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THE FIRST MACHINE DYNASTY

“Ashby’s debut is a fantastic adventure story thatcarries a sly philosophical payload about power andprivilege, gender and race. It is often profound, andit is never boring.”

Cory Doctorow

“vN fuses cyberpunk with urban fantasy to producesomething wholly new. There’s a heavy kicker inevery chapter. Zombie robots, vampire robots, robotsas strange and gnarly as human beings. A page-turning treat.”

Rudy Rucker, author of the Ware Tetralogy

“Will AIs be objects, or people? Caught between thecategory of human and everything else, we can’tthink about the very real entities that inhabit – andwill inhabit – the excluded middle. Madeline Ashby’sdone more than just think about that territory; she’smade it her home. Person; object; we need newwords for things that are neither – and in vN, Ashbyprovides them.”

Karl Schroeder

“vN is a strikingly fresh work of mind-expandingscience fiction.”

Charlie Jane Anders, iO9

“Picks up where Blade Runner left off and mapsterritories Ridley Scott barely even glimpsed. vNmight just be the most piercing interrogation ofhumanoid AI since Asimov kicked it all off with theThree Laws.”

Peter Watts

an excerpt fromvN

by Madeline Ashby

To be published August 2012(everywhere – US/UK/RoW)

by Angry Robot, in paperback andeBook formats.

UK ISBN: 978-0-85766-261-3US ISBN: 978-85766-262-0

eBOOK ISBN: 978-0-85766-263-7

Angry RobotAn imprint of the Osprey Group

Distributed in the US & Canadaby Random House

angryrobotbooks.com@angryrobotbooks

Copyright © Madeline Ashby 2012

All rights reserved. However, feel free to share this

sample chapter with anyone you wish. Free

samples are great. We are so good to you. Of

course, the whole book is even better...

PROLOGUE

Give Granny a Hug

Jack had lived through this same moment before,with human women.

Before meeting his wife (he insisted on referringto her that way, despite their lack of legal standing)at a tech show in Las Vegas, he had spent most of hisdating life in what he called the Relationship Acad-emy of the Dramatic Arts. Through a combination ofpatience, politeness, punctuality, and other qualitiescuriously absent from most of his competitors, hemanaged to attract the most volatile women in hisavailable pool. They were the kind who called youin tears at 3am, two years after the breakup, whentheir latest “performative bio-political modification”art project got infected. He offered these women theopportunity to calm down and sort things out.Things their moms had said. Things their dads hadnever said.

Charlotte was different. Charlotte was vN. Shehad no hormones to influence her decision-making,no feast-or-famine cycle driving dopamine or sero-

tonin. She didn’t get cramps or headaches or night-mares or hangovers. She didn’t need retail therapyor any other kind. Her “childhood” was difficult –her mother abandoned her in a junkyard – but herspirit was as strong as the titanium sheathing hergraphene coral bones, her personal integrity asimpermeable as the silicone skin overlaying thepolymer-doped memristors embedded there, her witas quick as the carbon aerogel currents waftingthrough and shaping the musculature of her body.

Charlotte was a self-replicating humanoid. Char-lotte didn’t do drama. Until now.

That morning he’d found Charlotte in the sameplace he’d found her all week, curled up beside Amy,in the hammock their daughter used for defragging.Their faces echoed each other: heart-shaped, withnarrow little elfin chins and high cheekbones, deli-cate ears, couture eyebrows just as fair as the hair ontheir scalps. Depending on how much and howoften they fed her, Amy would eventually grow toher clade’s default size and shape. At that point, sheand Charlotte would be indistinguishable. Jack wor-ried about that, sometimes. What if one day, yearsfrom now, he kissed the wrong one as she walkedthrough the door?

For the past month, Jack had gone to bed alone.He only felt Charlotte slip in beside him in thedimmest hours of the morning. He always rolledover to hold her for the last few seconds before herbody went completely still, untroubled by snores ortwitches. That perfect stillness took some getting

used to. At first, it felt like holding a corpse. Now hesuspected he’d find human women too warm, tooloud, too mobile.

When he’d asked last week, Amy said her motherspent most of her time looking up potential clade-mates online and mapping their locations. She hadshared access to the map with Amy, but not Jack.The clusters glowed throughout the Americansouthwest. The Border Patrol sometimes found themhelping migrants across the desert. It was the failsafe,Amy said. They had to help, even when helping wasillegal. With a flick of her wrist, Amy and the projec-tor had put him down inside the canyons where thesightings took place, walking him down the blazingpaths his wife had traversed only hours earlier. Amyhad snagged the images from drones the BorderPatrol shared with the public, but confessed to hav-ing already played them in an epic weekend game ofCapture the Frag.

“You’re not supposed to play violent games,” he’dsaid. “They could trigger you.”

Amy ignored him and changed the subject.“Mom’s been away from her mom and her sisters solong, she doesn’t know how big the clade is. Theydon’t even know she’s replicated.”

“Iterated,” Jack corrected her.Amy shrugged her mother’s shrug. Then she

asked: “Dad, what’s an r-selector?”

Like most mixed families, Jack and Charlotte andAmy kept their kitchen carefully organized.

Although the labelling had improved in recent years,it was still easy to mistake vN food for human food,especially since all the brands now seemed to man-ufacture the equivalent of their most popularproducts for vN. The majority of the pantry wasdominated by whatever vN food they’d managed tofind on special at the handful of retailers licensed tosell it. Jack had gone on a spree when he realizedCharlotte was iterating. Now he realized that theyreally didn’t need that closet full of vN products, notwhile they were keeping Amy little. Were it not veryillegal, and were it not for the trackers embedded ineach box, he might have considered reselling themerchandise.

Five years ago, Jack had been tempted to speedAmy’s progress and get to the fun parts: themeparks, concerts, bikes. He bought all the food to startthat process. But now he knew what life with vNwas really like, and he knew his daughter. Sheneeded the time to grow at an organic pace. Sheneeded to understand how she was different andwhy and what it meant, from her lack of physicalpain to her abundance of opinion. She needed tripsto museums and street markets; she needed to askabout glistening roasted ducks hanging in windowsand why there weren’t any for vN; she needed tobuild her endless succession of dream homes andsecret lairs and impregnable fortresses, each moreelaborate and clever than the last, in her multiplegaming environments. This time – this sweet time,pulsing with rhythms he was finally learning after

years of moving too fast – was the gift most vN neverreceived. He was determined that Amy have better– even if it meant adhering to a strict child-sized ver-sion of the Ro-bento Rory diet, even if it meanttelling his little girl to go without meals.

“She stayed up last night.”Jack turned. Charlotte knotted the belt of her pale

blue bathrobe and pulled out a barstool from thekitchen island. He watched her take note of the boxof vN pancake mix he’d pulled down from its shelf,and the spray can of special oil he needed to cookthem with. Her eyes didn’t lift from the products.“So you don’t have go to all this trouble,” she con-tinued, “because she won’t wake up for a while.”

