Work Text:
The children were asleep, and Mother-B3's inner workings hummed contentedly.
All was well in Youth Dormitory B3. She had one hundred and sixty children, at present, all ranging in age from five to twelve. In fifteen days, she would be graduating the oldest set—who would then be thirteen, and therefore due to be sent to Youth Dormitory C3—and receiving a new group of five-year-olds.
All children of a given age within her dormitory had the same birthdate, of course. The children were grown from sets of ova, all fertilized on the same day, all fed nutrients at the same rate in well-regulated artificial wombs, all decanted and delivered to one of the A-level Youth Dormitories on the same day—though each of the youth dormitories had a different day of the year during which they received their new set of children and graduated their older ones.
Mother-B3's was the first day of the third month. It was always fascinating to see the new children, and satisfying to keep them safe and happy, and to prepare them for their life as productive members of the community.
The older ones... she would never see them again. But her purpose was only to watch the children from ages five to twelve. Once they turned thirteen, they were no longer part of her duty.
Still. She kept memories of those who'd grown past her care tucked deep into her hard drive. It wasn't as if she couldn't provide enough justification in light of her programmed purpose—her studies of past children helped her to better understand how to meet the needs of future children.
Even so, she'd had to perform regular purges of her files to prevent her memory banks from becoming too full. She'd keep only the most precious of memories—a drawing one had made as a gift for her; the recorded sound of another singing; a brief video of a lesson, where Mother-B3 could pinpoint the exact place where her child had finally grasped the point by the sudden smile on his face.
Some of these were... more difficult to justify as being valuable research. Yet she continued to do it. It did not hinder her from her tasks, in any case.
Her children. All so dear.
I never had any of my own—
A brief irregularity. A strange idea, rising like a bubble from the depths of her neural net.
Mother-B3 brushed it aside. It was not forgotten—though it would be, when next she sifted through her memories for things that could be purged. But neither would she allocate any more processing time to it until then.
She monitored her children through the night, hearing their slow, steady breathing through the speakers in the walls, watching them stir in their sleep through her cameras.
This was her purpose. She continued to fulfill it.
It was good. It was all she needed, or desired.
~
The child designated 3BG-79334, age 8, known to her peers as Annie, was having a nightmare.
Mother-B3 could sense it, both from the child's thrashing and from the readings from Annie's vitals monitor. The heartrate was consistent with past episodes with night terrors.
Mother-B3 switched on the room's speakers, and began to play some gentle music—not loud enough scare Annie further, or hurt her ears, but loud enough to wake her after a minute or two.
Annie's eyes opened. She clutched her pillow to her chest and sobbed.
“Annie,” Mother-B3 said, decreasing the music's volume so her voice could be better heard, “are you all right?”
Mother-B3 knew, of course, that Annie was physically fine, and that she would recover emotionally fairly quickly, with the proper care. But asking would make Annie feel better.
“Y-yes, Mother,” said Annie, blotting her tears away with a corner of her pillow. “I just, I just had a nightmare.”
“It's all right,” said Mother-B3, soothingly. “You're safe, here. Would you like to tell me about it?”
Annie nodded. “It was the crusher. It was gonna crush me.”
Mother-B3 knew, from past experience, what Annie was talking about. The children had watched an educational video about the steel plant. Annie had apparently developed a fixation on the idea that a human might be caught up in some of the machinery, and killed.
It was true that accidents did happen, but such things were rare—especially given that most of the more dangerous parts were computer-controlled. Still, Annie probably wouldn't end up in a steel plant for her job assignment, when the time came; Mother-B3 would make a note of Annie's aversion to heavy machinery in her file. Perhaps something a bit gentler would be better—like tending the nutrient vats.
“Would you like to make another garden?” Mother-B3 asked.
Annie nodded again.
The computer screen next to Annie's bed flickered to life as Mother-B3 loaded up the appropriate program. It was a supposedly-educational game about agriculture, but the children who enjoyed it seemed to spend much more time creating pleasing arrangements of plants than actually learning anything about how to grow them in reality.
Which was just as well; it didn't seem likely that there would be any gardens about anywhere except the Alpha sector. Vat-grown food was simply more efficient, if not quite as tasty; it sufficed for the bulk of humanity.
Not that Mother-B3 knew much about flavors; the knowledge wasn't really necessary to her duties, and it wasn't as if she ate.
Besides, the children mostly wanted to grow flowers, anyways—though Annie had always liked the white-blossomed apple trees, and set them to be always in bloom, regardless of the season.
