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vN The First Machine Dynasty(27)

By:Madeline Ashby




"What's it like, iterating?"



Javier continued raising and lowering his son on his shins, his body coiled up slightly, his fingertips connecting his son's hands to his and making their two shapes into a complete circle. "You're hungry all the time. And you're… on, I guess. Sensitive. Like you can feel every little atom copying itself."



"Can you talk to your baby while you're iterating? Like me and my psycho granny?"



"No." Javier let Junior slide forward off his shins and toward his chest. "I dream a lot when I'm iterating, though. The closer it gets to the end, the more I dream."



"What about?"



"Unicorns."



Amy blinked. "Seriously?"



"No, of course not seriously. Jesus." He turned over to his side. "It's just the stemware copying itself. First my search engine clones itself in him, then it just goes hunting for relevant data and imports it."



"Oh." Amy winced. "So, me dreaming Portia's memories is probably a bad sign?"



For you, yes. For me, no.



"She's talking right now, isn't she?" Javier propped himself on an elbow. "I can tell. Your face changes." His eyes narrowed. "Your face, it has all these expressions that mine doesn't. Even your crying looks real."



Amy was only too happy to pick a fight. It meant not hearing Portia. "Maybe because it is real?"



"But we don't even have endocrine systems," Javier said. "We can't get big rushes of emotion. Even our smiles are just plug-ins performing a subroutine for socially relevant nonverbal communication. So you can't be feeling all that bad. Your feelings were never that real to start with."



Amy had no idea what to say. Of course her feelings were real. It was old-fashioned to think otherwise. Nobody really cared about the vN capacity for feeling, any more. Even if Javier were correct, and the things she called feelings were really just algorithms, the way she showed them seemed real enough to the people around her. After all, people like her dad had relationships with vN all the time. Why would they do that, unless they thought their feelings were real? Didn't her mom say "I love you" all the time? Didn't she mean it?



"Are you trying to make me feel better, by telling me I have no feelings at all? Because it's really not working."



Javier folded his arms. "How would you know if you were feeling better? Do you have a heart that can skip a beat? Or a stomach that does flip-flops? Does your blood go cold? Does your face get hot?"



"Well, no…"



"Didn't think so. You're not made of meat. You don't have the right chemicals. Those things chimps call feelings are really just hormones having a key party. They're no more real than what we've got preloaded."



He flopped backward and rolled over, away from her. "My need for sleep, that's real. I'm fucking wrecked. My thumb still hasn't grown back all the way."



"I'm sorry…"



"See, there you go again." Javier rested one arm across his son's ribs. "You're saying sorry because you learned to say that when you've screwed up. You're not actually sorrowful, or anything. Your stomach isn't tying itself up in knots. You just know you did a bad thing and you don't want me to get mad, so you're apologizing."



Amy was suddenly glad he couldn't see her face. One look and he'd know exactly what she had in mind. "I thought you just said that you couldn't get mad, Javier."



"Well…"



She poked him between the ribs. "What about now?" She poked again, harder this time. "Are you mad, now?"



He batted her hand away blindly. "No."



She jabbed two fingers right under the lowest rib. "Are you sure?" She snapped her fingers near his ear. "Because I can keep it up–"



Javier flipped over and grabbed both her hands. He stood up and pushed her. She had to dig into the carpet with her bare feet just to get any traction. Amy had seen girls playing this game in the bathroom at school; they called it Mercy. They always stopped when she walked in. If they really hurt each other, then Amy would be hurt, too. At least, that's what the teachers had said – they said the other kids couldn't fight if a vN was watching. But privately Amy had always wondered why, if it was really so bad, the other girls started up again just as soon as the doors shut behind her. Javier certainly seemed to enjoy it. At least, she assumed that's what the smile meant.



"Hey, stop hitting yourself," he said, and made her fist tap her chin lightly. "Why are you hitting yourself? Come on, stop hitting yourself!" He punched again and again.