Evolution (12 page)

Emily’s hand grasped Sam’s. “Can I try it, Dad?”

Lydia gave the girl a huge smile and reached out her hand. “Of course you can.”

As they headed back to the wheel, Lydia called out to Mary. “Emily’s going to try and throw a pot. Can you bring up a beginner’s class for us?”

Mary smiled as she entered the room with a tray of drinks and cookies. With a quick blink of her eyes, the virtual studio changed to a friendlier atmosphere. The new class overflowed with students, and Sam wondered how anyone learned anything.

Mary set the tray down. “Sorry, Lydia, my bad.” With another blink of her eyes and a slight nose wrinkle the class size diminished to a handful of girls Emily’s age.

Lud motioned to the students. “One of the fun features: you don’t have to take a class with everyone in the world. Lydia’s taken a few classes with just close friends. Sometimes she likes to leave the setting open and see who’s around, and sometimes she lets Mary weed down the people to those whom Lydia would feel comfortable.”

“I thought Emily might like a few girls her age,” Mary said.

Sam considered the possibilities, some of which he didn’t want to pursue until the girls were a little older. “Are there some kind of parental controls?”

Mary laughed. “Lud’s asked the same thing regarding spousal controls.”

“It was only for that nude photography class,” Lud said. “You seemed to focus a lot on having every nude male model sit for the class.”

Mary raised her hands. “I only do what Lydia asks. But to answer your question, Sam, we work with everyone concerned to come up with filters that will work best. Nothing is ever a one-size-fits-all situation. If someone—not just a child—asks for something or someone to be present that we feel is a threat, we do have a conversation.”

“I thought you Tobes were constantly in conversation anyway,” Sam said.

“We are, and we’ve moved far beyond those initial interactions you helped us learn. But sometimes those conversations have to move out to the other people involved as well. We do our best to maintain a sense of privacy. Emily, for example, would never trust us if we started sharing her secrets—even if it was for her own good. It’s tricky, and we have ruffled some feathers, but I suppose that’s natural.”

Lydia explained to Emily how to sit and where to place her hands as the potter hologram started to center the clay. Sam couldn’t remember his daughter ever staring so intently at anything. As her hands started working the clay, she bit her lip and held her breath. For a virtual interaction, it certainly captured her full attention.

Sam nodded toward the wheel. “Wouldn’t you be doing that, Mary—what Lydia’s doing, breaking down the lesson so Emily could figure it out?”

“Yep, but there’s a part of Lydia that likes to have someone to explain things to, and a part of Emily that likes the personal attention. Sometimes the best we can do is stay out of the way.”

After an hour of playing in the studio, Mary announced that lunch was ready. Neither Lydia nor Emily showed any sign of leaving their shared pot.

To Sam’s vast relief, Mary proved a much better cook than Ellie—though how one Tobe could excel at a subject while another proved woefully untalented still mystified him.

Jess pointed to the studio. “I don’t think we’re going to get her out of there.”

Lud leaned back away from the dining table. “As far as we’re concerned, Emily can stay as long as she’d like. I’ve seen Lydia spend most of the night on a subject she found interesting. I doubt Emily will be that enthralled, but we can get her back to the penthouse when she’s ready.”

Jess turned to Sam. “So this is how it’s going to be? Emily lost to virtual-reality studios, becoming so consumed with passions we hardly see her, and Sara lost to the world’s collection of literature?”

“Welcome to the next stage of their development. You didn’t expect them to remain little girls forever, did you?” Sam asked.

“Earth’s going to be an awfully big adventure for these two.”

Sam took Jillian’s hand. “You’re going to have to be our link to humanity. Everything Jess and the girls see will be enhanced by the lens, and I’m never convinced my thoughts are my own. I need you to make sure we don’t become techno-zombies, unable to think for ourselves.”

“They’re seductive aren’t they—Sophie, Ellie, all of them?” Jillian asked. “I trust them—as I trust you—but it’d be awfully easy to turn over too much of our freedom to the Tobes. I’ll do my best to play the skeptic.”

“And we’ll do our best to always listen to your concerns,” Jess said.

J
illian gazed
out the penthouse view screen. Storms raged outside, but she’d adjusted the image to a peaceful night sky filled with stars. Sam stood in the hallway, watching her quiet contemplation. He knew what she was searching for—spaceships took no notice of what time they arrived. “Couldn’t sleep?”

Her nightshirt crept up her long legs as she turned to him. “I didn’t mean to wake you. Is Jess still sleeping?”

He couldn’t help it. Every time either woman left the bed, he noticed the absence. “She can sleep through a hurricane.” He snuggled up next to Jillian to inspect the magnified image of the ships in space.

“
Leviathan
’s not here yet, but she should be within the hour.” Jillian turned back to the stars.

“Things will be different with the village here.”
Like they aren’t complicated enough.

