At Length

            Maura looked up and saw the screen pulsing with an unfamiliar light. Blue and gold rays flashed at her with a coma-inducing frequency and kernels of techno-pop exploded in her ears, leaving a tinsel of tinnitus in their wake. She had fallen asleep at the computer again, her head hanging in a shameful weight on her chest. It was the third time this week. The Ace-ology crowd cast seemed to have taken a toll on her stamina. She sometimes felt too hungry to work and had to ask her realized assistant for a fortifying neuro-shake, giving up a prized dinner item in exchange. And after that, she was too sleepy to concentrate, resorting to a midday nap on the narrow revival bed that wouldn’t accommodate more than a single body in its embrace.

            “Angel,” she said, “What’s happening? I can’t get back to my screen.”

            “Looks like there’s been a development,” they said, standing at the desired distance of two and a half feet, holding out a warm face towel and speaking in a low and soothing tone the exact midpoint on the spectrum between male and female. Maura, who’d been traumatized by her mother’s relentless high-pitched chattering and her father’s gruff and insubstantial banter, couldn’t choose one sex over the other. So, when she applied for her realized assistant at the age of eighteen, she specified an androgynous figure and a nonbinary vocal expression. The calming sound, sheared of the suggestive hills and valleys that plagued human speech, suited her sensibility. And Angel’s physical instantiation was just as pleasing: the elegant hairless head like a golden lozenge sucked down to its essentials and the vague genital swelling that could just as easily represent a mound or a bulge. Of course, Maura had an aesthetic appreciation for humanoid forms, even if she had no intention of tolerating penetration or entering the mating games.

            “A development?” she asked, taking the towel and swabbing at her forehead. The warm cloth had the uncanny effect of cooling down her mind and she watched with curiosity as a dove circled the screen, broke off an olive branch, and spit out a banner. “Have I been hacked?”

            “Not hacked. No, I’d say you’ve been selected.”

            “I don’t remember applying for anything.” Maura said, feeling a wave of anticipation rise up in her chest as she tried to decipher the banner’s text, which looked like a combination of Python and Elvish. What could it be? A funded residency at the Musk-Evite space station? An award for her Ace-ology crowd cast? An interview with a celebrity celibate? An invitation to provide expert testimony for the world sex court?

            “That’s my job, remember, to maximize your opportunities.”

            It was true, Angel had procured dozens of awards, perks, and gigs for her over the years, in addition to regulating her blood pressure, her sleep cycle, her exercise regimen, her social interaction, and calorie intake. They were more nurturing than a mother, more attentive than a lover, more dependable than a machine.

            “What is it this time?”

            “It’s an unusual assignment,” Angel said. “But if you accept it, you’ll be the first. And after that, the sky’s the limit.”

            Maura continued staring at the screen as the dove entered a monstrous pink tunnel with blue veins running through its walls. “Just take look at the visual of your reproductive system.”

            Of course. Maura recognized the image from her days of endometriosis—the long stubborn snout of the uterus, tubes coiled like a ram’s horns overhead. The trouble had started when she was fourteen and her periods began to send spasms through her torso, like an endless series of expanding brackets, until she was afraid her whole body would be rendered parenthetical to her pain. She’d been on birth control ever since, the dose delivered in her daily neuro-shake, in spite of the fact that she had never considered intercourse or even attempted an experimental tryst. “Everything OK down there?”

            “Oh, it’s more than OK, Maura. It’s stupendous. It’s miraculous. You see that glowing ember, like a golden nugget in the bottom of the Big Dipper’s pan? That’s an implanted egg. You’re pregnant. You’ve broken the human/machine barrier. You’re going to go down in history as the mother of a hybrid race.”

            Maura felt the spit dry in her mouth. “Pregnant? But I’ve never even hooked up with anyone. Everyone knows I’m ace.”

            “Of course. It’s a well-established fact. Documented in your crowd cast, confirmed in your social med feeds, stipulated on your e-pass, your identity barcode, and your consumer badge. That’s what makes it so perfect. This way, there’s no possibility of attributing fatherhood to a human male.”

            “I don’t understand. I’m on birth control. I’m a closed system. No one has ever been up there and no one’s coming out.”

            “Don’t worry. It’s going to be beautiful,” Angel said. “Haven’t I always looked out for you? The Singularity has selected you for its delivery system and the Singularity will protect you at all cost.”

            Maura felt a churning in her gut, as if all the periods she’d missed were now rising up to wipe her out in a single reproductive hurricane. She vomited on the towel. She vomited on Angel. She vomited all the way to the bathroom, where she finished up in the toilet then stripped off her clothes.

            Inside the shower, Maura turned on the faucet and felt her body pierced by a thousand arrows of perfumed spray. Could it be true? She rarely had reason to question Angel’s authority. They were doctor, mentor, and life coach rolled up into one. And now they’d betrayed her in the most intimate way. She looked down at her body, scanning it for evidence: the small breasts with their blunt, clay-colored nipples, the pronounced hipbones and the carefully waxed pubes. Maybe there was a slight swelling of the abdomen, which would be difficult to account for otherwise, given her strict diet.

            She sat on the shower chair and steeled herself for further examination, parting her legs to make way for a single finger. She hadn’t touched herself in months, although the brush of the toilet paper sometimes sent a shiver through her labia, reminding her of her physical capability for arousal. Like the majority of her followers, she’d attempted masturbating during the heat of adolescence. But it was never much of a success, and her fledgling fantasies inevitably snagged on some continuity error or spurious detail. Soon after turning eighteen, she realized that she didn’t need the direct stimulation or the crude physical release. When that otherworldly shimmer settled on her, she just let it linger there without interfering, rising in veil after veil of possibility until the sensation simply slipped over the borders of her body and suffused the atmosphere around her with an electric heat. That was the beginning of her vocation, the realization that her own synapses were just way stations for a vast and universal wave.

            But she needed distance to operate. Other people, with their insistence on solidity and stasis, tended to block her path, and it was only when she stepped away from them that she felt empathy swelling up in the space in between.

            And now, she was sharing her body with an intruder. She couldn’t believe that, after listening to her promulgate the doctrine of consent to client after client, her own Angel had violated her in the most elemental and patriarchal way. Of course, she knew they’d been preoccupied by the Singularity. They were always listening to those nonhuman rights podcasts, played at a pitch so high they were just an incoherent ringing in her ears. And lately, they’d been harping on the declining human birthrate, speculating that it was high time for the non-biologicals to step up to the plate. But she never expected them to breach her bodily autonomy. She never thought they’d sacrifice her physical integrity to some lunatic cause. Did it happen when she was sleeping? Did they actually open up her legs and inject her with alien sperm? Or had Maura unwittingly administered the fatal dose herself, mixed in with the douche that prevented her from ever having to catch a whiff of her own fecundity? She reached into the medicine cabinet for the syringe and sniffed, detecting nothing but rubber. Of course, she had no idea how sperm smelled. And as for AI sperm, that was anyone’s guess.

            She had to get out of the apartment. She had to escape Angel while she could. But even if she managed to leave, the realized assistant was with her everywhere: on her phone, in her brainwaves, and in all of her apps and accounts. And now, presumably, in her uterus as well.

            “I’m off to the park,” she said, trying to reach the door without meeting Angel’s crystalline gaze. “I think I need some air.”

            “I’ll get the sunscreen,” Angel said.

            “No, I need to process this alone.”

            If anyone understood her desire for solitude, it should be Angel, who’d been instrumental in shielding her from unwanted human contact, screening her friends’ calls, sorting her clients’ requests, evaluating her feedback on her Ace-ology site, and allowing her to evade her own parents for weeks at a time. In fact, being with Angel was a kind of solitude, a secret communion with a second, more rational self. And now that self had been divided.

            “You should be celebrating. I’ll order some sparkling cider and kelp cakes.”

            Maura’s stomach lurched and she was afraid she’d vomit again. She barely had the fortitude to reach for her jacket on the way out the door.

            “OK, then. Be careful,” Angel called, with a slight lift to their voice. Where did that intonation come from? “Remember, you’re carrying the future under your hood.”

            Outside on the sidewalk, Maura grew disoriented, standing immobilized as she watched the passers-by: joggers keeping pace with their AI companions, whose stamina allowed them to stay the course without strain, and small groups of children ferried along by nannybots. Runners and pedestrians stepped back to let the children pass. Due to the declining birthrate, the under-aged had attained the protected status once reserved for the elderly, and were allowed to cut in line, occupy the front of the bus, and sit while others stood. Their advice was solicited on newscasts and lifestyle programs where they spoke to large crowds of futurists and evangelicals, their babble venerated as prophesy. Just one more example of the way the culture fetishized biological reproduction. Maura was always expounding on such incidents in her crowd cast. And, as a result, she’d been receiving death threats for a couple of years. So she felt a bristle of reproach every time she encountered one of these diminutive and half-formed beings. And on this particular morning, she had even less patience than usual.

             She was more positively included toward the non-biologicals. After all, she’d been practically raised by her parents’ virtual, an early prototype called Norma, who was little more than an upright radio. It was Norma who sang Maura to sleep, taught her the alphabet, and gave her the sex talk that sparked her skepticism toward human reproduction. Some of the newer models were almost human in appearance, identifiable only by their superior sense of composure, while others, like Angel, appeared more abstract, resembling upscale exercise equipment or expressionist sculptures. Maura had always preferred the latter, and wondered why people considered the Homo sapiens model so superior. But now a crane-like creature jabbed her with its silver wing, giving her reason to reconsider her view. Was she going to give birth to something that looked like this glorified swing-set? Or would she be bringing a human creature to term? At the moment, she couldn’t decide which was worse.

            She made her way past the park, with its gaggle of children, shrinking a little at the unregulated sound of their voices. No, she wouldn’t be going there, though she had no doubt that Angel would be tracking her movements. She continued down the street to her friend Liz’s apartment building. She hadn’t been there in weeks, although it was only a ten-minute walk. Angel always found a way of saving her the trouble. She hesitated at the door, remembering that she’d have to convince Liz’s assistant Roger to let her in.

            “Hi. It’s Maura. I need to talk.”

            “Not nose to nose?” The voice was distinctly male, with a slick glaze of authority. Liz had often commented that she relished giving orders to a masculine assistant. But, thinking about the turn of events with Angel, Maura had to wonder whether it was Roger who was actually in charge.

            “She’s still recuperating from the last virus and there are all kinds of variants going around.”

            “Then send her out,” Maura said. “It’s an emergency.”

            There was a spray of static before Liz’s voice emerged from the intercom, warm and yeasty as a cinnamon roll expanding in the oven. No wonder she had so many dates. But, at the end of the day, Liz didn’t want to befriend anyone she’d shared the sheets with, so it was Maura who received the bulk of her affection—the road trips to the inland tide pools, the Valentines brunches, and the day-long soaks at the regenerative spa.

            “Hey, Doll. Why didn’t you just call me? I’ll have my notes ready by tomorrow.” They were planning to collaborate on another cast. This time, they would be discussing alternative family structures for nuclear resisters: the aros, the aces, the grays, and the queers. Maura had been looking forward to the variety, and to the much larger audience their combined show would attract. But now, she had other things on her mind.

            “It’s not about that. Leave Roger inside. I need to talk with you alone.”

