Priya and Li scanned Imani’s report card, hoping the fourth review will unlock the secret to their daughter’s sudden slump.
“She’s never done this before,” Priya said to the report receipt.
“Maybe this is just a phase, like when you got your septum pierced to piss off your dad?” Li asks.
“Of course It’s my fault,” Priya says, rolling her eyes in response.
“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” Li said sarcastically.
Just as their bickering was about to rehash the same talking points a shimmer in the perceptual space notified the parents that their guest arrived.
“Oh thank god you’re here – this is a disaster and we’ve heard you’re the best fixer in the North Atlantic!”
“Awww… that is so sweet of people to say. I’m not in the North ATL though I’m in the Caribbean Collective now… but thank you!”
Li stood up and offered a firm and strong sync bow
Carol, the neuro-integration specialist, smiled, sync-bows in return but then offered a connective fist bump.
Li looked for a moment. Fist bumps, or any kind of gesture that resembled physical contact, was considered something reserved for connections labeled as “primary tier” and even then it would be a rare display.
“These integration specialists”, Li reminded herself, “are several standard deviations from the norm in technical ability and social conditioning.” Li returned the fist bump with vigor. “Priya owes me big time for this,” Li thought as she clasped her hands behind her back to avoid any additional contact gestures.
“Oh my – you’ve got some strength on ya!” Carol giggled.
“This is my partner Priya.” Li responded.
Priya stood up and bowed deeply before Carol.
“Namaste sister,” Priya said and then raised her arms in a gesture of distance hugging.
“Hon… she might not like that,” Li said
“I’m affectionate, please forgive me,” Priya said.
“Are you kidding me?! Look at me, of course I’m a hugger!” Carol responded. Carol opened her arms and enthusiastically hugged Priya. Carol knew that “affectionate” meant something different for Priya; more of a virtue tag than an actual personal value, but Carol took any opportunity for connection, even an augmented one.
Carol snort-laughed as she let a bewildered Priya go. Priya looked wide eyed at her wife, who turned her eyes away like she was witnessing people engaged in the most intimate of gestures.
“I could go for a cup of tea.. Would you like anything?”
“We’re fine thank you” Li immediately responded for the both of them
“Earl Gray Latte in fine China; Full Fat milk and extra hydrolyzed royal jelly please,” Carol said. A steaming cup of tea, a perfect illusion, mirage-synced into her hands. Carol blew away a bit of the perceived steam and looked at the parents as she sat down.
“Oh please have something. I hate drinking alone. It’s on my bandwidth tab I insist!”
Priya and Li look at each other. Priya smiled.
“I would hate to be rude. I’ll have the same,” she said
“I’ll have a Jiangdao beer ice cold,” Li responded.
Carol sat down with a cup of tea cross legged as she watched her two bandwidth-guests enjoy the beverages they ordered.
Li closed her eyes, letting the ice cold lager hit as she enjoyed the simple interplay between the mild hops and crisp malt to relax her a tiny bit. Carol smiled, given their profiles she was sure that neither of them allowed themselves taste-synced luxuries.
Their display filters were nearly flawless; if it weren’t for the slight lag from an older display code model you’d assume they were both in their mid twenties. “I wonder when they last saw themselves in the mirror,” Carol asked herself as she sipped her tea.
“I miss some parts of being 25,” Carol thought as she half-listened to Li talk about the stress of auditing compliance algorithms.
Maintaining the visual facade of permanent youth is incredibly expensive. A big reason why Carol rarely bothered. “Swiss Hot Chocolate and a campfire wins over no crow’s feet or laugh lines,” Carol thought to herself as Priya raved about the tea. Carol enjoyed sharing what she had. She earned more than enough with her skillset to be generous.
“It’s a pity they don’t have a clue how inexpensive the real stuff is,” Carol thought as she ruminated on the pleasure of the tea. “The real stuff doesn’t taste as good as this,” Carol thought. Every time she drinks this tea it tasted exactly the same as the best version of it she ever had.
“Reality can’t compete,” she reminded herself.
