The Mad Scientist's Daughter
The chapel smelled like the inside of a freezer in a flower shop, damply cold and sickly sweet.
At only one point during the ceremony did Cat’s focus sharpen. The mist melted away. She was in a church, surrounded by statues, wearing a heavy white dress and too much makeup. There were two rings on her finger: one with a diamond, the other a narrow band of gold.
Cat blinked.
Then she handed her bouquet to Lucy, as she had been instructed to do in the rehearsals. She turned back to face Richard on the altar and, in those few moments when her eyes belonged only to herself, she glanced out over the church. Her side was half-full, dotted with old scientist friends of the family. Finn sat in the front row next to her father. Her father’s cheeks were wet. Finn looked straight at her. He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. And then Cat was gazing at Richard, and Richard was taking her hand in his own, and she was back in that fog, that haze, that mist that persisted until the moment they walked down the aisle with their arms linked, organ music billowing out behind them, and emerged into the bright, burning world.
* * * *
At the reception, Cat’s head cleared.
There was a sit-down luncheon, of course, the smell of which made Cat’s head spin and her stomach grumble. Pomegranate soup and artichoke hearts simmering in pools of butter, chicken roasted with honey and pine nuts. Cat ate all of it with huge, greedy bites, not worrying about wine-colored splatters across her dress. White lights twinkled overhead and in halos around the tables: the reception hall was windowless and dark except for the occasional moments when someone slipped outside and sunlight flooded through the open door and across the neat arrangement of round tables.
After lunch, people from SynLodge stood up to make toasts and speeches. The last person to toast was Ella Halfast. At the microphone, she set down her champagne glass, a frosted pink lipstick kiss on the rim. “I have to say,” she said, “I never thought I’d see it. Caterina—” At the sound of her name, Cat jerked her head up and looked Ella in the eye. “Caterina, congratulations. I’d love to know your secret.” Then she picked up her glass, lifted it above her head. “To the Fevershams,” she slurred.
“The Fevershams,” the audience shouted back, their glasses held aloft. Richard laughed. Cat wanted to slide under the table and disappear in the billowing folds of her gown. But before she could move, Richard grabbed her upper arm, pulled her in close, and kissed her on the mouth.
Later, they cut the cake with an oversize knife, Richard’s fingers wrapped around the knife’s handle, Cat’s fingers wrapped around his. The cake was covered entirely in flowers made of icing: sugar-spun marigolds and morning glories, amaryllis and alstroemeria. As the knife slid through the cake, the flowers all muddied together, turned back into icing.
Richard slipped a piece of cake between Cat’s lips, neatly, leaving his fingers in a little longer than he should have. Everyone applauded. It sounded like rain. Cat and Richard danced, though it was difficult for Cat to move in that heavy dress. Her skirts swished across the floor, across her bare feet—she had slipped off her shoes as soon as the reception started, left them lying underneath the table where she’d eaten lunch.
The afternoon wore on and Cat drank glass after glass of champagne until her thoughts were made of air. She didn’t stop dancing, even though the arches of her feet ached and burned, even though the weight of her dress pressed down on her chest. These minor inconveniences of the body were preferable to sitting down at the light-draped table at the center of the room. Cat didn’t want to be the center of attention, the focal point for every single person at the reception, the place where their eyes naturally turned. That role exhausted her more than dancing ever could.
Eventually, Cat had danced with everyone willing, all the awkwardly suited young men from SynLodge, a handful of her father’s friends. She broke away from the dance floor and drifted out among the twinkling tables strewn with champagne flutes, making sure to keep moving, a fluff of dandelion seed caught on the wind. She drifted over to where Finn was sitting.
“Dance with me,” she said, and he looked at her with his black eyes. Miguel sat next to him, his tie loosened, and Cat saw him watching her with an expression of drunken amusement.
“Was he bothering you?” she asked Finn.
“Not at all.”
