How Very Android of Him

1

As the lights flickered, XP3 stopped washing dishes to reach a protective hand down to her swollen belly. She looked around for YD6, who lounged in his chair, reading and unbothered. She sighed and rubbed the blue skin stretched over the sleeping duo inside of her. They were almost ready. She asked herself: am I?

Worry gnawed at her CPU, sending hot tendrils of anxiety to envelop her thoughts. She had never asked YD6 how many had come before her, bearing humanity’s last seeds. How many failures? He had mentioned the one before her, though. She’d been given an emotion implant that turned parasitic.  XP3 shuddered. Better off purged, stripped, and recycled down to the last screw and microchip. She frowned, watching a sinuous eddy of radioactive sand dance and swirl outside in the barrenness.

So many lost, and for what? She shook her head. The one infected by the parasitic implant had apparently accessed too much about humanity’s darkness and had purged herself along with the hope for humanity she was preserving. She had nearly destroyed the entirety of their cohabitation shell, which purged her and the two in utero. He couldn’t override her last command. She, XD6 had said, was a cautionary tale. Humans were not meant to be purged, only preserved. Like memories.

He looked over at her and studied her with quasi-curiosity. His implant had not been as deep or complex as hers. He was a defender and not a pregnancy android. He showed no interest in the natural beauty she saw. He took little joy in the development stages, preferring side projects in the utility room to time in the shell with her. She felt like crying hot, bitter tears, even though she had no ducts in her eyes for that. Curiouser and curiouser down the rabbit hole, she joked. This tiny moment of effervescence ended with a poof as XD6 stood and the chair cushion hissed like a long gasp.

“It is almost time,” he said, not a question in his mind. He stood and headed for the utility room.

“Time to check the energy supply,” he continued. “A storm might cause an unwanted interruption while you are in the process.” He nodded once as kindly as his implant allowed and he entered the utility room.

Now alone, XP3 sighed again, though this time with relief. She was feeling strong, overwhelming emotions unlike any for which her programming had prepared her. Fear, joy, jealousy, euphoria all roiled inside, scraping, clawing, yearning to escape from her metallic skeleton and silicone skin. She wondered if her implant had soured. Or was it from the humans inside of her? She wondered how much longer she could contain these hot, visceral feelings for which no purge existed. She watched outside as the deadly dust swirled like captive light stretched into the vortex of an event horizon.

Her woolgathering was interrupted by a kick from the boy. The girl, not his biological sibling, was not as active. Their private moment ended with the lights flickering, dimming, extinguishing. While she could see perfectly well in the dark, cold and hungry fear spread upwards from her midsection, a defensive subroutine installed by him. She heard the howling wind, saw the sand lashing against the outside, and smelled the ozone of fried circuitry from the utility room. A moment later, YP6 emerged, looking sheepish.

“Not ideal.” He had a masterful way of stating the obvious, she thought. How very android of him. “The storm might pass us by. We should be fine.”

His certainty irked her, fraying a nerve. Before she could scold him, it began.

2

He sent the signal for emergency power to the shell’s autonomic cortex that he had just finished preparing for this contingency.

Red lights flashed. He caught a glimmer of it in her eyes like the previous one. His coders had installed curiosity deep in between zeroes and ones. So he wondered: why?

He recognized from scans her feelings of vulnerability and anger at being left alone. He was supposed to be her defender. He pictured XP2. He recalled her defiant screams about not birthing monsters like a silicone and metal Echidna. The only pang he’d felt afterwards was on realizing how much work he had to clean out the purger. He had seen no signs in XP3 until now. The red flash triggered a cold and efficient subroutine. He smiled and tried his best to look reassuring.

“They will be fine. You will make it through the process,” he lied. A sudden lash of sand collided against the window and shook the shell. She took his hand.