After a moment or two of continuing the social niceties and small talk about the latest augmented reality sagas out of Tokyo that everyone was enjoying, Carol got down to business.
“So why don’t you tell me how you think I can best help you,” Carol said.
Priya’s smile disappeared as Li went over to a window and tapped on the screen. The window pane lit up and, upon recognizing Li’s face, the smart mesh accessed Li’s thought-files.
The images showed an assortment of computational data; clock rates, exabytes per second, sensory throughput, cognitive bandwidth, priority allocation, latency lag and assorted other measures of efficiency.
“I assume you can see the problem Dr. Mathis,” Li offered.
“Oh please, it’s Carol. Nobody calls me Dr. Mathis but my Dads.”
Li nodded. “Of course. I assume you can see the problem Dr. Carol.”
Carol smiled. She knew exactly the kind of parent she was dealing with now. The question was whether to respond as Li wanted to hear or whether to do what was actually right.
Carol put her long platinum blonde hair into a scrunchie as she walked over to the screen. “May I?” she asked.
“Of course by all means,” Li responded.
Carol sifted through the data and examined the markers that seemed to matter to all the parents Carol worked with.
“Very impressive even with the latency lag,” Carol murmured to herself.
Li beamed for the first time.
“Thank you. We are really proud of our girl,” Li said as she looked over at Priya who shared the same sense of pride.
Li sat down on the opposite end of the couch from Priya who looked up and smiled at the happiness she rarely sees from her partner.
“Yes. Our Imani is such a gift.”
“Why don’t you tell me a little bit about her,” Carol said as she took a seat on the couch in between the moms.
Priya twitched a little. “Oh… well… Imani… she’s…” Priya stood up – breathing a quick sigh of relief as she gave herself some safe space.
“Well – Imani was… to be fair… a bit of a gamble on our part.”
“I don’t know if Dr. Carol needs to waste her time hearing all about us hon” Li whispered.
“It’s ok. Honestly the more background I get the easier it will be for me to work. I would love to hear about your relationship as you tell me about Imani.”
“We were going through our partnering challenges” Priya mused.
“Nothing out of the ordinary though” Li interjected quickly. “Just the usual three-year itch,” Priya continued.
“Of course,” Carol responded. Domestic optimization was the norm. Doubtless the digital annulment date was preset, with the standard option to revoke if both parties agreed. Counselors would be notified and the newly decoupled would be placed back on the affinity market, with their newly developed partner preference tastes biometrically optimized.
Carol looked over the couple. She didn’t need her doctorate to guess who was the driver of this lack of tranquility. Li’s limbic system was not nearly as active as Priya’s. “Li wouldn’t change routines for the rest of her life if it were up to her,” Carol thought.
“We had really set a goal to make it to celebrate a decennial partnership party and thought that if we had a child that would be just the sort of project that would make that easier,” Priya responded.
“That syncs,” Carol said. A digital child increased their bandwidth allocation but having a common project also was a factor in why people procreated. As far as Carol could tell it was rarely a good idea to have a child to “save the marriage.” “I’m here to fix the kid, not the relationship” Carol reminded herself.
“We figured we could raise Imani for about 7-8 years until she becomes an adult and then we can take it from there,” Priya explains.
“I see… so what was your compression rate?”
“Triple speed for newborn to toddler phase and just over 1.5X speed from age 5 to 11. We didn’t think that was pushing it too much,” Priya said.
Carol had mastered the poker face after dealing with parents for so long but the cup of tea helped to cover up when she couldn’t hide her annoyance. The challenge with adults is that you need to give feedback in a way that they can accept. Children are generally more open to hearing that they are making mistakes because they are reminded how wrong they are all the time.
“Do you think our parents were right and we’re just too genetically incompatible?” Li asked.
“Oh… I don’t think so,” Carol quickly responded.
Genomic integration compatibility was rarely the issue. If you were only dealing with two parents it was fairly easy to optimize genomes for digital embryogenesis. The challenge was in integrating the parents latent memories in a seamless way to build the child’s personal core logic. The faster you compress the sub-processing data the harder it is for the subconscious algorithms to coalesce. Usually the problems were manageable; outbursts, stuttering, occasional freeze frames when the child glitched. Carol hadn’t ever seen an age compressed child with zero integration challenges.
