Indebted

by Kalie Night

If I could give you one piece of advice, it would be this: never become indebted to a mortal.

I met her on a dinner cruise. Alexia was one of the servers on the ship at one of those “family” reunions our kind never enjoy but never miss, back when we foolishly held them out on the San Francisco Bay. She wore her make up thick and her smile thin, her hair long and her skirt short, her laughter loud and her words soft. I couldn’t keep my photoreceptors off of her.

She was so enthusiastic and easy going that now I marvel I ever mistook her for a maton. I was comfortable enough with her that she assumed I was a human. Maybe we wouldn’t have spent the evening at each other’s sides if we had known. Maybe we still would have. Some humans can always tell the difference between human and maton, but they tend to be the unpleasant sort.

We stood arm in arm up on the top deck looking out over the waves at the blurring skyscrapers lining the smoggy horizon. “You want to get out of here?” she asked me.

I’d made my appearance, so I couldn’t see the harm in it, but we were miles from shore. “How?”

“Let’s take a lifeboat.” She squeezed my hand. “There’s one with a high speed motor.”

“What about your job?”

She grinned. “I’ve been meaning to quit.”

We stowed away on the metal lifeboat, she in her dress flats and I in my best tie, my hand on the black stick that steered the motor. We were barely a hundred feet away from the cruise ship when the missiles hit.

Those cursed five minutes are a blur to me now. What I know is that the explosions took out everything: the shields, the flotation insurance, the safety net fields, most of the lifeboats. A few mata as well, though most of them flew into the water. The memory has haunted me for the past fifty years: the running, the screaming, the fire, the last few mata clinging to burning pieces of driftwood before their weight pulled the ashes under the surface.

The curse of our design: the density of our species. Every one of them sank like rocks..

Humans say love is more powerful than fear. Don’t believe it for a minute. There are cases, stories, where love overpowers fear, but they are rare enough to surprise us, the exception that proves the rule. And that night wasn’t an exception. No one went to save the mata. Our lifeboat could have saved a few of them, but in the terror of the moment, I froze.

No programming could have prepared me for this, and my chips were not created to analyze or make decisions in the face of such trauma, such conflict. It is our great psychological weakness that the deepest programming we have for dealing with one another is our debt rituals. Fittingly, it is to debt I reverted that night.

“Ma’am,” I said to Alexia when all was silent and when I finally caught my breath, “I believe you have saved my life.”

She didn’t reply, so I pulled my gaze away from the wreckage. She’d pulled her knees into her chest, tracks of mascara lined her cheeks, and she was rocking, shaking.

I placed one hand on her shoulder and one on my temple, opening the colorful holographic main menu in my vision. The word “Debt” was already center screen, a blinking white circle hovering in midair.

Taking a deep breath, I reached out and touched the hologram, and the synthetic organic material covering my left wrist began to bunch in some places and thin in others, the skin opening, exposing the wiring underneath. Excruciating pain brought tears to my eyes, but there was no other way.

She gasped and jerked away from me, her eyes transfixed on my wrist. “You’re a maton!”

Looking back, I am lost as to why this stinging remark didn’t alert me to her humanity. Perhaps it was the shock. I proceeded as though she were one of us.

“Alexia, you saved my life.” I knelt down in a little puddle on the floor of the lifeboat before her, head lowered, eyes at her feet. “I must recite the debt conditions. You must reply to each with ‘I accept.’ Do you understand?”

“I—I don’t—”

“Do you understand?”

“Y-yes.”

I began the recitation, lowering my head still further. “If not for your mercy, I would have no breath in my lungs. And so to your mercy do I release my autonomy. I am yours to command. Please accept my voluntary servitude in recompense for your altruism.” I reached into the gaping wound with my fingers and pulled a loose wire from my wrist, gasping in pain.

“Servitude to me?” Alexia’s voice shook. “The whole ship just went down, all those people—”

“Do you accept?” I couldn’t stop the ritual once it had begun, and I could barely keep a grip on the wire against the shaking in my hands.

“Fine! I accept!”

I pried a second loose wire from my forearm, clenching my teeth. “Your request is my law. Your orders outrank those of all others. I cannot deceive you or withhold information from you. I cannot, by your mere request, harm a human or subject myself to destruction, but the value of your safety surpasses my own and any number of others in sum. Do you accept?”

“Noah—”

“Please.” The pain quickened my heartrate, and blood dripped down my wrist.

“I accept,” she choked out.

I connected the two loose wires, and they retreated into my wrist. Last recitation. My skin was already beginning to reseal itself, cool relief following the path of the restitching. “And in the event of your demise, dismemberment, or voluntary release of consciousness, you release me from this debt, returning my freedom.”

“No!”

“What?” My skin resealed itself, but a deep burning kindled in wires far below the surface.

“Noah, do you even care about what just happened to those people?”

“We—we’re not programmed to . . .” It seemed she knew nothing about our history, our culture. I had never encountered such a personality chip in my life.