Miguel winked conspiratorially at her. Cat had drunk too much champagne to care. She grabbed Finn by both hands and pulled him to standing. He wore the same ill-fitting suit he had worn to her mother’s funeral. They walked out to the dance floor and the music changed, became something old and slow and sad, too sad to be romantic, too sad for a wedding. No one else was dancing. She put her arms around Finn’s neck, and he put his hands on her waist. The dress’s weight disappeared. She moved her face close to his, and he didn’t pull away. They were close enough to kiss.
The song lasted three and a half minutes. For three and a half minutes, Cat lived a completely different life. For three and a half minutes, she had married Finn instead of Richard. For three and a half minutes, the version of her life that rolled out in front of her did not fill her heart with dolor.
For three and a half minutes, Cat understood joy.
When the song ended, Cat felt something rushing out of her, as though she had been holding her breath underwater. Finn pulled away, his hands at her elbows. Cat looked dazedly around the room. It was late in the afternoon, and no one was paying any attention to her. Richard loitered by the bar, laughing raucously with his friends. Felix and Lucy and Miguel leaned against one another at one of the tables, passing a bottle of vodka between them. Her father, sitting alone by the door, looked toward the annihilated wedding cake, his hands folded neatly in front of him. Cat turned back to Finn. His eyes vibrated.
“Thanks for the dance,” she said.
“You’re welcome. Congratulations on your marriage.” A pause. “Mrs. Feversham.”
* * * *
When Cat stepped outside the reception hall, the glare from the sun flashed up off the jewels on her dress and blinded her. She threw up one hand, eyes fluttering, pupils contracting into tiny pinpricks. She saw nothing but white light.
“Time to go.” Richard’s voice was in her ear; his breath was at the nape of her neck. The heat of his hands pressed against her lower back, pushing her into a shower of birdseed. Cat lifted up her skirts, tilted her head down. In the miasma of sunlight she spotted the shine of Richard’s car. Everyone was cheering. She couldn’t breathe.
She climbed into the car, hoisting her skirts up around her. It was pointless even to try to buckle the safety belt. She slipped off her shoes and tucked her legs up underneath her and peered out the window at everyone peering back at her. She didn’t see Finn.
“We’re fucking married.” Richard threw his arm around her shoulder and pulled her across the shift stick. Kissed her. “I have a surprise for you.”
“A good surprise or a bad surprise?” The last thing Cat wanted today was a surprise. What she wanted more than anything was to sleep.
He smiled. “A good one.” He started the engine and pulled out of the parking lot. A cheer erupted behind them. Cat watched the reception hall disappear in the rearview mirror.
Richard pulled onto the freeway. He reached down and turned on his music player, drummed his fingers against the steering wheel.
Cat almost said, You’re in a good mood before she stopped herself, realizing, He just got married. He married you. You’re married.
She took a deep breath.
They weren’t driving in the direction of the condo; they were, in fact, driving out of the city. Everything here was brand-new, reconstructed in the last few years. This part of the countryside had flooded, many years ago, before Cat was born. Three hurricanes in a month, with winds strong enough to shoot off strings of tornadoes like Christmas lights.
“Where are we going exactly?” Cat pressed one hand to the window. The thin strips of grass lining the freeway were greener than th
e grass in the city.
“I told you, it’s a surprise.” Richard guided the car off the freeway, onto a road surrounded by sound walls the pearly color of conch shells. He turned down one street and then another. Huge suburban houses flashed by. A stone sank to the bottom of Cat’s stomach. She didn’t like the look of these houses. They were more normalcy than she was prepared to handle.
Richard pulled up to a guarded gate, pressed his ID card to the glassy computerized reader. A dot of ice-blue light blinked three times, and the gate slid open. Richard drove through twisted, curving streets, leaning back confidently in his seat. The houses here were bigger than in the other parts of the neighborhood, each one surrounded by trees and a swath of empty, impossibly green yard. Richard pulled into a cul-de-sac.
Cat’s heart hammered. Heat built up behind her eyes. “I bought you a house,” Richard said. The car rolled to a stop. He turned off the engine.
“Oh my God.”
Richard grinned. “It’s this one.” He pointed through the windshield to a house made entirely of glass. Cat stared. She could see straight through the walls to the blinding blue sky.