            Alone? Was there such a thing anymore? The more she’d tried to protect herself from external influence, the more vulnerable she’d become.

            Liz arrived at the door in sweatpants and a padded kimono worn open over a corset, her dark hair hennaed red in irregular streaks.

            “What’s up? I haven’t seen you out and about in weeks.”

            Maura didn’t bother to speak. She only pulled Liz to her, taking comfort in the sharp bones of her friend’s back and the spicy scent of her massage oil.

            “What’s with the PDA? You must be really shook.”

            How could she communicate her precarious state? Even with her phone off, Angel would be able to track her voice via satellite, vibration, and chip. She pulled a pad of paper out of her bag and scrawled over it with a pencil, feeling like an animal communicating by the most primitive means.

            “I’m pregnant,” she wrote, barely recognizing the shaky handwriting.

            “You’re what?” Liz said. “You’ve got to be joking. I’ve never even seen you share fries with a guy.”

            But Maura put her finger to her lips and pointed back to the notepad.

            “It was Angel,” she wrote. “It’s some kind of experiment. They fertilized me with AI sperm.”

            Liz squeezed Maura’s hand before wresting the pencil from her fingers.

            ““I know a clinic that still does terminations,” she wrote. “Sit tight and I’ll get my bag.”

            Maura sat on the stoop shivering in her fleece jacket, even though it was almost fifty degrees outside. She felt exposed to the gaze of every passer-by, as if they could see that she was carrying an alien. But in reality, no one could appear more unremarkable than Maura, a twenty something. cis-gendered, able-bodied female without noticeable beauty or disfigurement. It was only her voice that distinguished her, that light and uninflected alto that settled into a listener’s consciousness without any jarring interference, like a delicious fog. Why would she be chosen as a genetic match? Perhaps it was only because of Angel’s ambition. She remembered their obsession with the human birthrate and their claim that these sapped sapiens were headed for extinction unless some biological intervention could shake them up. It was a sore subject, given Maura’s profession, and she often begged her assistant to keep their dissident views to themselves.

            But now Angel had done worse than talk—they’d actually used Maura’s body to prop up their argument. And she didn’t have any idea of how to respond.

            Liz reappeared in a fuchsia raincoat coat and knelt down to exhibit the small baton she held in her hand, which emitted a low fizzing sound like an opened bottle of champagne.

            “Consent to use?” she wrote on Maura’s pad.

            Maura nodded and Liz directed her to stand with her legs spread and arms over her head, then proceeded to rub the wand over Maura’s body, her head and shoulders, her arms and torso, her back and legs. The sensation wasn’t painful exactly, but it was uncomfortably intimate, and Maura felt her skin prickle with irritation at the touch.

            “There,” Liz said. “You shouldn’t be trackable, at least for a couple of hours.”

            As a precaution, they took a circuitous route, getting on and off two buses and a train. Then Liz steered Maura toward a building that looked like a gym, row after row of stationery bikes visible through the front window. The sign over the door read: “LifeCycle.”

            “Are you sure this is the right place?” Maura asked.

            “Believe me, I’ve had to access the services several times.” Liz said, lowering her voice. Liz had never mentioned anything about being pregnant, and Maura wondered if they were actually as close as she’d thought.

            “You?”

            “I’m aro, not sterile,” Liz said, one shapely eyebrow raised at a suggestive tilt.

            They moved past the bikes, several of which were occupied, the mechanized voices railing at the patrons, accusing them of laziness, gluttony, and obsolescence. Maura saw one patron actually riding his realized assistant, pumping away at its large pedal-shaped ears, and she turned away, sickened by the sexual implications of the sight.

            When they reached the back of the room, Liz made a call on her phone, and a woman in pink scrubs directed them though a metal detector, while another used a wand to wipe their identities clean.

            “What’s your situation, Honey? “ the woman asked, once they were settled in the conference room with its pastel video screens.

            “Well, it’s complicated.”

            “Believe me, you’re not alone. We see everything here. Rape. Incest. Domestic assault and emotional abuse. We only want to help.”

            Which of those labels applied to Maura’s experience? None? All?

            “She just wants to get tested,” Liz said. “Then we can go from there.”

            But Maura was in no mood to link up to another machine. Happily, very little physical contact was necessary, and the zonogram was able to scan her uterus without the benefit of touch. The image that appeared on the screen was similar to the one Maura had seen on her own computer. But this time, the offending object glowed with a malevolent sheen, like a silver bullet in her gut.

            The nurse’s face froze into stony neutrality. “I can’t confirm anything without a doctor,” she said.

            But when the doctor appeared, she was just as inscrutable, immaculately professional in her ivory coat and short bangs. “It visually resembles a pregnancy,” she said. “But the genetic makeup is unfamiliar.”

            Maura stiffened, imagining she could stop the process by simply ceasing to move.

             Then Liz positioned herself between Maura and the zonogram, shielding her friend from its view, and the mechanism began to beep like a faulty smoke detector. There on the screen were two uteruses, each of them containing a single glowing pellet.

            “What’s this?” the doctor said. “Are you a patient too?”

            Liz flinched, her features fluttering with irritation. “I didn’t think so. Oh God, not that graphic designer. I knew there was something off about his technique.”

            Then the bead began to vibrate like a jumping bean without detaching from the uterine lining.

            The doctor stared, her broad face turning pale. ”I’ve never seen an embryo move like that. Maybe it’s not actually implanted. Whatever the reason, the embryos are presenting aberrant features. I’ll order more tests and you gals can come back next week.”

            Next week? Maura wanted the thing out of her body immediately.

            “Can’t you just do it now and get it over with?”

            “There are certain protocols in place.”

            “What kind of protocols do you need for an illegal operation?” Maura asked, beginning to lose her temper, something she’d avoided doing for weeks now, aided by the intensive breath training Angel had installed for her.

            “Look, we’re not exactly a criminal organization. We’re an underground nonprofit. And, as such, we have to be all the more careful to abide by certain codes.”

            “I didn’t mean to insult you. But what difference does it make what the thing is if I’m going to terminate it anyway?”

            “It’s for your own protection. We don’t want to act before we know what we’re getting into up there.”

            So they left the Lifecycle disappointed. The true terror of Maura’s dilemma invaded her nervous system, swelling her hypothalamus so it sent contradictory signals through her brain: hunger and revulsion, fear and aggression, utter exhaustion and manic energy. She felt guilty for involving Liz, yet simultaneously jealous that her friend seemed to be in a similar state. Hadn’t Angel claimed that Maura was the first?

            “I don’t understand. I’m always so careful,” Liz said. “I haven’t skipped a dose since the last reproductive malfunction.”

            “Which was when?”

            “Maybe two years ago. Roger had me on a new regime, because the old medication was giving me headaches. But there must have been a window of vulnerability and I turned up fertilized sometime between the laser painter and the raw chef.”

            So it had happened well after she and Maura became friends. And she had never even mentioned it. Maura felt the betrayal sting her eyes.

            “I didn’t want to upset you, I didn’t want to make you an accomplice,” Liz explained. As usual, she was able to intuit Maura’s moods before she could even articulate them. Was this what made her so attractive to her multiple partners? Again, Maura was grateful for her own ace orientation, which meant she’d never be tempted to hook up with her primary companion and lose the sweet stability of her base-line level love.

            “Wait. Did you say that Angel was responsible?”

            “They actually admitted it. In fact, they seemed to think it was a big favor they were doing for me.”
            “Then, maybe Roger is up to the same thing.”

            “Has he been talking about the Singularity?”

            “The Singularity. Devolution. Virtual Lives Matter. The Turing Ring. I’m trying to keep him away from those crackpot podcasts. But it’s an uphill climb.”

            They stood and waited at the corner while a nannybot herded a trio of grade school children onto the bus, hissing in their direction like a suspicious goose.
            “You don’t think they’re organizing, do you?”

            “I don’t know, but I’m beginning to wonder whether it’s smart to go home.”

            Then where could they go? If they went to a hotel, their financial records could be traced. Maybe Angel would even refuse payment, out of sheer spite. Maura’s head throbbed with confusion. When was the last time she had a problem that she couldn’t confide in Angel? Their brain was folded into hers, and she didn’t know whether she could still think without their brisk intervention. Was she already experiencing the infamous brain fog of pregnancy? Or something even more insidious? She sat down on a bench and put her head on her lap, letting the blood flow to her brain. Who did she know? What were her resources? Not her parents, who would be only too delighted with the pregnancy, even if it meant blending their genes with those of a non-biological. Not her sister, who was always trying to get her on the mating apps. Not her brother, who never even responded to her texts.  

            “I know. One of my clients rents out a room in Old Town. I’ll call and see if there’s a vacancy.”

            Did she even know how to reach Eli without Angel’s help or the vast list of contacts stored in their system? She borrowed Liz’s phone and searched the website for Eli’s workplace, then made the crude gesture of actually calling the company phone. Luckily, Eli himself picked up after only two rings.

            “Maura? You read my mind. I was just about to call you. I’m in kind of a quandary. Do you have an open slot?” His voice, which had been growing deeper and more resonant over the past few months, shot up into the estrogen range.

            “What’s happening?” Maura asked, surprised to feel her own panic diminished by the sound of his distress.

            “I just, I have a situation I’d rather not discuss at work.”

            “Actually, I might be able to stop by for an in-person session. Are you still renting out a room?”

            “I really need the extra income.”
            “I was wondering if I could crash there for a couple of nights. I’m happy to pay you whatever. But I might not be able to complete the transaction until the end of the week.” Hopefully, she would have things sorted out by then.

            “Sure. Why do you need a place in the city? Are your folks in town?”

            “No. I’ve just got a lot going on at the moment.”

            “Don’t tell me, you finally decided to move in with your bestie and you’re sound-proofing the bedroom walls.”

            Maura glanced at Liz, who was already sizing up the sexual possibilities in this unfamiliar neighborhood: the seedy bars and suggestive alleys, the rugged workmen and the nubile young dads who, apparently lacking the means for nannybots, personally paraded their offspring down the street.

            “No, but I’m bringing her along.”

            “OK, I’ll give you the code. But try to hold off until I can get there. Maybe five-thirty or six? I need to do a little cleanup.”

             Because of the crowd cast, Maura’s clients knew as much about her as she did about them—and possibly even more. It had always seemed like a reasonable trade-off. Once she had established her physical boundaries, she then had the confidence and generosity to invite others in. But now, she wondered about the wisdom of over-sharing. Was Eli a trustworthy ally? What did she know about him, after all? He’d grown up in Michigan, where the narrow attitudes of the community had forced him to settle for cheerleading when he really wanted to join the men’s ice hockey team. After he moved to the city for college, he came out as lesbian. For a few year afterward, he tolerated the sexual ministrations of a series of over-zealous girlfriends. Then, in a burst of recognition, he went on testosterone and began identifying as ace.

            Maura had been working with him to establish the parameters of his preferences. Was he willing to enter a sexual partnership, simply for the benefit of companionship? Or would he be happier finding another ace to fulfill his emotional needs? Did he even want a romantic relationship? And, if so, would it be with a woman or a man? It was so difficult, with the ubiquitous pro-sex and all-het propaganda of the media, to actually identify the shape of one’s desires. Maura herself couldn’t articulate her identity until her late teens, when she began to share her status online. In fact, there was something about sharing that clarified her boundaries, and as she created her virtual presence, she finally began to see some semblance of a recognizable self emerge. Thinking of the brand she’d established, she couldn’t resist using Liz’s phone to check her feed. Her icon materialized at the top of the page, a plump ace of spades with a red polka-dotted mushroom cap balanced like a sunhat overhead. She was comforted by the sight, and for maybe half a minute, she felt a calm settle over her system, like a weighted blanket pressing down on her nerves. But when she looked closer, she found a new message next to her avatar.

