Blue Hearts of Mars
Read Blue Hearts of Mars Online
Authors: Nicole Grotepas
by Nicole Grotepas
7: On the Subject of Procreation
Excerpt from World in Shadow (Illuminated Universe Book #1)
For my fathers, Calvin and Terry, who taught me to love science fiction.
“Awake, my son.”
A voice called to me.
“Awake.”
The voice compelled me.
Who is me? What am I, that I have thought, that I think this, now?
“Open your eyes,” the voice said.
What are eyes?
There was darkness all around. I floated. The voice came from somewhere outside me, piercing the darkness, stabbing into my heart.
What is a heart?
“I know you can hear me. Your ears are perfectly formed. I know your eyes. Open them.”
Suddenly, as though lightning bridged a chasm, the idea
open your eyes
became a catalyst, synapses fired and my world was drenched in a brightness beyond description.
I blinked. My eyes.
What are eyes?
My eyes see the face leaning toward me. Blue eyes stare at me, intent, full of something. It is the first thing I see. The first thing I’ve ever seen. Dark red eyelashes blink slowly, corners of lips pull up into a soft smile.
“Hello.”
This is the source of the voice. I stare, feeling confused. The light is bright. I don’t know where I am or what I am.
How can I know that? What is I? What is light?
“I’m your mother. You are my son. My firstborn. I made you.”
Mother?
“I made you.” The eyes are full of something. Tears. She wipes a hand across her cheek.
What is a cheek?
“I made you.” She made me. She made me.
“My firstborn. My son, Hemingway.”
He was more machine than man.
Well, he was an android. Or a blue heart, as we called them—for their hearts that were blue and so, different from human hearts.
A blue heart. No doubt about it. I mean, sometimes when I wasn’t paying attention, I caught myself staring at the tiny glowing neurons deep in his pupils. They flickered and brightened like stars out in space. Like the image of a galaxy. I felt myself drifting, sinking into his eyes.
I guess his eyes were his
tell
—the thing that made it obvious he was an android. Otherwise I wouldn’t have known. Sometimes it was hard to see
tells
. Some androids got away with being human, while others lived with the discrepancy.
I couldn’t help staring either way. When he laughed his teeth were perfect and beautiful. The fact that he was an android dissipated and there was a glow spreading out from my heart into my fingers and even into the tiny hairs on the tops of my toes. That’s how strong it was. Even my dead hair could feel it.
We were sitting in Cassini Coffee, a coffee bar, under the New Helsinki dome on Mars, where we both lived. He was telling me his earliest memory—which was of his mother feeding him a bowl of oatmeal.
“How old were you?” I asked, catching myself, but it was too late. The question was out there. He laughed and I saw just a tiny flicker of realization on his face that I’d said something weird. Androids don’t grow up, at least, not the way humans do. They’re always the same age. The only thing that grows is their mind.
“Well, it’s my earliest memory. So, you know.” He shifted on the couch awkwardly, flashing me a hesitant smile. His perfect teeth sparkled under the lights of the coffee bar. Around us other conversations buzzed, sucked up into the fans circling lazily overhead. I felt the lightest touch of his long slender fingers on my forearm. I glanced down at his fingernails. They were long and oval, and a really pleasing pink.
I wanted to swear. Loudly. But I didn’t. I just laughed, feeling a wave of giddiness sweep over me.
I couldn’t think of anything else to say. Honestly I would have been happy to just stare at him for an hour and fantasize.
Before I go any further, let me just explain that I’d never done or felt anything like this in my life. It’s forbidden.
Forbidden.
All my crushes before this were on boys. I mean, human boys. Because Hemingway was a boy, I mean a man, really, but an android. A machine. That’s what the kids at school call them. To be jerks. And sometimes I called them that too, well, really, everyone did. But you tried not to do it to their faces if you were decent. I was almost always decent except when I called them machines by accident, which I did in my head more than anything else.
“Want to go for a walk?” Hemingway asked. He was named for the classical writer who lived a couple hundred years ago and at first it was weird. But aren’t all names weird? Until they grow on you, at least.
I said sure and stood up. Before long we found ourselves near a small Hyperglass shop where they sold Links and Grams and Gates. It was sandwiched between two clothing stores. I stepped toward one of the clothing stores, the RedSand store, pulled there by the window display. It was a hologram of several girls dancing on a beach somewhere—Earth, probably—wearing some cool jeans. I stared wistfully at the hologram. The girls looked gorgeous and some naive part of me thought I’d look that good in the jeans. I worked—at the coffee bar, actually—so I’d been able to buy a RedSand jacket recently. What I really wanted now was a pair of jeans.
