Free Sample

Leaving a piece of yourself behind can lead to unexpected results.

Photo by Ayla Meinberg on Unsplash

Danny Smith’s phone chirped. He checked the message. The DNA-tracing service he belonged to said, “New relative discovered!”

Not an unusual event. One of his cousins was working back through the family tree. Had even managed to connect them to some medieval British nobles. Had he finally managed to find out what side they were on the Wars of the Roses?

Clicking the link gave him a shock. The new relative was ‘Veronica Smith, daughter of Daniel Smith.’ The birth date was three days ago.

There were other Daniels in the family tree, but the site claimed this kid was his daughter.

What the hell? Danny was single. He hadn’t even had a girlfriend in the past year. He never did one night stands. All of his exes were in touch on social media and none had been pregnant.

Who was this kid? Where was she? The mother was listed as ‘PERSON NOT IN DATABASE.’ Not that rare. Lots of people today tried to hide their DNA, so the service would take their profile down if someone asked.

It took two days of wrestling with the county vital statistics database to find his daughter’s address. It was in one of the big new office parks west of downtown. The six story building belonged to ‘RPTP Inc.’ Searching on that found press releases about new developments in robotics and fertility research. There was no way to contact a person who worked there.

Danny took the next day off work and went over to the RPTP building. The front door was marked with the acronym. He went in.

The lobby was appointed with fine art and plush chairs for the comfort of anyone waiting. No one was. The receptionist was dressed for a high society cocktail party. The security guard in the corner of the lobby didn’t pay any attention to Danny. He looked like he’d just finished a twenty year career in special operations.

Danny advanced to the receptionist’s desk. “I’m here to see Veronica Smith.”

“And you are, sir?”

“Daniel Smith. I’m her father.”

“I see. One moment. I’ll call a manager to talk to you.” This was accompanied by a dazzling smile implying this was a rare favor being bestowed on him. The receptionist typed for about a paragraph, then folded her hands and waited.

In a minute, the double doors behind the desk opened to reveal the manager. RPTP Inc. must have sent to Hollywood for ‘Father figure, mentor, just old enough to have his first grandchild’ and Hollywood delivered. The man looked so trustworthy Danny felt his suspicions about this place double.

“Ted Stanfield. I’m sure you have many questions.” The man’s handshake was firm and dry. “Let’s go back to my office and I’ll answer them all.”

Danny followed Stanfield through the double doors. “I want to see my daughter.”

“You will. But we should make sure you understand everything first.”

The office was as high quality as the rest of RPTP’s facilities. Firmly padded guest chair. A bookcase implying Stanfield had majored in genetics. Family picture with adult children and, yes, one grandchild.

When they were seated, Stanfield said, “Where would you like to begin?”

Danny didn’t know. He had so many questions. He settled on, “Who is Veronica’s mother?”

A sad expression flicked across the manager’s face. “I’m sorry, I can’t tell you that. It’s confidential. I can tell you Veronica was conceived and gestated in vitro. The mother was a cell donor like yourself.”

“I never made a sperm donation!”

“I’m afraid you did, sir.”

“Bullshit.”

The man sighed. “If you will allow me . . .” He reached for his mouse, made a few clicks, then turned his monitor around so Danny could see it.

The video showed Danny sitting a bar, staring into his beer. The viewpoint was from the eye level of someone taking the barstool next to his. “Hi,” said a honey-sweet female voice. It brought back memories.

Video-Danny turned to face the speaker. His eyes widened. “Well, hi.”

“Do you think I’m human?”

He looked up and down. “Yes, very.”

A feminine giggle. “I’m not. I’m a bot.”

“You’re very convincing.”

“Thank you. We’re the very latest model, the Phryne 2000. Want to see how I feel?”

She held out her hand. Video-Danny squeezed it with both of his. “You feel entirely human.”

“I’m glad you think so. We’re entering the sexbot market. We’re not certified for sale yet. Would you like to be a beta tester?”

“Stop!” shouted Danny. His face felt hot. Watching the goofy look on his face as he accepted the sexbot’s proposition made him cringe. “That’s an illegal recording.”

“In fact, it is mandatory that humanoid bots record all their interactions with humans. I believe that establishes you gave a donation of your own free will. We have no intention of asking you for child support, if that’s your concern.”

Danny didn’t care about the money, he had more than he needed. It was the theft. Violation. Whatever it should be called. He gritted his teeth. “I left the sperm. That didn’t give you the right to keep it.”

“There were cleaning supplies in the room. You could have disposed of everything. Instead you abandoned it. Which left all those cells legally available to be picked up by anyone who wanted them.”

Danny wanted to dispute that, but Stanfield was too confident. They’d probably run their scheme past good lawyers. “Where are you getting the eggs? Girls aren’t dropping them everywhere.”

“No, that’s harder. We take skin cells left on the sex bot, force them to stem cells, then make them become oocytes. A few more steps and we have an ovum, though we have to filter out the ones with Y-chromosomes.”

