Daniel Suarez - Influx

“That doesn’t mean we can’t try.”

“There’s a pattern to it, Varuna. I’ll avoid nested reference frames. I can manage it.”

“Do you still experience absence seizures during emotional trauma as well?”

“I don’t have emotional trauma.”

“Then you haven’t experienced emotional trauma since childhood?”

She paused. “Right.”

“That’s not normal human experience.”

Alexa frowned at the ceiling.

“I remember how upset you were when you learned other children had parents.”

Alexa remembered her sense of being adrift. Alone.

“It’s not my intention to upset you.”

“You aren’t upsetting me.”

“You know you can’t deceive me. Is your fixation on parents the reason you visited the biogenetic division? To inquire about modifications?”

Alexa remained silent.

“You wish to be a mother? Perhaps to replace the mother you never had?”

“I had a mother, Varuna. I had you.”

There was a momentary silence.

“I am always here for you. We have spent many happy years together, you and I. And I am very proud of you, Alexa.”

The illogic of this seemed obvious, but Alexa still appreciated the AI’s lie.

“I want to remain on active duty. Without work I would have no purpose. I promise I won’t be a danger to others. I will carefully monitor my emotional state and visual inputs.”

Another pause.

“I’m asking you, Varuna. Please.”

“I will recommend you for active duty. Please contact me if you experience a recurrence.”

“Thank you.”

Clad in a smartly tailored pantsuit, Alexa moved along a corridor in the BTC executive complex. Fellow bureau officers and staff members nodded and smiled to her as she passed. They all knew her and knew that she had the ear of the director. That she was in many ways his right hand. But then people had liked Alexa before then. She had been designed to be universally appealing, after all. It was what had made her career.

And she’d grown up in the Bureau. It was literally the only life she knew. She’d been out in the “real” world before, doing tactical fieldwork in the ’80s and ’90s. She’d worked closely with the elder Morrison for a time, until they couldn’t stand the sight of each other. But the outside world seemed filled with chaos. A lot of regular people seemed decent, but there was so much needless suffering and deprivation out in the public world, all of it—to her mind—caused by evolved behaviors whose usefulness had long since passed. A proclivity for superstition and tribal conflict.

Those were the traits the BTC wanted to excise from the human genome. She believed the only thing capable of saving humans as a species would be a civic gene—one that caused humans to act not just in their own self-interest but also in the interests of the generations to follow. Evolution hadn’t solved that because few species had ever been in a position to destroy their entire ecosystem before. It was usually a volcano, environmental change, or an asteroid that did them in. So human ingenuity would need to solve the problem instead. In some ways humans were the victims of their own success.

A passing twenty-something junior executive nodded to her, smiling. He almost collided with someone as he turned to watch her pass. She had that effect on men, and it was one of the things she resented about her genetic design. Aside from her statuesque form, Alexa secreted trace amounts of androstadienone from her skin, and while the vomeronasal organ that detects pheromones in mammals was once thought inactive in humans, the BTC had established that the neural connections still existed between it and the olfactory bulb, the amygdala, and the hypothalamus. This was a major center in the brain for reproductive physiology and behavior—as well as body temperature. It went a long way toward explaining why men got hot flashes just from talking to her. Why they often stammered in her presence and felt giddy afterward. It didn’t work with all men—and it also worked, in fact, with a good number of women. But Morrison, for example, remained unaffected by Alexa—as did his “sons.” Thank heaven for small favors.

It made her wonder, though, whether she would ever know if someone actually cared for her because of who she was, not what pheromones were telling them about her desirability.

She had no doubt it worked on Hedrick. Was that unfair? And was it really different for anyone else? Maybe she just secreted more pheromones than the others. Maybe it was the root of all human attraction—chemicals bonding in our sensory organs. Then in our brains—which we imagined to be our hearts.

It was one reason why romance held no appeal to her.

Alexa slowed down as a young couple with an adorable baby moved through the office hallway. The BTC had legacy families—those who, like her, were born and raised in BTC facilities and who only ever interacted with other BTC personnel. They had their own vacation islands and remote work sites. A society apart.

The BTC junior executive was holding his baby girl, the mother apparently having come up from the housing levels for lunch. The man smiled as he clutched his baby’s hand. The young mother looked on and then smiled, too, as Alexa stopped to tickle the little girl under her chin.

The baby smiled broadly at Alexa and giggled, a dribble of spittle rolling from her mouth as she thrust her arms up and down excitedly.

“What’s her name?”

The mother answered as her husband stood stammering in front of Alexa. “Charlotte. Charlotte Emily Warner.”

Alexa smiled into the baby’s eyes. “Well, Charlotte Emily, I see you’re getting a wonderful start.”

The proud parents beamed as Alexa nodded to them and kept walking.

It hurt. It really did. They’d made her the way she was, and in many ways she was grateful. But sterility was the price. Almost fifty years old, and she looked not a day over twenty-five. But she’d never menstruated. Never felt what it was to be a woman. The look in that young mother’s eyes…

Alexa pulled to the side and faced a lighting alcove in the corridor, pretending to open her wrist UI. She took a few moments to master her evolved emotions. She could feel the urge to be a mother. Even if she lived to be four hundred years old, she’d never know the joys and sorrows of motherhood. She glanced back at the young mother walking with her husband. The woman was chunky. Genetically inferior. But at that moment Alexa wanted to be her. Life was about experiences. She’d learned that more and more over the decades.

Alexa gathered herself and moved quickly toward the director’s offices.

She passed by the director’s secretary and security detail and fell in step alongside Mr. Morrison and one of his sons—with whom he was having an argument.

“What would you even know about it, Dad?”

“I know more than anyone where your talents lie—and it ain’t microbiology.”

Alexa nodded to them. “Mr. Morrison. Iota-Theta.”

“How do you tell them apart? I know I can’t.”

“I have 20/5 vision. It’s written on his school ring.”

The young man snorted. “Impressive, Granny.” He cast a knowing look to Morrison. “We’ll talk about this later. I need those transfer papers signed.”

Morrison grumbled as he opened the boardroom doors. “Pushy little bastard.”

Alexa looked after him. “Technically they’re all bastards.”

“Hmph.”

As they entered, Alexa took her position just to the right of Hedrick, who stood at the head of the boardroom table. Morrison sat just to his left. Other departmental directors chatted nearby. It was the entire leadership team. Something big must be up.