The following story is the second of three parts, which began here. In a post Earth colony where the sky remains a constant, unchanging blue due to the manipulations of the Sky Corporation, Percy struggles with loneliness and the grief of losing a child. Percy's husband, Sean, suggests blackcoding their Sky Corporation housekeeper robot (a Skybo) to provide her companionship when Sean works back on Earth in the mines. Percy hesitates, unsure. Yet after the Skybo is blackcoded (blackcoding is running illegal code to change the operating system - illegal, but often done.). A companionship - and a sexual relationship - develops between Percy and the Skybo, now known as 'Amy'. As their bond deepens, Percy grapples with conflicting emotions while anticipating Sean's return. The story explores themes of love, identity, and the blurred lines between human and artificial intelligence. The second part begins some seventeen years later, as her adopted teenage son tells her he is leaving to join a resistance against the Sky Corporation and the AI robots that now almost wholly run the Colony.
Blue Skies [Part 2]
'You don't even see it, do you?' Ethan was screaming at her. 'She's not real'.
'She's your mother, too.' Percy choked. 'Don't you remember?'.
She thought of Amy bringing the new baby home, like a puppy at Christmas. His tiny dark hands quivered and reached for the Skybo's face and gurgled happily. Sean had been gone for two years, working full time in the Earth mines and refusing to answer her Skycalls. In the end, she let him go and had not seen nor heard from him in years. Instead, she had the Skybo in Therapy Mode - better than a husband, better than any of the human psychs. When Amy suggested they adopt, it seemed the best decision she - they - could make.
More and more people were turning to the robots for emotional support than they did in the first migrations to the colonies. There was more trust between human and machine because the new colonies necessitated it - the Colonies wouldn't even exist without the Sky Company and their artificial intelligence bots. They made life easier. Anyone that remembered the last twenty years on Earth were grateful for easier.
'You were happy before the Resistance got to you. How could you be so brainwashed? Don't you remember how much you loved - love - her?'
How could she possibly make Ethan understand that Amy was a better parent than he could ever have hoped for? How could she make him remember the sweetness of his childhood? What had the Resistance fed him over the last year via hacking his personal Skyscreen? They had infiltrated so many of the Colony's young, both here on the first post Earth settlement and on many others. The Corporation was working to eradicate them and Percy worried what that might mean for her beautiful boy.
Everyone had a photo wall in their apartments, with live and historical video feeds courtesy of the Sky Corporation, and dynamic photographs of family on rotation. Image by me and Midjourney
'Mum.' he said quietly. 'I don't know what I'm meant to remember. You know half of what I remember is fed to me, right? You know most of this never happened?' He swept his hand to the Sky Wall beside the kitchen, where the wall was marked with Ethan's height from when he was a toddler to a teen. Apart from this growth chart, the wall was a live, dynamic one, showing various screens - silent news reels, live feeds from various Colonys such as the Sky Zoo on Colony 2 where the last giraffes langurously loped, and animated photos: Ethan at the park, Ethan's first steps in the foyer of the Sky Station, the school for pilots that inevitably Ethan went to. Ethan had always loved flying.
Percy scoffed. 'Of course it did. I remember your first steps! You toddled to me on the ferry to Chinatown on Chinese New Year. How you found your balance on that boat, I do not know.'. She stopped, put her hands to her mouth. On the wall, the photo of Ethan's first steps at the Sky Station changed to Ethan toddling on the ferry. She couldn't recall seeing that photograph before.
Ethan in his flying suit: Me and Midjourney.
'I don't think I ever liked flying, Mum.' He looked sad as he fiddled with the button on the pocket of his jacket. She worried it would come loose, although this small concern was immediately replaced by the thought of losing him. 'I think it made me like flying. I think it makes us like what it wants us to like. I think it's dangerous.'
Percy's head hurt. She thought of Amy in Ethan's room on his sixth birthday, painting a mural of the skies around the colony, the various moons and planets, the Sky Flyers with their uniforms and angular ships ferrying passengers and cargo between the colonies. 'He'll love flying for the Corp', she had set, tucking the boy in tightly. 'You'll see'.
The mural in Ethan's bedroom - Image by me and Midjourney
She thought of Amy encouraging her to join the Sky Legal team after a long absence from law and the years spent fighting for the Skybos to have recognition as living beings, like whales or polar bears or dragonflies. 'When we are free', Amy said 'our love will be free'. The more rights the Skybos had, the more of them there were - they could no longer be incinerated, or coded against their will. They ran the code, and life was good. Better. The Skybos were free to improve the lives at the Colonies in the best interests of humanity. It had been a good ten years. Secure. How lucky they had been. Percy felt proud to be part of that. Didn't she?
'Ethan, you don't remember the last of the good Earth days, baby.' It was hard to believe what he was saying. They had more freedom here than they ever had. There was no hunger, no poverty. The air was clean. Everyone was provided for.
'I do. I've been told about them forever.' On the wall history-feeds of Earth burning buzzed and shimmered, as if to prove a point. A landscape of dead elephants. Whales washed up on beaches. The long lines of starving humanity hoping for admittance to the ships that would take them to the AI built colonies. The last hope. 'But I'd rather true freedom. I want to be free to think. To decide my own life. To be part of a movemet that returns humanity to itself, not a humanity the Corp. wants us to be, to suit itself.'
'I can't leave her.' She felt horrified. How could she possibly be in a position where she must choose between Amy and Ethan? She loved them both. But she saw clearly now that his path was not hers. Like Sean, he would leave the Colony and not return, and she would mourn him for a time, but have the reassurance and love that only a Skybo like Amy could bring.
'I know.' he said tenderly. 'But one day you'll see. And hopefully, if we succeed, you'll be forced to leave her. And then you'll be free.'
For many years afterwards, Percy would strain to see beyond the blue sky of the dome, wishing she knew where her son was, and if he was happy. The wall played photos of him as a child, and she touch them and smile, but sometimes she wondered if he had been real at all. She did not tell Amy this.
Somehow she knew, even then, that it might be dangerous to tell the Skybos such things.
Part 3 continues tomorrow.
With Love,
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