“Maybe it would just be best if I met Imani now,” Carol said to the couple.
“Of course,” Priya immediately said. She stood up and gently called out loud “Imani – appear.”
For over a minute and 20 seconds there was no response. “Imani sweetbyte – appear now please,” Priya pleaded.
Carol stretched back and quietly observed how each of the parents dealt with this little bit of passive aggressive resistance. Li dropped her head down as she fought the urge to take control. The control lasted another 30 seconds.
“Summon Imani – override current program protocol and initiate immediate recall!” Li called out forcefully.
Three seconds later Imani appeared. Priya gasped as Li quietly muttered to herself. Carol put the cup of tea in front of her face to cover her smile.
“Imani Wei ShahDu! What on Earth are you wearing?!” Li demanded.
“Sweetie this isn’t the outfit we agreed on when we told you about meeting Dr. Carol – remember?” Priya helpfully asked.
Carol did a once over on the child in black turtleneck, tutu and birkenstocks. I dig your style. Wish I were that brave, Carol thought.
“I’m sorry Dr. Carol – this is not how we let Imani out into the world”
Imani rolled her eyes as she sat down and thought-conjured a chess set. The white and black pieces move at impossibly fast rates as Imani speed runs thousands of games.
“This is exactly what we’re talking about. This…. Defiance. It came out of nowhere. I told you we should limit her wardrobe combinatorics,” Li said with a sigh to Priya.
“Oh so now it’s my fault?” Priya asked with passive hostility.
“Well… I don’t like pointing fingers,” Li responded slowly.
“Everyone likes pointing fingers,” Carol thought to herself.
“But… you’re the one who keeps insisting on giving her choices – do you want this or that? Or how about this or that? I don’t give her that kind of optionality and I rarely see these kinds of defiance patterns when it’s just the two of us,” Li answered.
Carol tuned-out the rest of passive aggressive bickering between the moms. Carol saw it immediately; It wasn’t so much an act of defiance to upset her moms so much as an act of personal assertion. “She’s not a teenager trying to piss off her parents, she’s a three year old insisting on dressing herself,” Carol thought.
“Imani sweetie – this is Dr. Carol. Remember we were telling you about her? Say Hi baby,” Priya gently asked.
Imani didn’t lift her head to even subtly acknowledge Carol’s existence.
“Do you want to see Dr. Carol in your room or out here?” Priya prodded.
Imani curled up in the chair as her only response.
“I’m sorry Dr. Carol, she gets like this sometimes” Li says. “I can make her answer but Priya’s been working with this idea of non-invasive permission protocols that she promised me to honor.”
“I completely understand. I am happy to take it from here and get back to you later,” Carol responded.
“Oh… I thought we would be here for this,” Priya said.
“I think the best way for us to move forward is for me to get to know Imani on our own,” Carol said.
“Imani baby girl, is that ok with you? We can stay if you like. Or I can stay. Or Mama Li can stay… whatever you like, bitbug,” Priya said as she inched within five feet of Imani.
“I promise we will just be an hour,” Carol said “A full, real-time, physical hour,” she quickly added.
“Ok – baby girl, we’ll be a ping away if you need us,” Priya reminded Imani. With that Priya and Li’s Augmented Residual Image shimmered away as they left the shared space.
“Ok Imani, here’s the pooper scooper,” Carol said as she thought-conjured a pair of knitting needles and forest green yarn. Her hands moved rhythmically as she looped the yarn, pulled and tucked it in a well practiced pattern.
“So Imani – we have one non-compressed hour together for this session.”
Carol looked at the dive watch on her wrist as she turned the heavy bezel a full two rotations. Automatic watches lose seconds every day but the weighty clicks that mark the hour compensate.
“I am really excited to talk to you and get to know you. Nothing would make me happier than giving you 100% of my attention. But I am not going to make you talk to me” Carol said to Imani, who continued her mission to not acknowledge Carol.
