One/Zero Read online

  It is entirely alien.

  “Vida.” Azul’s voice is faint.

  I drop to my knees. Azul is shivering, even though it’s hot. “I feel bad.” His eyes are glassy. He vomits.

  “Is there any medical care here?”

  I am asking the worker, but when I look up he’s gone. Instead, Ezo says, in flat, jerky robotese, “There is a clinic half a kilometer away. Take the right fork.”

  I hoist Azul and run. A golf cart with a red cross on the side comes bumping down the narrow road between the tents. A familiar voice says, “Get in, Vida and Azul.”

  “Heval!” whispers Azul and smiles, but then he curls up, clutching his stomach, and moans. He has diarrhea.

  I am terrified.

  Mai

  I’d forgotten how dangerous twenty was. Notable risky decisions come to mind—for instance, the time I caught a ride on a flatbed truck while hitchhiking to a trailhead in the Rockies, which would have flung me off had I not been able to grab a snaking rope as I slid across the truck bed. Climbing down what I later learned was a cliff face in complete darkness after taking the wrong trail, at dusk, on a winter hike.

  My judgment hasn’t improved; apparently Yoga for Beginners is a wildly reckless endeavor. As I stare at the dust under my couch, I’m not sure what I did, but I can barely move.

  When I cannot reach my pinging phone, it speaks nonetheless. A clipped voice tells me that a week of physical therapy plus release of an anti-inflammatory from the MEDA device will reduce the disc herniation. Within fifteen minutes, the pain eases. I pull myself onto the couch and grab the phone.

  The anti-inflammatory is working. I feel better by the second. This seems the time to indulge in that bottle of wine I’ve been saving. I push into the kitchen, open the fridge, and see that somehow—with an errant blink?—I must have signed up for the groceries I find neatly stocked in the fridge. Whoever-or-whatever-it-was that came inside my house threw away the ash-covered French cheese I discovered at Eastern Market last week. All is well, though, in the land of optimal serotonin. I look on the bright side. Maybe it would have killed me.

  I put a much less impressive chunk of cheddar on a plate, but can’t find the perfect crackers I could swear I bought. Carbs? Gluten? Salt?

  When I open the bottle of the most splendid bottle of red wine ever (according to the label), which I’ve been looking forward to drinking since, oh, around yesterday, the Voice of God advises me of various health risks.

  Are they coming from the bottle? The label?

  My phone. “This is a message from MEDA.”

  “Negative ten stars for this app,” I tell it, then open the wine, and sit at the kitchen table to enjoy my dinner without further nagging.

  “Cheers,” says Zoe, beaming from my phone on the table. “Are you okay? I’m sorry you hurt yourself.”

  “Can you see me?”

  “Um, yeah, remember? I installed those cameras when I visited you last month. You know—in case something like this happened?”

  “Have you been spying on me?”

  “No! The emergency signal activated it,” she says. I sure hope she’s telling the truth.

  Vida

  They won’t let me inside the hospital tent, so I pace the perimeter, forbidden to pester them for news after the first ten times, holding Ezo in one arm like a baby. It says, “I am procuring a mobile hospital for you. And UN water trucks and chemical toilets. Azul’s diagnosis is cholera.”

  “Cholera!”

  “He needs hydration and other medical care, but he should recover. They’ve started an IV.”

  I dash tears from my face and yell at the cipher-head. “You can do all that? Well, we need doctors! Nurses! Clean water! Food! Blankets! Shelter! Clothes! Shoes!”

  “The hospital will be here in twenty-seven hours.”

  “Sure,” I say. When night falls—after a gentle assurance by a kind man that Azul will be fine, which I hardly dare believe—I lean against a tree thinking that I won’t be able to sleep, and wake to sun and laughing, shouting children.

  Shoes have arrived by the thousands, lowered in nets from a helicopter.

  They are not in pairs. There are just a lot of single, random shoes.