“Wait, you’re taking men’s cells to make eggs from?”

“Yes.” Stanfield said gently, “It takes longer, so it’ll be another month or two until you receive an announcement of your child through that line.”

“You’re not just making me a father, you’re making me a mother?”

“Socially, no, genetically, yes. Legally, it’s complicated.”

“Oh, God.”

The manager sat quietly as Danny worked through the emotional shock.

“How are you taking care of them?” Danny visualized an overworked staff of nurses, now about to have another Smith baby thrust on them.

“Each child has a dedicated nannybot caring for them full time.”

“I have to worry about how well a bot can care for a baby. There was a case in school about monkeys who had a wire mother with milk and a cloth mother it could just cuddle, and they preferred the cloth mothers.”

Stanfield raised an eyebrow. “Your vision of a nannybot is obsolete. These are developed with the same technology as the Phryne 2000s. I assure you the babies are just as satisfied cuddling their caretakers as you were—well, never mind.”

Danny thought back to his session with the sexbot. Yes, it probably could cuddle a baby just fine. The breasts were as real as he could tell. Engineering them to produce milk would be hardly any effort compared to what RPTP had already done.

“May I see her?”

“Certainly. It’s going to be a bit of a walk, though.”

Stanfield wasn’t lying. The building took up most of a city block and they followed a winding path through it. Danny realized he was hopelessly lost after a few minutes.

Part of the path went past windows into rooms with banks of uterine replicators. He realized each one must have a baby growing in it. He boggled at the scale of the operation. If RPTP was keeping those replicators in continuous use they’d be producing thousands of babies every year.

More of the building held little rooms with a nannybot and a crib for a solitary baby. Every dozen of those had some support rooms, for storage and cooking and such. A more complicated room held an actual human reading a book. “On call paramedic,” explained Stanfield.

Veronica’s room wasn’t on the main corridor. They had to go through some twists and turns to reach it. Danny looked in the window.

A nannybot with the same face as the sexbot was nursing the infant. He stood there watching, he didn’t know for how long, until Veronica fell asleep at the nipple. The nannybot gently laid her in the crib and drew a sheet over her.

Danny felt his heart swell as he watched her. It was like there’d been a piece of his life he’d been missing. He had an overwhelming desire to care for and protect Veronica for the rest of his life.

“I want custody of her.” He said it before realizing he’d spoken out loud.

“Are you sure?” asked Stanfield.

“Yes.”

“Have you ever changed a diaper?”

“Does that matter?”

“I think it does. More importantly, I bet the judge overseeing a custody suit would think it does.”

“Well, I have. My sister has a boy. I changed a diaper the last time I visited.”

“It’s a heck of a leap from changing one diaper to being responsible for every change. Don’t you have a full time job?”

“Yes.”

“What are you going to do if you get custody of her, quit your job and live off basic? Is that the kind of life you want for her?”

Danny contemplated that, then asked the question, even knowing it was weakening his case. “Would you sell me the nannybot to take care of her?”

“We don’t sell them. We’re barely making enough to keep up with the babies. There’s empty uterine replicators because we’re not sure we’ll have enough nannies.”

He turned back to the window and watched Veronica again, the love and care now mixed with disappointment and frustration.

Stanfield put a hand on his shoulder. “I understand how you’re feeling. We’ve thought about this. If you were married, had a kid between you, we’d consider letting you bring Veronica into your home. If you get married and have a kid in the future and you want to have Veronica join your family, that’s an option, too.”

Danny just snorted. “Dating is ridiculously hard these days. You think a woman would marry me when I have a couple of kids in a corporate orphanage?”

“Some might think that’s a good point,” but Stanfield didn’t even sound like he’d convinced himself.

“What are you going to do when she learns to walk?”

The manager grimaced. “We have a bunch of people preparing that. Another building is under construction in this office park to hold the toddlers. We’re trying to figure out if we need to stay at a one to one kid nannybot ratio or if they can handle more. That’s what I was working on when you arrived.”

Danny nodded, then turned to Stanfield. “Why are you doing this, anyway? There can’t be any way you’ll make a profit from these kids. Not a legal one.”

“We’re a charity. Several trillionaires are funding it. As for why . . . you mentioned your nephew. Do any of your friends have nieces or nephews?”

“No. Not many have siblings.”

“Any of them have kids?”

“Not unless your sexbots collected samples from them.”

“That’s the reason, Danny. Nobody’s having kids these days. So we’re making kids, to ensure there’s going to be another generation.”

Danny stood in the hallway and turned about, visualizing everything he’d seen in the building. “You’ve got a huge operation here. And it’s going to have to get bigger, just to take care of the kids you already have. But compared to the whole population, it’s a drop in the bucket.”

Stanfield shrugged. “We have to start somewhere.”

More stories by Karl K. Gallagher are on Amazon and Audible.