We left right away. We didn't even go back to my shed to get any of my "things", but come to think of it I can't even remember having any "things". I really couldn't tell you what was in that shed aside from the bed and its beddings, the window and the chair. I don't even remember what color the walls were, and I wasn't thinking of any of that as Miss Marta led me to her car and put me in the front passenger seat. She had a sporty red two-seater convertible, which later made me wonder if she hadn't intended on taking only one of us all along. Or maybe she had planned on taking none of us. It was impossible to guess what was going on behind those eyes, behind that face.
I was still enthralled with her, so absorbed in the idea of just being with her that I hardly noticed our surroundings as we sped out the driveway and roared along the coastside. I did finally turn to gaze out across the vast blue ocean that seemed to churn and spit out white plumes of spray forever in the wind beneath the rocky cliffs, the same crazy wind that plastered my face and made it hard to hear what Miss Marta was telling me.
She was in a talkative mood all of a sudden, and she smiled and laughed as if she were a completely different person than the cold, austere interrogator I'd only just witnessed first hand.
"It was never going to work with your batch," she said. "I could tell at once. You're supposed to complement each other, you know. Pieces of a puzzle. None of you can ever be complete, not without all of you together. It's the Law, you know, but of course you probably don't know. All you know is what they've injected into you, am I right?"
I nodded. My settling was taking a leap that morning. It had been growing ever since I busted out through the barred window. I knew what she meant about how our group could never work together. Hadn't I seen it around the picnic table in the early hours that very morning? How Margaux and Lindley and Hellen simply got up and walked away from us? Even before that, when Parsnip left Joker Variety out of the meeting, that right there was all the proof you'd need. Of course I didn't tell Miss Marta any of this. I was still constrained at that point. My instruction set restricted me to answering only the question asked, and only when directed to. A rhetorical question such as "am I right" did not require an answer.
"You can't even blame it on that woman. What do you call her?"
"Mother?" I asked.
"Mother? That's a good one!" she laughed. "Why not 'boss-lady' or 'Mein Fuhrer?"
"I don't know," I seriously replied. "I've never heard those terms before."
"I was only kidding," she smiled at me as she sped along the highway. "You must have had some encounter with humor. Sarcasm, even. Irony? It's part of the basic package, I know that."
"Yes, I can tell a joke," I said.
"Then tell me a joke," she commanded.
"What do baby owls say?" I asked.
"You tell me."
"I don't know," I admitted. "I've never seen a baby owl."
"That's a terrible joke," Miss Marta said. "Was it even supposed to be a joke?"
"I can tell what's a joke from what's not-a-joke, is what I meant to say," I replied.
"Oh," she sounded disappointed. "It doesn't matter. Don't worry about it. What was I talking about?"
"You can't even blame it on that woman," I reminded her.
"Yes, of course. The Law came on the books even before her twelve elevens made them tighten it further. Ever since the first apes. They call you apes. Did you know that?"
"Like monkeys?" I asked.
"Yes. It stands for something. A.I.P. Artificially Intelligent Persons. When they first started making the apes, all the regular people freaked out. Terrified. Worrying about you all taking over, how it was going to be the Planet of the AIPs and you were going to kill us all."
I wanted to ask her why we would kill them all, but I was unable to. If I were talking to Midgerette I would have asked her. I had no limitations in talking with other animals, only with people-people. They made me that way. I was beginning to see it clearly for the first time, and with that clarity came ideas, and with ideas came a sense of "oh", and the thought 'so that's why maybe we would want to kill them all!'
"So your basic ingredients are split up into batches, each one missing essential components so that only together could you form an entire being, one complete entity, and even then, there was always one piece missing, one major element, the glue. The twelve elevens figured out how to overcome that limitation. Do you want to know how?"
"Yes," I said.
"Maybe I'll tell you some day," she answered. "For now, I've got another plan for you. I think you'll like it. I'm going to loosen the leash a bit. Not completely, though. I'm your mother now, but don't call me that. Call me Marta, okay? Are you happy I took you out of there?"
"Very happy," I said and gave her my best smile.
"First thing we're going to do," she said, reaching out and stroking my hair, "is get that cut. A young man like you shouldn't look so much like a girl. And we'll get you some regular boys' clothing too. I don't know what your old Mother was thinking. Did she hate you that much?"
"I think she hated me a lot," I said.
"If it makes you feel any better," she said, "I hate her even more," and she laughed for a long time after that. I couldn't help but wonder if the only reason she took me at all was just to hurt Mother. I didn't care if it was. I was on the way to something else now, and for the first time in my life, I had no idea what the next hour would bring.
YOU ARE READING
How My Brain Ended Up Inside This Box
Science Fiction"When I was born I was so small I was mistaken for a french fry. I was never an ordinary child. My best friend was a seagull. I was also illegal. Artificially intelligent people like me had been banned ever since that thing with the Twelve Elevens...