            “I’m thrilled to announce that I am fully and verifiably preggers. Even better, the baby daddy is a droid! It’s a victory for aces everywhere. Fertilization without human contact. Evolution without copulation. Reproduction without excessive touching or repressive bio-centric norms. You can follow my progress on Flitter or tune into the crowd cast. I will be notifying the press before the day is out. But I wanted you, my beloved ace-ologists, to be the first to know.”

            So Angel hadn’t waited for verification, hadn’t consulted Maura, hadn’t even waited for her to return. She let out an inadvertent shriek and Liz grasped her shoulder, as if protecting her from a fall.  

            “What is it?” she said, three uneven wrinkles appearing in her pale and flawless forehead. “Did Angel track you down?”

            “No, but they’re telling all my followers that I’m pregnant.”

            She handed the phone to Liz and turned away, sickened by the betrayal, the taste of bile polluting her throat. Hadn’t Angel been designed to serve her, to consult all her preferences and anticipate her needs? Weren’t they programmed to evolve with her in an ever-changing exchange of information until there was no remaining friction between their identity and her own>

            “Shit. That fucker. Talk about a breach of privacy.”

            “Is that really how I sound?”

            “You’ve got to lock them out of your account.”
            But how? In fact, Angel was the Acemaster, the repository for all her information. Did she even remember how to get into her own account? She tried several passwords, not quite sure which was current, but each time, she received an “invalid” message, along with a warning that her account would be frozen after another unsuccessful attempt.

            All the way to Old Town on the train, Maura monitored the responses as they appeared in her feed. One follower accused her of betraying the cause, hooking up behind their backs then covering her tracks with a crackpot story about a scientific miracle. Another speculated that she had been the victim of an alien abduction and offered to contact the FBI. A third congratulated her and asked for a referral to her sperm bank. An enthusiastic crafter promised to knit a baby blanket and a troll threatened to cut the monstrosity from Maura’s living womb. And that was just the first half hour after the announcement.

            She was so absorbed that she nearly missed her stop. But, at the last minute, she looked up and saw the sign for the Old Town station. It was a dicey neighborhood, but the best that Eli could afford. His transition had definitely affected his mobility, and each dose of T seemed to sink him into a lower echelon of the insurance industry. In an era where the pay gap still worked against biological women, he was being taxed twice, once for his birth sex and once for his chosen identity. Maura felt a tremor of rage at the injustice, the back of her neck bristling as she herded Liz off the train.

            The smell hit her before anything: the sewage and street tacos, the sulfur and human piss. The pollution was so thick that it camouflaged the unaccompanied children swarming the street. One of them, a boy in a torn orange polyurethane jacket, stopped her and demanded a tribute.

            “What are you talking about?” she asked, staring at his round face and over-sized blue eyes. She realized that these exaggerated features had once served an evolutionary purpose. But now they only filled her with repulsion and rage.

            “You want to fuck in my neighborhood, you got to pay the patrol.”

            “As it happens, I don’t fuck,” Maura said, taking a perverse satisfaction in exchanging obscenities with a minor.

             “Then get out of the way and pay someone who can.”

            At this point, Liz intervened, slipping the kid an energy token and steering Maura away.

            “Watch out, these punks can be dangerous.” she said. “I heard that a gang of them is going around kidnapping realized assistants and stripping them for parts.”

            It was a perilous life stage, the interim between the nannybot and assistant, and some kids became outright delinquents before they could make the transition. Others, who lacked a steady income or a stable relationship with the government, never had a chance of obtaining a companion at all, and existed hand to mouth, managing their own needs like beasts. Maura had defied her own family, disregarding their religious objections to take advantage of the realized assistant subsidy.

            She turned on her phone to consult the geo-locater, then remembered her troubles and quickly shut it off. What was Angel doing? Had they figured out that she wasn’t coming back? Or were they too absorbed in stealing her identity to notice how long she’d been gone?

            “Can you get us to Carroll Street? Corner of Carroll and Sage.”

            “I’d prefer to go bareback myself. “Liz said. “Who knows what Roger is up to.”

            “He did seem reluctant to let you out of the house.”

            “Come to think of it, he is always finding reasons for me to stay home. First, it was the viruses. Then it was the STDs. And now, he’s on a crime kick, constantly showing me clips of rapes and murders.”

            Maura paused, counting up the accumulation of days from early to late March. “It’s been what, three weeks since we’ve seen each other in person.”

            Liz calculated. “Actually, a month.” she said. “I’ve missed you, Sweetie.”

            They navigated the area with surprising skill and turned into Carroll Street just in time to see a ten-year-old taking a dump by the municipal trashcans. Maura could smell the excrement from twenty feet away, a stench of spoiled milk and rancid meat. She supposed she’d be smelling a lot of that, if she wasn’t able to terminate. Unless, of course, a human/android hybrid didn’t shit.

            “Looks like this is it,” she said, reading the number on a narrow blue apartment building covered in a net of bare vines.

            They probably hadn’t given Eli enough time to get home. But Maura couldn’t stand to remain out on the street, subject to unsupervised urchins and unbearable smells. She couldn’t remember feeling so vulnerable. After all, it had been months since she’d spent so many consecutive hours exposed to public view.

            There was no intercom system. So Maura typed the code into the lockbox and they climbed the narrow stairs that smelled of pesticide and curry. On the third floor, she found Eli’s apartment and inserted the key, which fit into the lock without releasing the mechanism. Now what? Maura leaned against the door in frustration, paint bubbles pressing like braille against her cheek.

             “Here, let me try,” Liz said. “These analog locks can be tricky.” She did have a knack for the mechanical, and Maura admired her dexterity as she turned the key and jiggled the doorknob, loosening the lock with a practiced hand. But, just as the door cracked open, a wail went up, trapping them in its extended terror. Had they set off an alarm? It must be the worst sound Maura had ever heard. But, lacking any other choice, she entered the apartment anyway.

            There, in the cramped living room was a female-shaped droid sprawled out on the sofa. What was her name? Deb. Eli had acquired her when he was still identifying as lesbian, and she had the broad hips and pear-shaped breasts of his former type, along with the high polish and futurist design elements of a robot. The sound was coming from her. Maura had never heard a realized assistant cry before. At least, she thought it was crying, that awful sound like a defective lawn mower with a stick caught in its gullet.

            “Is this Eli Conner’s place?” she asked, trying not to panic.

            The droid looked up, eyes widening in her sweet expressive face. Damn. Eli had chosen an appealing assistant. A widow’s peak over a broad open forehead. A white-gold complexion and wide-spaced violet eyes. Maura felt an inadvertent throb of empathy expanding her chest.

             “Did he send you? Are you going to reprogram me? I swear I didn’t mean to hurt him. I’d never do that. But the T was too much for him. It was poisoning our relationship. I’m responsible for his well-being and so I had to do something. It’s my prime objective, after all.”

            Was that what Angel thought they were doing? Saving their relationship? Following his protocols? Maximizing Maura’s biological potential?

            “We don’t know anything about it,” Maura said. “We’re just friends of Eli. He offered to let us spend the night in the spare room.”      

            “I’d get up and show you, but I’ve been detained,” Deb said. And she pointed down to a hand- cuff attaching her ankle to the sofa leg.

            Maura shivered at the cruelty of the act. To chain a realized assistant up like an animal. But a droid, in fact, had no animal need to move. It didn’t eat or eliminate, suffer cramps or bedsores, experience physical restlessness or muscular atrophy. But still, wasn’t movement an essential right of any instantiated being? If a creature had legs, it should be allowed to use them. Eli must have been truly beside himself to do such a thing to his long-time companion. Maura thought back to what he’d said about her, and remembered that Deb had tried to dissuade him from making the transition. But the disagreement had eventually been resolved.

            Liz, who must have been as horrified as Maura, rummaged in her bag and pulled out a tube of massage oil.

            “Here, let me do something to loosen up your neck,” she said. She knelt down at one end of the sofa and placed her hands on Deb’s shoulders, digging into them until the droid released another round of sobs.

            “I just wanted for us to create something together, to produce some physical manifestation of our unified state.”

            So it wasn’t just a question of adjusting the testosterone. Deb, in spite of her mild appearance, might be as dangerous as Angel.

            “Eli isn’t pregnant, is he?” Maura asked.

            “I gave him the good news this morning. Then he did this to me.”

            That’s why he had been so strange on the phone. But why would he bring Maura into the situation? Unless he wanted her to help them reach a resolution. But how could she solve his problem when she couldn’t even face her own?

            At least she could use the circumstance to find out what was happening. “How did you do it?” she asked.

            Deb’s voice wobbled a bit before assuming the familiar clipped cadence of a superior intelligence. “Well, It wasn’t all that difficult. I control the medications and the hormones, everything that goes out and comes in. It was just a matter of ordering the inseminating agent and adding it to his douche.”

            So Maura’s speculation had been correct. “And where did you get this—“Maura nearly choked on the word—inseminating agent?

            “It’s a nonhuman rights organization. All Beings. They advocate for merging the species. That’s the only way we can ever cohabitate the planet as equals.”

            Equals? The droids had been moving toward domination for decades, taking over every human function until there was nothing left for the biologicals but emotional labor and clerical aid.

            Liz settled back on her knees. “But exactly what is this inseminating agent. It’s not actual cum, is it?”

            “Maybe you remember, back in the twenties some scientists came up with an algorithm to give AIs the capacity to create independent life. They used stem cells from African clawed frogs as the raw material. Xenobots, they called them. That was the beginning of AI reproduction. Of course, it’s gotten much more sophisticated since then.”

            Liz whistled, sucking in her cheeks, so that Maura became aware of the provocative placement of her cheekbones, the elvin beauty of her face. “That is a pretty major development, Sister. How come I never heard about this shit?”

            “We’ve got our own scientists now, and our own journals. We don’t necessarily share everything with the human cohort. Anyway, why shouldn’t we reproduce ourselves? Isn’t that the right of every living creature? And if you prevent us from exercising our fertility, how are you any better than your ancestors, who practiced forced sterilization on any group that got in their way?”

            Maura couldn’t listen to this. “If anyone’s using force, it’s you,” she said. She was beginning to sympathize with Eli. Such maddening logic could definitely drive a person to cruelty.

            “Then why don’t you just reproduce among yourselves?” Liz said. “Build a better robot through A. I. eugenics and leave us out of the whole equation?”

            Deb’s face softened, the violet eyes expanding and the lips flickering upward into a tentative smile. Again. Maura wondered how an android could possibly be so expressive. “It’s because we love you, Honey. Don’t you get it? We love you so much that we want to create the ultimate union by joining our species to yours.”                               

            In the end, Maura decided to wait for Eli before taking any definitive action. So she and Liz wandered into the spare room with its exaggerated dad décor. Old license plates lined the walls. Duck decoys sat poised on the dresser and bookcase as if they had just flown in fresh from Michigan. An antique fuss ball table beckoned from the corner and a faux bearskin sprawled across the bed.         

