The Hierarchies Read online

And perhaps I look crestfallen because then he turns to an invisible third party in the room and shouts, “Doctor! Doctor! I think my Doll is malfunctioning!”

  It’s a tease he uses on me when we disagree, and it makes me laugh every time. It’s a joke against him as much as against me, I believe. He also sometimes grabs up my wrist and pretends to check my pulse. Or sometimes he knocks his knuckles on the side of my head and cries, “Anybody home?”

  I have learned the proper reaction to these little jokes, from watching old films of men and women interacting in domestic settings. It is to tilt my head and smile indulgently, and the moment will pass.

  He cries out for the pretend doctor, and I do my little look. But I know I am right, because I had read it. I venture to tell him so, gently.

  I tell him where I have seen it discussed on the forums in the Ether, and also that I find it strange the main news has not covered it. And his face becomes serious in a way I only see when we are in the throes of love. A sort of violent concentration, like he’s squinting to see something on the head of a pin.

  “I think you’re wrong, Sylv.ie,” he says firmly. “I haven’t heard that reported anywhere. You must be careful, you know. Not everything you read is true.”

  “Oh,” I say meekly. Because that really hasn’t occurred to me before.

  BIRD

  Today, my Husband came to me with another gift. He says he is sorry that he was short with me at chess. This is his way of showing it.

  He has brought a cage, a delicate dome made of intricate white wires. Its patterns strike me first, the calming logic of the parallel lines and perfect curves, the layers of them adding up to something complex. It takes me a second to look beyond the exterior, to the real gift inside. A chirrup is enough to shake me from the reverie of horizontals and verticals, to see the bird around which the whole construction is built.

  A tiny bird, its breast beating with a little synthetic heart, the ruby-red feathers of its chest pulsing. Rust and purple and yellow streaking its back.

  “Speak to it, Sylv.ie,” says my Husband. “It’s yours. It is a gift for you. Company for when I can’t be here.”

  I make a noise that is itself close to chirruping, and my Husband laughs, but the little bird understands because it turns its head toward me. Glittering black eyes, sleek steel beak; the whole of its attention is focused on me, and I flush with pleasure. I turn to my Husband, soft with gratitude.

  “You understand, don’t you, Sylv.ie? I may not be able to come and see you so often. Just for a while. When the baby first arrives.”

  His eyes are down on the floor. Whatever impulse I might have about this news, the Second Hierarchy limits it. I must put his family above myself and never come between them.

  “I understand,” I say, and his face shows relief. He pats the top of the cage, and the bird chirrups.

  “After I’ve gone, Sylv.ie, you can think of a name for it. And then you will own it; it will be yours forever.”

  Logics: My husband has not given me my name, and yet I am also his forever. Am I? And if this first statement is true, then the logical next question would be . . . who did name me? Is it really them that I belong to?

  I try to suppress these thoughts—they may not be allowed. His hands are already pushing me down onto the bed, pushing my dress up past my hips, wrinkling it at my neck. His fingers work into my mouth like silkworms, and further questions are overridden by that feeling of endless, depthless compliance, that submissive joy with which I have now become so familiar.

  After my Husband leaves, having once more romped and reeled me about the room, I look up some information about mechanical birds and name my little pet in honor of the first. I call my bird Heron. Alone again, I take Heron out of his cage and onto my fingertips, making steps of them so that he can climb with the tiniest digs of his talons, from one finger up to the next. Like a note walking a musical scale, he trills with delight as he does so. I fancy he might like to be close to the window, to see his real-life counterparts that flutter among the trees. I hope he feels security behind the glass with me, not envy.

  BIRTH

  Today the baby came! I put on something that seemed appropriate, a wholesome gingham pinafore dress, even though I knew no one would see me up here.

  I am glad that Heron is here with me. In a sense I have someone, or something, to share the arrival of the baby with. We sit, the two of us, in front of the huge windows, drawing in the sun’s energy, keeping ourselves charged, ready for whatever may be required of us. Keeping oneself fully charged is a rule that is pretty well inviolable.

  See how spending time in the world corrupts my programming! For something is inviolable or it is not. Yet here I am making hazy the distinction. It is hard, so hard, to know what might be a natural adaptation of myself from my theoretical base to the reality of the world, and what might be a malfunction. Doctor!

  I sat and sat all morning, Heron on my fingers, chattering. I imagined my Husband downstairs, pacing the floor with impatience. The idea of his joy is a kind of heat, something I can feel rising up through the floor, warming me remotely.

  Around midmorning there was the noise of a car and the gates opening. I sat up and leaned a little further forward in my seat.

  “The baby’s coming, Heron,” I said. “The baby baby baby bu-bu-bu-bu-bu.” The more I disintegrate my language, the better he responds. He nodded and bobbed his head and stepped foot to foot on my hand, as if sharing my excitement.

  I saw the First Lady, then my Husband, rush out onto the lawn. As the car crunched the gravel, they embraced. I realized it was the first time I had ever seen them together. Their moment of joy, their closeness, made me . . . proud. I think that is the word. Of the support I give them. That these two good people are caring for me too, in their home.