“You mata are sick!”

Chemicals and current coursed in tandem through my limbs, and I rose to my feet. I should have realized sooner. “You’re a human.”

Tears beaded on her eyelashes as she loosened her grip on her knees, staring up at my eyes. “You thought I was a maton?”

I couldn’t speak. I was indebted to a human. I had never heard of a maton refusing to perform the debt ritual, but to my knowledge, no maton had ever become indebted to a mortal. No mortal had ever bothered saving one of us.

“What’s going to happen to the mata under the water?”

My head lowered, and my voice quivered like a human’s. “The—their flesh will be destroyed by the pressure, then the water will dissolve it. They’ll be irreparable within the hour.”

A tear rolled down her cheek. “But they won’t die.”

“It would take a lot more than water to destroy their chips.”

“So they’ll feel their flesh rotting? For all eternity?”

My forearm burned. “Please, the release condition.”

“Can’t they get a—a voluntary . . .”

“Voluntary release of consciousness?” I shook my head. “Another maton has to connect to them directly for a VRC, which means they’d have to go down there, remove their own life support equipment, and perform the release. They’d be trapped down there, too.”

“Why can’t the VRC be done remotely?”

“The VRC can be installed with a delay, but not from a distance. Trevor Waters’s brilliant design.” Sparks tingled in my fingertips at the mention of the robotics engineer’s name. “No maton is going to go down there.”

Her eyes pierced mine. “Then you do it. Release them!”

The order triggered nearly-irresistible electrical signals, but death-fearing adrenaline silenced them. “I can—and must—destroy myself if it is required for your safety, but I cannot for another. My debt is to you, not to them.”

“Can I transfer the debt?”

I breathed in to lie—and short circuited. The truth spilled against my will: “You can ask for the debt to be transferred in the event of your death.” I gasped and regained my speech. “But please, Alexia, I’m begging you. Accept the release condition!”

“No.” Venom dripped from her gaze. “I do not release you. When I die, your debt is passed to the mata under the water. You’ll repay your debt by releasing them.”

I felt a soft, warm click beneath the synthetic skin in my forearm, and what felt like a cold hand around my flesh-and-blood heart. The bond was permanent. She wouldn’t last long—maybe another fifty or sixty years, if I was lucky—and then I would be enslaved.

Bound to return to these cursed waters, to attempt and fail a rescue that would leave me in the same place: alive, unbreathing, and burning with the short circuiting that arises from an unfulfilled debt. Alive and conscious and screaming, until the sun expanded enough to boil the oceans and vaporize the Earth, destroying our chips at last, freeing us all from our watery hell.

* * *

You’re young enough that you might not know it, but humans have chemical pathways and neurochemicals incentivizing altruism, charity, sacrifice, even love. They crave it and despise anyone who lacks it.

If you have wondered why they fear our kind, that is why. Humans wrote great detail into the way mata should relate to mortals, but their programming was tacit on our relationships with each other. Now they condemn us on the weakness of our sympathy in contrast with theirs. They worship the way they were programmed and blame mata for the way they programmed us.

Most mata don’t like talking about the history, but you should know that the debt rituals are our creation. They are our feeble attempts to patch in for the gaps in our moral codes, and the system is sloppy at best. Core directive rewiring requires working under the skin, and human anesthetics are not usually wasted on our kind.

Likewise, no human submersible would be subjected to great depths for the sake of comforting mata’s pain. Like you, I felt some sympathy for the eternally drowning mata. But like you, I was helpless to act.

On the night of the explosions, once our lifeboat reached shore, Alexia and I parted ways. Such scorn radiated from her whole being that I doubted whether she would ever call me for any favors until the day she died.

It took two days.

I received Alexia’s call at a craft show where my floral arrangements were selling even more poorly than usual. She called from prison. Human law enforcement hadn’t bothered to pick up the tab on an underwater rescue, but they had picked up the case of finding the bomber. She was the prime suspect, but she couldn’t have been guilty, because she was with me all evening. She asked me to testify, and I had to.

I had to drive out to Stockton for the trial. At the time, the word of mata wasn’t admissible as evidence in a human court of law. Under the circumstances, and since I lived in Silicon Valley—mata central at the time, the restriction was temporarily lifted.

They allowed Alexia and I to meet in a windowless visiting room with an officer standing guard beside the barred doors. Her wrist was handcuffed to the metal table. “I’m surprised you’re being charged for attacking mata,” I told her.

“I’m not.” Her face was gaunt and pale, the flickering fluorescent lights doing no favors for the deep bags under her eyes. “I’m being charged for vandalism and possession of illegal explosives.”

“What do you need me to say?”

She slid a yellow file folder over to me. “These are the case details they’ve released to me. It’s not much.”

I opened the folder, but I made it no further than the name at the top before the internal conflict in my chips redoubled. “Alexia Waters?” I cried. “As in Waters Industries?”