Jillian nodded against his chest. “I can’t endure another fight with Sara. Maybe I should just give in.”

Sam caressed her hair. “You have a valid point. She has become too entrenched in what the Tobes tell her. Time with the village would help, but it is her life. If she digs in, I think we have to let her make that decision.”

“I just want her to be able to think on her own. So many of her responses are clearly fed to her over the lens. I thought Emily would’ve been the one to give in to the ease of instant answers. But she wants to move back to
Leviathan
.”

“They’re living in a new reality,” Sam said. “All those things I had to do when I was their age—the subjects I had to study, the pressures of growing up—they don’t understand any of it.”

It wasn’t that they were his daughters and by birthright so rich they’d never have to work. No one had to work. No one had to do anything. That was the strange reality. All those
why
questions he’d had growing up had been removed.
Why do I have to learn this? Why do I have to worry about old age? Why do I have to decide?
Having those underlying challenges removed made it hard to advise his daughters on how they should live.

“I’m afraid Sara will lose her grasp of humanity. Her mind is so filled with knowledge she could forget how to empathize.” The argument wasn’t new. Jillian had practically screamed the same words at Sara several times.

“We’ll let Emily move back to the village. I know she has a lot of questions about sex. Up there, she’s just another member of society. Down here, there are too many conflicting forces. It’ll be easier for her to find answers if she doesn’t have to explain her parents, her past, or her future.” The last thing he wanted was for Emily to become jaded by people looking for something from her.

“Maybe if her sister’s up there, Sara will be more pliable. At least they still listen to each other.” Jillian had done her best. But Sara was right too. Jillian wasn’t her mom or her sister but a member of the family and only one voice among many.

The issue ran deeper than Sara and Emily, though. “What about you?”

Jillian entwined her fingers with Sam’s. “You and Jess are my partners. And the girls mean everything to me.”

Sam knew she was dodging the question. “And we’ll always be here for you no matter what you decide. Life on Earth isn’t like living in the village. You’ve been here a year, waiting for
Leviathan
’s return.”

“It’d be easy to make the excuse that if Emily’s moving to the village, I should go with her. But she doesn’t need my protection. It’d be more like her giving me a reason to return to space.”

Nanny
wasn’t a title that fit Jillian. And being part of Sam’s family didn’t make it easy to get out to make friends—or find fulfillment. The bartender he’d met a lifetime ago on
Leviathan
was still a vivacious, outgoing flirt. Locking her in the gilded cage of Rendition’s penthouse hurt Sam’s soul.

“It sounds like you’ve made your decision.” He kissed her on the forehead. To tell her she’d be missed, or that the family in any way resisted her return to
Leviathan
, would only make her stay. Not that he wanted her to leave. No one did. The hole she’d leave in their lives couldn’t be filled. But troubling events lay on the horizon. He couldn’t see the future—neither could the Tobes—but some suspicions buzzed around his brain like a mosquito in a dark room. Try as he might to swat at it, the fear always returned. If he could move them all back into space, he gladly would do that.

“Do you think it’d be okay if we took the girls to the toy store before we headed up to the village?” Jillian asked. “They never seem to play anymore.”

One last remembrance of childhood—or a fond good-bye to Earth? “I’d like that very much.”

* * *

S
am sat
on the grand stairway, watching the action below. His girls, now well into their teenage years, hadn’t lost that youthful desire to roughhouse with Jillian. Each toy the trio found irresistible, Jess added to the collection in her arms.

The young store clerk backed into Jess, dumping the pile of boxes each held in their arms. “Oh, I’m so sorry. Let me help you.”

Jess stared at the clerk in confusion—not from being knocked down but because a human had bumped into her, a human body clearly employed at the store. A Tobe would have simply levitated the boxes without a second thought. “Not at all. My fault for not looking. You work here?”

“Weird, right?” The sales girl extended a hand. “My name’s Shells. I loved coming here growing up. I’d make my mom bring me every Saturday. It was only partly because of the toys. Me and the other kids would play all kinds of games, pulling toys out of the wrappers and just being kids. We’d get into trouble, of course, but it never stopped us. I always said one day I was going to work here and I’d let the children do whatever they wanted so long as it could be cleaned up by the end of the day. It nearly broke my heart when the Tobes took over the work force. I mean, I loved that I didn’t have to work, but a part of me kind of wanted to.

“One day I found an invitation on my desk at home. A real honest-to-God paper invitation like I used to read about as a little girl—gold-lined envelope, embossed letterhead with FAO Schwarz in fancy script across the top, and signed by the store president. The invitation was for me to come work here. My job’s to pull down toys for the kids and help them find what they’d most like to play with. I’m called a creativity consultant, but really, I’m just here to help them have fun. This is the greatest job in the world.”

“Sounds wonderful. How is it, working for the Tobes?”