Jack persisted with his preparations anyway. Heopened the box of pancake mix, nose wrinkling atthe dried-blood smell of the rusty orange powderthat puffed up when he ripped open the liner bag.“How late was she up?” he asked.

“Midnight.”Jack nodded. “Did she finish the ship?”“Oh, she’s never really finished with anything.

You know that.”Charlotte continued staring at the box of pancake

mix. Her gaze didn’t move when Jack began meas-uring the powder into a bowl. She blinked at theproper intervals to simulate a human need for mois-ture, but her expression – default neutral – remainedunchanged. Sighing, Jack retrieved a black tub ofionic gel from the refrigerator door, and set it besidethe mixing bowl. He wouldn’t open and emulsify

the spoonful required by the recipe until Amy wokeup, but he felt better just having it ready on thecounter. He liked the integration of old and new inthis kitchen – his humanoid daughter’s advancednano-particle meal formula sitting at home besidethe chipped earthenware bowl and the scarred bam-boo butcher block. He liked the life those thingsindicated. He wanted to keep that life.

“You’ve slept with her every night this week,Charlie.”

He watched his wife’s internal protocols negotiatefor which expression to summon. Her face vacillatedbetween embarrassed and indignant before settlingagain on neutral. “Amy can’t play with human chil-dren. She needs a vN friend.”

“I agree, but I need my wife, too.”Now Charlotte’s eyes rose. “Is this some kind of

test? Do you think that my feelings for you aren’tgenuine?”

Shit, Jack thought. Now he’d done it. He’d com-mitted the one sin that no human partner of a vNhumanoid should ever contemplate: he had doubtedthe reality of Charlotte’s emotions. How many timeshad he unwittingly made that same mistake? Shameprickled across his skin. No wonder Charlotte wasacting strangely.

“Charlie, that’s not it–”“You think I really am just a robot–”A chirp from Amy’s wrist-mounted design assis-

tant interrupted her. Their daughter stood in thedoorway, wrist held up in its habitual composition

pose, perhaps articulating the bend of a banister oran arcade. Her hand dropped abruptly and sheturned back down the hall. Her footed pyjamasmade scuffing noises as she marched away. Jackdropped his measuring cup immediately and wentafter her. He caught her door on its track before itcould click shut.

Amy’s room was made to look like the interior ofa treehouse. The knotty pine had cost them, but itwas worth it, and the sheer number of nails meantthat she never really lost anything because she couldalways hang it in plain view. She stood at her peg-board now, carefully reorganizing her shirts bycolour. Her projector remained locked in displaymode. The light from the projector hid her from hima little, and when he moved she moved, too, obscur-ing herself in the brilliance of last night’s creation:an eighteenth-century pirate cruiser called The SunQueen. He watched its walls peel away to expose thedecks hidden within, and all the mates inside swab-bing floors and tying down barrels and playing dice.

“How much did you hear?” Jack asked.Amy shrugged.“I was making pancakes.” Jack tried to smile, just

in case she turned around to see it. “I should knowby now not to start a conversation with your mombefore having any coffee. It’s an organic thing, youknow?”

Amy nodded. She must have heard this excuseany number of times, from any number of humans.He certainly offered it enough.

“This is a really cool ship, you know. You did agreat job.”

For a synthetic child, appeals to Amy’s ego stillworked fairly well. This time she did turn around.She twisted her wrist, and the display vanished.“Mom thought she saw one of her sisters last week-end,” she said. “That’s why she’s being weird.”

Jack nodded. He looked around for a cushionlarge enough to hold an adult, and sank into it. Amyjoined him in his lap.

“Mom says our shell used to be popular.”“That’s true,” Jack said. “That’s why she gets con-

fused, sometimes. There are so many vN with yourface running around, it’s easy to make a mistakeabout seeing a clademate.”

Amy nodded into his chest. “That’s what she said,too.” She fiddled with her assistant, sliding two fin-gers under the haptic bangle and wiggling them.“She said I’m not supposed to talk to them.”

“You’re not supposed to talk to any strangers, nomatter who they look like.”

Jack kept his voice light. No need to teach Amyhis phobias. He knew other parents feared the samethings: strangers, vans, promises of puppies. In theirdarkest moments they imagined their children kick-ing and screaming, wrestling against duct tape orblankets. What terrified Jack was the willingnesswith which Amy would allow herself to be taken bywhatever human pervert came along. Her failsafeguaranteed that.

The angel investor supporting the development of

von Neumann humanoids was not a military con-tractor, or a tech firm, or even a design giant. It wasa church. A global megachurch named New EdenMinistries, Inc, that believed firmly that the Rapturewas coming any minute now. It collected donations,bought real estate, and put the proceeds into pro-grammable matter, natural language processing, andaffect detection – all for the benefit of the few pitifulhumans regrettably left behind to deal with God’swrath. They would need companions, after all. Help-meets. And those helpmeets couldn’t ever hurthumans. That was the Horsemen’s job.

It all went to hell, of course. The pastor of NewEden Ministries, Jonah LeMarque, and many of hiscouncil members became the defendants in a classaction suit brought by youth group members regard-ing the use of their bodies as models in apornographic game. The church sold the licenses tovN-related patents and API rights to finance the set-tlement. They had risen in value over the years thatPastor LeMarque spent in the appeals process, butLeMarque insisted on keeping the failsafe propri-etary. He claimed that this way, the vN could neverbe used to hurt human beings. The judge who sen-tenced him was the first to remark on the irony ofthis particular opinion.

“How come Mom has sisters, but I don’t?”Jack blinked himself out of his thoughts. He kissed

the top of Amy’s head. “Because your mom and Igot it right our first try, sweet pea. We don’t needanybody else but you.” He pulled back a little to peer

at her. “Would you like to have a sister?”Amy twisted her assistant around her wrist. “I

don’t know.” She furrowed her pale brows at him.“She’d be just like me?”

“She’d look just like you. That doesn’t mean she’dbe just like you.”

Amy nodded. “Would you keep her little, orwould you feed her a lot so she caught up to me?”

Jack considered how to reframe his daughter’squestion. “Well, I guess she would grow at a humanpace, just like you.” He smiled. “Would you like a lit-tle baby to help take care of?”

Amy looked genuinely perplexed. Then her faceresolved into mock accusation. “Aren’t you late forwork, Dad?”

He laughed. “I’m taking the day off work.”Amy perked up immediately. She twisted in his

lap to face him fully. “Oh yeah? Can I take the dayoff school?”

He lifted her in his arms and stood. “What? Youcan’t take today off school; you’ll miss your party!”

Amy rolled her eyes. “The party’s going to be stu-pid. I bet they forget that I can’t eat the cookies, likelast time.”

“Then you’ll need your breakfast, won’t you?”Jack turned. Charlotte stood in the door, armed

with a wooden spoon still glittering with ionic gel.“Pancakes are ready,” she said.