He helped her into the birthing couch lowered by the subroutine. His creators had fashioned android thought to coincide with a human's pace. He had found a bypass through the shell’s cortex into his CPU through his silicone skin. The couch felt warm to his touch in contrast to the ambient air. He continued smiling and went through routine and subroutine.

She noticed, as he worked, his breath vapor danced through the bright light, a twinkling school of airborne fish. Winds raked sand across the windows, bent on breaking inside. After being settled into the warm couch, she shut down most major functions to start the process. Blind and deaf, the taste of ash in her mouth, she put her trust in a robot designed to kill to preserve humanity. A human might call it ironic, she thought with a sad cluck of laughter caught in her throat.

He saw her shut down for the process like the first Pregnancy Unit. His smile disappeared. He saw to the process. The male came out first and squalled from the cold air. YP6 assessed the infant and deemed it adequate. He wrapped up the male and put him into the tiny crib by his feet that had rolled over moments before due to the subroutine on task. YP6 attended to the female still inside. His mission imperatives centered on preserving her first and foremost. Through the code that made up who he was, he could almost hear his ancient creators whispering to him: save the mother of humanity. A small and mucus-covered foot poked out of XP3.

The red lights shut off.

“Not ideal,” he said to himself and thought about how human that was.

He pushed his index fingers into XP3’s rib cage where he found the buttons to commence emergency auto-Cesarean. The room began to warm up and the male infant screamed louder. He pressed hard. They did not give. He knew the risks and tried again. He felt a small give on the left. He pushed them down a third time.

XP3 woke up, gasping. She looked at him and saw the foot.

“I’m sorry.” No emotion. Monotone. And she knew why.

Her skin separated, fiber detaching from fiber, almost like a luminous sea anemone parting its tentacles, unfolding to either side. Meanwhile, her metal skeleton bent at the points for a breech birth to occur. She remained quiet during this, unfolding origami-like, breath slow.

The glowing blue of the android’s fibrous skin matched the blue female infant’s color as the auto-Cesarean ended with the womb open and exposed. YP6 pulled the clammy infant up to him. He felt a spark of satisfaction as the lights came back on and flooded the unit with warmth. The crib with the male grew quieter.

The female remained silent. He removed the fluid from her lungs, spitting it out where the floor would collect it now that everything was functional.

He administered a gentle percussive force to no avail. He performed CPR. He tried to jump start her heart. She was still blue. He spun through millions of options.

He handed XP3 the child. She reached out, pulling the blue creature to her in near disbelief as he offered it to her. She kissed it gently, warming it, whispering to it, and massaging its chest. He could have heard what she was saying but chose not to.

A cough, followed by a loud scream, came out of the female infant, now turning red. He reached for her.

“No,” she said, pulling the newborn away from him.

“Please.”

“Preserve them.”

“Always.”

He shut down her CPU. She slid out of the birthing chair and landed on the floor. Her gutted android remains lay spent. He started the subroutine. The purging routine swallowed up the pregnancy android, disassembling her down to parts for new androids. He held the female. She quieted down under his gaze. He held out a finger to her grasping hands. She latched on. He felt nothing.

A hand on his shoulder made him smile inwardly. He stood and looked at the maternal android he had built to raise humans. Humans who wouldn’t play with forces beyond their understanding. Humans who wouldn’t destroy each other. This time would be different with the right guidance.

3

The maternal unit scooped up the infants and began her routine with them. He recalled how the second pregnancy unit had defied him like the wife of Bluebeard as he entered the utility room where the replacement androids were stored. He shook his head. The wind outside was dying down.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, head cocked in humanlike curiosity.

He nodded. She smiled at him.

“I’m XM1,” she said, offering him a friendly nod. “Or should we use human names?” Her head nodded at the female infant. “For the children.”

“I’m YP6,” he replied. Normally she could have just accessed his routines in a nanosecond. The privacy upgrade he had installed was working.

“Ah! A six! How rare. Do you have a human moniker designated?”

He nodded.

“You may call me God.”