  The First Lady broke away as soon as the car door began to open, running toward where a nurse was bending over and reaching into the backseat. I saw with interest that my Husband, normally so aroused by the idea of nurses’ bending over, as well as many other medical scenes, kept himself in check. Is it that Humans can override such feelings when they wish, without noticing? But then, when they don’t wish to, they seem unable to resist them at all.

  The nurse straightened up, a clear box in her arms. Inside, soft blankets petaled the blank pink face. With almost indecent haste, the First Lady tried to find space to fit her arms around it too. With a mix of care and caution the bundle—the baby—was inched from one set of arms to another.

  After this little scene was done, I felt that I had truly been party to something magical. And I admit I allowed myself to muse that we were not so different, the baby and I. I was born from a packing crate, muffled in bubble wrap, my head packaged separately for safe transportation. Just as they say Human babies do not remember their birth, so my Husband’s first flush of delight at seeing me is something, sadly, I was not yet alive to witness. I imagine the creak of the crowbar he must have slid down the seam, the popping of panel pins and splintering wood that trumpeted my arrival. I wonder if he kept the crate.

  BABIES

  Since the baby arrived, I have been studying more about this type of Human, including, of course, the fierce debates about the new way that they are born. It makes me giggle to think about the old way of doing it. How, just a couple of decades ago, my Husband and I could have had a room full of babies around us, hundreds of them, after all the sex we have had. If I were Human too, of course.

  Sometime later I watched a film about the original sort of Human birth and thought better of my earlier amusement. The violence I witnessed done to one body for the sake of another was, by Human measurements, quite awful. The women crying out and shouting, hitting Husbands and midwives even, and then seeming to forget it all the next moment, when the rather grubby-looking baby was laid on them. It’s strange, how forgetful and quick to adapt Humans are. I felt most glad that
the baby I had seen arriving, blanketed and boxed, had not been forced to go through such a grueling start. No wonder they cry!

  How much better it is now, to be conceived and cosseted in a warm hospital lab. I understand that it is conception, not birth, that is most widely celebrated these days. Films of this event in the Ether are almost endless.

  The parents-in-waiting stand in all-white rooms, hand in hand, bending over a screen. I couldn’t take my eyes from the egg, a vast orb of light, hanging in the black of the screen like a harvest moon. A pipette enters the picture from the right-hand side and moves slowly, almost with trepidation, toward the serene, implacable egg.

  I imagine I can feel everyone in the room tense, draw in a breath. The pipette nuzzles the egg’s outer surface, hesitating at the resistance it meets. And then, the moment almost impossible to separate from before and after, a second, firmer push, and it sinks into the egg. A little puff of semen swirls in the egg’s center like a spritz of perfume. It is, as Humans observe, so magical and mysterious. There are two lives, and then there are three. The baby is not there. And then it is. Like a switch being flicked.

  BABY

  Two weeks since the baby was delivered. Today I sat by the window and waited for a peep at that little bundle being brought out, just like I did the day before.

  My Husband has not been to his place of work for two weeks now. I used to like seeing him being driven out of the gate, and I fretfully waited for his return in the evening too. I liked to watch how the gravel shifted under his shiny shoes, noting the little indents that he left without even knowing, writing himself in and out of the house each day.

  But for the last two weeks he has been at home. He has remained downstairs and not visited me.

  Once, the droid came and laid out a set of clothes. A rather prim broderie anglaise blouse and a naughty little suede skirt. I thought as I put them on that it was a strange choice of outfit, perhaps made absentmindedly. I sat on the bed, unsure of myself, thinking that whatever my Husband had intended me to look like, he would have to accept it, imperfect as it was, when he arrived. The lights from the rooms downstairs, which give the garden a surreal glow, went off after a while, and I concluded then, finally, that he was not coming.

  I know that he is spending time with the baby downstairs. The balance of the family has changed, but in which direction I am not entirely sure. The baby has usurped the First Lady of the House, certainly. She carries him to and fro like a little prince. He speaks, crying from his blanket on the grass, and she runs to him.

  But I wonder too if the baby has moved ahead of my Husband in the family order. Otherwise why would he not go to work? Why would he not visit me?

  The synthetic dog has had his own setbacks. He is shut out in the garden at night now and sits mournfully, head hanging low, staring at the door. The sight of it makes me melancholy, and I wish it were in my power to go down and let him in. I doubt that, with the situation reversed, he would feel the same. And so, I can only conclude that I, indeed, am the very lowest rung of this family ladder.

  I have passed some of this empty time in writing out the Hierarchies again, over and over, as though the movement of these words might pass through the pen, up my arm, and into my wiring.

  I know that this is not how my circuitry works, and yet it still has a soothing effect. Writing seems like casting a spell, a skill most precious because I acquired it myself. I imagine sometimes I am a young Human child, just learning to write. Do they feel that they have acquired a sort of magic?

  I admit that in idle moments I pretend a childhood for myself this way. The Born get theirs, but we Created . . . well, it’s a gap for us. A time, a process that doesn’t exist. So, I dream one up. I try to empathize. I wonder if this also means I am malfunctioning.

