Unnatural

CHAPTER 18

  What would Dad have thought about this? Sabrina wondered as she struggled against the grip of her robotic restraints.

  Nothing, a part of her insisted. Livingston’s been seducing you all this time because of your altered brain, and that this is your fault is exactly what he wants you to think. That’s what they all do!

  The truth was she couldn’t be sure that she hadn’t brought this pregnancy on herself. Mind modification couldn’t have compelled her to do it, after all, and if the cause was the same as that of Uriah’s rum binge on Monday, there was no way of distinguishing between that method of compulsion and her own “free will.” But if she was as dangerous either way, what was the point of guilt?

  The original question applied not actually to that matter, but to how she chose to deal with the consequences. Kenneth Lockhart had never been a friend of technology critics, but Sabrina could just not take it any longer. Her life had gone downhill ever since some person too big for his britches had made that – thing – Uriah had shot, again with technology. Humanity had for centuries been feeding a flame that used to be a Pleistocene comfort, but could now only end up causing a wildfire.

  That was why she couldn’t let them put the embryo in an incubator. Not with that psycho Livingston on the loose. It was just … unnatural. And she’d made her choice. There was no turning back from the responsibility.

  Yet she still hadn’t cracked a single smile since, and she had no intentions of starting now. On the contrary, she was downright shaking in fear.

  Case in point, the restriction of the androids was inescapable. They eventually had to resort to paralysis in order to carry out the will of those who would use the bounty of nature to break the law of conservation of freedom, if freedom was matter and rights were energy. Authoritarian as Zolnerowich could seem, Sabrina still found it out of character for her to use such desperate means for no good reason. She’d requested contact with a representative of Luna to explain herself, but she met only silence.

  So now she was as much a slave to AI as to her passions, and with a gaze at the moon, Sabrina resolved to fight those masters as much as was humanly possible, without using one to slay the other.