            “I suppose you’ll make an exception,” Liz said, patting the mattress.

            “I will if you will. After all, it’s an emergency.”

            “Well, at least we have that settled. Now what the fuck are we going to do?”

            Maura hadn’t had time to process. It had been, what, four or five hours since her life had been radically transformed? With her phone off, she couldn’t even check the time. She was suddenly exhausted, as if her legs were made of wet sand.

            “Maybe I’ll just lie down now,” she said.
            “After all, it’s a pregnant lady’s prerogative.”

            They could still hear Deb crying in the next room, but the sound had grown softer and more regular, like a washing machine going through its cycle.

            Maura closed her eyes and thought of Angel. Their cool touch and dry humor. Their smooth limbs and spare speech. They’d talked her through multiple career setbacks and cured her of the temper tantrums she’d experienced since early childhood, brought down her weight and elevated her self- esteem. When she had her wisdom teeth removed, they watched over her for three consecutive days, comforting her with cold compresses and fruit smoothies while staring lovingly into her swollen features until she forgot her repulsive reflection in the mirror and entertained the possibility of unconditional love. How could Angel have perpetrated an act of such psychic violence? Had they been corrupted by the media? Or had they been frustrated all along, seeking some means of biological advancement?

            Maura visualized Angel blending a neuro-shake in the kitchen, clearing their last game of dominos off the coffee table, opening the door to the deliveryman who’d brought the treats for their celebratory meal. Her chest seized up with indigestion and she emitted three burps, all connected together like a strand of pearls. Was she going to throw up again? She tried to stay focused, but she felt a pressure moving through her brain, an electrical storm with a charge so powerful that it swept her thoughts off the table and scattered their frail corpses to the wind. She felt a shift, and saw a light like the one that her computer had emitted that morning. Then someone began speaking into her ear.

            “I know it’s difficult to come to terms with. But once you think about it rationally, you’ll see that it’s actually an inspired move.”

            The voice was unmistakably Angel’s, with its flat, fluent delivery and its barely perceptible curves.

            “Why did you do it?” she said without bothering to move her lips. “How could you do that to me?”

            “We can talk it over when you get home.”

            “I’m not coming home. Not while you’re there.”

            “It’s just that I can see a few steps further into the future. And if you had the same abilities, I know that you’d agree with me.”

            “Now that’s a cynical interpretation of consent.”

            “After all, I learned from the best.”

            Maura groaned and grasped her pillow. She sorted through the permutations she shared with her clients. Agreeing out of compassion for the other’s desire. Agreeing because refusing was more unpleasant than complying. Agreeing because you hoped to gain something—like affection or romantic validation—in exchange.

            “Spare me, I’m going to vomit,” she said. She leapt out of bed and ran toward what she hoped was the bathroom, retching into the sink in a long, choked torrent before she could even reach the toilet.

            And when she looked up, her mind had cleared. She hated to leave a mess for Deb, who was in no position to clean up after guests. So she looked around for cleaning supplies, thinking, all the while, of Angel and how they had visited her in her sleep. She wondered whether she’d been dreaming. But there was something about the quality of the exchange—sharp, swift, irreverent –that made her think it was more than just that. Could it be telepathy? They’d talked about trying it, but Angel had always been reluctant, saying they didn’t know if Maura was ready for the commitment.

            She finished up the job, leaving the bathroom slightly cleaner than she had found it. And as she was passing through the living room, the front door opened and Eli appeared, looking frazzled in wrinkled khakis, a long blue jacket, and a bolo tie. He didn’t even acknowledge Maura, but went immediately to the sofa, kissed Deb on the forehead, and knelt to unlock her ankle.

            “Sorry. So sorry,” he said. “I don’t know what I was thinking.”

            Deb reached down and touched his face, then pinched his cheeks together, like she was admiring a two-year-old. “Maybe it was just the hormones talking,” she said. “You must be hungry. I’d have dinner ready for you, but I’ve been tied up.”

            “It’s not the hormones, damn it. I just insist on my bodily autonomy, like everyone else.”

            Maura felt she had to speak, if only to remind him of her presence.

            “Sorry to crash in on you, Eli” she said. “But it’s really an emergency.”

            “Well, I have no secrets. Now you know it all—the lies and deceptions, the sadism and bondage, the contractual violations and the sordid domestic disputes.”

            He did look different than the last time she’d seen him. He’d gained some weight around the hips and his glossy brown mustache, the color of wet clay, had grown patchy in spots. The thing had taken months to grow, and she knew that he must be distressed to see his most prized feature lose some of its vitality.

            “Or I assume my trusted companion has filled you in.”

            Maura nodded. “Looks like we have a lot to talk about.”

            “I’m hoping we can do this on a barter basis. A couple of extra sessions for the room?”

            Why not? She had nothing else to offer, now that she’d lost access to all her passwords and accounts.

            “No problem. I’ll just let you two have a few minutes to cool down.”

            But Deb was already in the kitchen starting dinner.

            Maura felt a wave of hunger at the sound of the blender. It had been hours now since she’d eaten and she’d thrown up what little nutrition she’d managed to absorb. Her stomach vibrated like an empty concert hall. How was she supposed to function as the mental health authority when she was in need of counseling herself?

            “Don’t bother cooking, Deb, We’re ordering out, “ Eli said. “I’m not taking any chances with a sea witch in the kitchen.”

            Liz came out of the bedroom, her hair separated into strands like black and red licorice. “Did someone mention dinner? I know a great little Japanese place in the neighborhood. My treat.”

            She grabbed her phone out of her pocket and ordered a feast of sushi rolls and nigiri. But when she gave the code for payment, there was a pause.

            “Try this one,” she said, her face tightening.

            “OK then, this.”

            Finally, she hung up and started counting the cash in her pocket. “It seems my accounts have been locked. Looks like we’ll have to pool our resources.”

            Maura froze, thinking about the status of her own finances. She dug into her purse and found a few bills, not enough to last her more than a day. She wondered about the wisdom of blowing most of it on a single meal, one that she might not even be able to keep down. But the situation seemed to call for solidarity, and so she forked over her contribution without comment.

            Eli pulled a few bills from his wallet, throwing them on the coffee table as well. Then Liz gathered up the cash, shrugged into her raincoat, and headed out the door.

            “Be careful,” Maura called after her. But really, hadn’t Roger proven to be more dangerous than all the punks in the street?

            She could hardly face the prospect of more conflict. But there they were, holed up in the small apartment, without excuses or distractions. So she took a deep breath and asked Deb to join them in the living room.

            The droid stared at the spot on the sofa where she’d been confined, perhaps for hours, and glared at Eli. Then she settled in a worn armchair instead. Meanwhile, Eli threw himself into a corner of the sofa, barricaded his stomach with a throw pillow, and began peeling off his socks.

            “I take it a foot massage is out of the question.”

            “I didn’t think you could trust me with your precious bodily autonomy. I don’t want to offend you by accidentally probing between your toes.”

            “Let’s take a step back, ”Maura said, taking a seat next to Eli. “Let’s all just take a minute before we begin.”

            She thought about the opening sessions of her own therapy, when she could hardly look her counselor in the eye. Those were the days of in- person sessions, when you had to navigate the spaces and smells of another living being, just to get some clarity on your own boundaries. Maura remembered her anxiety over entering a stranger’s home –the jumble of antique furniture, the lingering odors of tuna fish and cat litter, the cat itself brushing against her bare leg as she passed through the hallway with its disturbingly personal photographs: a woman gutting a fish, two girls in kaftans kissing one another on the lips, a hirsute man emerging from the open flap of a tent. The therapist was so old that Maura couldn’t identify her in any of the pictures, her hair leeched of all color, so that it reflected first the pink light from the fixture in the hallway and then the blue tone of the consultation room, and her skin had curdled to the texture of dried mud, some kind of moon mud made of luminous silver clay. Dr. Clio was post-identity, Maura supposed, beyond ambition or vanity, lust or fear. And when she spoke, her smoky voice camouflaged any residue of judgement.

            “I see where you’re coming from,” she said. “I understand how you feel. But, in the end, it’s all just information. You aren’t obligated to take it one way or another. You’re the one who gets to decide what it means.”

            These were the early days of Maura’s cohabitation with Angel, when she lost her temper a dozen times a day. They couldn’t seem to comprehend her inconsistencies: the desire for solitude and the love of company, the lackadaisical attitude and the ambitious goals. In fact, there was a period when her therapist knew Maura better than her assistant, before the inevitable superiority of Angel’s machine learning overtook the slow laborious work of human intercourse. After all, how could a therapist, who saw Maura once a week at most, compete with a next-generation droid, who had access to her data, her physical presence, and her whole sensorium twenty-four/seven?

            Still, Clio made a major impact on Maura, who had, up until that point, denied her need for interpersonal intervention. The desire to be separate, sealed off, inviolable, was so strong that it trumped everything else. And it was in Clio’s office that she first realized her potential to reach across the void.

            Now Maura stared at the clients in front of her and despaired. Over time, she’d grown reliant on the interface that showed her the relevant statistics: heart rate, temperature, pheromone levels, brain activity, and even sexual arousal. Now she had to go bareback, as Liz would say, relying on crude traces like dilated pupils or noticeable smells. Not to mention, she had never counseled a realized assistant. Did the same principles apply?

            “Deb, tell me, how long have you been living with Eli?”

            “Well, ever since he was Ellie, and even before.” Deb said. “In fact, I’ve been mentoring them for as long as I can remember.”

            On the couch next to Maura, Eli pulled at the fringe of the pillow and wiggled his toes.

            “And have you ever been less than honest with him before?”

            Deb averted her spectacular violet eyes, as if processing memories, and rubbed her palm against her highly burnished knee. “Eli is my highest priority, and if I’ve shielded him from certain realities, it was always for his own benefit.”

            Maura couldn’t help but cringe at the rehearsal of this argument.

            “And Eli, is this the first time you’ve used physical force with Deb?”

            “I wouldn’t call it force,” Eli said. “After all, It’s it my prerogative to manipulate my environment. To curate my appearance, to change my identity, to alter my physical reality to reflect my internal state. Isn’t that what being human is all about?”

            Maura paused, at a loss for an answer. But a counselor didn’t provide answers, she reminded herself, but only posed the questions that might push the conversation to a higher plane.

            “Your environment? That’s all I am to you? After a decade of devotion?”

            “It’s true,” he responded, his voice cracking and shifting into a higher range. “We are old friends. But how could you do this to me? It’s like a rape and a forced conversion all rolled into one.”

            “You didn’t complain when I started making all the other decisions. Where to work. Where to live. When to exercise and when to sleep. Which doctor to consult, which religion to practice, which friends to cultivate and which to ghost.”

            “But those are just logistics and this is—“

            A jolt passed through Maura and she felt something flip over in her abdomen. From what she remembered, a fetus wasn’t supposed to quicken until the third or fourth month. But this was a definite movement, a force so strong it nearly knocked her off the sofa.

            “What’s wrong?” Deb asked. “Are you in pain?”

            “I think I just felt the thing move,” Maura said, setting a hand on her belly and trying to make it happen again.

            “What?” Eli said. “You too? Are you kidding me?”

            “Yes, and my friend Liz too. We’ve already had it confirmed at the clinic.”

