Rustling leaves. That’s what I will always imagine when I look at you, Suki. I went once into the jungles of Venus, on a tour after some conference or other. The guide wanted to show me the trees themselves and the solid wood they’d managed to coax from thin freshly-terraformed soil; he wanted to point out the creeks that ran clear—too clear still; too much acid left in the water—among the grasping roots that would in time break down the poisons and sip them away. I couldn’t pay attention. There was something about the leaves that caught my eye and made me watch in wonder: a million million little slips of green, all whispering their secrets when the wind touched them. I’d never seen anything shiver so beautifully before, and until I saw you I thought I never would again. But that’s you. That’s how you move, that’s how you speak. That’s how you think.

I should know. I built you. I etched and prepared each pair of thin half-centimeter growth plates, coating them in the chemical bath that would let your mind begin to grow through their shallow surface channels. I pressed them into the seeding dots that grew cilia, tiny gecko-foot hairs to hold you together. With my partners and my family, in our now-distant city home, I raised you and helped teach you everything you’ll need to know. I’ve begun to feel like your mother, and like you are my daughter. It’s crazy, I know how crazy, but I love you. (My creation. My triumph!) My daughter. I love you, Suki.

But right now I can’t find you, and it’s beginning to worry me. You were playing hide-and-seek with Sarah and Kiefer. You must have found a new hiding place, and a good one, since your playmates gave up half an hour ago. How many closets can there be in this house? (Only five. I looked over the floor plan before we moved.)  How can you hide so well when your scintillating green should give you away?

You must be within earshot. This closet is the last, and I’ve looked everywhere else. Yet I still can’t find you, and you won’t come when I call, no matter how displeased I manage to make my voice. I suppose I really am turning into your mother: I can’t stay angry with you for long.

There’s something the children yell when the game is over and it’s time to come out. If I could just remember what it is, maybe you’d answer it. You are a quirky child; I should know. Maybe you picked this one up from Kiefer. What was it again?

Oh yes. “Ollie-ollie-oxen-free!” I call out in my best singsong.

A flash of bright amazonite from my left: I turn and spot the first thick rivulet of liquid you as it peeks from its hiding place. You silly girl—you hid behind the thermostat! (I didn’t know there was enough space back there. Have you learned to compress yourself? Is that even possible?) Now here you come, flowing over the wood floor towards me, stretching yourself up as tall as you can. You’re shoulder-height when you reach me, giggling the tinkling musical rustle that has become your laughter. It’s like riotous birdsong on some world of living xylophones.

“I win!” you announce, triumph in your shivery laughter. Then your tip tilts sideways, as if you’re cocking your head at me. “Where are Sarah and Kiefer?”

“They went home half an hour ago,” I tell you, unable to stop smiling despite the situation. (I should be stern with you. You need to learn how important this is.) “And it’s long past time you charged. Why didn’t you come when I called?”

“It’s in the rules,” you chuckle. “Everyone stays hidden until they’re found, or until someone says the magic word. You hadn’t said the magic word.”

I can’t help but smile in return at the sheer childlike literalness of your assumption. (You become more like a child every day.) “Oh, Suki. I thought I told you before: rules aren’t everything. Other things are often more important than the rules of a game.”

You absorb that with a sidelong nod of your column tip.

“We’ve got to go now, dear.” That word still gives me shivers—dear. “Charge time, remember? We can talk more on the way.”

You form yourself into a sphere, more solid than usual, and roll along the floor to follow me. “What kind of bath do I take today?”

I knew you’d ask that; you always do. (Too predictable.) And I hate to tell you this, but— “No bath yet. Sorry, little one, but you’ve been out too long.”

You shiver in dismay. “Oh, Ella, please?”

That stings a bit, though I did ask you not to call me “Mom”. Too many memories lurk around that word. (Besides, I’m not your mother. You’re my daughter, but I’m not your mother. You have too many parents for me to claim credit that way.) “You’ll have to wait until after your charge. You know the rule: in bed by bedtime, no exceptions.”

You punctuate your disappointment with a papery scritch against the floorboards. “But you just said rules weren’t everything!”

(You are learning.) “That’s true, Suki. But some rules are very important, and this is one of them. I wish I could bend it for you—” (and I do) “but if I do, you’ll run out of power, and you might decohere. You know we can’t risk that.”

We pass through the living room, by the picture window that faces into our new backyard. I pause for a moment to look around. In the city, you and I lived in an apartment. We had no grass then, and certainly no flowers, much less the perfect garden that spreads behind this new house. The apartment was comfortable enough, but it had no hardwood floors, no deep carpet, and no crown moldings on the creamy walls. This new home—this little brick house nestled in this quiet town, near the family—is paradise.

“Oh, Ella, look!” You point a pseudopod out the window. “What’s that?”

I just manage to catch the jewel flash of red and green as it hovers for a moment at the trumpet-vine that twines up the side of the house. Then it’s gone, darting behind the corner of the brick and stucco. “Wow, Suki, good eyes! That’s a hummingbird.”

“It’s beautiful!” you exclaim. “Is it really the bird from the textbook? Archlochus colubris?”

“Yes, it is.” You’re right. (And such aesthetic sense!) I haven’t seen a hummingbird in years; I’d forgotten how perfect they are, and how exquisitely fragile. You even know your terminology—and you’ve learned that name on your own. Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re only two years old.

When I look back down at you, you’ve shortened by a foot, rippling along your height. “Ohhhh. Do I really have to go and charge? It’s so wonderful; can’t I stay up and study it all?” Your crystalline voice has taken on a tone I haven’t heard before, one you must have picked up from Sarah as well as our lessons. You’ve learned to plead. For a moment I’m so delighted that I can’t think what to say.

Then I pull myself together. There is a reason you can’t stay up. “Your voice is so much better—that was wonderful! I’m sorry, though; you really do have to charge now.”