“You bought a house?” She looked at Richard. “I thought we were just going to live in the condo—”
“Oh, hell no,” he said. “Do you like it? I know I should have asked for your input. I mean, I know this really should be a decision we make together, but—” He bit his lip earnestly. “I wanted to see the expression on your face, you know.”
“It’s lovely,” said Cat. “Um. Thank you.”
Richard laughed. He pushed the car door open, stepped out. Cat followed, not bothering to put her shoes back on. The grass was cold beneath her feet. The wind blustered through the trees, and Cat’s veil streamed out behind her, fluttering at the ends. Her skirts billowed around her legs. Richard walked up the narrow stone pathway to the front door. Cat didn’t follow him. She just stood at the edge of the yard, her veil tugging gently at her temples. Cataracts of white light fell off the angles of the house.
“Well?” Richard called out. He gestured for Cat to join him on the porch. “You want to see the inside or not? It’s completely outfitted with Robocile.”
“What?”
For a second, Richard’s eyes narrowed. Then he swiped a card across the door. Cat lifted up her skirts and walked across the yard.
“This is a new subdivision.” Richard leaned against the door to hold it open. “Pretty trendy. Lots of big names designed the houses. I mean, I didn’t recognize any of them, but I was told they were big names.” He paused as Cat stepped on the porch. Faint lines of disappointment traced around his eyes.
Robocile. Of course. His AI program.
“So I’ll finally get to see what you were working on all those late nights,” she said.
Richard beamed and gestured for her to step inside. There was no foyer—only an enormous room, full of sunlight and empty of furniture. The ceiling extended above her head for two stories.
“So everything’s automated?” Cat prompted.
“Yep,” Richard said. “Well, most everything. The computer’s built into the structure of the house, although I don’t think it’s been turned on yet. And of course you talk to it.” He paused. Cat gazed around the room. There were no clouds of golden dust to catch the sunlight. “You’re going to be the first person outside the company to test it. You can let me know if you think we faked the sentience well enough.”
“All right.”
“Let me show you around.” He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. “I like how everything’s open, you know? Here, let me show you the bedroom.” He led her down a wide, sunny corridor, a pair of discreet control panels set into the walls. All the lights on the panels were dark and still. The master bedroom was around the corner and encased in alabaster white walls, although a square of blue sky was visible through the ceiling.
“Isn’t it fantastic?”
“It’s beautiful.” Cat pulled away from him and walked back out into the corridor, ran her fingers over the control panels. The house was silent save for the swish swish swish of her dress. She followed the corridor into the main room, where she found a sliding glass door leading out to a stone patio. She tugged the door open with the pads of her fingers and stepped out onto the smooth, cool stone. There was no grass in the backyard, just tilled-up dirt. The yard was surrounded by a ring of fast-growth pine trees that looked plastic. Cat gathered up her skirt with both hands and stepped off the patio. Her feet sank into the soil. The hem of her dress dragged across the dirt.
“Oh,” said Richard behind her. She looked over her shoulder at him. “Yeah, they haven’t laid the grass out yet. Sorry.”
Cat didn’t say anything. She walked to the center of the yard. The wind whipped up her dress like a bit of cloud. She turned around and looked up at the glittering house, at Richard standing in his tuxedo in the doorway.
“Smile,” said Richard. “You’re home now.”
TEN
Six months into her marriage, Cat discovered a coffee shop she liked. Ever since the honeymoon she was alone most of the time, and the coffee shop was the sort of place that favored aloneness. It was in an old wooden house in a leafy, gentrified neighborhood on the edge of the suburbs, the rafters strung with tarnished silverware that clinked and jangled whenever someone opened the door. Cat liked to sit at the same table next to the window, drinking a caffè breve and looking at the wildflower garden growing in the backyard. Hidden speakers played sad, whispery music. Dusty beams of sunlight fell through the skylights.
One of the baristas was an android.
Not quite like Finn. The android was vaguely female and moved more stiffly and possessed a more limited vocabulary than Finn did. Her facial features didn’t change as much. But like Finn, she was truly automatous. She was not like the computer in Cat’s glass house in the suburbs; she wasn’t even like the army of electric servants that now paraded up and down the streets of middle-class neighborhoods, children and dogs in tow.
