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Text File | 2022-08-26 | 32KB | 1,346 lines

NIOBE WEEPING, Part Two Okay, so one day, you find out your babysitter died. Well, don't get upset. She was a biobot. A biobot is one step up from a Teddy Bear. It is not a real person. You want to go on a tour of the production facility? You can see hundreds of them. They all look alike. Mommy and Daddy had yours modified so she would look like family. But she was just a biobot, not a person. So don't sniffle, darling. If you want, I'll buy you a new one. Or would you prefer a puppy? Puppies are real. Puppies are alive like people. Nothing like nasty old biobots! Strange how no one thought the women who got pregnant, who had Stewart Syndrome and maybe a Stepford husband, funny how no one said they and this particular line of biobots had something in common -- they got pregnant! * * * There was a dead biobot babysitter in Christine's childhood. And for the life of her, Chris cannot remember her name, who she called for when she fell down and hurt herself. Her mother always refuses to tell her and is insulted by the very question. And Chris cannot clearly remember what she looked like or how her voice sounded when she spoke. She is a faint, blurry memory. An older sister who went away one day and never came back. When she grew up, Chris thought of her as not being a person. And yet, she went into biobotic medicine as if secretly searching for her lost sister. It horrifies her, from time to time, nowadays, that she ever believed clones were not people. It horrifies her more, that to this day, neither of her parents think of that babysitter as something more than a sophisticated toy. Because both of them are decent and loving people. They would have to come to Niobe to make the realization she did the first time she saw a biobot comfort a dying companion. Or another carry in an injured coworker and keep coming by asking about him. Weeping, so terribly, the day his friend died. There are days she would like to condemn her parents to a month on the biobot med wards of Niobe. Make them see she had not given up medicine for biomechanics. Other times, she does not want them to ever see where she works or what she does. * * * That cute law that forbids a man to make a clone of himself is to keep all of this going, Chris tells herself. If you make a clone of yourself then he is your brother. Your other child. He's your son's brother. Your brother's brother. Your mother. Your sister. Your wife. It's not to prevent confusing identity legalities, possible alibis for criminals, insurance fraud, or all the other crimes. There is no difference between us and them. If there was, it is long gone. But there never was one. Three thousand years ago on Earth some human bio-matter was used in a lab to cure a genetic disease. Someone copyrighted that cure. And that's what biobots really are. The children of some human bio- matter that was copyrighted in an ancient Earth lab. They are as human as those cells were long ago. No less human than we are, created and shaped by exactly the same biotechnologies. They are no more eligible for slavery than people were when a pyramid needed to be built or a Greek temple constructed or a plantation needed the cotton picked, the sugar cane cut. That is what she will tell The Corday when she sees him. Then she will spit in his face, lose her job, get blacklisted, and find something else to do with her life. Never see this human misery up close again. But have terrible nightmares about it over the long, oh so so long, centuries ahead. I'm young. I'll go back to school! Become a lawyer. Spend the rest of my life fighting this! Chris shakes her head. I'm fantasizing, she thinks and it is time to go to bed. * * * "I don't believe it! You are here in my med lab!" a young, rather pretty blonde says. But Derek has rarely seen anyone who was less than pretty outside of biobots who can sometimes be rather plain. Derek gives her a quiet smile. "Dr. Darrow, I've been waiting for you!" he says warmly. "I'm surprised you slept in late. Your staff, and company records, say you are scrupulously conscientious about attendance. I suppose it was the party last night. They are tiring." He does not seem to be complaining Chris is late. He seems very chipper as if her arrival has perked him up. "I have so looked forward to meeting you!" "Really?" Christine snaps then pulls back. There's a lingering faint trace of sarcasm. "Records. You're here for records. For research, I assume?" "I have already seen all the records I'll ever want to see on this!" Derek says and sounds sad for a quick moment. "I saw your records back at Corporate, read them all the way out here, and I saw the more recent ones this morning. Mr. Garcia gave me your passcodes." He sees the flash of anger in her eyes. "I've been waiting to see and speak with you! You are a woman of rare and true insight." Derek pauses thoughtfully. "I asked after you last evening but --" "Why would you want to see me?", she asks sharply. Derek has studied synerlinguistics. She is truly angry at me. And deathly afraid of me! Wasted trip. It's a wasted trip! "This catastrophe could have been more expensive. You were incredibly prompt in contacting us. Your description of the symptoms was very precise and allowed us near immediate identification of its cause. You enacted a quarantine so quickly and isolated the affected so rapidly." Derek gives a gentle sigh. "There could have easily been a million clones, or indeed the whole facility coming down with this lungscarring flu." Flu? Now there is an odd word. She wonders if it is an acronym for an exotic Gen-design term. "Oh. I see. I saved you money. You want to say thank you. Well, say it and go! And take those things with you!" Chris smiles smugly. I bet I'm the first person who has ever dared to be openly rude to him in his life! But to her disappointment, he is unperturbed. * * * It is strange. Up close, he does not look three centuries old. Boosters do bring a lot to the table but there are always signs that a person isn't the age they appear to be. He even lacks the faint lines of a thirty-year-old who has yet to see his first booster! The incredibly wealthy, they live forever, barring accidents! Several former Corday directors are said to be still alive. Somewhere off lightsailing or mounting young great-great-grandnephews and nieces on the sunny beaches of the forever young. Boostering every few years instead of every three to five decades. Quite a few of them and their cousins are fifteen, sixteen, seventeen centuries old. Most people make it to three hundred or four hundred. A rare few cough up the fortune that allows you to reach six hundred. But the incredibly wealthy, they can booster at the very first line or faint wrinkle. They are immortal. If they don't die in an accident like Charles Corday. Some suspect youth is less costly than the Cordays and their ilk sell it for. They are shutting the rest of the human race out! Keeping the riffraff off their playgrounds. Chris never believed it before but now -- Derek Corday doesn't even look his present age. He should be much younger. In fact, there are senior clones on Niobe who look like they have been out of their crates a good decade longer than Derek Corday. Is there a special type of booster for Cordays only? One shot and you are thirty forever? Chris is suddenly embarrassed. She has been staring at him way past the point of rudeness. He has been waiting for her to rejoin the conversation. He's very polite, she thinks. Very patience. But then, he probably bought his manners along with his eternal youth. * * * "Those 'things' are called robots!" Derek chides gently. She looks at him with horror. A new biobot series with an exotic name! Didn't they make laws against this centuries ago?