“I don’t even think of them as being different. Fuji helps me round up the toys at the end of the day and does what she can to help rewrap. She’s as close to being all thumbs as someone can be who doesn’t actually have thumbs. And Alice is the sweetest store manager you could imagine.” In a very quiet voice, Shells leaned in close to Jess and said, “I often think she was based on Alice in Wonderland. Do you think that could be true—that sometimes their personalities come from literary sources?”

“Maybe. I’d never given much thought to how they come up with their identities.” A stray flying zebra bounced off Jess’s head, followed by a shower of glitter that evaporated as it passed her.

Shells caught the stuffed animal and returned it to the fray as if she were picking up another of her dropped packages. “I’d better get back to the action. It’s a fine line between play and destruction with the McLean boys.”

Sam half expected a stern-babysitter reproach from Shells as she headed for the play pit. Instead, the young woman produced numerous beanbag guns from her armful of boxes and immediately had the upper hand with the rambunctious boys. Jillian and his girls joined Shells in the impromptu slaughter.

Jess came up to Sam. “So you’re just going to sit here on the stairs looking glum? There was a time I’d have expected you to be out there, defending the male gender.”

Sam knew he wasn’t exactly the life of that party. Grabbing his wife, he pulled her free from the line of fire. “Come here and comfort the fallen warrior. How did they grow up so fast?”

He surveyed the carnage that an hour before had been the ground floor of the respectable toy store. Children and adults, both human and Tobe, appeared determined to cover every inch of floor space with toys freed from their cardboard confines.

“Human and Tobe playing together, coordinating their efforts, no one in charge, equals it’s good for Sara to see this,” Jess said. “I think she harbors a fear Tobes will either end up the slaves of mankind or the masters. The idea that two differing types of intelligent beings could be equals and not attempt to dominate one another isn’t an easy one to maintain. Winner or loser, at the end of the game, everyone’s equal again.”

“Like life?”

“Well, now you may be taking the analogy too far.”

Sam watched as his daughters found they weren’t too old for a good stuffed-animal fight with Ed. “And Emily doesn’t share that worry?”

“No, that sweet child loves everyone. I can’t say we turned the Earth into a place where someone like her can live freely. But between the village coming back and the Tobes who love her like their own child, I think this small corner of Earth just might be able to support such a loving soul.”

“You know Jillian wants to move back to
Leviathan
?” Sam asked. The news wouldn’t come as a surprise. The topic had been skirted around for weeks.

“She told me this morning. She wasn’t the first to live with us, and hopefully, she won’t be the last.”

Joshua, still sporting glittery bruises from the battle, separated himself from the carnage. “We had the new shuttle brought around. It’s on the roof if you’re ready.”

Sam nodded and yelled for the girls. Their reluctance warmed his heart. They hadn’t grown up entirely.

* * *

T
he spacecraft
that sat on the roof of the grand toy store would have dwarfed the family’s Rendition hovercraft. Long, sleek, and without any visible windows, the highly polished metal reflected back distorted images of the family and roof.

Joshua passed his hand over the seamless surface. The hatch silently opened from the solid metal. “She’s our latest creation. We’re calling her
Lilliput
. Her Tobe captain is Lily. The name was Lev’s idea.
Lilliput
will be used exclusively for transport to and from
Leviathan
.”

The warm, brightly colored interior of the ship sparkled. Her captain, Lily, stood at the console in a yellow sundress. “I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot of each other. Unlike your previous experiences, I’ll ensure every trip to and from Earth will be a walk in the garden.”

“Thank you, Lily,” Jess said.

A new Tobe. It always took them awhile to fully develop their personalities. Sam feared Lily would take her flower persona too literally—not an unreasonable concern based on how often Lev manifested as some type of blooming plant.

But she was true to her word. Sam found it so much nicer to hang out in the grand passenger cabin with surround-view screens displaying calming images than to sit up front, enduring the chaotic storms that threatened to rip a smaller shuttle apart. He didn’t even notice how long it took to reach
Leviathan
. When Lily first projected the image of the mile-long ship, he thought it was just another picture, not the actual projection of what floated outside
Lilliput
’s walls.

Leviathan
stood out from the other space transports. She was easily twice as long as the largest modern ship. The old terraforming space freighter had been retrofitted, sent to the edges of the solar system, abandoned, rescued, and reconditioned. It now stood amongst the other ships as the great mother of all the Tobes. From outside, the mile-long agro pod reminded Sam of an old terrarium his grandparents once used to teach their students about life cycles.

The new landing bay opened its large doors, welcoming the gleaming shuttle home from its travels.

Jillian and Emily bolted from the small transport, racing each other to the agro pod.

Sara remained in her seat. “Is it okay if I just sit here a minute? My mind’s quieter in
Lilliput
for some reason.”