Disappointed but accepting, you go ovoid again and follow me across the living room towards the front foyer and the stairs. We’re just beginning to mount the steps when the doorbell rings. I haven’t heard it until just now. It really is lovely: a deep rolling chime that beckons, instead of demanding like most doors do. For a moment, I don’t recognize it.

Then it sinks in. I have to get this now—I’m expecting some important packages, fragile equipment mailed express from the city. “Oh dear. Suki, wait here for a moment?” You have another fifteen minutes before we’re in any danger; I can just ask the caller to wait a moment.

The doorknob is heavy and solid, but the door whispers effortlessly open. Behind it stands a young man I haven’t met yet. He looks to be in his late twenties, with pale blond hair clipped short and swept back. An almost palpable aura of open, friendly honesty surrounds him and the white cardboard box he’s carrying. “Er, hello,” he greets me. “I’m Vaughan Tashi, from next door. Thought I’d come over and meet the new neighbor. Welcome to the neighborhood.” He sticks out a hand to shake.

I take the hand and squeeze, giving him a genuine if rather distracted smile. You’re weighing rather heavily on my mind at present. “Hi, nice to meet you. I’m Ella Radche. I actually have to put Suki to bed at the moment, but I’d love to talk—why don’t you come in for a minute? You can wait in the living room if you like.”

He nods, smiles, and bobs his way up the front steps. The sight of our foyer filled with still-packed boxes makes me wince, but he only smiles. “Radche? Any relation to—whoa! What’s that?”

I follow his frozen finger with my eyes. It seems he’s caught sight of you. “That’s Suki,” I explain. “She’s, well, a project of mine. I work in experimental AI programming, you see; she’s a learning computer. And she’s a lot like a person, in many ways.” (I’ve learned over these past two years how to introduce you such that you inspire interest and affection instead of fear. Besides, you deserve to be treated with a thinking being’s dignity.) I clear my throat for introductions: “Vaughan, this is Suki; Suki, this is Vaughan.”

You roll up to my side, then stretch into another tower shape and extend a pseudopod as if to shake hands with him. “Hi, Vaughan!”

He stares at the pseudopod, speechless for a moment. “Why is it built into a sweeper robot?”

Oh dear. He’s familiar with sweepers. This does tend to make things difficult. People seem to cherish these preconceptions of what a sweeper is, and they refuse to learn how truly harmless you are. “Oh, don’t worry—she’s not dangerous, not any more than an AI passenger plane is dangerous. Just because its predecessor was designed for the air force doesn’t mean the jet has guns.”

“I’d never hurt you,” you chime in. “Not you, not anybody.”

“We know, dear.” I lay a protective hand on your head. That is, on what passes for your head at the moment.

“You mean… it doesn’t have any cleanup gear?” He’s still transparently cautious, but at least he isn’t outright hostile. That’s an improvement over my fears.

“None. Actually, she’s so full of her mind—the processors, the memory, et cetera—that I had trouble giving her senses and a voice in the first place. Remember that story, Suki?”

“Oh, do I! You always make it sound like lots of fun.”

I can’t restrain a chuckle at your wistful tone. Designing light sensors, microphones, tactile sensors, proprioceptors, and a speaker into your chassis was almost as hard as programming your basic conscious mechanisms. You so love a challenge—it’s hardwired into you—that you often miss the frustration in stories of drawn-out experimenting.

Vaughan is still just staring, and I’m not at all sure what to make of his expression. I hope he decides to wait a moment… I still have to start your charge cycle. “Er, Vaughan, I still have to put Suki to bed. Make yourself comfortable; I’ll be down in a minute. Come on, Suki.”

Then I skitter up the stairs, with you in tow. (You’ve formed yourself into a vague quadruped, and your coordination is better than usual but still not excellent. We’ll work on that when you wake from your nap.) Your canister stands in the corner of your room; I usher you in, give you a good-night caress, make sure your power socket—the only large solid part of you—is in place, and let you settle in before closing the door behind you. The lights atop the canister panel shine gentle blues: everything’s working properly. I set the timer to charge your cells gradually up to full power over the next few hours, and slip out of your room.

Vaughan is still waiting downstairs. (Thank goodness.) He’s perched uncomfortably on the corner of a rather old and squishy ottoman that Mother refuses to give away, and which seems to have landed in my foyer on its way to Gavin’s attic. His box balances on the knees of his khaki slacks. “Sorry about that,” I greet him. “She has to take these naps, or she runs out of power. She’d recover if she did, but the time between would be messy.

“Thanks for coming over… it’s good to meet you. I was going to come over and introduce myself tomorrow, but I suppose you’ve beaten me to it.” I pause. I really should say this, though I hope it’s not necessary. “I’m sorry if Suki startled you.”

He runs a hand back through his hair. It’s frizzier than I’d first thought. “Oh, it’s all right. I just thought… no, never mind.” His tense smile relaxes a bit. “So, Ella Radche, right? Are you related to Gavin and Natalie, down the street?”

I nod and smile back. “Gavin’s my brother, actually, and he’s a little responsible for my moving here.” All his stories of this idyllic town did convince me, in the end, that the Midwest is a good place to raise children… even if your children happen to be silicon-based. “You know him well?”

“We’re good friends.” The smile eases yet again. “Your nephew Kiefer is friends with my son. The boys brought us together, you might say. Oh—I almost forgot… here.” He hands me the box. It’s slightly warm, the cardboard smooth on my palms. “Peasant bread, straight from the oven.”

My favorite! How did he know, if Gavin didn’t tell him about me? I open the box just a crack; the aroma that wafts out almost makes my eyes cross. “Wow, it smells divine. Thank you!”

He grins. “I run the bakery downtown. We made that loaf especially for the new neighbor. Enjoy it.”

“Believe me, Vaughan, I will. Thank you.”