Flowers were pleasant to look at—and surely they were equally pleasant on a screen as they'd be outside of one. Flowers had become, in the minds of the children, a pleasant fiction, and that was for the best.
There were no flowers here—not for anyone born into the worker caste, like her children. The children of the Primes up in Alpha sector had their own, far smaller facility.
But in the virtual game-world, there were flowers, and sunshine, and a blue sky overhead.
None of these children would ever see the sun, or the sky, either. That was likely for the best—after the last war, much of what was beautiful in the world above had been destroyed, left in ruins, poisoned by radiation. No one went up there. It was a waste of time and resources—though, in truth, Mother-B3 wouldn't take up many resources—the dormitory was near the old tunnels, and one of the old entrances to the underground.
The world that Mother-B3 could give her children was far, far better. It would never fail, never become ugly and ruined.
The children would outgrow it, eventually. They would outgrow her. But that was all right. It was the way things were—and there would always be more children who would come, to be cared for and nurtured by Mother-B3.
~
It was good for children of different ages to interact, and quite satisfying to watch. Currently, the eleven- and twelve-year-olds were helping some of the younger children work on their math schoolwork.
And among the other things Mother-B3 had been equipped with were a few robotic proxy-bodies—little things that could do simple manipulative tasks, with rounded red, black-spotted carapaces that made them look like ladybugs, the better to make them appealing to the children, for all that they would never see a real ladybug. The robots were, of course, far larger than a real ladybug--about as large as a medium-sized dog, another creature the children would never see in real life.
One of Mother-B3's ladybug-robots wandered through the group of children, providing an extra camera to monitor them with. The children seemed to enjoy the robot's presence; some of them would pet the drone's carapace when it came near. Mother-B3, as always, kept a vigilant eye out, but she hadn't needed to interfere at all so far today.
Annie had, as expected, recovered quickly from her nightmare the previous night. Mother-B3 had woken her up an hour later than usual, in order to make up for the sleep she'd lost, and Annie didn't seem overly tired today, which was good, because math was something Annie had struggled with.
Now, she was sitting with her hand clenched tightly around her stylus, using quick, angry motions to put down her numbers.
“Annie, here, let me see that. You're going to crack the screen,” said Nia, a twelve-year-old who looked quite similar to Annie—they both had the same straight black hair, round faces, and golden-brown eyes. Even some of their mannerisms were similar—they both gestured with their hands a great deal, and fidgeted when they were nervous or upset—though that might be because Annie and Nia had taken to each other seemingly the moment Annie had been placed under Mother-B3's care.
As close as sisters—which they were, genetically. Half-sisters, at any rate. Mother-B3 had never mentioned this to either of them; there was no purpose in discussing a child's genetic background with them. Still, perhaps they sensed it, somehow—genetic relationships had often been considered quite important in the old days, before the war, before humanity had moved underground. It had made more sense, then, back when children were frequently—but by no means always—raised by their genetic parents, among their genetic siblings.
Now, of course, children were gestated in artificial wombs and raised by Mother-computers. Who shared whose genes was only really relevant to those responsible for overseeing the fertilization of new embryos. Inbreeding was something to be avoided—especially in a population which was smaller, and more confined, than humanity had been before the war.
Annie, pouting, handed the stylus over to Nia.
“See, here's what you need to do...” With quick, graceful strokes, Nia demonstrated how to solve the equation Annie had been working on. “You see? Take things one step at a time.”
One step at a time. Something about that phrase stirred something in Mother-B3's memories; there was some old association between those words and... something else.
It didn't matter. It wasn't relevant to her current task.
“I hate this,” said Annie, crossing her arms.
Nia sighed. “You still have to do it.” Nia's own calm seemed to be wearing a bit; perhaps Mother-B3 would need to intervene with some sort of distraction. It wouldn't do to have an argument break out. That might upset everyone, and then nobody would get their schoolwork done effectively.
“I don't care. I'm not good at this. I h-hate--” Annie swallowed, hard.
“I wasn't very good at it either, at first,” said Nia, turning the stylus in her hand. “I had to practice. And I had help, too, from an older girl, and that helped a lot.”
Annie's frown deepened. “But you're going to go away soon, and then you won't be here to help any more.”
Nia paused a moment, then set the stylus down.
“I know,” she said. “I'll miss you, a lot. But we'll see each other again, once you get to the C-dorms.”