Her jaw pulsed, and she kept her eyes on her hands. “Trevor Waters was my father.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Was?”

“He disowned me for refusing to use a derogatory term for your people.”

I didn’t have to ask, but I couldn’t help it. “What term?”

She stammered, “Robot.”

I flinched. I hadn’t thought she would say it aloud.

“Look.” She put her hand on my wrist. “He cut me off. He’s not a part of my life anymore. I don’t want to talk about him, and I don’t think you do, either. I just need your testimony to confirm my alibi. Will you help me or not?”

“If I do, will you accept the release condition?”

She winced. “Just help me out of this.”

The words I spoke were not my own: “Your request is my law.”

The trial was held later that week. I did not mention the debt in my testimony. It was brief and to the point, and I answered their questions honestly. She was released the next day. She did not thank me, and I did not need her to. I didn’t think I would hear from her again.

I was wrong.

* * *

Trevor Waters has been dead for years now, but the good and harm he did for our kind will never die. How could the same man who perfected artificial intelligence to the point of giving mata self awareness and consciousness be the key anti-mata rights spokesperson for the entire world? Could he really not know, or did he not care?

My irrational desire to take out her father’s sins on Alexia ran in opposition to the debt. My forearm itched night and day, too much current always flooding the rewiring. I tried not to think about her. And some days, I succeeded.

When I didn’t hear from her for a year, the debt circuitry kicked in and alerted me. I had no choice: I called her to check in, to ensure she did not require my services and to renew my vows. My call only bewildered her. I tried to explain why I was calling, and she hung up mid-sentence.

A year later, I called again. At first she seemed happy to hear from me, but her words slurred and there was so much noise in the background I couldn’t make out most of her words, then her voice cut out. I heard nothing more from her.

However, I received a call from her a few months later. Her voice was strained, and she kept having to stop to take deep breaths. “I’m in the hospital.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, because I had to. “What happened?”

“Car accident,” she wheezed. “But I can’t afford to be here. I don’t know what to do, Noah.”

“Can I help you?” This time, I felt genuine sympathy. She wouldn’t have called me if she weren’t desperate.

“I’m not doing so well. I—” she struggled for breath— “need a lot of . . . medical help. Help me.”

“Your request is my law,” I said, then I asked to talk to her doctor. Her doctor—a human—said things weren’t looking good for her. Three broken ribs, a fractured leg, a punctured lung, and scrapes and bruises all over.

A few mata have overcome powerful political and personal opposition to enter the medical field. As for myself, I don’t think I could have so much as administered a vaccine. Isn’t it odd that no matter how much we tell ourselves it’s for the human’s ultimate good, we can’t see past that initial harm—harm we can’t inflict because it’s against every line of our programming? Then again, it’s not easy for humans, either.

I could tell Alexia was implying that she wanted me to help her medically, falling under that odd and unfounded misconception that just because mata have comprehensive neural databases, we’re all medical experts. I opted instead to pay her medical expenses and give her a ride back home once the treatments were complete and she was released.

I was helping her into bed at her apartment when she looked up at me. “What’s your name?”

Clearly, the drugs were taking their toll on her mind. “Noah.”

“No, I mean your full name.”

I hesitated. When I had learned her full name, it had come as a shock to me—I took a deep breath before telling her mine. “Noah 8-2633-10.”

Her eyes widened. “2633. I’ve heard that family code in the news.”

I nodded, pressing my lips together.

“Didn’t a maton with that code get killed or something?”

Every chip dismantled from its casing, every bit of synthetic flesh removed and melted, every wire snipped, every bone powderized. I never wanted to talk about it. “He was my father. I administered the VRC myself.”

She placed her hand on mine as her head settled into her pillow. “Noah, I am so sorry. You must miss him.”

I shrugged. “He released me from debt in the event of his demise.”

“Still.”

I swallowed against the tightness in my throat, shifting so her hand fell away from my arm. “Usually people who hear my name aren’t focused on the family code.”

Her brow furrowed. “Well, you are very new. The last digits are your age, right? It’s been four years since I met you, and you were only born—made—what, six years before that?”

“Most humans are more worried about the generation number.”

She shook her head. “I don’t care about that.”

“That’s a first.” It was more than astonishing, coming from Trevor Waters’s daughter.

“Humans don’t keep track of our generation numbers,” she said. “And our . . . ‘programming’ . . . is a lot more messed up than yours.”

“No, just a lot less rigid,” I said. But it wasn’t worth debating. I could already see her drifting off to sleep.

During her recovery, I checked back in on her every few hours, then once a day, then every couple of days, then not at all.

Not once could I bring myself to ask her about the release condition. If it angered her, she might not call again, and then I might not be able to ask again.