Amy slid out of his arms, briefly threw her armsaround her mother, and bounded off to the kitchen.Jack heard the clatter of cutlery a moment later. His

eyes locked with Charlotte’s and he opened hisarms. Pursing her lips, she stepped inside them.Seven years later, her body still felt the same. Engi-neers and artists and experts of all sorts had workedto sculpt this form for human use, but Charlotte stillfelt uniquely fitted to him when she let him hold herlike this.

“Are we OK?” he asked now.She nodded. “Sure.” She pulled away to look at

him. “You’re taking the day off work?”“I decided my girls needed me more, today.”Charlotte smiled. “Thank you.” Her head tilted.

“Do you believe that I love you, Jack?”Jack’s eyes shut. He tugged her back to him, so he

felt the brush of her eyelashes on his neck. Mar-riages like his operated on a different kind of faith.It wasn’t the synthetics themselves that organics likehim had to trust, but the emergent properties latentwithin them, the sum total of decades of researchand design and prototyping. You had to know, deepdown, that the expression of feeling was as valid asthe chemicals that made all human feeling possible,that the story you read on your wife’s mass produc-tion face was just as mysterious and meaningful asthe ones gleaned from more wrinkled texts. Fiveyears ago he had sworn by those words or some-thing like them, not legally, but he had wept and sohad she and that was all he needed to know.

“Yes. I believe.”

His wife rarely spoke of her childhood, but Jack

knew it involved a lot of hiding during the day andraiding junkyards at night. Her mother Portia haditerated her in a junkyard. It was one of the onlyplaces with enough raw materials available to triggerthe self-repair mode into total self-replication. Char-lotte was a glitch; because her clade did not stemfrom a networked model, neither she nor hermother had access to the clouds that might have reg-ulated their iterative cycles. Now fully grown and faraway from her mother, Charlotte craved both openspace and solitude. Too many people made her nerv-ous, but too tight an enclosure did the same. So ontheir dates, he often took her to Lake Temescal.

The first time he brought her here, she asked:“You’re taking an artificial woman to an artificiallake?”

“It wasn’t always artificial,” he had said. “We piti-ful humans just improved it a little, with ourprimitive damming technologies.”

On that day, just like this one, Charlotte luxuri-ated in the sun. (Sunscreen had fast become thedefault accessory to their relationship.) She lovedthe night sky just as much, even during the peakpower seasons when it glowed orange with light pol-lution. She loved hiding in fog and reaching out forthe rain from the roof of their building. Charlottecouldn’t fathom Amy’s constant desire to stay inside– working on environments that would never exist– when there was so much outside, waiting to beexplored. They fought about it, sometimes, in a com-pletely logical and amicable vN way that nonetheless

resulted in stalemates.Despite the impulsive nature of his decision, Jack

had chosen exactly the right day to take off. Clearsky, no bugs save the botflies keeping an eye on thetourists, the clammy fog of winter a distant memory.Others had gotten the same idea: milling aroundunder the shade trees behind Jack and Charlotte wasa group of high school seniors attempting to grill abrunch of maple sausage and English muffins on abarbecue with a mostly empty solar cell. It involveda lot of snide laughter and cursing.

The beach was also populated by other vN, bothvagrants and min-wage workers standing patientlyinside snack stalls. He could pick out the vagrants bythe lumps under their skin; unlike the vN withenough money to buy the pre-fabbed food, theyoften resorted to consuming e-waste to survive. Hewatched one – with a rather bland square-jawed,broad-shouldered shell – seated at a picnic table,picking errant pieces of plastic from his skin and sav-ing them carefully in a colourful pile between hislegs. Jack watched him scoop the pieces into hispalm and transfer them to a zippered pouch insidehis shirt. He would probably feed them to depositorylater and earn some cash.

“It’s good they have those machines, now.” Jackglanced over to find that Charlotte was looking atthe vagrant vN as well. She closed her eyes for amoment, then turned away to hug her knees. “Weused to have to actually ask for the money, some-times.”

“We?”Charlotte shrugged. “Just vN in general.”Jack nodded. “If it’s still this nice tonight, I was

thinking we’d take Amy to Lake Merritt after thegraduation.”

Charlotte winced. “With all the quake tourists?”“It’s either that or the zoo.”“I can’t stand the–”“Fuck!”Jack twisted to look at the group of teens. A boy

wearing a Raiders jersey staggered away from a pic-nic table beside the grill, clutching his hand. Acheap-looking knife and a half-skinned pineapplestood abandoned on the table, and when the kidturned Jack saw blood. He checked: Charlotte kepther eyes pinned to the grains of sand welling upbetween her toes, where she wouldn’t see the injuryor the pain it had inflicted; the vagrant vN hunchedat his own picnic table, head hidden in his arms; thevN at the snack counter had shut their eyes.

“I’ll see how bad it is,” Jack said, and pushed him-self up off the beach.

“I could help,” Charlotte said. “My clade has ahealthcare plug-in.”

“Yeah, a deactivated healthcare plug-in,” Jack said.“No wife of mine is shorting out because some kidcan’t use a knife.”

He jogged over to the kids at the grill. They had itmostly covered; the kid with the cut hand hadimmersed it in a cooler full of ice while his friendsrifled their bags for skin glue. Botflies hovered over

the kid; one settled on his shoulder and blinkedgreenly at him before alighting on the cooler itself.The kid held up his hand, pink now with dilutedblood, and the fly blinked again.

“You OK?” Jack asked.The kid turned. “I think so.” He held out his hand.

“Does it look bad?”Jack looked. The kid had sliced into his fingers

pretty deep; probably deep enough to chatter a doc-tor about it, but the glue would do the job in themeantime. “You’re fine,” he said. “Next time, slicethe bottom off the pineapple before you trim thesides. That way you’ll have a stable base.”

The kid nodded. He returned his hand to thecooler. He looked over at Charlotte’s hourglassshape, still sitting patiently on the beach. “Does shebelong to you?”

Jack had corrected others on the matter of hisrelationship so many times that he could now sum-marize it in a single line: “She belongs with me, notto me.”

“Sorry.” The kid tried smiling. “I just wish theycould, you know, help with this kind of thing.”

“They help us with all kinds of things.”The kid gestured at his face with his good hand.

Jack couldn’t tell if the pink of his skin was sunshineor embarrassment. The kid said, “What’s it like whenyou cut yourself shaving? Does she freak out?”

“I don’t cut myself shaving, any more,” Jack lied.“I’m not a fucking amateur.”

They were washing off the beach in the showertogether when a call came from Amy’s school. It washer principal. Amy was in trouble, and her principalwanted a meeting.

“I’m sorry, but what did she do?” Jack watchedthe water meter under the showerhead slowlydialled into the red zone as their allotment swirleddown the drain.