“Hello,” the android said when Cat drifted through the door one balmy autumn afternoon, setting off the chiming chain reaction of the silverware overhead. The android’s mouth and eyes lit up electric white. “Caffè breve?” she said.
“Yes, please.”
“Coming right up.”
Cat paid and then slouched near the table covered with sugar canisters and pitchers of cream. Behind the counter, the android slid a metal filter packed with espresso into the coffeemaker. Milky steam clouded up into the air.
“Do you like working here?” Cat asked.
The android turned around, steam curling around her expressionless face. “Oh yes,” she said. “Mr. Rodriguez hired me.” Rodriguez slurred slightly, the final z sounding more like an s.
“Is he the owner?”
The android nodded, a quick jerk of her head. Finn can nod, really nod. Cat smiled, hoping she looked trustworthy. The android poured the steamed cream over the espresso. “He found me. Long ago. At McCallister’s.” The android’s mouth lit up again. She slid the caffè breve down the bar toward Cat.
“McCallister’s.” Cat tried to place the name.
“Yes.”
“Oh my God. That’s the junkyard, isn’t it?” She remembered Lucy talking about it—she used to jump the fence on rainy nights, when the guards would be curled up with their computers inside the little shack next to the gate, to scrounge around for found-art objects.
“Yes.”
“Who would—”
“I was de-fec-tive.” The android’s mouth did not light up.
Cat didn’t say anything. The android stared at her for a moment longer, but then the silverware rattled along the ceiling. A trio of college students walked in, their faces pink from the sun.
Cat carried her coffee over to her favorite table. Loose granules of sugar glittered in the sunlight. It was too hot for a caffè breve, but Cat drank it anyway. The college students sat nearby and erupted per
iodically into screeching laughter, the legs of their table clicking against the wood floors. Cat always felt like she was the same age she had been in college, but the college students here seemed so young. They were children.
When Cat finished her coffee she went out into the wildflower garden and lit a cigarette in the shade of an enormous magnolia tree. The sun’s glare made it difficult to see through the coffee shop windows, but every now and then pale white lights would blink inside.
* * * *
Cat didn’t work at the vice stand anymore. She still went to the artist’s co-op, where she would weave a few rows on her project, the yarn unfamiliar against her skin. The drive there from the suburbs was long, though, and often slow with traffic, and sometimes the co-op seemed more of an artifact of her past than a reality of her present. But every month she paid in her portion of the rent, and at least twice a month she roused herself out of bed to make the trip and work at her loom.
Even so, the mild sun-kissed winter transformed nearly unnoticed into the mild, sun-kissed spring and Cat’s life took on a uniform sameness.
She exercised most mornings, doing Pilates off the screen in the living room. The house always chimed to remind her, even though she couldn’t remember asking it to. She reread the books of her childhood, all those stories Finn recited to her from memory: Metamorphoses was still her favorite. These many years later she was still enamored of the idea of things becoming other things, of bodies changing into other bodies.
Richard worked his usual long hours—even longer now that SynLodge was on a meteoric rise toward capitalistic greatness. It had finally begun to turn a profit, he told her on one of his rare Sundays at home. Another AI company, Noratech, was talking about incorporating it. Cat nodded along to all this business chatter but rarely listened; when she listened, she didn’t care.
During the blur of days, Cat looked forward to her long evening walks. She followed the meandering cement paths cutting through the neighborhood, the houses twinkling in the twilight. Even though the days were already uncomfortably hot, the evenings still held on to a faint strain of coolness. Many of the neighborhood houses didn’t draw their curtains, and Cat liked to peer in through the illuminated windows at the families set up like tableaux inside: a housewife with frosted blond hair, children in school uniforms, a service android—they were all androids out here; anyone who could afford these houses could afford a robot that looked like a person—washing the dishes or mixing up cocktails. Sometimes she lit a cigarette, away from the house’s computer, which always read the smoke as a fire.