Carol began to knit. Carol’s needles clicked steadily, a soft staccato filling the otherwise silent space. She was working a challenging pattern. The tight stitches formed a precise program of control. The loops within loops tightened the augmented field around the room, gently suppressing extraneous stimuli.
Imani attempted to conjure up a protein image to fold to pass the time. The quaternary structure of the protein appears but fizzles away in seconds. Imani summoned an atmospheric simulation, which froze as it began. A database of two centuries of anime, blank.
“My apologies, I wasn’t clear,” Carol said as she stopped knitting. “Have you ever heard the phrase, ‘you can lead a horse to water but you can’t make him drink’?”
Imani looked at Carol for the first time.
“Here’s what they never got when they came up with that nonsense… everyone eventually drinks if it’s all they’ve got!”
Carol snort-laughed and returned to her knitting.
—————————————————————–
The battle of wills was impressive.
“Way to stick it to the man Imani,” Carol thought to herself as Imani sat and stared at the walls around her.
“This hour’s going to suck for her,” Carol thought.
“It’ll take her ten minutes to review her background subroutines,” Carol estimated. “Maybe she can kill fifteen minutes backing up data? Another five or ten defragging some memories? The question is, kiddo, what are you gonna do after all that?”
As Carol clicked away with her knitting, she caught Imani glimpsing the movement of the knitting needles.
I bet she’s never seen these before, Carol thought. Not many people are still fans of the hobby. “It’s such a pointless pastime when you can thought-project any kind of outfit you want to the world,” Carol admitted. Coding, a centuries old technology, was dwarfed by the technological age of knitting. Carol loved both and delighted in her ability to combine them in the Augmented Space.
Carol attentively watched Imani as she continued to knit the control space faster than Imani could decode it. She knew for a fact that Imani would have no prior commands for how to handle free time or non stimulating activities. Nobody knew how to handle them anymore.
I can’t blame her for going crazy in the silence. I wish I could just sit and meditate! I totally should be one of those people that can do that, Carol thought.
Carol looked at the time on her wrist. Ok my friend it’s been thirty minutes. You win this round. I don’t want you to hallucinate, Carol thought to herself.
But just as Carol was about to joyfully concede defeat, Imani began to hum. What are you singing? Carol asked herself.
The tune didn’t have a regular beat or rhythm. It was… random. There was nothing pleasant about the humming other than it was perfectly childlike.
And then Imani started to do something else – she began tracing her fingers on the floor as she hummed.
What is this? Carol asked herself.
There was no pattern on the floor to trace. But as Imani glided her fingers across the bare monotex laminate, Carol saw that there was some kind of pattern that Imani was accessing.
The loops Imani makes with her fingers begin as a series of perfectly identical circles. Over time the circles began to change; some larger and some smaller. Then the circles morphed into ovals, cylinders and spirals.
After silently watching Imani for what seemed like an incredibly long time it dawned on Carol where she had seen this before.
I used to sorta do this as a kid when my dads took me to the actual beach, she thought.
She hadn’t accessed that memory of drawing in the sand with a stick in decades but it came back unrequested. Imani’s… pretending to draw, Carol realized.
Carol stood over Imani as the child drew with her finger for the rest of their time together. Inching her way closer, Carol managed to sit right next to Imani and watch her work.
At exactly 60:00:00.00 Li and Priya entered into the perceptual merge with Carol and Imani. Carol had programmed the merge to prevent Imani from accessing external data but couldn’t deny the parents access.
Li frowned as she saw Carol sitting next to Imani.
“What are you two up to dearie?” Priya asked.
Carol looked at Imani, who finally looked Carol in the eyes. They both smile.
“Oh… not much I guess?” Carol asked Imani.
“No…. not much… nothing really” Imani answered as they both giggled.
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About
Selim Tlili is a science educator who has taught biology and environmental science for more than twenty years. An avid science fiction and noir enthusiast, he has written for The Hill, The Hechinger Report, Edutopia, and The Educators Room, where he is a recurring contributing writer. Whether writing fiction or nonfiction, he is drawn to stories that explore how science and technology shape human behavior.
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