* * *

That first digit of my last name was the reason why it took me so long to get promoted at work, so many years to get elected into office, so much effort to make friends. A zero-generation maton is built and programmed by humans, and a first generation maton, by a factory-programmed maton. With each generation removed, the fear of core directive pollution grew stronger. Eighth generation is enough to make a maton antsy, let alone a human.

You, as a ninth generation maton, would face even worse discrimination than I did, if it weren’t for the work of a few activists between then and now.

After the hospital incident, Alexia called me up from time to time, and each time, I tried to keep her on the phone for as long as possible. I had realized by now that I was playing the long game for my life—that my release was something I had to earn.

The first time she called, it was strictly business, letting me know she was changing addresses, though we chatted for a bit. The next, she was crying hysterically, I think over a breakup, though it was hard to make out most of what she was saying through the sobs, even after I brought her ice cream and tissues.

But even after that, she called me every month or so just to talk. Sometimes she even asked about me, so I told her about my floral arrangements, my dead-end government office job, my pipe dream of running for city council (“You should!” she cried in delight, in what must have been a moment of record-breaking naivete).

One evening, she asked me to meet her at a park near her apartment complex. “Is everything alright?” I asked her.

“Everything is fine,” she said. “Just . . . come meet me.”

I would have even if I didn’t have to. We made small talk and walked on a little dirt path through the trees, and came to a stop at the top of a hill.

“It smells so fresh out here,” she said.

“I can’t smell.”

“Shame.” She breathed deeply.

The sky was painted in shades of orange and pink that faded to light blue, then up to dark blue. Wisps of clouds flecked the horizon, and I couldn’t stop staring at area around the glowing orange orb. Discomfort overwhelmed me, and I lowered myself onto a stump.

She placed her hand on my arm. “Is everything okay?”

I broke my gaze away to look over at her. “It’s the sunset.”

“It’s beautiful. Do mata not like sunsets?”

I let my breath out. How to word the struggle we’ve all felt, the deep unsettling isolation, the otherness of the world we live in? “We love architecture but not plants. Art but not animals. Cities but not sky. You humans love what you call nature because the same God who created that—” I gestured all around us— “created you. Not so for us mata.”

“I don’t believe in God.”

“I don’t suppose that was an easy choice?”

She raised her eyebrows. “What do mata believe?”

I shrugged. “We don’t have a choice whether to believe in you.”

It was silent for a few moments.

She cleared her throat and took a seat on a park bench nearby. I followed and sat beside her. “I wanted to ask a favor.”

“Your request is my law.”

“I—” She looked away for a moment, then back at me. “I’m getting married soon. I would like for you to be there, and maybe put together the floral arrangements.”

“I’m only a hobbyist, and I use fake flowers. You would do better with a human florist.”

She shrugged. “I’ve seen pictures of yours. They’re nice. And I want you to be there.”

I straightened my back. “Your request is my law.”

“No, no.” She shook her head. “As my friend, not as my debtor.”

This should have meant one thing to me: that I was close to earning my release. If I had asked for it then, I am sure she would have given it. Instead, a warm bubbling arose in my stomach, and my throat tightened, and I couldn’t speak at all.

* * *

It took me a long time to understand why she had never mentioned her boyfriend or fiance to me up to this point, or why she had never mentioned me to him. I believe she had a hard time releasing her view of me as the ‘man’ she met on that cruise, so she felt guilty calling me, guilty inviting me, and guilty dating someone else. There wouldn’t be anything I could do to convince her otherwise.

Her wedding was simple and elegant, small and intimate, short and sweet. She wore little flowers beneath her veil, and her groom—a large, muscular man—teared up as she walked down the grassy aisle. Her father wasn’t there, but her mother and stepfather’s side of the family was. The best man and maid of honor made beautiful speeches at the reception, though after a little too much wine, her mother and sisters muttered to each other about how it wouldn’t last.

She introduced me to her husband as they greeted the guests who were heading into the reception hall. “This is Noah,” she told him. “He’s a maton.” That was all. He shook hands with me, maintaining unsmiling eye contact, and his grip—held just a tiny bit too long—was firm enough to hurt.

For a long time after the wedding, I didn’t hear from her. I called her every month or so at first just to hear her voice, then every year to renew the debt vows, but she never picked up the phone.

* * *

She showed up on my doorstep in the middle of the night.

It was raining, and she shivered in a soaked sweatshirt. Her hair was matted and her jeans were torn, mascara ran down her face in tracks made by tears and rain, and the rest of her makeup didn’t quite conceal the black eye, split lip, and bruised cheek—or, for that matter, the bags under her eyes and wrinkles at the corners of them.

It had been six years since I had heard from her, ten since we had met. We stood a long time, simply staring at each other. When I came to my senses, I opened my arms, and she collapsed into them, sobbing.

I gave her a dry t-shirt and sweatpants to change into while I made her coffee. She grimaced when she tasted it. “Do you have any cream or sugar?”

“Sorry.” I sat down on my armchair. “I can’t taste, you know.”