“She was in a spitting contest,” Mrs Lindsay said,as though that explained everything. “She left a holein the flooring, and I expect you to pay for the dam-age.”

“Mrs Lindsay, if this is your idea of an end-of-termjoke, it’s not funny. My daughter is a humanoid, nota xenomorph.”

“Pardon me? A what, now?”“Whatever. We’ll be there soon.”Jack and Charlotte had researched schools all over

the city before finally selecting one where Amymight safely make human friends. They chose theone with the smallest classes and the youngestteachers and the best after-school programs. Theyconducted interviews and obtained references. Theywanted her to grow up alongside organic children,to think of herself as a person first and a syntheticsecond. They showed Amy stories about vN actors,vN chefs, vN teachers and dancers and designers;they avoided news about expanding anti-vagrancylaws and the millions of angry, jobless humansreplaced by synthetics. They hoped the world mightbe a different place for vN by the time she grew up.

Things would harmonize, Jack thought, as theyentered the schoolyard and made their way to theprincipal’s office. His daughter would find her place,and she would be happy, and so would her owndaughters. They just needed time.

Jack heard himself explaining all of this to MrsLindsay after the door to the principal’s office clickedresolutely shut behind him and Charlotte.

“I understand that, Mr Peterson,” Mrs Lindsaysaid. She was a small Indian woman who wore herblack hair in a tight chignon and offset her ratherplain suit with ornate enamel earrings in the shapeof hummingbirds. “But the reality is that the lifestyleyou have chosen for your daughter is having harm-ful side effects, and not just for school property.”

Jack turned to Charlotte. “How many pancakesdid she eat this morning?”

Charlotte shrugged. He was seeing a lot of thatshrug today, and he didn’t like it. “However manyher diet said.”

“This is the diet that retards her growth, yes?”“It doesn’t retard her growth, it gives her time–”“Mr Peterson, your daughter is going hungry.”Mrs Lindsay laid her hands flat on her desk.

Between her fingers, Jack saw a hot map of theschool. It randomly leapt between classrooms, offer-ing attendance stats and tiny windows ofsurveillance footage.

Mrs Lindsay’s gaze slid over to Charlotte, who metit blankly, then back to Jack.

“I’m not certain why I need to explain this to you,

but when vN children go hungry, their digestive flu-ids build up and permeate their saliva. That makes itcorrosive, and very dangerous in an environmentlike this one.”

Jack sat up a little taller in the too-soft chair acrossfrom the desk. “I’m well aware of my wife anddaughter’s physiology, Mrs Lindsay. What I don’t getis what gives you the right to tell me how to live inmy own home. Amy is a smart, happy kid–”

“No, she isn’t, Mr Peterson.”He uncrossed his legs. “Excuse me?”“Please don’t feel badly about this. Children often

hide these kinds of things from their parents. ButAmy has no friends in her class. The friends she doeshave are teachers. She talks with them during therecess and gym periods.”

“Only because you won’t allow her to partici-pate!”

“Accidents happen in those settings all the time,Mr Peterson. We can’t risk her failsafe going off if ahuman child falls off the monkey bars and cracks hishead open.” Mrs Lindsay squeezed her eyes shut andtook a moment before continuing. “We cannot fulfilyour daughter’s special needs and allow the otherchildren to play normally.”

“Then don’t. Keep a closer eye on the organics,and let Amy play. It’s not her fault if one of the mon-itors can’t stop a fight fast enough.”

“That’s true. It’s not her fault. But it is definitelyher problem.” Again, Mrs Lindsay glanced at Char-lotte. When Charlotte said nothing, Mrs Lindsay

raised her hands in a conciliatory manner. “I’mgoing to recommend that we allow Amy to skip afew grades. Frankly, I was never fully convinced thatshe should start school in kindergarten. She is not akindergartener, and has not been one for years.”

Jack looked at Charlotte, expecting backup with-out knowing why. His wife had voiced the exactsame concerns, back when they made this choice.Now he wondered how much of their choice it hadbeen. Maybe Charlotte was just going along with it,waiting for him to see her brand of reason. He sud-denly felt very alone in the room.

“So, what if we don’t skip her ahead, or grow herbigger, you won’t let her come back next year?”

“Please don’t treat this conversation as a hostagenegotiation, Mr Peterson. This is an inclusive school,and we simply want it to be a safe place for all ourstudents, organic and synthetic.” She steepled herdelicate fingers. “But it’s because this school operatesfrom that ethic that I would be forced to report youto certain authorities if I found you unusually defen-sive about keeping your daughter prepubescent inappearance.”

Fear opened up a void inside him. He knew whyother men kept their synthetic little girls so little. Hewasn’t one of them. But Mrs Lindsay had the powerto make the pedo squad think he was, and that kindof thing didn’t just leave your record, even if it wasonly a simple search for the wrong kind of pornog-raphy. It could lose him his next job, and the oneafter that. He thought of the vagrant vN, their skin

bulbous with trash, like serfs of the Dark Agesafflicted with plague.

Beside him, Charlotte stood. “I think we’ll be tak-ing Amy home now,” she said. Somehow, Jack stoodwith her. He wandered toward the door. Behindhim, he heard Charlotte ask: “How old were youwhen you reached your full size?”

“A year,” Mrs Lindsay said.

Back at home, they ordered delivery from the near-est Electric Sheep location. Amy wanted to go in andsit down to eat like a grown-up, but the Sheep wasa meat market. At least, their local was. Maybe theother franchise locations were different. But the lastthing Jack wanted in this moment was for hisdaughter to watch organic men watching syntheticwomen. So he put his foot down, and Amy ordereda Folded Hands sandwich with Flexo Fries and anorange LCL punch, and hid in her room playinggames until she was done. The meal itself was toobig, far beyond her dietary limit, but she said noth-ing, perhaps having already guessed the things MrsLindsay had told them. Jack wondered, as hemunched on his own potato version of the FlexoFries, whether the principal had counseled her at allbefore meeting with him and Charlotte. Did theyalready have some sort of scheme going? Had sheasked Amy to report anything unusual?

Jack finished his fries, put his GO Box in the sink,and stretched out in his chair. He watched Charlottewatching the scroll-style display above the trick fire-

place. He’d bought the place solely for that fireplace;it was one of the last units in the city to be built withone. In every dream house Amy designed there wasnow a fireplace, sometimes with a display over it,but most often with a real brushwork scroll or tap-estry or painting. With Amy safe in her room,Charlotte had lifted the usual limits from the feeds.Occasionally, the eye-shaped clockwork gear thatindicated failsafe-triggering programming would popup and the secondary limits kick in, delaying the sig-nal and shuffling until something suitable wasfound. She flicked through the remaining contentwith one irritable, jerking finger.

“What’s wrong?” Jack asked.“Nothing.”“It’s not nothing. Something’s bothering you.

What is it?” He hunched forward and tried to catchher eye. “Is it because you were right, all this time?That we should have grown Amy more quickly?”