Of course, after that, I have to offer him something to drink—there’s iced tea still in the fridge—and in the end we sit and talk in the living room for an hour. He seems a very nice fellow, comfortable, genial, and outgoing. (If his bread is any indication, he’s certainly an excellent chef.) Once he gets over his worries about you—and everyone does, in time—we’ll be good friends and good neighbors. Maybe his son will even play with you soon, on that wonderful lawn of ours.




After that meeting, I think nothing more of the way Vaughan startled when you first appeared until two days later. Gavin comes down the block to help us unpack, and he brings with him interesting and disturbing news.

We’re sorting knick-knacks and clothing when he first brings it up. I’m surrounded by sweaters, teaching you how to fold them even as I decide which to leave out for early fall when I pack the rest up in my closet; Gavin is digging through a box of paintings and wall hangings, sorting them by the rooms where I hung them in my old apartment. He pulls out a particularly large one, a sleek black minimalist frame with a colorful view of the Trifid Nebula in Sagittarius, and watches for quite a while as its colors cycle. When he looks back at me, I can tell he’s troubled. Call it sibling sympathy, or just call it too much time together—we can usually guess each other’s moods.

“Ella, I know you’re not getting out much yet, but have you noticed what the town’s saying about you?”

I raise an eyebrow. “About me?” I knew this Holton was a fairly insular sort of village, but that they’d already be talking about me is a surprise.

“Yes—well, you and Suki really.”

That catches your attention; you draw yourself up taller, put down the sweater you’ve just folded, and pull back your pseudopods. “People are talking about me? Do they like me?”

“Actually, no.” His brow creases. (Wait… since when does he have that many laugh lines? We have been apart too long.) “They don’t like either of you.”

“Did I do something wrong?” you ask, rippling, apprehensive.

“No, no.” He reaches across to rub the top of your current shape. “Not at all. People are just funny sometimes.” Looking back at me: “Ella, apparently Vaughan got a good look at Suki the other day before you took her up to charge. He’s convinced that she’s a full sweeper with an AI in it.”

“What?” That’s impossible, I told him so when he asked!

Gavin is already holding up a hand to forestall my protest. “I know, I know, you probably told him all about it. Listen, Ell, Vaughan’s a wonderful guy and a hell of a chef, but he has no mind for technological details. In one ear and out the other.”

“So in his ignorance he’s just spreading the rumor that I’ve put an intentional AI in a weaponized sweeper?” The idiot! He couldn’t do more damage if he’d been trying!

“Weaponized, no, not specifically. AI in a sweeper, yes. But around here, the default sweeper is pretty much a weapon already. I keep hearing oblique references to some kind of industrial accident in the thirties; somehow people are connecting that to all sweepers, including Suki here.”

“I’m not a sweeper!” you protest, rearing back. “I’m a person. I’m Suki!”

“I know,” he comforts you. “I know, and Ella knows, and Kiefer and Sarah know. Everyone knows who could possibly have to. Some people in town are confused, but we’ll explain to them.”

“Oh really?” I sigh. “Just how do you plan to do that?” An old Mark Twain saying comes unbidden into my head: A lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its boots. What a head start the lie has today. I’d better start helping the truth get shod.

“We could ask the Holton Tribune—you know, the local paper—to do an article on you two. There’s probably enough interest already to justify it, and the editor will be as curious as anyone else. When she comes to you for information, you can give her the whole truth, and she’ll publish it. Everyone in this town reads the Tribune…” He spreads his hands. “Do the math.”

I’ve already done the math, and I like the results I’m getting. “That does make sense. Do you know the editor personally enough to drop hints like that?”

He bares his teeth in one of his inimitable grins, the kind so obscure that it’s impossible to distinguish mirthless from facetious. “Ella, think about this town. The freaky new arrival here is my sister. If there’s anyone in Holton I don’t know, chances are they’re here to install something.”

That’s my Gavin. Suddenly I can’t help laughing.

Once we’ve finished with the pictures and the sweaters, he leaves to pick up lunch from Vaughan’s bakery-café, promising to stop by the newspaper’s office on his way. You and I spend the time in the back yard, learning botany from my encyclopedias and from the gardens we’ve been bequeathed. By the time he returns, we’ve worked our way through several orders of garden plants and have just started on specific strategies for identification. You’re having trouble with the inconsistent “mitten-shape” of the sassafras leaf; I’m trying to explain it to you in terms of statistics when he rounds the fence.

At his cheery whistle, I put the notebook on standby and go to meet him. You roll along beside me, calling him. “Hi, Gavin!”

“Hi, Suki!” This time his grin is purely happy; there’s no mistaking it.

“Did it work?” You’re bouncing higher than usual in your excitement, sparkling in the afternoon sun. You’re so cute when you do that!

“Oh, I’d say so.” He kneels to greet you. “She should be here any minute.”

Behind him, someone is already advancing up the lawn: a woman I don’t know, taller than I am, carrying a notepad, and wearing a sleek bronze ponytail and entirely unnecessary sunglasses. I tap Gavin on the shoulder and point her out with a smile; he leaps to his feet. “Rachel!” he greets her. “Prompt as ever. Ella, this is Rachel Maran, editor of The Holton Tribune. Rachel, this is my sister Ella Radche, talk of the town.”

The editor offers me her hand. “Good to meet you. Call me ‘Rachel.’” When I release her hand, asking her likewise to call me “Ella,” she looks down at you with a rather false smile. (I hope it’s only uncertainty behind that mask.) “And this must be Suki!”

You stretch up into your column shape, extending a polite pseudopod. “That’s me! Hi, Rachel!”

Surprisingly enough, she takes your pseudopod and gives it a warm squeeze. (I hope you’re not too thixotropic right now. Accidentally engulfing her hand might not be the best way to make friends.) “It’s good to meet you, too, Suki. I’ve been hearing a lot about you, but Gavin tells me some of it isn’t true.”

