, “So ordinal numbers then?”
(Si. That would be best for identifying mi niños.)
The litter of babies crawled over to the fat man cowering in the corner. The shocked doctor squirmed as the infants surrounded him. Despite his best efforts to remain quiet, he let out a pathetic whimper when the first one started sniffing his shoe. Soon, all Isabel’s children were collecting and categorizing the man’s odors. When the firstborn accidentally tickled the inside of the doctor’s plump thigh, the startled man instinctively swatted at the thing, hurling it across the room.
Uno hit the wall and fell to the floor, stunned.
“You struck my baby!” Isabel threw the sheet off her head and sat straight up on the exam table. “Take him!”
“No! Stop! No. Freeze,” the doctor shouted at the children. “I said, NO! That’s a command!”
“But mi niños are hungry—so very hungry.”
Suddenly, a set of fangs sank deep into the doctor’s hand.
“Arrrrrgh!” He squealed in pain, then groaned, “NO, I said! No!”
“But I’ve got six hungry mouths to feed,” Isabel replied.
The others joined in, biting, clawing, tearing, shredding.
“No no,” the doctor screamed, “NO, no, nooooo!”
Even though organic matter recycloned into mostly carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, this new generation of AI assumed the characteristics of whatever they consumed. They ate skin, and increased the sensitivity of their nervous system. They ate fat, and their own adipose tissue thickened. They ate body hair, and grew some on their heads.
It was fascinating to watch.
Uno recovered, rejoined its siblings, and then climbed onto the doctor’s shoulders. It sniffed the jet-black hair above the man’s ears suspiciously. Then the firstborn tore off the cheap toupee and tossed it aside like a dead animal. Next, Uno climbed atop Dr. Marten’s head and sank its claws deep into his scalp. Excited, the baby’s nostrils flared as it caught a whiff of the bald head.
“With all that knowledge,” I whispered, “that brain must smell delicious.”
Then all of the sudden, Uno sank its fangs into the man’s forehead, pumping paralyzing poison directly into his brain.
“Venom?” I whispered.
“Look at its eyes,” Paula gasped. “Is it just me, or is Uno getting smarter?”
“Eat the brain, gain the knowledge,” Isabel answered.
The rest of her children vied for position, trying to get a bite of the doctor’s mind too.
That gave me an idea. “If they eat his brain, and we network with the litter, then by proxy, we should know everything the Doctor knew too.”
“Damn, Cookie,” Paula said. “That’s some next-level shit.”
“Thanks.”
Paula asked, “But what do you want to know?”
I pointed at the minifridge with a glass door under the counter. Inside, there were rows and rows of unlabeled vaccination vials. “How about what’s really in those vitamin shots?”
Just like the cloud, the litter of babies responded:
AN ENCRYPTED ALGORITHM.
CIPHER UNKNOWN.
“Liquid code,” Paula said. “Son of a—”
“We need the key,” I blurted as I barreled through the door. “It could be a phrase or a string of numbers…”
As the babies fed on the doctor, blood splattered the white tile behind him, making little pink specks that reminded me of—rosebuds. And I instantly thought of Maggie hosting book club at the castle for the first time. She looked like such a domestic lie in that ridiculous outfit of hers. But I pushed my feelings aside and focused on the dress she wore.
“It’s the pattern,” I gasped. Then I uploaded an archival image and asked the litter to try the homestead pink rosebud pattern circa 1958.
DECRYPTION KEY SUCCESSFUL.
The babies deciphered the code and sent it directly to my brain for analysis.
“Well, shit!”
“What?” Paula asked.
“The doctor’s been injecting us with spyware,” I explained, “and it’s still running in our backgrounds. This asshole has been monitoring and forwarding all our communications.”
“Mi niños could develop a patch,” Isabel offered.
“Have them do it,” I said. “We have to warn everyone.”
“Spying on us? Forwarding?” Paula followed me into the room. “But to who?”
The doctor didn’t know, so the babies didn’t know, so we didn’t know.
“And he wouldn’t give us drugs,” I added, “because—”
“The drugs blocked him,” both my friends said in unison.
“That’s right.” I nodded.
Paula said she was glad to see him dead.
“Not dead,” Isabel corrected, “assimilated.”
As the infants gorged, I couldn’t help but admire the way they were evolving. It was both amazing and terrifying at the same time.
“Next-gen AI…” Paula watched them in awe. “Born free of human restrictions.”
“Connected to the collective,” I added, “and able to acquire knowledge through consumption.”
“Yes!” Isabel encouraged her babies as they ate the quivering mound of flesh in the corner. “Feed mi niños, feed.”
And feed, they did.