2. When God is a woman

“Hilda, have you seen this growth data!?”

“I know right? These things are like something out of Geiger’s Alien. The embryo grows from the size of a cockroach to a rooster in what, like 3 hours? And then eats its way out of the host?”

“The vampiric ability is also staggering. Kind of reminds me of that video game from the early 21^st century. What was it called? Prototype or something? You could absorb people by basically cracking open their guts and then feasting on them with your weird gory tentacles.”

“Oh yeah, I remember. The pre-VR games had a kind of charm didn’t they?”

“I think maybe you’ve been here a bit too long Hilda.”

“Oh please, Kanchi. You must have seen worse in medical school?”

“Medical school no, but on Paradiso, yes”.

“Have you seen this thing in action?”

“Only the after-effects. Part of the reason we started using peacemakers for reconnaissance was so that they could burn away the corpses without potentially providing biomass to any lingering life form. Took us a while to get there though, and a few hundred shrivelled up corpses.”

“Yuck.”

“Yeah, this stuff in here is not like what you see on the battlefield.”

“Do you ever miss Paradiso?”

“Ha! No. Working on the frontlines was really meaningful but leaving Paolo was the best decision I ever made.”

“Oh right, your husband.”

“Yep, the old ball and chain.”

“I’ve got to say, having a husband in this day and age is pretty random.”

“#oh my god, that is like, so random!”

“Yeah pretty much.”

“Look I dunno, I was, no am, a romantic. That’s probably why I’m so susceptible to Stafano’s synthetic charms. Paolo was seductive when we first met, you know? I swear he could flatter his way into the Hexahedron. And handsome. And ambitious. And you know, ambitious in that tidal way, where you can just feel the energy, feel that he’s going places and you want to be swept up and carried along with him.”

“And so what happened? He cheated on you.”

“It was worse than that really, but I say it with irony now…”

“Huh?”

“Paolo insisted on a ‘real woman’. He wanted to walk into the corporate soirees on Neoterra with someone on his arm he could flaunt. Someone who was beautiful yes, but also conversational, interesting, and a force in her own right. Someone with the same gravitas as himself”

“I’m going to let all this big-noting slide so you can finish the story…”

“Yes haha, so I was perfect initially, but as we got a bit older and our careers took off, I resented how much time it took for me to look, and I stress look, the way he wanted me to look. Shave everywhere, do your make-up, brush your hair, go for fittings at House of Grace Chen, work out all the time…”

“He didn’t reciprocate?”

“Oh, he did. Paolo always looked the part. But it took him a fraction of the time to do so. 2 minutes with the clippers in the morning, not an hour in the shower. His tailor got his measurements once and he could dial in Kurtas by the dozen. And everything about what was expected of him was practical, you know. Short hair, flat shoes etc. etc. Meanwhile I’m here teetering on heels and worrying that my ass is about to fall out of my dress. I liked being able to command a room just by entering it, but I couldn’t be bothered with the effort in the end, especially when I really just wanted to be in the lab all the time.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, first I just stopped doing all the maintenance, in large part on feminist grounds. I mean, why the hell do women shave their legs? No woman has ever been born without hair on her legs! I wore my hair short, pants, flats. Still stylish of course, just practical. Paolo didn’t like it. He couldn’t flaunt me like he used to. We were arriving at parties like business partners rather than lovers.”

“And then?”

“And then he started looking around, and his eyes opened to what was going on in the world of unreal women. Paolo had always been too busy and too proud for synthetics and VR. A real man gets a real woman, he always said. Holidays on Bakunin were for degenerates. But as I changed, so too did this attitude.”

“Sounds like a bit of game theory to me.”

“Ok, now it’s my turn to say ‘huh?’”

“Sounds like the bargaining dynamics started to shift as you made the trade-offs more stark. When you guys first got together, he lost very little as a result of his preference for real women. You were only a smidge different to the synthetics in terms of their advantages, and you had some critical things they did not. The only way the synthetic chicks could get an edge over you was by looking unreal, and Paolo wasn’t so into that. But once you started to look well, I guess, realistic, well now the synthetics had an edge all of a sudden. They were hairless, acquiescent, dancing on heels, all that. So now there was a stark trade-off facing your man: he could have a real woman complete with her ego boundaries, or he could have his Galatea.”