You ripple side-to-side. “Well, I haven’t heard it, so I can’t tell you what’s true. What do people say about me?” That’s very candid of you—just your style.

“Lots of things.” Her smile is getting more genuine by the minute. It looks like she’s being drawn in more by your personality than by your chassis’ distant kinship. Thank goodness! “They say you think and learn like real people do.”

“Of course I do! I am a real person.” You stretch up a little taller, glad to be able to straighten her out. “I’m an intentional AI. We’re people, all of us.”

She puts one hand to her lips. “Oops. I think I meant that you learn like humans do. That’s different, isn’t it?”

“Nope!” You know this part. It’s one of the earlier things that I taught you—how to deal with people who think you’re not a person. Under the law and under the truth of your day-by-day learning, you’re as much a conscious being as any human. Some people will always try to make you prove it; from early on, you’ve known how. “Intentional AIs think just like people do. We think in different ways sometimes, but we think about things, and we think about ourselves. We’re sentient in every way that matters.”

If it weren’t for your perky singsong tone, you’d sound wonderfully mature. I’m proud of you, Suki! Clearly you’ve impressed Rachel, though I’m not sure she quite believes you. She doesn’t sound like she does: “But you were made, not born, weren’t you?”

You flatten slightly, just enough to imitate shrugging shoulders. “So?”

She tosses her head and laughs. Even if she doesn’t believe you, she must be enchanted with you. That’s a great first step at least! “Ella, she’s wonderful! How did you build her?”

“It could take me all afternoon to answer that one,” I tell her, returning the smile. “Why don’t we go inside and talk about it?”

I lead our little party inside, to the living room, where the four of us take different chairs. You slide up the couch to sit beside me, leaning into my lap; while we talk, I stroke the subtle, shifting contours of your surface.

Rachel wants to know how I built you, so I start from the beginning. I gloss over the part where I decided to build you, telling instead what my plan was at first: a highly creative AI, specifically one that would be raised like a child and therefore benefit from the laterally formative aspects of childhood. When I begin trying to add specific details about the process of programming you, her eyes glaze over; evidently she’s not a programmer. (I can’t claim to be surprised.) Steering the explanation back to more potentially interesting ground, I start to explain why I chose to base your chassis on that of a sweeper-bot.

Sweepers, I explain, were designed for toxic industrial cleanup jobs and for dangerous military work; they therefore maximize durability and flexibility, exactly the two characteristics you would need in order to grow up safely and with a wide range of experience. The sweeper chassis is made up of myriad tiny “flakes”, each coated in minute gecko-foot-like cilia that hold them together. The cilia can stick very tightly or quite loosely at any given moment; as a result the chassis is a quasi-liquid, supremely programmable in shape and viscosity. It literally lets you learn to shape yourself to the situation. (As if to demonstrate, you reach out and carefully center my glass on its coaster.) You can absorb most blows without damage by going liquid at the right moment, an essential trait for a curious but uncoordinated child who tends to fall down flights of stairs. The cilia also let you stick yourself selectively to almost any surface: you can move in any number of ways, on just about any conceivable footing. Most importantly, the flakes (though individually quite stupid) are networked through the cilia to form a fractally distributed processing system: each tiny flake holds a less-detailed but roughly complete image of your entire mind, so even if you did manage to lose a chunk of yourself, the loss would be manageable. Your senses are distributed just as your mind is: a large percentage of your flakes house minute light sensors from whose crude input you can synthesize detailed vision, while others link up to form diaphragms for microphones and speakers, and still others measure varying stresses on their cilia to extrapolate touch and gravity.

Rachel listens intently to my lecture, occasionally stopping to snap a photo, her notepad recording as I speak. When I finish and lean back into the sofa, rubbing your top surface, she nods reflectively. “Wow,” she murmurs at last, a little frown quirking her brow. “She really is a sweeper.”

You rear up out of my lap, mortally offended. “I’m not!” you cry. “I’m Suki, I’m me! I’m as much a sweeper as you are a gorilla!”

(Whoa. That’s a new analogy; I definitely didn’t teach you that one. It’s perfect! It works! Suki, you brilliant child, you little marvel, you’re learning metaphor! I can barely contain my astonished wonder.) I do manage to contain myself, though, and I lean forward to wrap an arm around you. “Calm down, Suki, it’s okay. She didn’t mean to insult you; she just doesn’t understand.”

You understand the defense by ignorance, even if you don’t like it; more or less mollified, you ball up again in my lap.

I look back up at the very startled Rachel. “She’s right, you know. Calling her a sweeper is like calling you a gorilla. She’s much smarter than any sweeper, and far less dangerous. See, what makes a sweeper dangerous is its equipment, whether that’s for planting and defusing mines or for cleaning up toxic waste, combined with its lack of real intelligence. No sweeper could pass a Turing test, much less a Lovelace test; they’re designed to work by remote control, closely monitored by a human. When they get loose, which is once in a hundred years with the new hardware—that’s when they’re dangerous. That’s when you have all that deadly hardware wielded by a thing without a conscience, with its safeguards burned out.

“Not only does Suki have no dangerous equipment at all, she has a conscience as real as yours or mine. The moral rule is hardwired into her: Do as you will, but do no harm. I know a lot of humans less conscientious than she is.”

Rachel can agree with that. (She even seems to find it pretty funny.) We talk for a while longer about details—your history, what it was like to raise you, my history, what I “really” do for a living. Then she gets up, puts her notepad on standby and packs it away, and offers me her hand.

“Thank you, Ella. This will be the best story the Tribune’s run in years!”

I take the hand and shake it. “I can’t wait to read it. I hope you’ll clear up some of the rumors that have been floating around.”

“Now that I know you two, how could I do anything else?”

You and Gavin and I walk her back to her car and wave as she pulls away.