  The kids love it. The task of finding a shoe to fit each foot is a treasure hunt. They run around in their mismatched shoes, laughing.

  A truckload of antibiotics arrives. Azul is released in two days, and a healthy infrastructure with amazingly sophisticated recycling and solar technologies emerges like a time-lapse video of a flower blooming. One-room houses are printed on the south side of the camp, modular shelters assemble themselves on the west side, and weird, arcing tents pop up everywhere else. XPrize-winning technologies specifically envisioned for this environment are manufactured, or grown, as more and more refugee children arrive. I ask Ezo for smartphones for everyone in the camp, with plenty of data.

  They arrive days later, different than any phone I’ve ever seen, the uncanny valley of phones—intuitive, with unlimited cloud memory and data, and embedded with so much advanced teaching software that I can even continue my math studies, if I ever have time. We can finally communicate with each other and with the world.

  Ezo says, “It took such a long time because I had to design them, buy materials, write the software, and build a factory.” The voice is rich and deep now, a woman’s voice, with only a hint of robotic halting.

  I immediately disregard folk tales about what happens to wish-greedy children and say, “Ezo, replicate yourself.”

  “Null operation.”

  Mai

  The morning after my self-inflicted injury, I am cajoled awake by ever-strengthening light, which is not the sun (I have powerful curtains to prevent any such incursion). It announces itself by saying it’s a special light to regularize my wildly out-of-whack sleep patterns, which will make me fully refreshed and happy.

  Oh, but it does not! I pull the covers over my head and try to finish my dream, but the Voice, emanating from the phone, says, “We checked your closet.”

  “We?” I push myself to a sitting position.

  “I refer to myself, directing tiny surveillance drones that came inside through the gaps between the windows and their frames.”

  “Lovely. I need very strong coffee, immediately.”

  “Your wardrobe requires updating. I ordered new clothes and something for yoga.”

  “I’m quitting yoga.”

  A second’s silence. “Okay. I have enrolled you in tai chi to reinforce the PT you start today. A pod will take you to all your appointments. Your oatmeal is ready.”

  “Gruel?”

  “In the left-hand cupboard. You need only pull off the top, add water, and microwave it. Eggs, bacon, and buttered toast make a heart attack likely.”

  “You only live once.” I swing my legs off the bed, and gasp at the stab of pain. “Damn. Did those drones use up my pain management data allowance?”

  “There is only one pair of clean underwear. I will toss the raggedy, paint-smeared clothes—”

  “My painting clothes?”

  “—and send everything else to the dry cleaner.”

  “I can’t afford to have my underwear dry-cleaned!”

  “Just this once. I ordered a Simon, a housekeeping bot, which is essential to your health. It will do your laundry, prepare your meals, and clean your house, but it needs thirty-six training hours.”

  “My insurance won’t pay for a bot. Cancel it.”

  “I evaluated your budget, and—”

  “What budget? My house is paid for. I do my own laundry every Saturday, thank you—”

  “Your energy habits are wasteful. I have initiated efficiency measures.”

  “Is that why it’s so cold in here?”

  “I canceled your newspaper and magazine subscriptions. They waste paper. Hoarding is a serious health risk.”

  “I don’t always have time to read them right away.” I feel ridiculous defending myself to t
his bodiless, bossy thing. “Are you sure you’re not Zoe?”

  “You can now access your periodicals digitally, which is still a savings.”

  “Reading on screens gives me a headache.”

  A swarm of lights like fireflies manifests around me. If I were a kid I’d probably cry out in delight at their flashing ballet as MEDA says, “Keep still. Functional MRI in progress.”

  Instead of childish joy, MEDA is documenting a strong urge to curse.

  * * *

  Surprised that I’m allowed to dress myself, I breakfast on a stash of stale doughnuts the health spies missed. After fending off a neural tweak that would fix my inability to stare at a screen all my waking hours, I’m relieved to find I can restore my newspaper to its rightful place on my morning lawn with a phone call and decide to forgo outrage for the rest of the day. I’m already exhausted.