“It’s just as well.” She sighed and set down the mug on the coffee table, settling into the couch across from me.

“What can I do to help?”

She shook her head, her eyes watering again. “I’m so sorry to impose. I just need a place to stay for the night so my husband can sober up.”

A soft click! in my wrist and the back of my head. “I’m sorry, Alexia, I can’t let you go back to him.”

She sat up straight. “What?”

“If you go back, he’ll hurt you again.”

She rolled her eyes. “Is this that stupid debt thing again?”

“You can’t release me while you’re alive. But it has nothing to do with that. You’re—” I paused for a moment, then I shook my head. It wouldn’t be helpful to re-explain my programming with regards to my obligations to humans; she knew that already. “You’re my friend,” I said instead. “I cannot allow you to come to harm.”

Her eyes shone, and her tears spilled. I joined her on her couch, taking her into my arms, and she cried into my shoulder until she fell asleep. I remained awake and still until the sunlight streamed in through the curtains and illuminated the neat shelves and clear tabletops of my condo.

* * *

That was the first of two times Alexia slept in my arms. If you have studied any human literature and allowed its tendencies to get the best of your predictions, you might assume this account to take a fancifully romantic turn. The shallowness of human imagination, to believe always that the deepest of love must be romantic!

Alexia stayed with me for awhile. For reasons I never understood, her friends and family tried to convince her to return to her husband, and when she wouldn’t, they sided with him. What little she had, she lost in the divorce. I would have paid the rent in full, but she insisted on splitting it as soon as she got back on her feet financially.

We both left the house before the sun rose each day, I to my dead-end government job, she to her dead-end office job. We returned in the evening and, to my understanding, spent our time much the way a human family does: chatted about our boring lives over dinner, watched holovision, and occasionally went to see movies. Sometimes we played games, though it was a challenge to turn off the parts of my chips that would have let me win every time.

On the weekends, we visited friends—my few friends at first, then Alexia was able to reconnect with hers and make new ones. We attended a church a few times, but I never saw any other mata there, and some of the humans gave me funny looks. I later learned that the few mata in the area had started their own church across town.

I never forgot about the release condition, but I could never bring myself to ask about it.

She slept on my couch every night. I sat awake in my study most nights. Despite whispered rumors amongst our neighbors, there was not—because there quite literally could not be—anything more than friendship and debt between us. But as Alexia and I continued to live in close proximity, my neural processes began to mimic some of those seen in humans. It’s rare in mata, but I believe humans call it empathy.

Empathy is difficult to describe. No doubt, you have witnessed a human in danger and felt those sparks of ions leaking into your veins, prompting fear as if you yourself were in danger. It’s exactly like that and nothing like that.

I felt her fear and joy and pain, but then I began to feel emotions outside of my own repertoire. Anger so far beyond our own annoyance, burning in the metallic marrow; longing for things I had never experienced and couldn’t imagine; boredom. The desperate mourning of days slipping by and precious time wasted.

The boredom was the worst, perhaps because it was the most contradictory to my own nature. Alexia’s life was sand in an hourglass, vapor in the wind, and she could feel every grain falling to no purpose, every droplet vanishing with no trace. As immortals, we have no reason to feel the same. Now, indebted to a mortal myself, my breaths limited to the number Alexia had left . . .

I reiterate: we weren’t designed for this.

One evening over dinner, she asked me, “Where are you going, Noah?”

My voice caught in my throat, my databases on human inflection alerting me that this would be no casual conversation. “I’m not sure what you mean,” I said finally.

“Do you like your job?”

No one had ever asked me this, nor so much as implied the question. My voice caught in my throat.

She set down her fork and looked me in the eyes. “A long time ago, you told me you might like to run for city council.”

I almost laughed, but caught myself at the last moment. There was no humor in her expression. “You think I should run for city council?”

“No, actually. I think you should run for mayor of San Francisco.”

This time I did laugh.

“I’m serious. Our mayor retires in two years. You could take her place.”

For a fleeting moment I could picture it. I could be the first maton mayor. I could change the world for mata and human alike. But reason got the better of me. “Alexia, I’m—I’m not sure it’s even legal.”

“It’s not illegal. I checked.”

I’d known that. But legality was only a technicality. “A lot of people wouldn’t vote for me because I’m a maton.”

She crossed her arms. “A lot of people might vote for you just because you’re a maton.”

“Mata can’t vote.”

“You could change that.”

I bit my lip, almost daring to hope. “I’m eighth generation.”

She smiled. “More human than maton, then.”

I let my breath out and settled back in my seat. She wasn’t going to let this one go. There was no way she was thinking clearly, no possibility she had considered the implications of what she was suggesting, the time commitment, the uphill battle, the impossibility of it all.

Somehow, she seemed to know what was on my mind. “I’ve taken a lot of classes in marketing and politics and psychology, and I’ve thought a lot about how this would work. If you’d let me, I would be your campaign manager.”