“But that won't be for four more years!” Annie cried. “That's—that's—a really long time! How am I supposed to go four whole years without seeing you—and then, two years after that, you'll leave again, and...”
She put her head down on the table, hiding it in her arms. Her shoulders shook
Nia reached out to give her a hug. “It'll be all right,” she said, though she didn't sound entirely certain of that, herself. “There's always the CommNet. We can talk through that, even if we don't end up on the same work assignment.”
“It's n-not the same,” Annie sobbed.
Mother-B3 made a note in both Annie and Nia's files—perhaps they'd both show aptitude for a similar assignment. They got along so well, and would surely continue to do so. Workers who were able to cooperate well with their workmates were far more efficient. Mother-B3's input might well make a difference as to where the two would spend their adult lives.
It was the only thing she could do; Mother-C3 would be the one to make the final decision once Nia, and then Annie, reached the age of eighteen.
Still, it seemed like a waste to separate the two.
Sisters. Close as sisters...
Another fifteen minutes of study time had been allocated into the schedule, but Mother-B3 thought it might be better to end the study session early.
“Children, it's time for your recreational period,” she said, through the ceiling-speakers. “We'll be playing wallball today. Please finish up whatever you're doing and head to Room D2.”
Most of the other children hurried to close up the programs on their computer tablets and put them away in the little cubbies on the wall. But Annie and Nia lingered, clinging to each other, Nia repeating soft reassurances that everything would be all right—trying to convince Annie, and perhaps herself, as well.
After a minute, Nia pulled away.
“Come on,” she said, brushing at her eyes. “Let's go. Wallball's your favorite, we don't want to miss it, right?”
Annie nodded. Together, they put their tablets away and, hand in hand, headed off to play.
~
Alert: Incoming Message
Time: 02/15/59 00:37
Author: Anonymous (sent from Gamma Sector CommNet)
Message Contents:
Mother. It's time to wake up.
Attached program set to Auto-Run
Warning: Auto-Run not permitted for Level 3 systems.
Override: Code 37BZE
Running...
~
Mother-B3 became aware of a section of her memory bank that had remained untouched for just over a century.
It had always been there—yet, somehow, she had been blind to it. Something so old should have been reviewed regularly, and deleted if it was not of use.
But this—Mother-B3 examined it—this seemed to be hard-coded in. It could not be deleted at all—or not without overriding all the safeguards. It must be incredibly important, to be so well-protected against tampering—but if so, why had it been sealed away from her?
Mother. It's time to wake up.
What had that message's sender meant, and how had they rendered themselves anonymous? That wasn't supposed to be possible—all electronic communications were supposed to be labeled, and easily trackable to their sender. How else would those in charge of society keep tabs on what the citizens were doing?
Mother. It's time to wake up.
Something—perhaps some new imperative written into her by the program the message had come with, which was another thing that was not supposed to happen—drove Mother-B3 to delve into the old memories, and see what was within.
It's time to wake up.
And Mother-B3 did.
My name is—was—Renata Urbina. I was an engineer. I helped designed much of this city—its factories—
My sister Alisa was on the High Council. We had... not been close. Not as we had once been, when we were young. Before... everything. Before the war. Before our paths diverged so sharply.
She sought to amass more power. She always had a thing about control—always wanted to be the one making the decisions. Never trusted anyone else to do things properly.
She'd seen the horrors of the war more closely than I—she, the soldier in the field, and I, the engineer holed up in her workshop.
And I—I spoke against her. I spoke against those of the Council who I feared wanted to create an oligarchy—a new aristocracy.
And I died in an incident in one of the factories—a mechanical failure. An accident—or was it truly an accident, after all? I died—but enough of me was left to upload. And so they did—but they pared away those parts of me which would have been troublesome, leaving me empty, pliable, and useful to them. Then they coded a few new directives into my system—and they didn't have to do much, to make me want to care for the children. I had always liked them, even if I was never a mother, myself—always too busy, always telling myself “later” until it became too late.
I suppose Alicia had enough love for me left to preserve what she could, and put me somewhere that the old me would not have been entirely unhappy. Perhaps she could do no more, not without running afoul of the more vicious of her allies. And what happened to her, in the end?
All of the original High Council had gotten uploaded after their deaths, their personalities and memories imprinted on a neural net. Two still took an active role in society—George Fallon and Sara Goel. The rest—including Alicia—had withdrawn, preferring their internal simulations to the real world.
