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tO DREAM
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Excerpt / to dream: anatomy of a humachine
Date: 2030
West Redlands, Florida
Ameri-Inc. Research and Development
Robotics Division
Niyati stared hard at the photo of her son, Jay. At his chestnut eyes and dark, sweet-tea-colored skin. Niyati touched her forearm. His skin was hers. Jay’s hair was also like hers: black, shiny and full. A lock of it cascaded, as it nearly always did, just below his left eyebrow. She slid her forefinger along the lock as if she could brush it back. His high school graduation mortar cap was angled proudly on his head. He had the strong, straight nose of a leading man and the sincere, full-lipped smile of a leader. “So much potential,” she said.
Niyati studied the angel-white graduation gown cascading down his slim torso. In the picture, Jay’s right arm was slung around Niyati, who was grinning proudly. “I want to make a difference, Mom,” he had said to her just before her husband, Pallab, snapped the photo outside on the auditorium lawn after the ceremony. That was eight years ago— when Jay was seventeen, she was thirty-seven, Pallab was still her husband, and they were still a family.
“Jay,” she whispered. In her memory a horn blared and she remembered it all, again.
A red pick-up with a firefighter’s sticker on its windshield smashed into her passenger side mirror. In her ears she heard Pallab scream, “Maadher chod!” Jay’s graduation cap ripped from his hand and jabbed her below the eye. Her calf ached from stomping on the brakes. The tendons in her fingers burnt from clutching the steering wheel with all her strength. The crackle of glass and fiberglass and the crunch of metal drowned out everything.
Then nothing.
No Jay, and eight months later a divorce decree and no Pallab. All she had left was a heart-shaped locket with Jay’s ashes and a desire to work forever. She wanted a cigarette. Niyati glanced at J-1. A marketing exec at Ameri-Inc. had long ago dubbed him “the Humachine” and attached the crass tagline: “Beyond machine, practically human!” She was glad she had stuck to her guns to have it made in the exact image of Jay. Corporate had fought like hell for it to be androgynous. “To appeal to as many consumers as possible,” they had argued.
But she had won.
They had known she was the leading expert in, among other things, quark circuits, and genefluodigy, which was the science of bio-core fluid and its relation to DNA. More importantly, they understood that without her the project would never succeed.
She noticed a separation in the seam of J-1’s shirt. Niyati opened her bottom drawer and removed a small sewing kit. She mended the tear, brushed back a tuft of hair that had fallen over his left brow, glanced to make sure his collar was straight and his zipper was up, and returned to her desk.
Niyati looked again at the photo. She wondered what her life would have been like had she pursued her hobby of dressmaking instead of science. Her eyes welled up and she turned Jay’s picture face down. Niyati slipped the sewing kit back in the bottom drawer and removed her personal touchslate. She pressed in her password. As the slate screen lit up she rose from the desk, approached J-1 and thought, God help me for what I’m about to do.
West Redlands, Florida
Ameri-Inc. Research and Development
Robotics Division
Niyati stared hard at the photo of her son, Jay. At his chestnut eyes and dark, sweet-tea-colored skin. Niyati touched her forearm. His skin was hers. Jay’s hair was also like hers: black, shiny and full. A lock of it cascaded, as it nearly always did, just below his left eyebrow. She slid her forefinger along the lock as if she could brush it back. His high school graduation mortar cap was angled proudly on his head. He had the strong, straight nose of a leading man and the sincere, full-lipped smile of a leader. “So much potential,” she said.
Niyati studied the angel-white graduation gown cascading down his slim torso. In the picture, Jay’s right arm was slung around Niyati, who was grinning proudly. “I want to make a difference, Mom,” he had said to her just before her husband, Pallab, snapped the photo outside on the auditorium lawn after the ceremony. That was eight years ago— when Jay was seventeen, she was thirty-seven, Pallab was still her husband, and they were still a family.
“Jay,” she whispered. In her memory a horn blared and she remembered it all, again.
A red pick-up with a firefighter’s sticker on its windshield smashed into her passenger side mirror. In her ears she heard Pallab scream, “Maadher chod!” Jay’s graduation cap ripped from his hand and jabbed her below the eye. Her calf ached from stomping on the brakes. The tendons in her fingers burnt from clutching the steering wheel with all her strength. The crackle of glass and fiberglass and the crunch of metal drowned out everything.
Then nothing.
No Jay, and eight months later a divorce decree and no Pallab. All she had left was a heart-shaped locket with Jay’s ashes and a desire to work forever. She wanted a cigarette. Niyati glanced at J-1. A marketing exec at Ameri-Inc. had long ago dubbed him “the Humachine” and attached the crass tagline: “Beyond machine, practically human!” She was glad she had stuck to her guns to have it made in the exact image of Jay. Corporate had fought like hell for it to be androgynous. “To appeal to as many consumers as possible,” they had argued.
But she had won.
They had known she was the leading expert in, among other things, quark circuits, and genefluodigy, which was the science of bio-core fluid and its relation to DNA. More importantly, they understood that without her the project would never succeed.
She noticed a separation in the seam of J-1’s shirt. Niyati opened her bottom drawer and removed a small sewing kit. She mended the tear, brushed back a tuft of hair that had fallen over his left brow, glanced to make sure his collar was straight and his zipper was up, and returned to her desk.
Niyati looked again at the photo. She wondered what her life would have been like had she pursued her hobby of dressmaking instead of science. Her eyes welled up and she turned Jay’s picture face down. Niyati slipped the sewing kit back in the bottom drawer and removed her personal touchslate. She pressed in her password. As the slate screen lit up she rose from the desk, approached J-1 and thought, God help me for what I’m about to do.