Charlotte opened her mouth, then closed it. “No.That’s not it.”

“Then does it have to do with your clade? I knowyou’ve been tracking them. Do you miss yourmother?”

Charlotte leveled him with a glare the likes ofwhich he had never seen in a synthetic woman. Itseemed to penetrate his every cell, as though shewere watching him decay one picosecond at a time.She was silent for a full minute before whispering:“No.”

Jack swallowed. His wife’s eyes had never seemed

so pale before. They were like jagged pieces of seaglass bleached by the abuse of sun and ocean.Despite the ageless skin surrounding them, theylooked terribly old. “We’ve never talked about her,Charlie. Maybe we should.”

His wife shook her head and returned to the feeds.“Nothing about Portia can be solved with conversa-tion.”

“Don’t shut down on me now, I want–”“Did you intend that pun, Jack? Or was it just a

slip?”Recognizing a no-win scenario when he saw one,

Jack stood up and left.

In her room, Jack found Amy captaining a pirateship and losing. A zombie virus had overtaken hercrew, and she, the sole survivor, fired her limitedweaponry from the crow’s-nest. Her little bodyswayed with the rocking of the simulated cruiserprojected at her feet. She had run out of bullets forher blunderbuss, and now mimed loading the thingwith gold doubloons straight from her pocket.

“The gold melts too fast,” she said, “but it leaves anice big hole.”

Jack poked a finger through one of the miscreants’sucking chest wounds. The creature cast him anaffronted glare. “I thought zombies were weakenedby salt.”

“They are, but I lost my loyalty round, so my firstmate rebelled and bought women instead of sup-plies.”

“You should have hired a better first mate. Nowyou’ll have to find another one.”

Amy shook her head. “It’s the ship I mind losing.I worked really hard on this one.”

Jack watched the zombies shambling over hisshins. He thought about what Amy’s principal hadsaid. “You don’t mind losing a friend?”

“He isn’t a friend, he’s the game.”“How can you tell?” Jack let a peg-legged zombie

crawl over his hand. An undead parrot alit on hiswedding ring and started pecking at it. Bright greenfeathers the size of rice grains molted away as itshead bobbed. They dissipated into smoke in the timeit took to blink his eyes. “I’m sure his programmingis just as complex as yours.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “Dad, please. I know the dif-ference between adapted and automatic.”

Jack nodded slowly. “Oh.”Amy made a pincer gesture to freeze the game.

“Are you trying to give me a talk about being introuble? Or about being vN?”

He closed his eyes briefly. “No, I’m not. You’re aperson just like anybody else, Amy. You know that.”

“And people get in trouble, sometimes.”“Yes. People get into trouble, sometimes.”Amy thawed the game. He watched her fight the

zombies as nobly as she could, until they werecrawling all over each other to climb the mast andattain her perch. She waited until she could see thepixels of their eyes, and then used an ancient rubyamulet won on her last quest. Jack recognized it

from his many trips through her treasure chest. Shehad played for weeks to find it. The gleaming cabo-chon inside granted her power over flame. With itsprojection clutched delicately in her tiny fist, sheheld it to the in-game sun and watched the lightrefract red and hot on her enemies. Fire blazedwithin the stone’s bloody depths. It ran down thered rays and caught and spread among the moaninghordes.

They gibbered and screamed and jumped ship. Butthe damage was already done, and the loss total: thefire had spread to Amy, too, and had run down hersleeve onto the mainsail and mast. The ship wasburning. She was going down with it.

“Oh, Charlotte! Hello!”It was Liz, one of the other mothers. Her son Nate

had attended the same daycare as Amy. The boy hadnursed a crush on Amy all year and given her a spe-cial synthetic chocolate heart last Valentine’s. Nowhe sat beside Amy in the front row, with the goldstar students waiting onstage for kindergarten grad-uation to start, staring at her openly. Amy pretendednot to notice.

“It must be so nice to have a boy,” Charlotte wassaying. She had brightened since they got in the car.Jack suspected Amy’s unexpected willingness towear the pretty new graduation dress Charlottepicked out had something to do with it.

Liz laughed. “You didn’t have to potty-train him!”Gary, Liz’s husband, looked Jack up and down.

“You think this is it for you, Jack? No more?”Jack defaulted to his usual answer: “If Charlotte

wants another, we’ll have one.”“Hey, that’s pretty handy. No worries about acci-

dents, right?”“Gary,” Liz said in her scandalized voice. She used

it on her husband a lot. “Amy is just like other kids.”Liz was one of those really informed human

women with a habit of sometimes sounding like apublic service announcement. “Oh, there are Nate’sgrandparents.” She gestured toward the door. “Areyour parents coming, Jack?”

“My parents won’t be coming,” Jack said. “I’vepretty much always been a disappointment, if youknow what I mean.”

“What, with a pretty lady like this on your arm?”Gary asked. “Come on, what father doesn’t dream ofa girl like Charlotte for his son?”

Jack made a mental note never to let Amy play atNate’s house under Gary’s sole supervision.

“Oh, just ignore him,” Liz said. “We have to gomeet my mother, anyway. See you after!”

Together, Jack and Charlotte watched them leave.They sat on folding chairs and sighed in unison,though for Charlotte it was a simple motion of hershoulders. Jack leaned back and looked up at thevaulted ceiling. It was a good school. He kept tellinghimself that. It was a good school. Better than mostkids got. Better than the insane military shit he’dbeen subjected to after breaking curfew for theumpteenth time, that was for sure.

“Hey.” Charlotte slipped her cool hand into his.“It’s my turn to ask you. What’s wrong?”

He squeezed her hand. “Just thinking about mydad,” he said. “How stupid he is to be missing stufflike this.”

Charlotte smiled. “The important thing is that wefound each other.”

“Damn straight.” He stretched one arm over hershoulders and pulled her closer. “Have I ever toldyou how smart you are?”

She shrugged. “All that graphene has to be goodfor something.”

He kissed the top of his wife’s head. He watchedhis daughter on the stage: her swinging feet, hereager wave. Her bright smile hit him in the gut, asstraight and sure as if she had reached over theheads of chattering parents and bored siblings todeliver a finishing blow.

Amy’s teacher, a willowy woman who wore herwaist-length hair over a long denim dress, ascendedthe stage soon after that. She held the microphonewith both hands in a white-knuckle grip. Sheswayed in place as though guided by some internalmusic. “Welcome to kindergarten graduation,” shesaid in a thin, high voice. “This has been a very spe-cial year for all of us. We’ve learned a lot, andalthough we’re sad to leave our class behind, we’reexcited for next year! On with the show!”

With that, the kindergartners shuffled out of theirseats and sang a song complete with hand motions(guided from offstage by their swaying teacher),

then herded back to their little chairs (with thename tags affixed to the backs), and fidgetedthrough a “commencement address” offered by theprincipal. She was wearing the goofy robes of heralma mater. Then it was time for the diplomas to behanded out.