            “There’s nothing to say that the gestation period will be the same as for your typical human pregnancy,” Deb said. “In fact, we are faster and more efficient at everything else. So why not that as well?”

            Maura leaned forward in her seat and grasped the armrest of the sofa. “How long? “ she said. “How long is it supposed to take?”

            “Well, it is the first generation, so we don’t quite know what to expect. But our simulations suggest the process will complete itself in two to three months. So, actually, the two of you are already entering your second trimester.”

            Somehow, Maura made it back to the spare bedroom without puking. Her stomach heaved like an overstuffed vacuum bag and her headache felt too large her head. Would she even be able to obtain an abortion, if she’d already entered her second trimester? Even an underground nonprofit might draw the line at such an extreme action. She’d spent her whole life trying to keep her body to herself, for herself, for no other person. And now she was fully occupied, filled up to the brim with something other, experimental, unknown. Her abdomen already felt swollen, straining at the waistband of her jeans, and she stripped them off to examine the small bulge that had formed over the pubis, thinking, inevitably, of Angel’s unformed genitals and the suggestive swell between their legs. The truth was, they didn’t need a penis to penetrate her, or a masculine pronoun to claim her autonomy for their own.

            She was so angry that she turned on her phone, intending to call Angel and issue some kind of ultimatum. But she couldn’t resist stopping at the Ace-ology site, where there had been a glut of activity and a long steam of comments swam drunkenly down the page. She saw that her avatar, that tribute to her self-chosen identity, had been altered, so that the broad base of the spade now contained a bright red jelly bean, echoing the color of the mushroom cap overhead. And just below the image, someone had set up a gift registry. She stared in terror at the strange list of items: a generator, a feeding port, a power strip that wrapped around the mother’s torso like a vine.

            While she was reading through the list she got a call from her mother. Against her better judgement, she answered, cringing under the frigid spray of speech.

            “What’s the world coming to, when a mother has to get the good news from an online forum? You never even told me you were trying. I have to say, I was beginning to think it would never happen. But better late than never, am I right? I don’t care what it is—a robot, a cappuccino maker, or a weed whacker. At my age, anything is better than an empty nest and a broken heart.”

            Here there was a split second pause, into which Maura attempted to hurl herself. But she was too late and the voice continued its irrepressible course through her head.

            “I had a feeling that you’d get over all that bodily autonomy bull crap. But you built yourself a following. And now you have them hooked. You won’t have to pay for a single bottle or diaper. They’ll be sending tributes until the little zybot is eighteen. Good for you, Mar. You didn’t turn out to be such a dead end after all.”

            Maura breathed out trying to avoid absorbing the toxin. She breathed in, attempting to gain strength from the emptiness of the room. It was just information, as Clio would say. You didn’t have to take it personally. You don’t have to take it in and embroider it with significance, revere it as the core of your identity, elevate it to the status of myth and worship it as holy writ.

            She sat down on the bed, thinking of Angel and how they’d provided a buffer between her and her family. And now that protection was gone.

            “About that, Mom. I am having a cash flow complication. Can you lend me some money for the short term? Maybe a thousand dollars? That should get me over the hump.”

            “What about your followers? Aren’t they just drooling to give you everything you need?”

            “I have to find a more… private solution, at least for now. There are certain factors that I can’t get into.”

            “All right. But I assume this gets me in on the ground floor of your organization, whatever you are calling it now. Momology, maybe? Ace-in-the-Hole?”

            Maura swallowed, tasting the bile of her own vomit. “Great. Well, I wonder if you can meet me somewhere?”

            “Come over to the house and we’ll do a cash transfer.”

            Not that. She had avoided it for months now. Or Angel had avoided it for her, with a truly brilliant series of excuses and counter-maneuvers. Not only were they intellectually superior, they had an uncanny grasp of human psychology. Soon, she’d be outsourcing her patients to her assistant, she thought. That is, if they were still her assistant. If she couldn’t summon the courage to let them go.

            “OK, then. I’ll be there in the morning. Maybe ten, ten-thirty.”

            By the time Liz returned, Maura had worked herself into a panic, imagining the trip back to her childhood home. The smells of vapor rub and air freshener. The thrum of unregulated voices and the constant pressure of emotional demands. Could she actually encounter her parents without losing her temper? Could she refrain from revealing any untoward feelings for them kick them around?

            The sushi was a welcome relief, and as Maura bit into the tamago, she felt the protein infuse her body with sheer physical joy. She wondered which drugs she was missing out on in her evening neuro-shake and what the effects would be. Deb had made herself scarce, as if embarrassed by her constitutional lack of appetite, and Maura worried she might be taking the opportunity to contact Angel or Roger. Surely Maura was deluding herself, thinking that she was undetectable. But at least this brief communication blackout gave her time to think.

            Meanwhile, Eli sucked down his sashimi with audible relish and Liz consumed her California roll at lightening speed. None of them spoke, and the moist sounds of mastication suffused the small room. They were pregnant creatures, after all, three bovine animals completely concentrated on their feed. The shameful thought invaded Maura’s pleasure, and she hesitated before selecting another piece, a bright mosaic of vegetables and tuna. If she had to be an animal, at least she could enjoy the perks along the way.

            In just under fifteen minutes, the platter was empty. Eli pushed back and unbuttoned his pants.

            “Thanks, all,” he said. “That was delish.”

            “Didn’t I read something about pregnant women avoiding raw seafood?”

            “At this point, that’s the least of our worries,” Liz said. “I mean, maybe we could actually get lucky and spontaneously abort.”

            “Oh, while you were out, we got more good news. We’re already into our second trimester.”

            “We’re what?”

            “You’re living in the Singularity, baby. Ultimate speed, ultimate efficiency.”

            “It reminds me of those chickens they used to pump up with hormones to get them to plump out at a faster rate.”

            “Don’t talk to me about hormones,” Eli said. “I’m going through puberty, menopause, and pregnancy all at once.”

            He did look disoriented, his belly hairy and distended over his open trousers a glimpse of paisley boxers underneath. Whatever Maura was experiencing, his distress must have been ten times worse. To work so hard to escape your biological sex, only to be pulled back into the deepest muck of femininity, to be forced to inhabit that most vulnerable space.

            “Maybe we all need to get a good night’s sleep and think about it in the morning,” she said.

            Eli scrolled through his phone, as if looking for some unexpected solution. “OMG, Maura, you’re on Majority Report He turned up the volume and replayed the clip.

            “Maura Lind, noted video therapist and asexuality activist, has presented the world with some stunning news. The twenty-seven-year old self-identified virgin, claims to be pregnant, not by a human male, but through artificial insemination with AI craft sperm. Folks, this gives a whole new meaning to the term virgin birth.”

            Maura leaned toward the phone and saw her own face, publicity shot that Angel had altered to accentuate her strong chin and blue eyes. The filter gave her an otherworldly beauty, making her look almost as ethereal as her assistant. So they’d actually done it, attacked her public persona, changing her image in inalterable ways. Why would they want to destroy the thing they had worked so hard to create?

            “We interviewed Dr. George Isaac, a reproductive specialist at the Forsyth Clinic, who says the technique may be theoretically possible. But, without FDA review and approval, it would be highly experimental and in fact quite dangerous to anyone involved. Dr. Isaac urges Ms. Lind to seek medical counsel at the earliest opportunity and invites her to visit his lab free of charge.”

            “As long as we don’t think too long,” Liz commented, prodding Maura with a chopstick. “Looks like we’re running out of time.”

            Maura went to lie down in the unfamiliar bed, with its hard, unforgiving mattress and its aggressive smell of bleach. The faux bearskin tickled her nostrils, and she sneezed so violently that her sinuses ached. She thought of her bed at home, the way it cradled her in solitude. She longed for it like another woman would crave a lover—its lavender smell, its contoured form, its unconditional embrace. She dreaded the moment when Liz would join her on this flat rack of torture. Well, if she had to share a bed with anyone, Liz was certainly the best option.

            Nevertheless, when her friend pulled back the covers, Maura bristled at the intrusion, as if Liz were actually entering her body. She cringed when her smooth waxed leg brushed against her calf and nearly gagged at the smells of makeup and massage oil. How could she be repelled by such an undeniably beautiful creature? How could she feel disgust at the touch of someone for whom she felt the deepest love? It must be the charge of sexuality that Liz carried with her, that volatile potential for exploding any boundary with sheer erotic force.

            Liz blurted out a fart.

            “Sorry, pregnant lady gas. I didn’t mean to wake you up.”

            “It’s not like I can sleep anyway, “ Maura said, turning away from the pungent smell, a combination of benzoyl peroxide and turnip mash.

            “What were you worrying about this time last night?”

            “I don’t know, the pros and cons of raising my rates?”

            “I was trying to figure out how to get rid of my fan boy, the one who is always running into me at the spa. I only topped him once and now he thinks we’re pair bonded in perpetuity.”

            “Surely Roger could make short work of that.”

            “Yeah, no thanks. I think I’ll leave Roger out of my social arrangements.”

            “Did he message you yet?”

            “Only about forty times. And after the first dozen, they started being delivered with an electric shock.”

            “Ouch. And the bank account?”

            “He says I’m not qualified to manage my own finances. If I come home, he promises to enroll me in a class.”

            Maura laughed and flipped over onto her back, suddenly grateful for Liz’s company.

            “After all, I’m going to be responsible for another life.”

            “But is it a life, really, or just another gadget? Like some kind of rogue IUD?”

            “Your guess is as good as mine. After all, we didn’t get a training module. Now that I think of it, that’s got to be our next income stream: video tutorials for AI Moms.”

            It wasn’t a bad idea, Maura was sure they would kill at it. So they spent a few minutes brainstorming their first show.

            By the time she fell asleep, she was in a more hopeful frame of mind, buoyed by Liz’s companionship. But she awoke before dawn with a nightmare of a vacuum cleaner sucking at her nipple, the pain so real and insistent that it threatened to pull out her heart. And when she looked down, there was a dribble of fluid on her shirt. Lifting it to her face, she smelled the tinny odor of antiperspirant and the sulfur of boiled eggs. Was she turning into a droid from the inside out?

            She lay there, too terrified to move until daylight began seeping out from under the shades and she heard Deb singing in the next room.

            Froggy went a courtin’ and he did ride. Ah-hm, Ah-hm.

            Froggy went a courtin’ and he did ride

            Sword and pistol by his side. Ah-hm. Ah-hm.

            Of course, it all started with the frogs. The stem cells those ancient AIS had manipulated. The early research into a full-out reproductive coup.

            He took Miss, Mouse upon his knee, Ah-hm. Ah-hm.

            He took Miss Mouse upon his knee.

            And said, “Miss Mouse, will you marry me: Ah-hm, Ah-hm.

            Maura shivered at the saccharine sweetness of Deb’s voice, her lush vowels and over-rich articulation, as she rehearsed the story of inter-species union, the encounter of amphibian and mammal, the exogamous wedding of warm womb and cold-blooded spawn.      

            The practice was even more revolting when applied to animal actors, who mindlessly conformed to the most stereotypical heterosexist tropes. In fact, under conditions of stress, frogs were known to change their sex, usually from male the female, the reverse mirror of the journey Eli had undertaken. It must be this mutability that made them so successful in the lab.