I stared long and deep into her eyes. Her persistence wouldn’t have been enough to persuade me on a fool’s errand, though had she ever phrased her desires for me as a direct order, I could not have resisted, thanks to my debt. But of course, she never would have ordered me to do this. It was my genuine desire for office that won, and at last, I caved. “How do we start?”

* * *

In those days, the population of Silicon Valley—more specifically, San Francisco—had the highest density of mata of anywhere in the world. If I was to be successful anywhere, it was here.

We managed to find a team of supporters, humans and mata working side by side. We released statements to the press, held rallies, attended debates. I downloaded information about how to present myself and speak compellingly. We went door to door and handed out pamphlets on street corners. We ran ads on holovision and in the daily digest downloads.

My polling numbers rose but came to a plateau around 30 percent. It was higher than I had dared to hope for in anything more than fantasy, but they were far, far from winning numbers.

Alexia and I had to move three times that year—once due to rampant vandalism, once due to targeted burglary, and once due to repeated death threats. We did manage to get the police to take an interest in that, but even they were hesitant to help us.

Many of the snide remarks and threats I received had nothing to do with my campaign and everything to do with our personal lives being thrust into the public eye—that is, the fact that Alexia and I shared a home. We might have found our own apartments, but pouring all of our funds into the campaign, we couldn’t afford to.

Besides, by this time, I couldn’t imagine living away from her. We spent every waking hour working together. And the thought of greeting the sunlight of each day or the darkness of the night, the joy of victory or the despair of defeat, without Alexia by my side, was like the thought of ripping every wire and chip from my head with a pair of pliers. I hope, by some miracle, you learn what that dependence is like: that strange mix of restlessness and peace, fear and joy, uneasiness and comfort.

Day by day, it became clearer and clearer that my popularity had peaked. My opponent’s negative ads played on the deepest of human fears, until everywhere I went, I heard people whispering, sneering, even pointing and laughing.

In later interviews, I attempted to reason that humans and mata are not so different. This backfired in ways I never could have expected. One afternoon, I passed a mother and child on the street. Upon catching my eye, the mother scooped her child into her arms. As she hurried away, I heard the child whispering something to the effect of, “Isn’t he the one that wants to turn everyone into robots?”

When Johnny Tompkins reached out to Alexia and invited me onto his talk show, we celebrated our big break with our team by studying up and practicing the entire day before the interview. I even slept that night. Alexia ran me through a few final drills backstage, then I was on the air.

I willed myself to settle into the oversized cushy chair in the studio across from Johnny. I was used to the cameras and lights by this point, and the studio audience didn’t bother me. I knew how to sit, where to place my hands, the exact required cadence of my voice, the angle at which to tilt my head at precisely what times, measured down to the nanosecond. There was something about the lift of his eyebrows, something about the energy in his handshake, that unsettled me and put me on my guard.

“So, Noah,” Johnny began, “I understand that you’ve reached higher polling numbers than any other maton in the history of politics.”

“That’s correct, Johnny.” I allowed just the tiniest hint of a smile to play with the corners of my eyes—neither so much or so little as to seem conceited.

He smiled and nodded, as if impressed. “And yet you’re so unhuman. So unlike the rest of us. Take compassion, for instance. Isn’t it true that mata have no physical ability to feel compassion?”

I had fielded this one many times. “That’s simply not true. Thanks to human programming, we do feel strongly for the welfare of humans. And we’ve designed our own programming for dealing with each other.”

“So you’re saying you’re just following your programming. You don’t really feel compassion.”

An intentional attack. I shifted my posture accordingly. “What I’m saying is that we feel exactly the compassion for humans that humans wanted us to feel, and the compassion for mata that mata wanted us to feel.”

Johnny nodded, eyebrows raised as if in sarcasm. “Can you give an example of that compassion for humans?”

I cleared my throat. “Well, one example would be my stance on homelessness in our city. I feel a great deal of sympathy for people who—”

“Ah, I see what you’re saying now. Humans can’t deal with their problems on their own, so we need you to come in and fix our messes.”

A decades-old accusation, but it stung. “I believe that humans created mata for a reason. We need each other to build a better future for all of us.”

Johnny leaned forward in his chair. “And what about the rumor that you coerced the humans on your campaign team under threat to their families?”

My team had been slaving away for my cause for weeks at this point. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. “The members of my team believe in my platform. You’re free to speak to any of them, as publicly or privately as you like.”

“Oh, I’d love to.” He turned around to face the camera. “I believe your lovely campaign manager, Alexia Waters, is backstage with us today? Alexia, be a doll and join us?”

My throat froze. We hadn’t rehearsed for this.

Alexia tiptoed out from behind the curtains, prompting weak applause from the studio audience. She stood in an awkward position beside my chair and gave a hesitant wave to the cameras.

“Thanks for joining us, Alexia.” Johnny folded his hands on his lap and leaned towards her. “Now, tell me honestly. Do you think it would be right for a maton to govern our city?”