“Amy Peterson,” the teacher said, and Amy stood.She crossed the stage halfway, before pausing andsquinting at someone standing among the other par-ents below the stage.

“Mom?”A woman rose slowly to the stage. She wove

unsteadily on her feet. Her clothes didn’t quite fit;she’d buttoned her shirt wrong. She wore no shoes.Her skin bristled with unshed plastic. Otherwise, shewas Charlotte’s exact replica.

“Come on, Amy.” The vN’s voice had the rough,hollow sound of real hunger. She held her arms out.“Give your granny a hug.”

“Please God, no.” It was the first time in Jack’smemory that he had heard his wife invoke any deitywhatsoever.

Onstage, Amy came no closer but did not backaway. She spoke clearly and sharply. “I don’t wantto hug you. Leave me alone.”

Charlotte’s double lunged, but Nate’s sly five year-old foot tripped her up. He looked directly at Amy.“Run!”

But Amy didn’t run. She stared as the other vN’sarm shot out across the floor and grabbed the boy’stiny ankle. Nate screamed as she yanked him off the

chair, off the stage, and threw him like a discus intothe crowd. His soft little body hit the linoleum andconcrete face-first before skidding down the aisle.Blood smeared from his open mouth and smashednose. In the gleaming trail, Jack saw a baby tooth.Then it disappeared, swallowed by the tread of aman’s boot. Charlotte’s hand left Jack’s grip as theshrieking started. Her feet pounded down the aisle.She leapt high and crashed down on the stage pianoin an explosion of wood and music.

Charlotte said, “Amy. Run. Now.”“Mom–”“Do it!”Amy hurried down the stairs. Now Jack ran too,

trying to get to her, but he stumbled and fell to thefloor. Now he lay eye to eye with Nate, level withthe blood oozing from his open mouth with its twofront teeth still missing. The boy was dead. Terribly,awfully, horrifically dead, his eyes still open and hishands still sticky with ketchup, a redder red than thedeep dark fluid pooled around his ruined face. Jackroared. It was a sound he didn’t know he could pro-duce, something mighty and raw that tore its way upout of his gut and must have signaled his child,because Amy crawled out from the forest of foldingchairs to meet him.

“Dad…”Jack stood up in a flash, pulling her with him and

shielding her eyes from the corpse at their feet incase her failsafe – Why is that boy dead, how can thatboy be dead, why isn’t Charlotte’s mother dead – trig-

gered and caused sudden memory corruption.Now backing toward the nearest exit with Amy in

his arms, Jack watched his wife battling her motheronstage: a blur of twisting limbs and hasty swipes,their arms and legs sweeping the air. Where did shelearn to fight like that?

“You can’t have her.” Charlotte grabbed a micstand. She hefted it across her shoulders. “She’smine.”

Charlotte’s mother laughed low in her throat.“She can be replaced.”

Charlotte spun, swinging the stand foot-side out.It landed inside her mother’s ribs. The other womanlooked at it a moment before snapping it off andgripping the rest of the stand.

“You knew this was coming.” More laughter hic-cuped out of her torn body. “You can never outrunme, I’m your mother.”

Charlotte screamed high and desperate. Shecharged. Her mother grabbed her by the collar anddrove her head into the opposite wall. In his arms,Amy had gone perfectly still.

“Dad, Mom needs help.”He bent her head to his chest, kissed her scalp and

stroked her hair. He was at the door now. He couldfeel its push-bar in the small of his back, already giv-ing way as he prepared to make the final step.Shame shrank his voice into a rasping thing. “I can’t,baby. I’m not strong enough.”

“Oh.” Amy hugged his neck. “That’s OK.” Thenshe slipped down his body and ran away.

“Amy, no!”But Amy, whose body was ten times as strong as

that of its organic inspiration, was already at thestage. Her little feet danced up the steps. Her voicecame out bigger than her little body would have sug-gested possible: “Granny!”

Charlotte wailed. Amy evaded her frantic graspand dashed toward the wretched, broken thingbefore her. She scrambled up it like a monkey on atree. Charlotte’s mother grinned triumphantly,clasping her arms around Amy’s tiny body, pinningher flailing arms. And as though their reunion werea happy one, Amy darted down for a kiss.

For a moment, it was almost beautiful. Jackthought of his wife and daughter’s kisses, thought ofCharlotte’s lips, warm and tingling with digestivefluid. You developed a taste for it, after a while. Thatsweet, distinctive burn remained in the mouth andon the skin for hours. He went to sleep with it everynight and rolled over every morning just to get itback. But as Mrs Lindsay had pointed out, that verypleasure came from the acid bubbling behind theirsmiles, the kind that only came up if they wereobsessive about their diets, if they were trying not toiterate or trying not to grow.

Muffled behind her melting lips came the soundof Portia screaming.

Jack had never enjoyed depriving his daughter offood. He firmly believed that for Amy to grow upright she had to grow up slow, and that meant grow-ing up starved. She felt no pain. Her belly didn’t

distend. Her nails didn’t weaken or her locks beginto fray. But watching her break the fast of her hun-gry years he sensed how long they must have felt forher. Her mouth opened wide, wider, until itunhinged like a snake’s and sucked down the rem-nants of her grandmother’s neck. She snapped aclavicle in her teeth. Black bone dust poured downher throat. Aerogel wreathed her face in a darklyglittering halo. It adhered to her skin in sparklingblack streaks. She licked it off the heels of her handsand spat plastic like a hunter freeing buckshot fromfresh-cooked game.

Amy’s grandmother sank to her knees. Amy dugher fingers into the older woman’s skin and pulled.Flesh flensed away from the ribs; aerogel piped outin a smokestack. It coated Amy’s hair and hands andface. The ribcage shuddered and trembled in her gripbefore finally giving way with a groan. It was nothunger Jack witnessed, now. It was vengeance.

He tried to step forward, to intervene, to be thedad, but there was a tide of frightened peoplestreaming around him and he was, after all, onlyflesh. He watched as Amy’s body lengthened – herlimbs stretching and popping, her shoulders expand-ing, her waist narrowing, as her grandmother’s bodydwindled, faded, became a pile of glittering silicon orlithium or whatever was left. Amy stood, her prettywhite graduation dress mere shreds over a woman’sbody, and wiped her mouth with the back of herhand.

“All gone, Mom.”

Charlotte covered her face with her hands andslowly crumpled to the floor.

On the floor, Liz keened. She rocked whatremained of her son’s body on her lap. Amy hoppedoffstage and padded down the aisle to the motherand child. Liz scuttled away, whimpering. Ignoringher, Amy knelt beside her dead classmate. She staredat the blood, the broken limbs, the clear evidence ofhuman suffering that should have tripped alarms allthrough her cognitive systems. Other von Neumanntypes would be twitching piles of carbon by now. Inher calm face, Jack saw the collapse of his daughter’sfuture and the beginning of what he had alwaysdreaded. The failsafe had failed. The world hadchanged, and his little girl was no longer safe in it.