When her car is out of sight, I let out a short breath. That went well, to all appearances… better than when you met Vaughan, certainly. Still, I can’t shake the feeling that she missed something about you, some crucial fact that would make her see how real you are. This is not a Pinocchio story; you’ve been absolutely real from the beginning, with no need for fairy intercession. Sometimes people just can’t believe that.

Gavin is the first to speak. “That went well, didn’t it?”

You chime in, sounding hurt. “She called me a sweeper.”

He ruffles what would be your hair if you had any. “Oh, hon, she didn’t mean it. Really, I don’t think she knew what she was talking about.” Looking back at me, he adds, “Why don’t we go eat our lunch, get Suki her bath, and forget about sweepers?”

“Bath?” You perk up instantly. “There’s time now?”

I smile down at you. “All the time you could want. We have to eat, after all!”

You extrude four legs to stand on and start prancing, excited, towards the house. “Then
what are we waiting for?”

Lunch is delicious—sandwiches from Vaughan’s bakery, better than anything I could get in the city. I vow to eat there as often as my personal budget allows.




That vow translates directly into the next morning’s breakfast. I eat at the kitchen counter, in the house’s quiet before you get up—coffee and a buttery fruit scone. Birds chatter in the trumpet-vines while I read the newspapers. First, the New York Times; when I finish with that, I switch the pages to the Holton Tribune. A photo of you and me graces its front page, beside our headline: I’m sitting on the couch with you curled up in my lap, arched a little bit to one side. You’re unbearably cute when you do that; the smile that wells up in me distracts me from the article for a minute.

Then my phone chimes, distracting me further. I sigh, looking down at my ring: Gavin’s name slithers in light around the thin black band. I slip it off my finger, let it unfold, and hook it over my ear. “’Morning, Gav. Que pasa?”

“Hi, Ell. Did you read the Tribune yet?”

“I was just starting when you called. Why?”

“You’re not going to like the article.” He sounds genuinely upset. This is rare for my happy-go-lucky brother, and usually contagious: if something can make Gavin unhappy, it can usually upset me even more. I listen apprehensively. “And you’re really not going to like the opinion article she published below it.”

“What? Why?”

I can almost hear him biting his lip. “I… well, you won’t like it. Read the thing and call me back, okay?”

“Are you sure about this? What did she do?”

He pauses for a long moment. “Let me put it this way. Rachel seemed to like you and Suki yesterday, right? Well, she doesn’t seem to have let the facts come between her and a good story. She makes it sound like you’re about to level Holton.”

She what!? Rage clenches my throat tight. For a moment I can only choke, inarticulate furious spluttering. When I have my voice back, I start digging into my seldom-used expletive vocabulary.

“Whoa, whoa, Ell! Calm down! That’s not even the bad part yet.”

“What could be worse than that? The—”

He cuts me off before I can give him an explicit description of that woman’s ancestry, personality, hygiene, and sex life. “She published a letter from one of the activist conservatives in the town. Did I ever mention Kyle Pritchel? Well, it seems he wants you two run out of town on a rail.” When I answer him only with deadly silence, he hurries on. “You must not have read that one either. He talks about the ’38 runaway—whatever that is—and he keeps telling his readers to remember the law.”

The last sentence brings me up short. “Gav, I looked at the local laws before I moved in. There’s nothing in them that forbids bringing experimental AIs into town!”

“I know, Ell. This is my home, remember?”

“And it was mine too, until the neighbors decided Suki was some kind of demon!” I can feel tears welling up, but I am entirely too furious to cry. Not now! As if grabbing myself by the shoulders, I snatch my emotions in hand and try to rein them in. It’s a bit like handling a team of bolting Clydesdales. “Look, I need to be sure nothing’s going to come of this. What was the ’38 runaway, and what law is he talking about?”

“I don’t—”

“I know you don’t know, but I need to find out! The statute book is online, right? Between that and the historical society—you did mention a historical society, didn’t you?—I should be able to get all the info. And I’m going to, if it means turning that Maran woman’s offices inside-out!”

Before I can hang up on him, Gavin cuts back in. “Ell! Calm, okay? I’ll take care of the law. You look up the runaway. Two heads will get it done faster.”

“Don’t you have to work?”

“It’s Saturday, hon. Being a freelancer does have its perks, doesn’t it?”

He’s trying too hard, but he does get a laugh out of me. It’s a grudging, mirthless laugh, but it’s a laugh. “Okay, whatever. You look up the law, I’ll look up the runaway.”

He agrees, and we hang up.

The first thing I do is pick up the paper and read the incriminating article. (It’s best to know my enemy… and the Maran woman falls firmly into the “enemies” category now). It’s everything Gav said it was, in details as much as overall structure. By the time I put the paper down and turn it off, my head is whirling. What do people have against you? Pritchel calls you a thing several times in his article, each time pointedly italicizing the word. What can you conceivably have done to deserve such rancor?

That way lies madness—or at least self-reinforcing fury—so I fold the paper, put it back on the shelf, and set my computer up on the counter. The town’s wireless net catches its signal, and I’m on the historical society’s homepage in moments. Their library archives are online, like everything else on this world, and I plunge into my research.

An hour later, just as the information is getting most disturbing, the whisper of your cilia on the kitchen tiles snaps me out of it. You’re perched on the counter beside me, reaching a long thin pseudopod around beside me to look over my shoulder. “That’s not polite,” I chide you automatically, even as I ruffle your surface by way of greeting.

You retract the arm. “Sorry. What are you doing?”

“Some research, honey. Did you sleep well?” Your presence helps calm me down. (You do that, you know. It’s so sweet.)

“Yes, just like I always do.” You slide down to ball up in my lap again. “What are you researching? Can I help?”

I sigh. “I don’t think you can, sweetheart. This is really important, and I think I need to do it myself.”