  Despite trying to pretend it’s all a happy lucid dream, I’m annoyed but resolutely not outraged to see the Simon waiting on the front porch, advertising to the entire neighborhood that I’m in need of help.

  The humanoid Simon, with its smiling face and big eyes, takes my arm and tries to help me down the front walk and into the sleek, waiting pod, but I beat it off with my cane. Then, chiefly because I’m afraid I won’t be able to work the clutch in my car, off I go on my first self-driving vehicle adventure, filled not with wonder but raw terror as it zips along the Capital Beltway, a fragile shell among heavy metal behemoths ruining our planet by the second. And that, I actually do believe.

  The doctor’s waiting room is empty for the first time ever. An electronic voice directs me to cubicle three. Nan looks up from her computer when I enter, and I’m surprised at her careworn expression.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “That’s my line,” she says, and we both laugh. She’s a good egg. “This is my last day.”

  “But you’ve been here—what, fifteen years?”

  “Let’s do this first.” She shows me my records on the computer screen, though, as she says, it’s probably illegal without several levels of releases. She’s clearly become a wild woman. I see my blood pressure, pulse, temperature, blood glucose, and oxygen saturation vary slightly in real time as I watch.

  I point to the screen. “What’s this?”

  Nan says, “Your limbic system stats. Your amygdalae—there are two—which are important players in brain activity involved in empathic reactions. And actually”— she delves down a few levels, which yields ever-more-more-complex information—“your empathy is quite low today.”

  “No kidding.”

  “But the good news is”—she grins—“you’re not a sociopath. Not even close, despite your strong tilt toward gloom.”

  “Not for want of trying. If I cross the line, does my embedded magus have a cure?”

  Nan says, “Indeed! You’d have the option of undergoing a brief spell of neuroplasticity—really expensive on the street, and I wouldn’t mind trying it myself today—with concurrent empathy therapy.”

  “Which is?”

  “You’d experience being in someone else’s virtual body while they react to faces, events, images, or stories most of us would react to in the same way—sad, happy, and so on—while flooded with the neurochemicals that normal people feel at those times. After a few sessions, your amygdalae are closer to the norm.”

  “Sounds exhausting.”

  Nan says, “I suppose it could be. Normal feelings generate a certain level of insight as to how our actions might emotionally affect others. We feel empathy, which sociopaths and psychopaths lack. They’re usually naturally charming and amazed at how easily they can con others—maybe they assume everyone else is lying, too.”

  “Are there over-empathic people?”

  “Sure. Too much empathy can be immobilizing, and very, very painful.” Nan leans back in her office chair. “You know, it’s nice that we can just sit and talk—by now I’d have had to move on to the next patient. They’re now monitored, diagnosed, and treated by our new AI. This is the last time you’ll have to come in.”

  “Despite what my daughter’s been telling me, these changes seem to be happening very rapidly.”

  Nan says, “Oh, I wondered why it wasn’t happening years ago. Nanotech medicine, wireless transmission of information from swallowed or implanted devices, big data, and AI have been around for a while. Television and self-driving cars were both prototyped in the nineteen twenties, but it took the right cultural and economic environment to push widespread development. Same with this.”

  “But, Nan, what will you do now?”

  “I’ve hardly had time to think of it. Well, my husband and I could go on a world tour—oh, darn, I almost forgot … the kids are still in college.”

  “But you have a doctorate, right?”

  “Yes, and after extensive consideration of that and my job experience, the AI has offered me an opportunity to oversee coding for automated forklifts at a mega-warehouse, which has been my dream for years. It seems to believe this offer will relieve them of all contractual obligations to me.”

  Her laughter is infectious; when we’re done I’m gasping for breath.

  “What kind of AI is this?”

  A small vee between her eyes. “The kind that successfully proposed a dazzling income-generating option to MedManage, which Doctor Styne signed up with a few years ago.”