1

The Ugly Parts

Amy woke on the floor of a cage that hummed. Shetried moving her legs and kicked the fencing nearesther feet, igniting a spark that jolted up from her toesto her teeth and left her so rigid even her eyescouldn’t move. She hated being more conductivethan organic people.

“Careful,” someone said from outside the cage.“It’s rigged.”

The man wore a blue uniform and held a scroll-style reader between the thumb and first finger ofeach hand. Its anonymous blue glow made hisexpression hard to read. He looked organic; shecould see his pores and the patchiness of his hair.Other clades had advanced plugins for differentiatinghumans. They used thermoptics or gait recognitionor pheromone detection. Amy just looked for theugly parts.

“Where am I?”He didn’t even bother putting down the scroll.

“You’re being detained.”Amy tried moving again. She had to do so care-

fully; her limbs were grown-up limbs now, and theywere much longer and clumsier than the ones sheremembered. Finally she sat with her knees to herchest and looked around. She sat in a kennel like atan animal shelter, a rectangle of white linoleum bor-dered by black chain-link. Across the room wasanother set of kennels stacked two rows high. In thecentre aisle sat an empty cage, shaped more like acube. Its floor was black.

In games, Amy had escaped far more challengingenvironments than this. In fact, she could have eas-ily designed a more intimidating space, given thetime and the tools. She checked for laser turrets oracid sprinklers, but found none. Maybe the wholeroom had a mutable magnetic field. It would cer-tainly explain how they’d kept her asleep, and whythey bothered with an organic guard. Without a hel-met, he’d be vulnerable to the field and start seeingthings. Did that mean the field generator was beingreset? Were there other vulnerabilities in the sys-tem?

She decided to take stock of other resources. Shewore a bright green jumpsuit. It didn’t seem partic-ularly sturdy, much less fire- or acid-proof. Far at theend of the kennels was another person in the samejumpsuit. She couldn’t tell if it was a boy or girl justby looking, but it had a very big shape over whichthe fabric stretched tightly. It wasn’t moving.

“Where are my parents?” She tried to think ofsomething more intelligent to say. “They should behere. I’m a minor.”

This time the scroll did fall, and a hand strayedtoward his taser. The guard’s eyes had the dead,blank look of someone watching late-night shows. “Idon’t know how it is in Oakland, but where I comefrom, minors know how to behave themselves.”

Amy had nothing to say to that. She looked at hernew prison slippers. She had never thought of hermother’s feet as big, but now that she was wearingthem, Amy wondered how her mom got aroundwithout tripping. How had she never noticed detailslike this before? Where was her mother now? Wasshe still repairing the damage to her body?

“May I please call my parents? I think I get aphone call. People who get arrested get a phone call,right?”

Now the guard stood. He lumbered over to thekennel and leaned close without really touching it.This close his humanity was more obvious: burstcapillaries in his nose, silver hairs sprouting from amole below his left ear, sweat stains blackening theblue of his shirt. “I think you’re failing to grasp theenormity of the shit you’re in. Now if you knowwhat’s good for you, you’ll sit tight and wait. Itwon’t be long, now.”

“It won’t be long until what?” Amy asked.He straightened up and pulled his shirt down

where it had bunched up over his curling waistband.He wore a yellow gold wedding ring. The skinaround it was puffy and red. He must have startedwearing it years ago, when his fingers were slimmer.

“You didn’t have to tell me about being young,”

he said. “It’s already on your record.”“So you know I just graduated kindergarten?”He nodded slowly. “Yup. So I figure maybe you

don’t know that all you vN were designed by abunch of Bible-thumpers.”

Amy shook her head. “I know. They wanted us forafter the Second Coming, or something. To take careof everybody God didn’t like.”

“That’s right. That’s why you’ve got all the rightholes and such. So people can indulge themselveswithout sin.”

Amy’s attention scattered over several simulatedoutcomes to this conversation. It cohered on the onein which he opened the cage to touch her, and shewove around him and got away, somehow.

As though he had run the same simulations in hisown mind, the guard shook his head. He held upone hand. “Don’t worry, kiddo. I’m a grown man; Idon’t play with dolls.” He leaned down a little.“What I’m saying is, I don’t know if they left behindsome piety programming or what, but if they didyou had better make peace with your god.”

Amy’s body remained very still, but her mindraced. They were going to kill her. She didn’t knowwhy. She had been trying to help. Her granny hadbeen hurting people and Amy had stopped it. Maybethat was the problem – maybe her granny belongedto somebody important, and Amy had eaten her.That wasn’t her fault, either: she’d only meant tobite her, but Amy’s diet left her so hungry all thetime. When her jaws opened all the digestive fluid

came up, a whole lifetime’s worth, hot and bitter asangry tears. It ate the flesh off her granny’s bones.By then, Amy couldn’t stop. The smoke was toosweet. The bone dust was too crunchy. And the sen-sation of being full, really full, of her processesfinally having enough energy to clock at full speed,was spectacular. Being hungry meant being slow. Itmeant being stupid. It felt like watching each packetof information fly across her consciousness on thewings of a carrier pigeon. But her granny tasted likeMoore’s Law made flesh.

“I didn’t know it was so bad,” Amy said. “I reallydidn’t. I swear. I just couldn’t stop myself.”

“I know,” the guard said. “I used to work correc-tions before I got this job, and that’s what kids inyour situation always say, organic or synthetic.”

Amy hugged her knees. She supposed organic kidswanted to curl up in a little ball in this situation, too.“There won’t be a trial, or anything?”

“Of a kind. Tests, probably. Lots of tests.”“Tests?” That was something. She had to be alive,

if there were going to be tests. “I get to live?”He looked her up and down. “Part of you does, I

guess.”Amy pinched the skin of her arms. If you couldn’t

brag in the brig, where could you? “I’ve got fractaldesign memory in here. Even if I’m cut up, my bodyremembers how to repair itself perfectly. I’ll comeback in one piece, no matter what.”

“Oh, believe me, dollface, I know. I’ve seen it hap-pen. You put some vN shrapnel in the right culture,

and it grows right back. Like cancer.” He snorted.“But whether what grows back is actually you? Withall the memories, and all the adaptations? That’s likeasking how many angels can dance on the head of apin.”

Amy imagined her skin sliced thin as ham, sus-pended in the shadowy clouds of vN growthmedium. Maybe she wouldn’t even miss her momand dad. Never once seeing their faces or hearingtheir voices or feeling their arms around her wouldprobably hurt a lot less, if she were smashed into amillion pieces.

Red lights washed the kennels in a sudden coughsyrup haze. “Shit,” the guard said. He thumbed offhis scroll, rolled it shut, and stuffed it in one shirtpocket. Then he pressed open a panel over his shoul-der and retrieved a shotgun. Frowning, he snappedit open and sniffed the rounds. Apparently pleased,he marched down to the kennel holding the otherperson.