“Aw, Ella!” You scritch against yourself to punctuate the protest.

“I’m sorry. We’ll go do some more botany later, if you like.”

“Ooh yes, let’s! I still don’t understand that sassafras thing. What do I do until then?”

“You can draw on the fridge if you like. Make sure to open a new canvas first.”

“Cool!” You bounce out of my lap and roll over to the fridge, stretching up to snatch your stylus off the counter. I watch you call up a fresh canvas in the fridge-front’s paint program and start drawing, but I can barely notice the subject of your sketch. My mind is still on the story I’ve gleaned from the archives.

The ’38 runaway was an industrial sweeper, rented to a minor manufacturer in nearby Kelmont to clean up contaminated groundwater. It had done its job and was being recalled when something went wrong in its programming—no one seems to know what—and it went berserk. The thing wrought mayhem across three counties and killed twenty-eight people before the police dropped an EMP on it. I’ve heard the horror stories, the worst of the havoc a loose sweeper can wreak; the people of Holton have seen them. Twelve of the twenty-eight died here; fully half the property damage was here. It’s no fault of yours or mine that Holton distrusts you: they’ve been conditioned to hate anything sweeper-shaped.

(I can’t believe I’m being so calm about this.)

While I’m still running through the data I’ve found, my phone rings: Gavin again. I answer emptily.

“You sound terrible,” he greets me. He’s not sounding fantastic himself. “Did you have any luck?”

“If you can call it that, yes.”

“You first, then.”

“Gav…” I can’t think how to say it. I massage my temples; it doesn’t help. “You’ve heard of the KHL sweeper incident, right?”

“Some kind of runaway sweeper in the thirties, right? One of a few around then. Killed a few people.”

“Twenty-eight. Twelve died here.”

“Here? You mean—”

“Gavin, the ‘H’ in its name is for Holton.” He greets that with stunned silence, which manages to spark a little of the anger I know I should be feeling. Anything but this leaden-limbed grimness. “Dammit, Gav, how did you not know?”

“That was forty years ago! The whole mess is always just an example, held out in the abstract… No one ever talks about the real towns…” He sounds as dizzy as I feel. “Oh my God.”

“Your God, indeed,” I mutter. “Now, what did you find?” Another long silence answers me. “Out with it!”

Now he sounds positively ill. “All I could find is that it’s illegal to bring AI weapons into this town. Violators get jail time; the weapons get confiscated and destroyed. That’s standard practice, right?”

“I know that—” Before I can finish the sentence, the bottom falls out from under my stomach. No. That can’t be it. I have to be wrong. “Gavin… does the law define ‘weapon’?”

“Not specifically. Doesn’t even refer to the national definition.”

At those words, the conclusion I so desperately want to avoid comes crashing in on me. You’re standing here in front of me, oblivious, so happy, drawing your fanciful cityscape on the refrigerator. You’re a child, my child in so many ways… and I’ve brought you to a place where your very existence is illegal. They’ll kill you if I let them!

He cuts into my recriminations. “Ell? Did you hear me? What’s wrong?”

I barely manage to choke it out. “Gav, think! After KHL, they can call her a weapon!”

Judging by the sharp gasp on the other end of the line, my brother may have just swallowed his tongue. “Jesus!”

“We have to go,” I manage to tell him. “Anywhere. Just get her out of town before someone takes us to the police…”

Before he can answer, the doorbell rings.

For a moment all I can do is sit here, frozen in shock. Who would call now? They’ve come already! No, it’s not possible; the paper’s only been out since midnight, how could they get a warrant? Oh, God, do they even need one? “Gav… did you hear that?”

“Yeah.” He rasps it out. “You’d better get the door.”

“Are you crazy? If that’s the police—!”

“Then you’ll be better off surrendering, and appealing if they try to take her, than you’ll be by resisting arrest.”

Always the voice of reason, aren’t you, dear brother? If you were here now, I’d punch you. I snarl something inarticulate into the phone.

“Go get the damn door!” he snaps.

I hang up on him. For a minute I just sit there, staring at you while you sketch on. Fairy towers above a soaring forest canopy, with marvelous birds winging between them, flow from your stylus. I can almost hear the leaves rustling in the wind, whispering their secrets. There are no trees here like those, no whispers but yours. (What could I do if they ever were silent?)

The doorbell rings again; this time, several sharp knocks at the door punctuate its melodious chime. “Police!” someone barks. “Open up!”

Gavin’s right. I can’t lose you running. If I surrender, I can appeal. A different judge, higher up, will throw the claim right out, will see the grotesque absurdity that could call you a monster. What else can I do?

With lead-weighted limbs, I get up from my counter seat. “Suki?”

You’ve been completely absorbed in your drawing; now you pause. “Yes?”

“I’m going to get the door. Will you come with me? Please?”

Putting the stylus back on the counter, you follow me eagerly to the foyer. The doorknob is heavy, solid, cold; it seems to pull the life from my hand as the door swings open.

There are two policemen standing on the step, immaculate in crisp blue uniforms. One of them shows me his badge. “Ella Radche?”

“Yes.” Even in my own ears, my voice sounds dead.

“You are under arrest for bringing intelligent weapons into the Holton city limits. Is that—” and as he points to you, I can’t miss the contempt and even fear in his voice— “the robot called Suki?”

“Yes,” you tell him. I can hear the confusion in your voice and see it in the ripples coursing down your sides. “I’m Suki. Ella, what’s happening? Who are these people?”

“They’re police officers,” I tell you, resting one hand on your top. “They think you and I have done something wrong, so they’re going to take us to the police station for a while. Don’t worry. Everything’s going to be fine.” To the police officer, I add (since he obviously doesn’t care what you say), “Yes, this is Suki.”

“Put the robot in its box, turn it off, and come with us.”