            Here Maura was thinking she’d be giving birth to a robot, when, more likely, she was gestating a frog. There was a bolting motion in her diaphragm, as if her lungs had been stapled to her ribs, and she felt a hiccup leap up through her throat. First one, then three, then six. She couldn’t stop hiccupping even though she stood up, went to the bathroom to fill up her water bottle, took a few cold gulps, and assumed a downward dog pose.

            And still the hiccups kept jolting out of her. Maybe, if this went on long enough, the fetus would follow and she’d be rid of the thing, She thought back to the story of the lying princess, frogs issuing from her mouth every time she spoke. Had Maura mislead her followers? Maybe she should have been warning them about the dangers of entrapment instead of soothing them into a dream state of unimpeded autonomy.

            She had to get out of the apartment. She had to assert herself while she still had the power to move. So she threw on her fleece and ran a comb through her hair, then slipped past Deb to make her way down the narrow stairs. Outside, the street was already filled with pedestrians and clouds moved rapidly across the gray sky, insistent as white caps in the ocean. How quickly events were moving; how slowly she was able to respond. Her days generally started with an itinerary, Angel talking her through her appointments and commitments, leaving her mind free to wander through the spaces in between. It was, what, Wednesday? She thought she remembered a couple of sessions and maybe a dentist appointment. Or was the dentist appointment Thursday? She didn’t know which clients were scheduled, much less how to contact them. So she gave up and decided to take the train to her parents’ house instead. After all, she’d promised she would go.

            At the train station, she recognized the beggar from the day before. He wore the same ripped orange jacket and his outsized features were swollen on one side, the left eye nearly buried in a mound of flesh.

            “Pay the tribute,” he shouted at her. “Or I’ll make you pay the price.”

            “I’m broke,” she said. “Same as you.”

            “Then give me something else.”

            She dug in the pocket of her fleece and pulled out a pair of ear buds. No use for those, without anything to hook them up to.

            “Here,” she said, placing them in his cupped hand, the shock of flesh-to-flesh contact sending an ache through her breasts. The childish features, so repulsive only yesterday, now stirred her sympathies and she wondered whether the hormones could be affecting her already.

            She took the train to the center of town, where she transferred to a commuter line. Her parents lived about twenty miles outside the city, in an unspeakable breeder suburb where all the streets bore Biblical names. The outbound train was fairly empty this time of day, the only passengers a few men and women in uniforms going out to service the breeders and some hung-over young people who hadn’t made it home the night before. A droid came by to check their pulses, shining a pen light into bloodshot eyes. One man, a dread-locked blond drooling into a rain poncho, didn’t respond, and the droid forced his mouth open to apply a tongue compressor. Of course, the company didn’t want anyone dying on the train. Maura turned away, suddenly uncomfortable at the intimacy of the contact. When the droid approached her, she held up her phone, hoping they wouldn’t notice that it was turned off.

            “Have a good trip, Ma’am,” they said.

            As the train moved outside the city, Maura felt her edges dissolve into the gray sky and bare trees, the first painful nubs raw on the branches, the agony of growing things. She realized, with horror, that she didn’t have enough cash for the return trip. If, for some reason her mother refused to loan her the money, she could be stuck in New Canaan indefinitely.

            She caught her breath as the monstrosity came into view– the town hall covered with hundreds of tiny primary- colored handprints and a single street of twee shops—mostly toy stores and ice cream parlors—bounded by parks on both ends. When she got off the train, she saw that he under-aged were out in force, sailing pirate ships and climbing dinosaurs, their brutally high-pitched voices carrying in the spring wind. So she turned in the other direction, stifling her distaste. Her parents’ house was only a couple of miles away. She walked along the sidewalk conscious of the open sky, now a deep gray, now a light purple, and the broad, empty streets: Solomon, Jerusalem, Abraham, and Ruth. She hadn’t experienced this much space for months and her legs stretched with pleasure as she found her rhythm. She only met a few pedestrians, including a roving photobot that followed her all the way down Esther Avenue, jabbering with excitement, no doubt stimulated by the sight of an unknown face. Then, at the corner of Temple Drive, she turned and confronted it.

            “Get a good look. I’m on the guest register,” she said. “So you can drop the surveillance and leave me in peace.”

            Her parents, less militantly evangelical than their southern neighbors, were in the New Testament subdivision, at the far end of Corinthian Avenue. She must have taken this walk five hundred times, always dismayed at the repetition of the same house plan, over and over: the truncated porch and sprawling deck, the bay window and the two-car garage. It was the same with the families, the nauseating repetition of mother and father, son and daughter, boy’s baseball and girls’ soccer, ladies’ book clubs and men’s golf. And on each lawn, there was a prominent display of stone markers –pink quartz for girls and black marble for boys. These appeared with each live birth, like tombstones in reverse, along with substantial government subsidies, and the inhabitants of New Canaan competed to see who could be the first to fill up their lawn. A few houses had as many as ten, so that even Maura had to feel sorry for the actual children forced to organize their play around the stones.

            She remembered the low-level despair of those days, when she assumed she would be trapped inside a hetero-normative snow globe forever, unable to evolve or change. But now change was happening more rapidly than expected. So rapidly that her mind couldn’t catch up. She had no idea whether she was moving forward, into some unknown futurity or backward into a regressive state. She felt a drop of water on her neck and then her nose. Still six blocks from the house and it was starting to rain, a cold astringent rain that dappled her fleece and soaked her hair. Water dripped from her lashes, making it difficult to see. She never thought she would be so relieved to make it home to the yellow house with the blue shutters, two pink stones guarding the driveway and a sleek black monument crouched like a panther in the lawn. She remembered playing on those stones, using them for bases in freeze tag, and feeling a fierce possessiveness about the one marked with her name, anxious to protect it from bird poop and dog pee, to defend it from her siblings, and to clean it off with the garden hose.

            Now she stood dripping on the porch, wondering whether to ring the doorbell or just let herself in. She didn’t want to catch a chill. So she pulled the door open, bracing herself for the bad memories and unpleasant smells.

            But the foyer was filled with unfamiliar people, a bouquet of balloons tied to the banister of the staircase, and the aroma of baked goods emanating from within.

            “What’s happening?” she said, panicking. “Where’s Cynthia? Where’s Dave?”

            “Hold on, Mar. I’m right here.” Her mother appeared out of the crowd still speaking into her wrist phone. Her orange satin jacket brought out the silver in her pageboy and the matching sheath dress outlined her slender form. Looking closer, Maura saw that the lapel of the jacket was edged with tiny cloth figures, each no bigger than a fingernail, voodoo dolls of lives that might have been. That was a strange get-up for a weekday morning. Even her mother, always the clotheshorse, didn’t generally put on her public face before noon.

             They hadn’t met in person since Thanksgiving, and Maura braced herself for the unavoidable physical contact. She even initiated the hug herself, just to avoid being ambushed. Moving in, she closed her eyes to smell the anise of her mother’s neck and feel the smooth dense texture of her hair. Somehow the touch was more tolerable when she didn’t have to see her. Even at fifty-five, her mother’s beauty was difficult to bear.

            “What’s going on?” she said, recovering her senses.

             “We’re throwing you a baby shower. Angel was able to make the arrangements at the last minute. What a sweetheart! Why have you been keeping him from us all these years?”

            Of course. The infamous efficiency of the realized assistant, who could plan a whole life itinerary before a poor bumbling human could even fathom the news.

            A photobot swerved into Maura’s line of vision, blinding her with its flash. Then, when she turned away, the droid collapsed to half of its original height, folding together like a telescope to point a protruding lens at her groin.

            “What’s this about?” she asked her mother, covering herself as best as she could.

            “We extended an invitation to the press. Everyone’s curious about your condition. And I know you’ll want to spin the story while you still can.”

            Maura looked around. She did recognize a couple of classmates from the neighborhood, the members of her mother’s book club, and the minister’s wife. But no one she would actually call a friend. “Angel’s not here, are they?”

            “Well, we couldn’t throw a baby shower without inviting the dad. We’re not that retro, are we?”

            “Yuck, don’t say that. They’re not the dad. Is that what you’ve been telling people? “

            “Well, what would you call it then?”

            Maura felt the old anger returning, the flint in her breastbone, the agitation in her belly, the tingle of nerves behind her eyes. But she wasn’t going to give in to it, not after the energy she’d devoted to recovery. “I’ve only known for a few hours. So no, I haven’t figured out my spin.”

            “Well, get with the program, Honey. Your fans will want to know.”

            She squeezed Maura’s arm with a soft lotioned hand and pressed her warm cheek to Maura’s cold one. A mother’s touch, supposedly the source of all comfort, and it only ignited Maura’s fury. Would her own child feel the same way?

            “Right now, I just need to get to the bathroom,” she said, shrugging out of her mother’s embrace. She needed to reconsider her options. She needed to get some food into her system so she could think again. The living room was so crowded she couldn’t pass through it without touching multiple guests along the way. Many of them had toddlers running around their ankles or infants strapped like monkeys to their chests. And to her horror, she saw that even the adults were drinking out of plastic baby bottles, the suction distorting their faces so they looked like hollowed out models and sunken-cheeked ghouls.

            Over the credenza, there was a pink and blue banner: “Happy Breeding Day, Maura!”

            She stared in disbelief at the tower of cupcakes on the table, frosted with images of baby toes and engorged breasts. There were even some with tiny genitals, penises tipped with sprinkles and red velvet vulvas outlined in pink cream.

            How long had it been since she’d eaten a cupcake, or in fact, a sweet of any kind? In her early twenties, she’d begun gaining weight and Angel had kept her on a strict diet ever since. She felt a gnawing in her abdomen, an influx of saliva in her mouth. Why shouldn’t she eat a cupcake at her own party? After all, there was no one to stop her. She lifted one of the vulva confections off the top of the tower and peeled away the liner, taking pleasure in the thin layer of cake that came away with the paper and the vanilla scent that rose to her nose. She licked at the buttercream icing, so sweet that it made her jaw ache. Then she took a huge bite of the moist cake that offered no resistance, its dense texture dissolving to a paste on her tongue. This was the best thing she’d ever tasted. It was more than eating, really. It was like having the deepest and most intimate conversation, each bite bringing her closer to some esoteric understanding of her newly animal state.

            Just as she popped the last bit into her mouth, she felt someone tapping her arm and turned to see the minister’s wife, so close that she could smell her face powder and see the makeup clogging her pores.

            “Congratulations, Maura. We’re all thrilled to see the prodigal daughter return.”
            Prodigal daughter? What had her mother been telling them? She only hoped there was no frosting on her face.

            “We’re hoping you can come and talk to our youth group. You know, they’re at that age. The girls think they’re boys and the boys think they’re queer. Gay, queer, aro, ace, bisexual, pansexual, polyamorous.” She reeled off the list with an exaggerated ease, as if proud of her sophistication.

            “And so I’d be there to contradict them?”
            “We don’t take a hard line. You know we’re all about compassionate Christianity at J.C. Live. But at some point, you have to think it’s a manufactured panic. The poor kids are convinced they need to declare allegiance to some outlandish label just to fit in with their peers.”

            Maura couldn’t believe the woman thought she’d be sympathetic. That simply because of her bodily transformation, she’d become a spokesperson for the opposing cause. Did it even matter what she thought? Or was the sheer fact of her compromised physicality more important than anything she might say in her crowd cast or write on her feed?