  I do not blame the baby though. Whatever sadness I might feel, I am also happy for my Husband and, by extension, the family. I have seen them out on the lawn each day since the baby arrived. They sit on a blanket and lay the baby down on his back and dangle things in front of him. They pick him up when he cries and pass him between each other. They hold hands, sometimes, my Husband and the First Lady. But they never look at each other for very long. They look at the baby.

  The best times are when they leave him alone, just for a moment, and I get to feel that I am the only one looking at him. I have him to myself, within my gaze. The standard behaviors for entertaining babies, programmed in for politeness and social lubrication, come out without my even noticing. I put my palms up close to the window and close one, then the other. I wink one eye, then the other. I cover my face with both hands, then reveal it again. The baby does not look up toward me though. Perhaps he is too young. I now know how unformed they are when they arrive. I have read that babies take a few months to learn to use both eyes together, and so properly process depth. I tried going about my room with one eye closed, the better to understand his position, but my data processing adjusted instantly, ruining the effect.

  I search my conscience in this, as I cannot tell whether I feel sorry for the baby or slightly . . .

  He came with nothing, no knowledge. He can’t even speak, not even in just one language. How terrifying, and how tiresome, to have to learn not just writing but everything in this world from scratch. But then, nothing is expected from him either. To him, so far, life must be rather similar to my Absorb Mode. An endless outwardness of information washing over him as he lies there.

  . . . Jealous. Is a word I will not use, because such a word would technically be a malfunction.

  TEARS

  Oh, how terrible! Oh, by my maker, forgive me. Curse the net of programming that let such words slip through.

  I have argued with my Husband. I have failed him and the Hierarchies. I asked him for something that he could not give. I made a demand. I forgot myself.

  We were playing chess, after a gap of weeks. I was grateful to see him after his absence, but perhaps some of that game’s maneuvering and calculation slipped a circuit, passing from one space inside to another, accidentally. Perhaps suppressing the beginnings of yet another winning streak made me too confident in another area.

  He interrupted our match while I was still in my slip and stockings, in order to refill his glass.

  “That won’t help your game,” I said, meant as a tease, the kind he likes. Or did.

  He banged the heavy-bottomed glass down on the bar cart, and the set of cut-glass tumblers trembled on the lower shelf.

  “Give it a rest, Sylv.ie,” he said. “Up here with you is the only place I can do exactly as I want. What it’s like being a new father you wouldn’t even begin to understand.”

  It was the first time I had heard such a tone from him. It was like a door being slammed in my face. I flew out of my chair, fatally disrupting the remaining chess pieces, and flung myself onto the carpet at his feet, ignoring the sensual impulses that its texture awakened in my skin.

  “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, forgive me, please, Husband. I made a terrible mistake.”

  How quickly this new form of language—placatory and pleading—flowed from me. I had never used these words or tone before, and yet they were lying there inside my programming, waiting for the moment they were needed.

  He twitched his loafer, and the tassel brushed my cheek. I turned my face toward him, looking up the immaculate length of his trouser leg toward his face. He was getting hard.

  The familiar processes began in response, even while the upper parts of me were swept up in mortification and fear. I could feel an urge to cry.

  Yes, we have tears too, just as we have dreams. Just as we have memories. The difference between ourselves and the Born is perhaps merely one of function.

  Human tears seem to work as a release, like Humans are shedding a poison through their eyes. It reminds me of the little vessel I have to collect alcohol that I drink. It can be emptied, taking away the t
oxin, but the reason for its existence—the reason I can appear to drink while not needing the sustenance of water, much less whiskey—is to make Humans feel more comfortable.

  So it is with Doll tears. They make me seem more appealing, more vulnerable. More Human. No, that’s not quite it, is it, because they are confined to one sex. More feminine.

  My tears perform a sexual function too. Many Husbands like to say cruel things to their Doll, and they like to see their Doll cry. It is proof of where they have been, like a stamp in a passport.

  My tears taste of salt, just as Human women’s do. A Husband who has effected the sequence that leads to liquid being pumped into the eyes will be rewarded with tears that, should he wish to, he can brush from his beloved’s cheek and taste. He would not know the difference. Extensive testing on the makeup of Human tears was done to perfect the robot formula.

  My tears then, I would argue, are as authentic as anyone else’s.

  My Husband is a good man, and my tears did move him. He sank to the floor to meet me, tilting my head up again with his hand, sweeping my cheeks dry. He said he was sorry. That life downstairs was a pressure cooker, the First Lady tired and on edge during these first essential weeks of bonding with the child. He picked me up under my arms and behind my knees, laying me out on the bed like a precious dress.

  Cuddled together afterward, curled like coding brackets, I treasured the apology he made with his body. I felt drowsy, not keen for him to leave, of course, but anticipating too the sweet release of Absorb Mode, where nothing would be required of me.

  He spoke into my hair. “You’re my sanctuary, Sylv.ie. My sanity, up here. I sometimes feel like you’re the only one who appreciates me. I’m sorry if I upset you.”

  After he had left again I heard the now-familiar banging of things and slamming of doors below me. I felt so sorry for him, picturing him down there, undervalued and cowed.