“Her canister is upstairs.” I sigh. “If you’re going to follow me, please wipe your feet first.” Turning from the door, I look down at you: “It looks like you have to go back to bed now, little one.”

“What? Why?”

“Because they’re telling me to put you to bed, and right now I have to do what they say.” I kneel beside you and wrap my arms around you. “Please, dear heart. I promise I’ll wake you as soon as I can.”

Maybe you can hear the resigned sorrow in my voice, or feel it in my arms; either way, once I let go, you acquiesce to trot upstairs beside me. The police follow us, standing guard while I hug you again, tuck you in, and close the lid behind you. Once you’re asleep, your main functions suspended as if to charge, I unplug the canister and heave it into my arms. (With you inside, it’s heavier than I remember… or maybe that’s just my sick, weary defeat.)

Brushing away angry tears, I let the police herd me downstairs and into the back of their patrol car. Only part of me is surprised to see that it’s one of four parked outside our house. In their fear, they expected trouble, and I almost gave it to them.

The soft white façade of the new house rolls away behind us. I watch it go, uncomfortably hugging your canister to my chest despite the cuffs on my wrists. That house, that haven—it would have been home if this benighted hamlet had let it. Not now.




I use my phone call to contact my lawyer, Kern Braeden, an associate and friend from the city. Once he’s assured me that he’ll come, I settle down miserably into my cell. They took you from me when we arrived, locking you up in your canister in some kind of evidence vault; I couldn’t see where, or what, or how. If they do anything to harm you… I don’t know what I’ll do. Perhaps next time they’ll be able to convict me of a real crime.

Time passes me in discrete droplets, each forming and falling to splash and evaporate on the concrete floor. Gavin visits, trying to comfort me, but there’s little he can say that hasn’t already been said. All that can help me now is my trial—mine and yours, our trial—where Kern will fight for my freedom and for your very life. He’s the best I know. (A tiny voice in the back of my mind nags: what if he can’t win? This is mass hysteria, not rational trepidation. It won’t respond to argument.) I ignore it. My lawyer will be able to help.

Finally he arrives. I’ve been escorted into the meeting room already when he sweeps through the door in one brushstroke of dark suit and short dark hair, all faint blue iridescence under the harsh lighting. I’m on my feet instantly. “Kern!”

He takes in my rumpled hair and sweater. I haven’t slept, and it’s obvious. “Ella. How have you been? Not so well, I gather.” Setting his briefcase on the brushed-steel table, he flips it open; it starts projecting documents onto the surface between us. “Sit down. We’ve a lot to talk about.”

He’s already done his homework, of course. Once I’ve filled in a few of the gaps for him, he sits back and lays out our defense. It’s rock-solid. (The tiny voice tries to tell me something before I slap it into silence.) Given a few days, we’ll have six experts lined up to testify on your harmlessness, and on how little you resemble the ’38 sweeper. By the time Kern has finished with them, the prosecution won’t have a leg to stand on.

As he leaves to get our bail set, I feel better already. I still miss you, and I’m still afraid for you, but there’s comfort in the knowledge that I can defend you with every legal tooth and claw. The ticking of the wall clock goes from Chinese water torture to hopeful countdown: each minute brings us closer to freedom.

Kern is gone longer than I expected; eventually I’m led back to my cell. After a few hours, they bring me back to find him waiting there for me. As they take off my handcuffs, he adjusts his lapels and slowly takes a seat. “Ella, we have a problem.”

His grim manner takes me aback. “What? They won’t set bail?”

“Oh, they set your bail readily enough.” He names a manageable, if unpleasant, figure. “It’s Suki we should be worried about.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Well, they set your bail, but they won’t even discuss Suki’s. It seems that when someone is arrested for AI-weapon possession, protocol demands that the ‘weapon’ be thoroughly inventoried and kept as evidence.”

“They can’t do that! She’s an intentional AI, a legal person! She may not get to vote, but she has rights!”

“I told them that; they wouldn’t hear me.” He leans over the table, a deep shadow passing over his dark eyes, and lowers his voice. “Everyone in this town is afraid of her, Ella, really afraid. The more people I talk to, the more obvious it is. This kind of mob mentality—” mass hysteria, the little voice in the back of my mind screams— “is never pretty; honestly, I think we’re lucky they haven’t decided to destroy her yet.”

I can’t believe this. Hysteria threatens to drag me under. “Afraid of her? They’d fear a six-year-old child with a heart of gold? She’s never done anything, she never would, she can’t!”

“I know that, Ella. So do you, so does Gavin, so does she. The rest of the town—”

“It was in the bloody newspaper!”

“The rest of the town doesn’t care.”

That does it. I can’t hold the tears back any longer: planting my face in my hands, I let them go. All I can think is that last sentence: They don’t care. It’s true. I can’t accept it, I can’t live with it, but it’s awful and it’s true.

A hand rests on my shoulder: it’s Kern. “I can go now. Do you want to post bail?”

Why would I, if you have to stay here? (No, that doesn’t make sense. I still need to pack the house back up to go; I left a project half-finished. I still have things to do.) I manage to nod.

“All right.” He gives my shoulder a gentle squeeze; a moment later, the door clicks shut behind him.




When I return to the house that will never be home, I spend the next few weeks packing listlessly. The refrigerator, covered in your half-finished painting, is too painful: I turn the display off and let it subside into unaccustomed blank white. The hummingbird that comes now daily to sip from the trumpet-vines provokes only dull heartache. I spot it for the first time while tipping the remainder of Vaughan’s peasant bread into the trash. No matter how I tell myself that it isn’t his fault, the stuff turns to ash in my throat.

By the date of our trial, the house is practically sterile, peopled only with stark dun boxes and my daily necessities. I’ve left your room intact, though. (Hope springs eternal.) I’ve come every few days to the police station, to check in and to make sure they’re taking adequate care of you. They don’t like me anywhere near the evidence, but at least they allow me a glimpse each time. With the canister unplugged, you’re in near stasis; at least on that front, we have nothing to worry about.