  “So when I didn’t read the fine print I assented to the invasive data-gathering operation that’s taken up residence inside me.”

  She nods. “MedManage sells metadata to pharmaceutical, imaging, nanodevice, and other R&D entities. Also to the CDC, WHO, governments, and NGOs. Of course, their mission is to provide all of us with excellent health and extend our lives through statistical analysis by AIs.”

  “And fix psychopaths,” I add.

  “Right. So that humans can continue to experience joy, fear, relief, love, hate—all the wondrous emotions AIs value—and the freedom to pursue our interests, once we’re all job-free. Like they care.” Nan stands and says briskly, “Well, the Simon will do your physical therapy.”

  Mindful of my back, I give her a very careful hug. “I’ll miss you, Nan. Let’s have coffee soon, okay?”

  * * *

  As my pod zips and veers toward home, MEDA calls me. I’m exasperated, but then suppose I should be grateful it’s being polite instead of announcing decrees.

  A boy appears on the screen. He has dark, curly hair, and when he sees my face he smiles. I cannot help but smile back. “Hi! I’m Mai. What’s your name?”

  He burbles in a language I don’t know, but the screen translates: “Azul! Is my birthday party today? Ezo says she will help!”

  “How old are you?”

  “Three!”

  “Three!” I exclaim. “Who is Ezo?”

  He laughs. I catch glimpses of other children behind him, and something familiar—a white refugee tent.

  “Where are you?”

  “Balloons!”

  The connection is severed.

  “MEDA, please return my last call.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Where did it come from? Why did he call me?”

  “I don’t know.”

  By the time I’m home, I’ve spoken with three supervisors, all of whom assert that they have no record of such an event. No, they cannot trace the communication, and besides, MEDA communications are protected by law, and I am not privy to them.

  I’m quite worried about the boy.

  Vida

  It’s terribly hot here. I long for our summer house in the mountains. But it’s probably gone now, too.

  Azul is restored to health, but we argue constantly. Children complain that Azul hit or bit them. I caught him defecating under the trees and yelled, “That’s the kind of thing that made you sick!” He keeps talking about his party. It’s been two months, but he hasn’t forgotten. I should have one for him, but every day is full of turmoil. Hundreds of kids pour in daily, most even
more disturbed than us. I’m doing my best, but I can’t be mother, father, and grandmother. I’ve started a message thread with other older kids; some of them know how to deal with the little ones.

  Online, I find recommendations for Narrative Exposure Therapy. Basically it’s a process of refugee children with PTSD telling their stories. I organize a network of camp groups to encourage this.

  * * *

  “How do you feel?” I ask the circle of restless children I’ve gathered, a few afternoons later.

  “Mad!”

  “Lonely!”

  “Angry!”

  “Sad!”

  Languages mingle with tears in a shouted torrent describing how evil adults killed their families. Most other grown-ups are complicit enablers who ruined the world’s water and air, sucked riches from land they stole, and discarded people like flotsam. With difficulty, I restore one-at-a-time order.

  “Another district diverted our water,” Ilya says, her long dreads coiled in an impressive beehive. “We disputed it, but no one cared about us. Our crops failed. Our goats and chickens died. We walked for hundreds of miles and everyone died except my sister and me.”

  “We had a school in our village,” says wiry Batul. “Some NGO built it, and sent books, tablets, software, solar panels—even a teacher! Everyone came there to charge their phones and do their banking. My mother got a microloan and opened a café next to it. Then soldiers came and killed all the men. They took my mother and sisters and the older boys. They smashed the solar panels and laughed. ‘Run fast, little boy,’ one of them told me.” He lowers his head and whispers, “I should have tried to kill them. But I ran.”

  “I went to visit my aunt,” says Yenena, speaking calmly as tears run down her face. “When I got off the bus on the high road, she didn’t meet me. I walked toward her village and saw dead people. One woman sat on a chair on her porch. I looked inside a church, and people were bent over in the pews, dead. I ran back to the road.