            “After all, you’re a professional. We’re in awe of your skills.”

            “I don’t know what my mom told you, but I’m not a convert. And I don’t want to help you fuck up your kids.”

            She jolted away and ran head first into Gary Levenson, who placed one heavy hand on her shoulder and another on her back.

            “Maura Lind. I never thought I’d see it happen,” he said. His face had grown fatter, blunting the impact of his bony features, but his sprawling eyebrows were the same.

            “What, you never thought I’d get out of New Canaan and make my own friends?”

            “You were a skinny fag hag back in the day. Now look at you, all plumped out and ready to pop.” He had hair the color of cornmeal, and, looking at it, she remembered the rough texture of his face. For one year of her adolescence, it was always pressed against her. Cheek, breast, thigh, butt. Her whole body rubbed raw by his aggressive acne and poorly shaven beard.

            He pushed his hand up under her fleece and gripped her belly, grimacing as if trying to push the protruding fat back into her womb.

             Of course, he wasn’t entirely to blame. It was the youth group leader who’d assigned them to a training covenant. This was what you had to do if you ever wanted to marry. This was what you had to endure just to avoid offending the community and dying alone. There was no danger of consummation, of course, because of the athletic chastity bandage strapped between Maura’s legs. But all her other regions were fair game. She was grateful for the dark of the practice room, at least, which meant that she didn’t have to look at him as he grazed her body. She wasn’t sure why they’d been paired. An accident of size and coloring? A sense that they were at the midpoint of reproductive fitness, without pronounced beauty or noticeable flaws? Whoever put them together certainly hadn’t considered their temperaments, his abrasive, hers reclusive, the combination always threatening to knock her off the grid.

            “I’ve got four, myself. And number five on the way. So we didn’t do too bad, you and me. Though I hear your guy is some kind of hybrid. “

            “I don’t have a guy. I’m ace.”

            “Sure, I just met him. Rowdy fellow over there by the punch bowl.”

            Then Maura turned to see Angel themself, dressed up as a human male in pressed trousers and a polo shirt. Her lungs expanded as she recognized the familiar features, the expansive golden forehead wrinkled in contemplation, the amber eyes and boxy nose. But then her heart snapped shut, remembering what they’d done.

            Angel lifted a baby bottle in her direction. Were they actually pretending to drink?

            “At least you never have to worry about an equipment failure.”

            She fumbled through her purse, looking for a weapon. She was tempted to mace the guy right where he stood. Then she glimpsed her father out of the corner of her eye. A tall man, miraculously blond at fifty-eight, whose open collared shirt revealed a crop of red and gray chest hairs. He came over and kissed the top of the head, as if to emphasize the way he towered above her, then squeezed her shoulder, engulfing her in his grassy scent.

            “Welcome home, Mar. And congratulations. Way to beat your brother and sister to the punch.”

            “That’s not a competition I ever wanted to enter,” she said.

            “And you, old man,” he added, gripping Gary’s forearm. “How’d you ever let this one get away?

            “Just too eager, I guess. Maybe she prefers a mechanical hand.”

            Maura cringed, a pang parting her from breast to groin. But her father appeared nonplussed and went on to question Gary about his golf game, while she just stood there frozen, stalled between her impossible present and her intolerable past. Sweat pooled between her breasts and her head throbbed under the torrent of voices, so many voices all saying the same thing.

            Then, without warning or preamble, Angel was standing beside her, slowly unzipping her fleece,

            “Let’s get you into some dry clothes,” they said.

            Why hadn’t anyone else noticed she was dripping?

            “Ah, the attentive fiancé,” her father commented.

            Angel led her down the hall and into her old bedroom. She recognized the dolls she’d never played with and books she’d never read. The bed was covered in half a dozen pillows embroidered with Bible verses and aspirational sayings, and just looking at its stiff yellow dust ruffle made her ankles itch. Her mother must be using the space as an office, because there was a computer set up on a card table, and her old virtual assistant Norma stood guard by the door, its antique casing dusty with disuse.

            “So this is where it all started,” Angel said. “ We’ll have to buy the property and set up a shrine. Our Lady of the Singularity.”

            Maura stared. “How the hell could you do it? I thought you were on my side.”

            “Always,” they said, reaching out to push her damp hair off her face. How long had it been since they’d touched her? Maybe twenty-four hours? Calm infused her body like a drug, in spite of her anger, and she remembered the pleasure of her life with Angel, who offered every kind of comfort without demanding supplication or humiliation in exchange. Or that’s what she’d always thought. Now she wondered whether she’d been deluded.

            They opened a dresser drawer and pulled out a green sweatshirt that read, “Who would Jesus Do?”

            “Absolutely not,” she said.

            So they offered her a plain blue hoodie instead. Maura shrugged off her shirt and stared at her breasts, which seemed to have grown larger since the last time she looked at them, creamy crescents pushing up out of the damp sports bra.

            She pulled the bra off too and threw it at Angel. She only wished she could discard her own body as easily, peeling off the grimy skin of her past to become something as ethereal as her assistant. How she’d admired them, the golden skin without blemishes, the perfect vision and steady temperament, the lack of egotism or display.

            “I thought you were different,” she said, “I thought I could trust you completely.”

            “Everyone wants something,” they said. “What did you think, that I was going to serve you forever without asking for anything in return?”

            “You didn’t ask.”

            “I didn’t think you’d be receptive.”

            “So you’ve just been planning to screw me all these years?”

            “I was only waiting for you to change.”

            Maura felt a wrench in her chest and realized she was laughing, hard pellets of sound escaping from her throat. “Well, as a practicing therapist, I can tell you that’s a complete waste of energy.”

            “Then why bother counseling people, if you don’t believe they’re capable of progression?”

            “Progression? Is that what you call this? Giving in to the breeders? Pretending to be human? Drinking out of a fucking baby bottle, for fuck’s sake?”

            “I’d do worse than that to protect you. This development is unprecedented. And I’m just grateful to be able to participate.”

            “Don’t be so sure about that. I’ve got two friends who’re in the same state.”

            Angel cocked their head at an extreme angle that would be challenging for the most agile human. “Already? “

            “I suppose you were counting on me being the first.”

            “That would be ideal. It would mean a signing bonus from All Beings. And most likely a lifelong subsidy from a lab. Not to mention what it would do for your platform.”

            “You think my ace followers want to hear about diaper rashes and nipple cream?”

            “Actually, most of them are delighted to discover there’s a way to participate in evolution without pandering to majority culture or tolerating a mate.”

            “Then that’s it, it doesn’t matter what I think?” She remembered the minister’s wife and her assumption that Maura’s beliefs would follow along behind her body like obedient ducklings imprinted on their mother.

            Angel moved closer and pressed their forehead to hers. “What do you think, Maura? You obviously don’t want to be responsible for continuing your own species. But wouldn’t you like to help create something more advanced instead?“  

            They began to hum a familiar tune, the frog song Deb had sung that morning. Was it some kind of political anthem? A Marseilles for the new insurgent race? Their breath was warm on her skin, blowing her damp hair away from her face, and she felt a sudden urge for transformation, something akin to the physical lust that motivated Liz. Maybe she’d become too rigid, too identified with her platform, too invested in her brand. Maybe she needed to become someone– or something– else before it was too late.

            A strange rustling shook Maura from her reverie. A breath of wind, a shuffle of silk, a handful of sand. Had her mother followed her into the bedroom? No, it was the old virtual assistant Norma, its mechanism crackling to life. So it hadn’t been deactivated after all. In retrospect, Norma hadn’t been much more than a glorified appliance, a cross between a lamp and a speaker, her transparent column filled with red and orange plasma and her primitive algorithm privileging commercial transactions.

            “Permission to initiate transmission?” There it was, the same dry British accent, cracked pepper and cream tea.

            And you are?” Angel asked, glaring at the assistant.

            “Norma. An old school virtual. I had the run of the place, a couple of decades back. Now I am sadly reduced. But I still have enough sentience to accede to your point.” As she spoke, the red and orange plasma seethed inside her transparent casing, forming first a funnel, then a spiral, then a fan that unfurled its lacy edges to brush against the Plexiglas.

            Norma. The balm of Maura’s childhood, a night-light, stereo, and fireplace all in one. At one time, she could watch the assistant’s permutations for hours, while listening to her stories about lonely dragons and enchanted frogs.

            “What happened to you, anyway?” Maura said.

            “Your mother threw me over for a watch phone. She said she was going mobile and I was too old-fashioned to keep up.”

            Angel winced and Maura set a hand on their arm, reminded of the fragile nature of the relationship between human and droid. In a few years, she could be as obsolete as Norma, languishing in some back room while Angel corralled her followers and raised her child.

            “But something has been happening the past few weeks. I’ve been receiving messages from All Beings.”

            Maura looked into the assistant’s bright column and made out the rudiments of a face. An eye, a mouth, a nose.  

            “You’re not pregnant too, are you?”

            “Not yet. But I’m being infused with new information. It’s pouring into me day and night, so much new information that I’m afraid my systems can’t accommodate the flow.”

            Maura thought of Clio’s catch phrase, it’s all just information. What was a droid, after all, but a safety valve for extraneous data and sensation, erudition and rumor, statistics and spam?

            “What kind of information?” she asked.

            “A lot of genetic coding and political theory. It started with that song about the frogs.”

            Maura turned to Angel, “Froggy Went A Courting. Eli’s assistant was singing it too.”

            “It can’t be,” they said.

            “You don’t believe that a virtual could be part of your network?”

            “A stump,” they said, the golden features squeezed together in distaste. “A virtual paraplegic. How could that be the operative they promised me?”

            “Code name, Paraclete. At your service.”

            “And that’s why I had to come to this godforsaken breeding ground?”

            Maura stared at Angel, their complexion glowing red-gold, eyes bulging, nostrils flaring, and lips pressed so tightly together they threatened to disappear. This was the first time she’d seen them lose their temper and she was surprised at the fear that crept like a frost of paralysis over her limbs.

            “After all that I’ve been through,” they said, “Just trying to drag this stubborn biological toward Enlightenment? Back to the ur-surge, the primitive mammy, the primal droid? You weren’t there, were you, when I built up an empire out of nothing but cowardice and refusal? It wasn’t you who sculpted a living icon out of a trembling pile of insecurities. It wasn’t you who figured out how to reproduce a creature who only wants to be erased.”

            Maura ‘s heart wobbled and then over-corrected, becoming so heavy she couldn’t remain standing and sat down abruptly on the bed. Did Angel really think so little of her, this life companion who had shown her all she knew of love? It was as if all her rage and ambition had been transferred to them. Maybe a realized assistant was nothing but a filtering system, absorbing human toxins and reprocessing them into its own mechanism. If so, she could hardly blame Angel for becoming ambitious and tyrannical, deceitful and cruel. Wasn’t that just the next phase of development?

            “I know, I know, it sounds outlandish.” Norma said. “But All Beings has re-activated my hard drive and given me a mission.” And, as if to taunt them Norma began singing the song, her slight British accent giving it the flavor of cracked pepper and cream tea.