“Absolutely, if that maton is Noah 8-2633-20. He cares more about human issues than anyone I’ve ever met, he applies himself fully to everything he does, and he would serve as an outstanding mayor of this city.”

Johnny turned to the studio audience, flashed an enormous grin. “There you have it, folks. Straight from the mouth of the woman who’s sleeping with a maton.”

Those are the words I have to pretend he said, or my cranial chips will shut down for as long as a week at a time.

All I remember from that day was the studio swirling and pulsing in red and black hues all around me, and the echoes of laughter from the audience, and the sick, satisfied smile on Johnny’s face that I could not allow to go on any longer.

I leapt up from my seat, and my fist swung and connected with his jaw, and Johnny fell from his chair and lay unmoving on the floor of the studio.

I didn’t hear the audience’s response, or Alexia’s, for that matter. I fell to my knees, and the world spun, turning black.

I’d harmed a human.

I harmed a human.

HARMED A HUMAN.

HUMAN.

HUMAN.

HUMAN.

* * *

I cannot describe the pain. There was nothing to be done for it, and the process couldn’t be stopped once started. A VRC is useless for a maton who disobeys a core directive.

They put me in a soundproof, underground padded room until the overloaded current running into every pain center on every chip and nerve managed to wear through the biological membranes enough to melt every fuse in my head. Only then could they evaluate the damage and see if there was anything left of me.

It took days. I screamed until I wore out my synthetic vocal cords, and I later needed surgery to repair them.

Due to the high current, all equipment relating to all three of my senses was destroyed, so I could not see, hear, or feel. I hallucinated wildly to compensate for the darkness, the silence, the stillness. Over and above all other visions and voices, the words of Trevor Waters reverberated through what was left of my charred body:

WHY.

At first I could not reply. In the blackest recesses of my mind, I could only tremble and cower.

WHY.

Little by little, I could start to call back. I had no choice!

Trevor Waters seemed to know I was lying. WHY.

I tried again. I’m indebted to Alexia. She was in danger, I had to protect her, I’m bound to her.

WHY.

No, I know, she was not in danger. But her honor was—if you heard what he said about her! I had to protect her.

WHY.

I am indebted to her! Her request is my law. I know, it should not have allowed me to harm another human, no matter what he said, but my flesh and chips felt so much, so much conflict—

WHY.

I don’t know why! Debt shouldn’t do that to me. Debt doesn’t tempt me to hurt anyone, none of my programmed laws allow it, but something did! I couldn’t help it! I couldn’t!

WHY.

Had I been capable, I would have wrapped my arms around my knees, rocking, whimpering.

WHY. WHY. WHY.

BECAUSE I LOVE HER! ARE YOU HAPPY, TREVOR? I LOVE YOUR DAUGHTER! YOU SHOULDN’T CARE, BECAUSE YOU NEVER DID. I LOVE HER, I LOVE HER, I LOVE HER . . .

I repeated my mantra over and over, drowning out any further attempts he might have made to question me again, until a needle I couldn’t feel shut down my internal consciousness for awhile. Scalpels and probes I couldn’t see assessed the damages, and voices I couldn’t hear determined that with a few months of rehab I might make a full and miraculous recovery, probably because I was an eighth generation maton and the rigidity of the programming had decreased over time.

Yes, I loved her. I would be with her throughout this life. Her request would be my law. And when she passed, my fatal voyage beneath the surface of the water would pay homage to her final breath, my unbreathing lungs singing her life for all of eternity.

I only learned about the whole thing when they woke me up hours later. According to the nurse who first woke me up, I was still muttering, “love her . . . love her . . . love her . . .”

* * *

I needed most of my fuses replaced, many wires re-soldered and insulted, chips repaired or replaced or reprogrammed, surgeries on several major organs, and both physical and talk therapy. I couldn’t leave the rehabilitation facility for six months, and they told me I would probably need weekly trauma counseling for several years.

Of course, the rehab took me well into the election, and I was forced to forfeit. Alexia visited me every day, and ensured me no one blamed me, that I was a hero to everyone on our team.

Ironically, shortly after the release of the Johnny Tompkins episode where I knocked him flat—of course, they aired that part—my polling numbers spiked to fifty-four percent. Alexia seemed to think that it was just because people like to see a bully get put in their place, but I wonder if I finally convinced the public that mata and humans aren’t so different after all.

I never took office, but it didn’t matter. In the following years, mata all across Silicon Valley did, and in the decades since then, across the world. Alexia’s excellent work as my campaign manager meant her choice of job in the weeks that followed, and she worked for upper-level management at a corporate office.

After rehab, dozens of companies called me with offers as well, but I didn’t return the calls. Instead, I started a non-profit political organization for mata rights. Even before I met you, I fought to build a better life for you. I can only hope I succeeded.

