Judgement Day
Farah Ghuznavi
I'm not crazy, you know, even if they've sent me to you for an assessment! My husband wants me committed to a Rest-and-Reprogramming facility “for self-protection”. For his own protection, Jai means...
The consequences of marrying a much younger man crystallized with my daughter's arrival; Jai didn't want to be a grown-up, let alone a father.
Asian cultural conventions still favour women marrying 'mature' men. But I'd realised men never grow up anyway, so their age at marriage is irrelevant. I chose Jai because I'd made more money from my robotics patents than I'd ever spend, and I yearned for a family, for motherhood. Was that so strange?
My male range-mates were all married. Most had multi-stage families by then - their wives continuously getting younger, until some had daughters the same age as their latest marital trophy.
Little was said beyond the inevitable eye-rolling that accompanied the “men will be boys”-type comments. Yet Jai was considered my aberrant consolation prize, the rich female singleton's 'joy-boy'. Dowry violence and female foeticide are fragments of past shame, but some attitudes linger on.
Once I held Anandita, I didn't care. I'd used frozen eggs, but carried her internally instead of seeding a bio-capsule for 'risk-free reproduction'. Why do it, if you feel nothing?
My problem was I felt too much. Anandita was premature; and after surreptitious advice that the colostrum would help, I went ahead. But when I continued breast-feeding, Jai claimed I was reverting to a primitive state.
My marriage flushed itself quietly but relentlessly down the toilet, Jai complaining of spousal neglect. That's what do-bots were for, he argued, to free humans from menial work. Yet I actually found childcare enjoyable...
As for the role of do-bots, is there anything humans have left to do - or need each other for any more? Artificial Intelligents undertake every conceivable task. Even the sex industry's pathetic creation, the inflatable rubber woman was re-launched as a humanoid robot – designed for a more 'authentic-seeming' experience.
Who needs a real woman to fake an orgasm for you, when you can have one of the S-X series (appearance modelled to your specifications) to do the very same thing? Its plastithene “flesh” simulates intimate contact, GlobeNet wits labelling it the 'S-X4U series'.
So I knew what was coming when Jai brought his sex-bot home, ostensibly to help me with childcare. He called her 'Pammie', modelled on some ancient TV show about lifeguards.
Pammie handled Anandita well enough; she was programmed with over a trillion stories, songs and games for a child's entertainment. And she handled Jai even better! All of which served to emphasise my redundancy. Especially after I made Jai co-chip-holder to my assets in a serious moment of oversight failure. Perhaps motherhood had done something strange to my mind, after all.
Nevertheless, I'm not insane. Or suffering neo-natal depression because of the “backward” birthing system I chose. The vertical learning curve aside, I'd never been happier than I was experiencing the sudden raptures and hormonal firestorms of new motherhood.
Unlike Jai. So he decided to get rid of me. We all know no-one comes out of those reprogramming facilities intact.
Sadly, technological progress notwithstanding, human cupidity remains constant. And Meditechs aren't immune to 'persuasion' either; not on the scale of my patent income. Now they're expecting you to provide a laser-scan of my supposedly addled brain that'll send me straight to where they've decided I belong.
Anyway, I know you're not really listening, but you're my last hope. After all, if an Alphatek-series machine can't be objective when it's doing a scan, who can?
I'm not crazy, you know, even if they've sent me to you for an assessment! My husband wants me committed to a Rest-and-Reprogramming facility “for self-protection”. For his own protection, Jai means...
The consequences of marrying a much younger man crystallized with my daughter's arrival; Jai didn't want to be a grown-up, let alone a father.
Asian cultural conventions still favour women marrying 'mature' men. But I'd realised men never grow up anyway, so their age at marriage is irrelevant. I chose Jai because I'd made more money from my robotics patents than I'd ever spend, and I yearned for a family, for motherhood. Was that so strange?
My male range-mates were all married. Most had multi-stage families by then - their wives continuously getting younger, until some had daughters the same age as their latest marital trophy.
Little was said beyond the inevitable eye-rolling that accompanied the “men will be boys”-type comments. Yet Jai was considered my aberrant consolation prize, the rich female singleton's 'joy-boy'. Dowry violence and female foeticide are fragments of past shame, but some attitudes linger on.
Once I held Anandita, I didn't care. I'd used frozen eggs, but carried her internally instead of seeding a bio-capsule for 'risk-free reproduction'. Why do it, if you feel nothing?
My problem was I felt too much. Anandita was premature; and after surreptitious advice that the colostrum would help, I went ahead. But when I continued breast-feeding, Jai claimed I was reverting to a primitive state.
My marriage flushed itself quietly but relentlessly down the toilet, Jai complaining of spousal neglect. That's what do-bots were for, he argued, to free humans from menial work. Yet I actually found childcare enjoyable...
As for the role of do-bots, is there anything humans have left to do - or need each other for any more? Artificial Intelligents undertake every conceivable task. Even the sex industry's pathetic creation, the inflatable rubber woman was re-launched as a humanoid robot – designed for a more 'authentic-seeming' experience.
Who needs a real woman to fake an orgasm for you, when you can have one of the S-X series (appearance modelled to your specifications) to do the very same thing? Its plastithene “flesh” simulates intimate contact, GlobeNet wits labelling it the 'S-X4U series'.
So I knew what was coming when Jai brought his sex-bot home, ostensibly to help me with childcare. He called her 'Pammie', modelled on some ancient TV show about lifeguards.
Pammie handled Anandita well enough; she was programmed with over a trillion stories, songs and games for a child's entertainment. And she handled Jai even better! All of which served to emphasise my redundancy. Especially after I made Jai co-chip-holder to my assets in a serious moment of oversight failure. Perhaps motherhood had done something strange to my mind, after all.
Nevertheless, I'm not insane. Or suffering neo-natal depression because of the “backward” birthing system I chose. The vertical learning curve aside, I'd never been happier than I was experiencing the sudden raptures and hormonal firestorms of new motherhood.
Unlike Jai. So he decided to get rid of me. We all know no-one comes out of those reprogramming facilities intact.
Sadly, technological progress notwithstanding, human cupidity remains constant. And Meditechs aren't immune to 'persuasion' either; not on the scale of my patent income. Now they're expecting you to provide a laser-scan of my supposedly addled brain that'll send me straight to where they've decided I belong.
Anyway, I know you're not really listening, but you're my last hope. After all, if an Alphatek-series machine can't be objective when it's doing a scan, who can?