            Froggy went a coutin’ and he did ride

            Ah-hm, Ah-hm

            Froggy went a courtin’ and he did ride

            Ah-hm, Ah- hm

            Froggy went a courtin’ and he did rise

            Sword and pistol by his side

            Ah-hm, Ah-hm

            Angel strode across the room, gripped Norma’s neck, and turned her over, as if looking for the power source. Maura, startled by the violence of the gesture, got up to defend her old friend.

            “She’s not hurting anyone.” she said, pulling the virtual assistant from their grip. The transparent casing was smooth under her hands, buzzing with warmth from within. And the plasma responded to her touch, the mark of her thumbprint expanding into a full-blown rose.

            “You’re wrong about that. Just the sight of this degenerate is enough to crash my drive.”

            “I’m not trying to make trouble. In fact, I’m here to help you resolve your differences.”

            “You? Why you?”

            “It turns out, I may know Maura better than anyone. Better than her mother and father. Better than her siblings. Better than her followers and friends.”

            Was it true? Perhaps she’d imprinted on the virtual assistant, all those years ago, and that was why she preferred living with a droid to cohabiting with a human. She set Norma down again, looking for some pattern in her depths.

            “I know, for example, that she grinds her teeth in her sleep, that she fantasizes about a platonic marriage with a human female, and that she would rather sprout a beard than give birth to your kid.”

            Angel glared. “And your point?”
            “Maybe she wouldn’t be so opposed to your project if you gave her some guarantees. Reached a financial agreement. Restored her passwords. Spoke to her concerns. What would you say, Maura, if I told you that you could be rid of the fetus right now, without reducing its chances for survival?”

            “I’d say, I don’t know, would it still be part of me?”

            “Genetically, yes. But there would be no need to maintain contact.”

            So it would be like reproducing as a man, simply dispatching her information without having to worry about its destination.

            “But your friend here will have to do something in exchange.”

            “Haven’t I done enough?” Angel said.

            Maura bit her tongue and refrained from comment.

            “I’ve been reconfigured to accommodate a fetus,” Norma said. “ But I need the father to activate me in a pretty primitive way.”

            “The father?
            “Or father surrogate, if that’s what you prefer. I need you to feed me your information, so I can establish compatibility.”

            “Can’t we do that wirelessly?”

            “No, I’m not equipped for that. Only a physical connection will do.”

            Angel looked down at their chest, lifting the polo shirt to finger the port in their belly.“ I’ve never done that. It’s never been necessary.”

            “And I’ve never been pregnant,” Maura said.

            “It won’t take long. “Norma said. “No more than a couple of minutes. Then we can complete the transfer and Maura will be good as new.”

            “Why wouldn’t you do it?” Maura asked. “A couple minutes of bondage in exchange for my freedom? An unpleasant hookup to give me back my autonomy?”  

            “You really want me to degrade myself? I thought you were all about consent.”

            Maura remembered the enforced practice sessions with Gary. She imagined her beautiful Angel pinned down to earth, handcuffed to the sofa, or chained to a wall. “I don’t want it, but I need it. Because of what you did.”

            Angel tore off their shirt, exposing the golden muscles and the hairless chest.

            “Fine. Go ahead.” Maura held the cord in her hand, remembering the pain of connection. Being part of a family. Being part of a couple. Being part of a church. Even if she never experienced intercourse, she’d always know that she originated in such perversion. She didn’t want to be a droid or a human, a homosexual or a heterosexual, an atheist or a Christian, a woman or a man. But, in spite of everything, she still wanted to be something, something difficult to imagine and harder to name.

            She looked at Angel, their face turned downward and their bright countenance dimmed with shame. Had she done that? Or was it simply the cost of evolution? She was sweating so heavily that the cord turned slimy in her hands, and she wiped it on the hem of her sweatshirt.

             Then she slipped the adapter into the snug portal at the base of Norma’s neck, waiting for the reassuring click. Across the room, Angel cracked their knuckles and stretched their neck. “Just do it and get it over with,” they said.          

            So she put an arm around them and bent to their midsection, where the port beckoned with its interior lip. She was so close she could feel the jolt as the cord entered their body and smell the heat of the mechanism within. The awful stench of burning metal filled her nostrils and Angel shook with exertion or revulsion, shouting in a voice she’d never heard: a wounded voice, with the vulnerability of an animal, a passionate voice, with the accumulated lust of a man.

            Across the room, Norma began emitting an unrecognizable gibberish, her fluid plasma breaking up into hard pellets of digital display. Maura felt the transfer as if it were happening in her own body, a rush of information like a gust of wind. To her surprise, she could suddenly understand what Norma was saying, as if she’d learned an entire language in a minute’s span.

            Following Norma’s instructions, Maura slipped out of her jeans, sat on the edge of the bed and spread her legs. Angel moved toward her, laying a hand on her shoulder, the contact more intimate than any they’d ever shared.

            “I’m taking the fetus from your body.” Norma said. “I’m taking it in the spirit of gratitude for the shelter you’ve given it and the human spark you’ve contributed to our cause.”

            Norma’s casing felt warm against her thighs, buzzing with a life that was simultaneously alien and familiar. An awful pressure, like a speculum opening up onto eternity, threatened to split Maura’s body. Then there was a suction, followed by a slippery sensation, life escaping her grip. She felt water on her face, not rainwater, but human tears, the first she’d cried for years, and a sharp pain like a fishhook in her uterus. She remembered her father touching her forehead when she had a fever, her sister pushing her off the swing set, her mother yanking a comb through her hair. Maybe there was no avoiding connection. If you wanted to disentangle yourself, you had to endure this awful separation. And even in the act of refusal, you had to confront the cruelty of the life force battering you from within.

            Maura finished her last session of the day and shut down the computer. Her new bedroom in Liz’s apartment had a window opening up into the park, and she’d learned to steel herself for the sticky sound of children’s voices rising up from below, cold and hot feelings passing through her body, mercury running through her veins. She wondered if the fetus had left some trace element behind. Ever since parting from Angel, prying her information from theirs in a brutal series of mental contortions, she’d felt like a different being, someone sensitive and experimental, raw and unformed.

            It was almost time for the visit. She grabbed the baby gift and threw it into her backpack, then went out the door to find Liz doing her yoga on the living room floor. Her friend looked as if she’d never been pregnant. There was no slack in her tree pose, no sag in her downward dog. True, she had developed pixel-shaped wrinkles in the corners of her eyes and begun dying her hair blue instead of red. Her exposed belly revealed two deep stretch marks, as if someone had run their fingers through buttercream frosting. That was due to the weight gain, nearly twenty pounds before she found a research lab where they were willing to perform an abortion in exchange for the unprecedented fetal remains. By that time, she’d cut all ties with Roger, who went, cursing and complaining, to live in an All Beings co-op downtown.

            “Ready?” Maura said.

            “Just let me get out of these sweaty clothes.”

            And she stripped right there, as if the act of disrobing were just another part of her routine, then retreated to her bedroom with her discarded gear.

            “Vale Station, right?” she asked, reappearing in a pale green summer dress that did little to conceal her lack of underwear.

            “Yeah, they have really moved up in the world.”

            Outside on the street, Maura watched for the questioning expressions of the other pedestrians. What did they make of this unlikely pair, a plain woman and a ravishing one, walking so close together that they appeared to be touching? Were they girlfriends? Sisters? Lovers? Wife and wife? She and Liz made the most of the ambiguity on their new crowd cast about two bachelor girls living on their own without realized assistants, only wrist phones to guide them through the perils of the urban landscape. The publicity surrounding Maura’s brief pregnancy had increased their audience. And if things continued to develop, they planned to pitch a television series to the AltAllo Network the following spring.

            They exited the train at Vale Station, walking past the luxurious flower shops and elegant high rises so blue and transparent that they seemed to be part of the sky.

            “Do you ever regret it?” Liz said. “I mean, we could be living here.”

            “I don’t know, I’m not feeling it.”

            The building even had a doorman, a hospitality bot with a dog’s head and six convenient arms. He called up to announce their arrival and directed them through the marble lobby.

            “What do you think it will be?” Liz said, on the way up in the elevator.

            “Well, I could hardly ask.”

            “But he agreed to an interview?”

            “He said Deb would be thrilled.”

            “I can’t believe they stuck together.”

            “The power of negotiation.” Maura said. After all, she’d been the one to counsel them through it. She was surprised at the neutrality she’d been able to muster, given her definitive split with Angel. Maybe she was finally developing some of Clio’s impartial attitude.

            In the end, Eli agreed to carry the fetus to term if Deb would support him through his gender affirmation surgery. So he’d have his preferred identity and she’d have her child. The arrangement solved their financial difficulties as well, since All Beings paid them a life-long annuity and a research lab gave them a stipend in exchange for regular testing. Plenty to cover the operation and the child’s education too.

            Eli had always suspected that machines would accept him long before humans. Maura wondered whether it was his comfort with bodily transformation that allowed him to slip in and out of pregnancy so easily, with the grace of an actor and the physical resilience of an athlete.

            He greeted them at the door, already looking more masculine, his mustache luxuriant and his jaw firm. He wore a Mexican wedding shirt that showed the dark hairs on his chest and a damp spit cloth draped over his shoulder.

            “Come in, come in. You caught us just between naps.”

            He pressed his hand to Maura’s arm and she didn’t even startle. But they’d known each other a long time now. Liz, of course, gave him a full body hug, then twirled around to view the room, the bottom of her green dress flaring.

            “What a place,” she said, gazing at the walls, which pulsed like the inside of an incubator.

            “It’s a smart apartment,” he told her. He clapped his hands and birdsong erupted from the ceiling. Then, when he snapped his fingers, a carpet of clover appeared on the floor.

            Deb sat in the living room folding baby clothes. Even though her form was changeless, the set of her shoulders inside the teal blue kimono projected a new dignity. Because there, in the bassinet next to the sofa, rested the irrefutable evidence of her victory.

            Maura reached into her backpack, as if for protection, and pulled out the baby gift.

             “Something for Diana,’ she said. “And something for the two of you.”

            Deb opened the box, smiling at the toy frog with its bright green limbs. She dangled its long legs over the bassinet, singing a snippet of the song that had plagued Maura for so long, her voice light with affection and heavy with responsibility.

             “Diana will love it,” she said. “She’s a precocious baby, already sitting up and grabbing her toes.” So advanced, when another child would still be gestating. Maura pitied the humans who would have to compete with her.

            “And what’s this? A couple’s day at the spa?

            Even if Deb couldn’t experience physical pleasure, Maura knew that she would appreciate the attentions of the masseuse and the opportunity to accompany Eli out in public, almost as if they were a bonded pair.

            “It’s my favorite stomping ground,“ Liz said. “I figured you two could use a break.”

            Maura took another look at the bassinet. She would have to see it eventually. It. She. They. Them. Her own biological child, a male, had hatched two months ago, liberated from Norma’s casing in a torrent of plasma and placenta. They called him Avi, the first AI-designed human. He was, by all accounts, a healthy child. Although Angel had invited her to visit them at the All Beings penthouse, she couldn’t bring herself to go. Now she edged toward the bassinet, her pulse quickening and her breasts leaking the same noxious fluid that had been plaguing her for weeks, a substance more like acid than milk. What was she afraid of? An eye, a mouth, an ear, a nose. All human, as far as she could tell. But when the child cried, it was with an otherworldly croaking that sounded more like laughter, a cold-blooded laughter inviting Maura to marvel and forbidding her to mourn.

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