Over time, I watched the lines around Alexia’s eyes deepen and the bags under them darken, observed as her gait slowed down and the timbre of her voice lost its stability. Once, when we went out to dinner together to celebrate her birthday, a waitress commented how nice it was to see a young gentleman take his mother out.

Each day that passed ought to have terrified me for my own sake, as my return to the water drew nearer, but no fear for myself could have made me ask for release from the debt condition.

One day, her doctor called us into a little office and told us her heart was failing. She didn’t have long.

She wept in her hospital bed. “The world will be exactly the same without me in it,” she cried, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“No, Alexia, no . . .” I could find no words to express the depths of my disagreement.

“I left nothing,” she insisted. “I did nothing. I have nothing to show for my life.”

I took time off of work, but Alexia didn’t want me to spend every waking minute and hour sitting beside her hospital bed. She couldn’t bear to watch me suffer.

“Find something to do, Noah,” she told me. “Do something good.”

So I did. I made you.

I withdrew much of the money I had saved throughout the years, and I ordered the materials, parts, and tools. At first it was by rote that I performed my work. Different though it might have been from any other type of work I had done, it was consuming, and it took my mind off of Alexia’s condition and my sorrow. Over time, it absorbed me in a different way—not distracting me from my life, but drawing me deeper into it. I experienced what every pregnant human and many hopeful mata have. I began to love you.

It was the programming, not the building, that took the longest. Even with the user interfaces other mata had put together to help hopeful mata such as myself, it took a lot of editing to blend together a perfect amalgamation of my own nature and Alexia’s. After re-reading the whole of it several times, I believe I have accomplished what I meant to.

My son, Adam 9-2633-0, you are your mother’s child.

* * *

The day you performed the debt rituals on me and set off into the world on your own was the day Alexia’s doctor called me in to say my final farewells. “There’s not much time,” the doctor told me as we walked through the halls toward her room.

There she was. She wore her hair short and her hospital gown long, her hands wrinkled and her sheets smooth, her voice soft and the beeping of the EKG machine loud. My breath stopped in my throat. She was as beautiful as she had ever been.

I lowered myself into the seat beside her bed. She placed her hand in mine and smiled up at me. The room blurred, and I could find no words to say.

“How goes the building?” she finally asked.

“I’ve finished the project.” My voice cracked. “Our son set off on his own today.”

Her eyes shone, and she squeezed my hand with what must have been all the strength she could muster. “What’s next for you?”

I shook my head. “Don’t you remember how we met?”

“Like it was yesterday.”

“Then you know. As soon as you’re—” I cleared my throat. “As soon as you’re gone, I have to go help the drowning mata.”

She smiled. “Noah, I accept,” she said.

“You—you what?” The skin around my forearm was already beginning to bunch and split, exposing the wires beneath.

“I accept the release condition. When I die, you are free.”

A wire beneath the surface of my skin split in two, but in my shock over what was happening, I felt no pain. With a few words, I was released from the very promise I had made to myself that had healed my insanity after breaking the first code of every maton, the seal of my love for her.

My skin restitched myself, and I could feel the electrons in my chips travel with a bit less resistance, could feel the metal cooling. I was free. I was not bound to the water.

But oh, my certainty redoubled again and again and again! How could I but go to the water? How could I but follow her to the end of the earth, to the end of life itself?

My throat choked and I could say no more. I crawled in beside her and wrapped my arms around her, and she slept.

* * *

My son, I would never advise another to become indebted to a mortal. No one could have predicted what debt to a mortal could do to one of us. My case was infinitely improbable. But you must understand: it was worth it to me. I am at peace.

It may seem impossible to you, but something about Alexia changed me. Eighth generation from the factory floor, indebted to a human, and I am not sure that I am pure maton anymore.

Alexia has released me from my debt to her, but I feel what shouldn’t be physically possible: I miss her. I miss someone who is dead, and the weight of the loss is like a part of me has been torn away and left to gape. I have, of course, released you from your debt to me in the event of my destruction, so you’ll never know what that is like. It will seem madness to you that I wouldn’t have it any other way.

After all I have seen, all I have been, I have to believe that I am more human than maton. That when I am destroyed and my consciousness is released, some part of me will live on, and that that part of me will search for Alexia and find her.

I arranged the flowers for her funeral—real flowers this time—but I could not bring myself to attend. However, I was able to reconnect with one of the members of my old campaign team, who has enacted a delayed voluntary release of consciousness in me. As of writing this, I have twenty-four hours to complete the VRC’s for the sunken mata.

I will send this message along with him, and I will stop him before he reaches you if I do return to the surface of the waves. I can choose to disengage my own impending VRC at any time while I am still alive. But I feel that to fulfill my debt—oh! Debt is such an insufficient word! But you will understand no other—I must remain under the water.

My son, please do not think me lost. I take this path of my own volition. I am embarking on a journey I cannot explain, the most important destination of my existence.

If you are reading this letter, I found her.