“You like RedSand?” Hemingway asked, standing beside me as I looked at the display.
I shrugged. “Who doesn’t?”
“Well, me, to be honest.”
My mouth dropped open. I turned to him. “What? They’re like, it. The brand. Everyone likes RedSand.”
“Yeah, I don’t really like them.”
“Why not?”
“They’re an Earth-based company and they import all their materials from factories back on Earth to make the jeans and stuff.” He turned and stared at the display.
“So? Lots of places do,” I said.
“But there are cotton fields in New Hyderabad. Why not buy from them?”
“Prices?”
He laughed and walked to the shop on the other side of the Hyperglass store. “These guys buy local,” he said loudly, to be heard from that distance, flashing me a hesitant smile. “Besides, you’d look better in these jeans.” He pointed at a pair of dark blue jeans that were interwoven with strips of thin red fibers.
“Huh,” I said, moving close to him to inspect them. “I guess I never really looked at this brand.” The store was called FreeMars. It sounded like some kind of conscientious place.
After a minute, I said, “I’m not buying anything today, anyway.”
Hemingway shrugged. “No big deal.”
We went into the Hyperglass shop and browsed through the Links and other glassware. The new styles were cool and I wished I could afford to upgrade my own Link. I glanced at it, all fitted to my forearm snugly, a good four inches long and two inches at the widest end. The fabric-LED screen was starting to look scuffed up and there were one or two sections that had gone slightly dim. My entire life was loaded onto it—I could log into my profile from anywhere and contact anyone if I wanted to have a quick video chat. The new Links came in an entirely different, exciting spectrum of colors. Mine was pink. I was tired of it. And the pink looked dirty. Plus the new Links had holo-chat. Mine didn’t.
Not that it mattered. Being able to see someone’s entire head or body didn’t make much difference. Unless you were a doctor or something and you were trying to diagnose a lump on the back of someone’s head. But how far could you trust a hologram, honestly? And anyway, you had to buy an extra part to scan your body when you wanted to do holo-chat. It was kind of a rip-off.
“You going to get a new Link?” Hemingway asked, drifting back to my side after venturing over to inspect the desktop Gate.
I shook my head. “Nah. Just looking.” The new Links came on a wider band so the screen was even bigger. Almost ridiculously bigger. Mine was kind of narrow. It would be cool to have a bigger screen, but that would involve registering the device and transferring data. And also, I couldn’t afford a new one.
But it was fun to dream.
“Do you want a new one?” I asked hesitantly, glancing up at him.
“No. I want other things. Not this,” he said.
“What do you want?”
He shrugged and smiled. “Stuff.”
What
did
androids want? I didn’t know. There weren’t too many in my life, none, really. At least not any that I recognized as such. Rumors abounded, but I didn’t catch many
tells
in the people I was around.
We left the shop and walked back to the coffee bar, talking casually about school and the mall. Other kids our age loitered around us, walking up and down the central plaza of the mall. I kept looking at them, then back at Hemingway, thinking how gorgeous he was. Did others notice?
Back in the coffee bar, I ordered drinks for us and sat down. I asked Hemingway about school and why we’d never met before. He said something non-committal and then looked away. It was weird. I almost asked him to clarify, but didn’t. Outside the coffee bar, I saw a group of kids that I knew from school migrating through the central plaza of the mall. If they saw us together, I could almost guarantee that I’d be ridiculed for being with an android. Hemingway’s
tell
was so obvious. I felt like ducking behind the table, but didn’t. Let them see me.
Hemingway glanced in the direction of the group of kids. He looked back at me and his expression went cold—the planes of his cheeks and jaw rippled. His eyes flickered down to his hands which were cupped around his frothy drink. “What’s wrong?” I asked, leaning forward.
“Nothing,” he looked out at the group of kids on the plaza, his brow knit together like the seam along the leg of my jeans. “I should be leaving.” He moved as though to get up, but my heart lurched and I found myself grabbing his arm.
I realized how desperate it appeared as I did it, and leaned casually toward him as though to make it more jokey. As if he’d fall for that. Right. “Do you really have to go?” I asked, smiling. “At least, if you do, when will I see you again?”
Over his shoulder I saw the flock of kids from school turn as though they communicated by telepathy and not voices. They were coming into the coffee bar.
Hemingway put his hand over mine.
That was it. The moment. Right then I knew that I didn’t care what was forbidden. He was an android. He looked like a human. He felt like me. I mean, not me. But he felt how I feel. Like flesh and blood. And besides, why in the world were they so human-like if we weren’t supposed to fall in love with them? Or even . . . lust after them?