“This your doing?” he asked. “Your boys knowwhere you are?”

“…chingada, cabrón.”“Yeah, same to you, pal. I know exactly what

they’re doing with you, later. They’re gonna smokeyour ass.” He stared up at the ceiling. “Serial–”

Behind him, another door slammed open, knock-ing him forward. He stumbled, and the gun clatteredto the floor. An alarm filled Amy’s ears. She coveredthem. Now she watched three women walk inthrough the door. One aimed a can of spray paint at

the guard; she misted him with it and he began tocollapse. The woman caught him, and laid himdown tenderly, arranging his limbs as though forsleep. It must have been some kind of drug in thatcan; Amy heard no screams and saw no blood. Whatshe did see frightened her more.

Granny. Three of them.Now Amy did skitter backward in her little ken-

nel. She watched the three women walk forward,single file. They each wore her mother’s face, butevery other detail shouted Wrong! in Amy’s head:the tightness in their shoulders, the alertness of theirgaze, their mismatched clothes and the hungry waythey looked at her. Up close, she saw the plasticembedded in their flesh. It poked up at odd points,black and pink and green just visible at the thinneststretches of their skin. They peeled her door away;sparks hissed harmlessly off their thick gloves.

“You’re coming with us,” one said.Amy whimpered. There was no way she could

escape from all three of them. They were here topunish her. They had to be. She had eaten theirmother. “Go away!”

One of them moved forward. “You have some-thing we need.”

“Leave me alone!” Amy pressed herself up againstthe wall. Her fingers, for some reason, were still inher ears. She was crying. They were staring. “I’msorry, OK? I’m really sorry. I didn’t mean to. Justplease let me go home. Please, I just want to gohome.”

One smiled faintly. “You are home.” And shereached out–

–and then her hand vanished, gone in a hot puffof wind that smelled vaguely of bile. For a moment,the other von Neumann woman watched her flail-ing stump of a wrist. Then the wrist disappeared,blazing away into blackly glittering nothingness thatsmoked from her disintegrating arm. She didn’tscream. She didn’t howl with pain or fear as ahuman would have done – she just watched as alarge figure in a green jumpsuit loped down the hallcarrying the guard’s shotgun.

“I think you know what this is!”Amy’s fellow prisoner primed the shotgun again.

He was hugely fat, and wore badly scorched prisonslippers on his hands. Amy smelled burning cloth.The other vN women backed away, abandoningtheir sister, who cradled her disintegrating arm closeto her chest. Now he stood at the ruined door toAmy’s cage. He said, “There are three more pukerounds in here. The peroxidase in just one can eatcarbon tubes faster than your repair mods can han-dle it. You’re gonna die.”

He pointed the weapon straight at Amy’s head.“And now you’re gonna let me leave.”

Amy tried moving, but he was bigger and fasterand he grabbed her arm and wrenched her upward.He pressed the gun into her back and nudged herforward. “Move.”

Fight back, a voice inside said to Amy. You can takehim.

But then the gun was prodding her again, and shestepped forward. The sisters followed her with theireyes. She kept walking. At the end of the hall stooda set of doors secured by a single steel bar.

“Open it,” her fellow prisoner said.Amy’s fingers fumbled on the lock. Grimacing, she

forced the bar up and over. It squealed a little as itslid down. She pushed open the doors–

–and almost fell into oncoming traffic. Her armswindmilled for a minute before a hand bunched upin her jumpsuit and yanked her back. Columns ofheadlights had gathered just a foot below them.Drivers honked and gestured at dashboard comms.Far away, she saw the blink and spin of police cars.The kennel room wasn’t a room at all: it was a vehi-cle.

“Hey, a mobile prison,” said her new captor. “Thechimps are getting creative.” Then he pushed her.

Amy landed on her knees – atop a car. She wincedand tried to apologize to the woman shouting in thedriver’s seat. Beside her, the other prisoner jumpeddown and grabbed her arm. He pulled her off the carand along the highway, out of the red glare of themobile prison and into the rows of increasingly noisycars. Amy looked back. The sisters stood high abovein the mobile prison, watching. They could still helpyou, a voice inside said. Do you want to be a hostage?

“Out,” said her kidnapper. He was tapping on thedriver’s side window of an old and dented bluesedan with the business end of the gun. Theteenaged boy inside yelled something, and Amy’s

captor flipped the gun around and busted the win-dow with it. “Out,” he repeated. “Please.”

The boy scrambled out of the car on the otherside. He held his hands up. “You can take whateveryou want,” he said. “I mean, seriously, just take it,just let me go–”

“Start running,” Amy’s kidnapper said. The boyran.

Her kidnapper reached inside the door via the bro-ken window, and opened it. He pushed her inside.She crawled over to the passenger side and squeezedback against the seat as her hostage-taker reachedacross her and pulled the door shut. It slammed andshe flinched. He gave her an odd look before shut-ting his own door and edging the car past the prisonand into the flow of traffic. He could barely fit hisbulk inside the driver’s seat. He didn’t bother with aseat belt.

“You see that?” he asked, pointing at the mobileprison as it blurred past. Outside, it looked like anordinary eighteen-wheeler with the words ISAAC’SELECTRONICS inscribed across its panels. “That’ssomebody’s idea of a joke. It’s fucking sick.”

Amy said nothing. The gun sat between them. Shewondered if she could grab it and use it. But wherewould she go? They were screeching through traffic.She couldn’t drive. At least, not in real life.

“You could thank me, you know.” He began rip-ping out peripherals and throwing them out thewindow.

“For taking me hostage?”

“For saving your ass!” He tossed a fistful of wiresonto someone else’s windshield. “You didn’t want togo with them, did you?”

Amy blinked. She hadn’t quite thought of it thatway. “Well, no…”

“Who were they, anyway?”Amy hugged her knees. “My aunts, I guess,” she

said. How much had he heard back there? “I, um…I sort of killed my grandmother.” He said nothing,but she sensed the suspicion anyway. “She and mymom were having a fight, and I got in the middle,and–”

“Whatever. Family drama. Got it.”Amy’s kidnapper had sort of a doughy face, olive-

skinned and fringed with huge black curls on topand a scrubby beard across the non-existent jaw. Hehad very nice eyelashes, though, long and perfectlycurled like in a commercial. He seemed to notice herstaring, because he turned to her suddenly and said:“I’m Javier.”

“I’m Amy. Amy Frances P–” She paused. Maybegiving out her name wasn’t such a good idea. “AmyFrances.”

“Was that your first time in jail, Amy Frances?”“Uh huh.”He sped up. “Lucky you.”

vNThe First Machine Dynasty

by Madeline Ashby

352 pp paperback and eBook

UK/RoW/eBook: August 2012

North America: August 2012

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