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“I can handle it,” Gina said, pulling on Ursa’s arm. But Ursa picked up the chair she was sitting on and threw it at the woman’s head. “Ursa! No!” The woman, who was on the floor, her own daughter beside her, said, “Why don’t you speak to the child? Use a firm hand, some severe language? Otherwise that thing should be shut down.” Gina, her hair in disarray, a button missing from her coat, looked at her in astonishment. “And what language do you suggest I use?” she asked—just before Ursa hit her in the mouth and bloodied her gums. Too bad you can’t give artificial children Ritalin. Later Gina told me the rest of the story: “But I managed to grab her up and beat a hasty retreat. In the car, she kept screaming and fighting until, in the middle of the scream, her circuitry seemed to burst, and within seconds there were sparks everywhere. Then, suddenly, she was silent. I didn’t say a word to her, just drove quietly home. She kept stealing glances at me. She knew I was mad.” I showed Gina the headlines of that day’s newspaper. CNS-Solutions was undergoing a battle in court, a scandalous lawsuit or something, as certain models of their lifelike robot creations were failing. Better yet, turning. Models they had specifically built for the Pentagon (soldier droids) were shooting and killing American countrymen in military bases overseas. The fine print noted that Technology Bank was sitting quiet in the dark, as they had investor inquiries—not to mention the patents and guarantees—to fulfill of their own. That night Gina suggested that I put Ursa to bed. But that young lady would have none of it, as Gina could only stand and watch what I was going to do. And her pure, undisguised hostility toward me saddened and baffled the whole family. She cowered behind her animals when I approached, held up her hands as if to prevent me from coming too close. She refused any loving gestures on my part, refused it from any of us now. The boys will be crushed when they learn… Once when I insisted, dove in close, she bit my hand. Had this new “glitch” to not want human emotion or be like humans caused her to fear men in general? Ursa knew just what it was she did and did not want. A firm shake of the faulty head was “No!” in any language. She ran toward what she so desired, and would not be distracted from it. Technology. And with this determination went an adaptability, the knack of fitting herself into the scheme of things she felt comfortable with. Already in the few days she’d been here she had evaluated the clocks, the lights, the televisions, the computer monitors, the household appliances, and somehow modified and accommodated herself to their personalities, even though they were gadgets you plugged in. It astonished us—her cunning adaptability. What a grand instinctive armor for her helplessness. And helpless, deep down, she must surely have been, incommunicado in this strange human society. Yet her every action against my pulling at that switch, trying desperately to shut her off, showed why she out of the many like her wanted to survive. As
I left the room, I looked back at her frozen form and smiled.
Her eye sockets went off. I had realized just how hard parenthood
was, how hard it was trying to “begin again”. Though
she had no power coursing through her small frame, her face was
finally locked with mine and I thought I saw the beginning of
a smile appear. *******END*******
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