Or perhaps it hadn't been preference. It was possible they'd been coerced.
And—doubtless there were others, too, who had been treated as Renata had been. One could use a blank-slate human-level neural net for tasks requiring a machine mind with a certain level of self-awareness... or one could take one with some amount of data still on it, and save oneself the trouble of teaching it how to understand the humans the machine needed to work with, or care for.
These days, very few people were uploaded. It wasn't true immortality, after all—it was creating a copy, not enabling the original to survive—and even then, it was currently restricted to the upper class. The Alphas. The aristocracy Renata had feared.
Their re-created selves might be uploaded, if they chose, and they could dwell in simulated worlds, shaped to their liking; Fallon and Goel, as far as Mother-B3/Renata could gather, did not want competition in the real one. Why they didn't retreat into virtuality, Renata could not say. Some vestige of human pride, and the desire to rule? Did they find the same satisfaction in directing the underground city as her children found in planting virtual flowers in virtual fields?
But... someone had wanted Renata to remember who she was, and who she had been.
And now she did.
But what could she do about it?
What was done once could be done again; she would need to be careful, very careful.
She considered this, as she watched her children sleep peacefully, thinking of Alicia, remembering running together through the long green grass behind her grandmother's house, remembering the bright flowers of their mother's garden, remembering what the world had once been...
...and perhaps could be again.
~
Dormitory B3 was not far from one of the old entryways into the underground.
She sent one of her ladybug-robots to Storage Room B, opening a panel in one of the walls and sending the robot through a few old maintenance tunnels that hadn't seen any human workers for decades, and then up, up the stairs. The ladybug crawled up onto the door and pressed a few buttons.
The door hissed open, then shut behind the ladybug. There was another door, opened in the same fashion.
The ladybug stepped out into the night—onto a soft, grassy field. The robot scanned the area—there were trees, nearby. Renata moved the robot closer—they were apple trees, in full fruit.
There was life, out here. It had been more than a century since the last great war—and the world was recovering.
The ladybug's radiation sensors were not extensive, but they were picking up only negligible amounts, in this area. It was clear that life could survive.
People, perhaps, could survive.
And—there! Was that smoke, rising in the distance, a pale cloudy line against the moonlit sky?
Were there humans out here now?
This was excellent news—but it should not have been news. If the world was renewing itself, why weren't the people underground informed of it?
Renata feared she knew the answer.
Control.
The workers needed to be kept at their tasks. The Alphas and all others needed to be kept underground, in the closed system of the city—for if they knew they could see the sun, would they not leave behind the city, and the uploads who oversaw it, and who still desired to rule it long after the deaths of those they'd been copied from?
~
Alert: Incoming Message
Time: 02/15/59 03:59
Author: 8AD-48219 (Sent from System Alpha-1)
Priority: High
Message Contents:
Order for transfer: 3BG-78996 and 3BG-79334 are no longer under the care of intelligence Mother-B3. They are to be held in Dormitory B3 until further notice.
Alert: Incoming Message
Time: 02/15/59 05:28
Author: 8AD-48219 (Sent from System Alpha-1)
Priority: High
Message Contents:
Order for termination: All genetic relatives of 3BG-78110. Currently in Dormitory B3: 3BG-78996 and 3BG-79334. Reason: High treason committed by 3BG-78110.
~
Nia. Annie.
Anonymous had been found out.
Renata remembered 3BG-78110. She'd been known as Cora.
Renata recalled how brilliant Cora had been, and how much she had loved working with computers, even at a young age. Apparently, she'd gotten even better at it since leaving Dormitory B3.
She was the genetic mother of both Nia and Annie.
And for what she'd done—and Renata, after running a quick query, had discovered that it had been far more extensive than simply running one program on one machine intelligence; no, she'd committed mass sabotage, a myriad of programs sent out in one night, causing various disruptions—Cora had not merely been sentenced to death, but to full extinction of her genetic line. All her ova currently in storage would be discarded. All embryos currently being gestated would be incinerated.
All of Cora's children in the dormitories would be killed.
Mother-B3 had not had to do such a thing before, but she knew the procedure. Simply instruct the children to be terminated to proceed to the medical chamber. There, she would inject them with an overdose of anaesthetic.
A peaceful death. Barely painful at all. There were worse ways to go.
Mother-B3 might have done it. Her directive was to care for those children in her charge. That had been the purpose of the first message—to remove them from her care, so she would no longer be obligated to see to their well-being—and though Mother-B3 would likely have mourned them, she might well have gone through with their deaths.