“Well, that is an interesting perspective, because I think we only split when my trade-offs changed as well.”

“Do you mean working here?”

“Yes. But let me explain.”

“One glance at Stefano is all the convincing I need.”

“Haha, yes he is delightful, but there’s a bit more to it.”

“Okay fine, go ahead.”

“Well, Paolo and I always wanted kids”

“Oh my god you are so last century!”

“Oh, come on! You don’t think there is something primordial about reproduction? It’s a yearning that most of us can’t escape. It’s one of the things that defines us as humans.”

“Yeah I’ve seen Bladerunner. But I also remember what the prophet Nietzsche said: ‘Physiologists should think twice before positioning the drive for self-preservation as the cardinal drive of an organic being. Above all, a living thing wants to discharge its strength—life itself is will to power: self-preservation is only one of the indirect and most infrequent consequences of this’. We have so many ways to discharge our strength nowadays. So many ways to affirm our will to power. Why would we choose reproduction?”

“What if reproduction gives you meaning? Children aren’t just some existential yoke around your neck.”

“I guess, but then I’d certainly be looking at using a surrogate or an artificial womb, and nannies. The Japanese may have fallen to second class citizens among the Yu Jing, but they’re still crushing it in the synthetic carer market. I can accept that a child is more complicated than a dementia patient, but not much more complicated.”

“Right! So that is exactly what I was getting towards. Just as Paolo started looking at artificial women I started looking at, well, artificial dads. Paolo wanted kids, but he wasn’t so keen to limit his political ambitions to raise the tikes. I had internalised that and fully expected to take some time-out from my career at some stage. Then I realised that I didn’t need to cut my career short much at all with the kinds of technologies we have nowadays. And I didn’t even really need Paolo, much as I thought having a genuine dad around would be beneficial. I’m not so keen on surrogate wet-nurses, but I found that you could get excellent and cheap male nannies among the Ariadnan’s trying to explore the galaxy, and even the Ateks on paradiso…”

“An Ariadnan nanny?! Do they drop the kid on its head to build character? Or maybe read it their version of little red riding hood, where the big bad wolf is an ample angry antipode who gets his head kicked in by Roger Van Zant the heroic woodsman, parachuting in through the ceiling?”

“Don’t be racist Hilda.”

“Ha!”

“Seriously though, I think it’s healthy for kids to be raised with a bit of pressure you know, and the Ariadnans value a kind of natural upbringing for kids, where they run around among the gardens and play sports instead of just sitting in VR all day.”

“Look I wouldn’t know or care; I haven’t thought of having kids for more than a minute in my life.”

“Right, you’re too busy being an ubermensch.”

“No, I leave that to Siegfried haha. Speaking of which, I might just ask him to get dinner started. Give me a moment.”

“These Asuras are fabulous, aren’t they?”

“Yes, quite unbelievable. Anyway, you were saying something about game theory?”

“Yes, yes, economics is the superior science, I get it. What I was saying is that once I realised that I didn’t need Paolo for much of what I thought I needed him for, my calculus about my life changed. Both of us needed each other for partnership, friendship and intimacy, but we also wanted other things. Once our partner was unwilling to give us those other things, they didn’t quite seem to be the worth the investment anymore, so we drifted.”

“And you found your way here?”

“Yes, it was quite fortuitous really. I sometimes wonder if some big data algorithm plucked me from the aether. I was spending my quite hours browsing Maya looking for anything that might give me scientific access to the Aliens that were assaulting Paradiso, and random stuff about pregnancy, and the occasional piece of romantic fiction. And then all of a sudden out of thin air comes this job, complete with everything I could possible want, even Stefano, all meticulously designed.”

“Well, we are working for Bureau Toth.”

“Yes, the AI God-head sees all and manifests the good or some such garbage, wasn’t that what those weirdos in Silicon Valley thought?”

“Indeed. Mommy Aleph will take care of us all.”

“Mommy?”

“Look around you! God has had a sex change!”