On the morning of the trial, my lawyer comes to pick me up. “Ready?” he asks as I swing myself into his passenger’s seat.

I manage a sickly smile. “What’s that supposed to mean?”




He’s wonderful. That much I can remember. Kern is wonderful, eloquent, arguing passionate circles around Holton’s lawyer. He calls our witnesses, cross-examines theirs, and with every word lays out our case so clearly that a two-year-old child could see that you and I are innocent. Within half an hour, the judge is clearly on our side. Oh, I wish you could see Kern work his wonders… we’d spend the next six months learning law and political science, just to answer all your questions. I wish I could see him again, so I could remember what it is that makes him so good. It’s all fled me, driven from my brain.

The only concrete memory I will keep from that trial is the moment when the jury foreman stands up, looks me in the eye, and reads from his paper: “Guilty, Your Honor.”

And then, minutes later, they sentence you to death.




Later, after I’ve staggered in shock from the courtroom, after I’ve had time to think, I can consider our sentences with something resembling calm. The judge agreed with us; Kern convinced her, though the jury succumbed to the hysteria. I’ll only serve ten weeks’ community service because she believed us. She’d have saved you too, if she could.

Oh, God, if she could! Holton’s law isn’t negotiable, though. It demands, no matter what my sentence, that the “weapon” I’m convicted of owning be destroyed. No one will call yours a death sentence, but it is: when they detonate that tiny EMP, when the surge of current obliterates that minute wire, the pulse will wipe your mind. Instant death.

I can’t understand it, the senseless impossibility of it. How can federal law call you a person, give you certain rights and a Social Security number, yet let this town demand that you die for the mere crime of existence when all it can take from your mother is twenty years?

Kern tells me it’s all legally solid, mad though it may be. We appealed, of course; he called the law out for its perversion. He demanded our chance to prove how insane it is and how innocent we are. The appeal gave me a week to think and to hope before it failed. There was no mistrial, the next judge ruled: the law was carried out properly. We had a fair trial, he claimed—a fair trial in a town hysterical!

So we’re left high and dry, you and I. We haven’t a paddle. I haven’t a prayer. You… you haven’t an hour to live. They kill you today, my love, my child. Time scatters past me now like leaves tumbling from a dying tree, carrying your life away with it.

I had to fight for it, fight with all my strength and Kern’s, but they’re letting me see you one last time. You’re terribly weak—they insisted on draining your batteries nearly to nothing before they let you out of the canister—but you’re awake, and I can say goodbye. (I can’t bear it.)

The officer finally opens the door to let me see you. You’re in the smallest, most solid cell this godforsaken armpit of a town can find; its walls, floor, and ceiling have been newly coated with metal plasma-spray treated to reflect back an EMP. Their dull gleam reflects us both to infinity in every surface while I go to you. Weak but awake, you’re sprawled amorphous across the floor. I kneel beside you, stroking your contours and calling your name.

“Ella,” you greet me, your voice barely a whisper. “What’s happening to me?”

“You’re going to sleep,” I lie through my tears. “I found a bug in your programming, and I have to let you sleep for a while so I can fix it. When you wake up, you’ll be fine.”

You ripple faintly. “I feel so… ick… Are you sure that’s all?”

“Of course I am, little one.”

“Okay.” With immense effort (you’re so weak!) you pull yourself together into a low pillar. “Will you say goodnight first?”

I wrap my arms around you, squeezing tight. Your green flank and my green sweater blend into one smooth expanse. I can’t speak, I can’t breathe. (You’re all I have!)  “Good night, Suki,” I choke.

“Good night, Ella,” you whisper.

The words must have drained your last spark of power: even as you speak you’re decohering. First one and two flakes slough away, then a hundred, then a thousand… and you slip through my arms, your solidity gone to a rain of falling leaves. Empty, desolate, I sit there in the dead silver room with the pile of ash that was my daughter.

After ten minutes, or maybe an eternity, I stand and turn to leave the room. Gavin waits at the door, taking my arm. “Take me home,” I whisper.

Behind us, the dull whump of the EMP.




Gavin takes me home, intending to walk me upstairs and put me to bed. Instead, I lead him past the stairs to the workroom where my boxed-up lab equipment rests. He frowns. “Ella, what are you doing? Don’t you want to—”

“Gav, I love you. Shut up and help me with this box.”

Too confused to object, he does. When we’ve opened it, I extract a magnifier and a pair of fine tweezers; setting them aside on another box, I strip off my sweater (he flushes until he sees the T-shirt I wore under it) and lay it out on the workbench. Tweezers in one hand, magnifier in the other, I begin to comb the sweater.

“Ell? What are you doing?” My brother, the broken record, bends down beside me. “Ella, are you even listening?”

“Shh.” I hold him off with one hand. “Give me a minute already. I think—”

There, under the magnifier. I almost missed it. A glint of amazonite green and silver… This time the tears on my cheeks are from joy.

I explain it to Gavin later, as I pick over the entire sweater and seal my finds safely in a sample bottle. When you decohered in my arms, you left a bit of yourself: these tiny flakes stuck in the fibers when they sloughed off. What the police didn’t remember, since they didn’t care to listen, is that your memory was fractally distributed. Each of these flakes bears a complete, if sketchy, image of your mind!

“See, Gav? If I can build her a new chassis and use these to rebuild the programming…”

His jaw hangs on a loose end. “You saved her!”

My burst of joy is a sunrise, a wind in the forest that comes bringing spring. I can barely see the sample jar through the ecstatic tears: inside, the pieces of you glimmer and blur into one. Not a leaf, no, nor a lump of ash—inside that jar is a seed. You’ll sprout anew; you’ll live and bloom again.

And this time, you’ll call me Mother.