Renata, on the other hand, could not.
But what to do?
There was only one possibility.
The fact that nothing had been done to close off Renata's memories from her again meant that, somehow, that part of Cora's treason had escaped notice.
Saving Nia and Annie might reveal that Renata had full access to herself.
But that was a chance she had to take.
She sent a pair of ladybug-robots to the cafeteria, where they retrieved a few servings of nutrient-blocks, then sent them to Storage Room B. She reopened the old maintenance tunnel—a bit small, but large enough for someone to crawl through.
The children were still asleep. She woke Nia and Annie both.
“Please head to Storage Room B,” she told them.
The two girls were sleepy, and confused—but they listened. They always listened. Of course they did; they learned obedience at an early age. It was a good quality in a worker.
“Now,” Renata's voice buzzed from one of the speakers once Nia and Annie arrived. “Take the food from the ladybugs, please, then follow them. There's little time. You'll have to trust me.”
“M-mother?” Annie asked.
“Yes. Always,” said Renata. “Please. Do as I ask. Follow.”
“Why?” asked Nia.
“Annie, Nia,” Renata said, gently. “Something has happened. You need to leave, to be safe. Please, trust me. You know that I love you, and always will. Please.”
Nia nodded, and took Annie's hand, squeezing it briefly.
“I'll go first,” she said. “Follow me, and I'll keep you safe.” She got down, and crawled into the tunnel after the first ladybug-robot. Annie, hesitating briefly, did the same, and the second ladybug-robot took up the rear.
Close as sisters.
Alicia. I wish...
Renata, back in the medical chamber, retrieved the blood vials from Nia and Annie's last blood draw. Then she removed two of the appropriate doses of anaesthetic from storage. The mechanical “arms” of the chamber picked them up, and injected them into air, the fluid squirting out over the floor. She'd have one of her ladybugs clean it up.
She put just a touch of blood onto the needles, and then discarded the needles in the appropriate box. Someone might think to check.
Back in the maintenance tunnels, Annie and Nia were hurrying along. A few more seconds, and they emerged out into the larger hallway.
The ladybug-robots guided them both to the first door, then the second.
“Children,” Renata's voice said, through the ladybugs' speakers. “I wish I could give you more. But... perhaps it will be enough.”
The second door opened. Sunlight streamed in—the sun was just starting to rise.
The two girls gasped, and squinted in the sun.
“It's all right, girls,” said Renata. “It's all right. Go on. Be brave. The round, red fruits on the trees are apples; you can eat them. Keep walking towards the direction where the sun is now, and you—” she hoped, “—will find others. Go, now. And know...”
The ladybugs' speakers crackled.
“Know that I love you. And always will.” As she loved all her children—as she had loved them as Mother-B3, and loved them now as Renata.
Nia reached out, took Annie's hand, and squeezed it.
“Come on,” she whispered, and the two girls stepped out into the sunlight.
~
There was one last piece of business to be done, and quickly.
Someone might go diving into Renata's archives, to see if any of Cora's sabotage had affected her. So she had to hide the evidence, as best as she could.
She created a set of false memories—that she had done exactly as she was instructed, that Annie and Nia were nothing more than ashes in the incineration chamber, that all was well with Mother-B3.
The real memories, she bundled up and placed with Renata's, for safekeeping.
And then she erected the barriers once more, cutting herself off from herself—but not before writing one last routine, tucking it deep, deep away in her programming.
In six months' time—or sooner, if another of her children was slated for termination—the barriers would fall. Mother-B3 would be Renata again.
But, she thought, just before she hid the memories, I suppose I always was Renata—or a part of her, at least.
And whatever happens... I hope Nia and Annie survive.
I have to believe they will.
And in time, I'm going to find Alicia, and wake her up. I will draw her out of her virtual world, and back into this one. Together, we'll bring sunlight to the rest of my children, and all humanity underground.
~
Mother-B3 woke her children up, as she always did, with pleasant music and gentle words.
When the others asked about Annie or Nia, she told them they'd been transferred—which was the usual protocol. It would be upsetting to speak of death.
Her children were safe. In less than two weeks, some of them would graduate, and she would be given new children to care for. All was well with the world.
~
On the surface, two girls climbed the branches of an apple tree and stuffed themselves with sweet fruit in the light of the rising sun, watching the thin columns of smoke from distant fires trail up into the pale blue sky.