physical stimuli.”
I . . . what was this? A nanocomputer? Evoke appropriate emotions? Evoke? This person couldn’t possibly be trying to tell me . . . he couldn’t be saying . . . there was just no way. Of course my emotions were real. I felt things all the time.
My throat constricted, as if to confirm my belief.
“The rest of its structure is also a conglomeration of human and manmade, but mostly synthetic. Its body is comprised of cyberdermis, synthetic tissue infused with a polymer hydrogel lying just under bioengineered skin that is exceptionally strong and resistant to injury and also holds receptors to carry sensation signals to the nanobrain—though pain receptors are very sparse, only one one thousandth of the amount found in a typical human.”
I recalled the fall from the truck, my worry that I’d damaged my spinal cord. Suddenly Mom’s insistence on slow horseback rides made complete and terrible sense. She hadn’t been terrified that I’d hurt myself—on the contrary. She’d been worried that I’d fall and the whole no-pain thing would lead to questions. It was amazing it hadn’t happened before.
Wait a second. How had it not happened before? How, in sixteen years of life, had I not noticed that I had little to no pain sensation?
That’s when the brutal wave of reality really hit. The voice had said that the MILA 2.0 was physically indistinguishable from a sixteen-year-old girl. Meaning . . . he was also saying I’d never been any age other than sixteen.
Meaning . . . those memories I had of being younger? Lies. All of them.
According to him, I’d been “born” exactly as I was now.
Nausea flooded me. Which, given everything I’d just heard, made no sense. None of this did.
I was human. I was.
“Its endoskeleton mixes tightly woven braids of fiber optics encased by tubes of transparent ceramic hybrid that is very difficult to break and easy to repair, and its body utilizes a unique technology that meshes human with machine by way of embedding nanotransistors into live cell membranes. Instead of a heart, Mila has a sophisticated pump to supply energy to her partially organic cells, which can generate their own oxygen. Breathing for it is just a computer program to simulate human function.”
No heart? I had no heart? No, that was absurd. Ridiculous. I could feel it there, in my chest, beating away.
Unless . . . unless that was the “sophisticated pump” the voice was talking about. My hand flew to my chest, my fingers spreading across my shirt and pressing inward. A second passed, and then I felt the faint upward motion. Beating. Something under there was definitely beating. I hoped the action would soothe me, but instead of the fist-shaped, vein and artery-covered organ I’d seen in biology class, all I could picture was a pool pump. A bit of machinery stuck under my ribs, masquerading as life.
Of course, that was assuming I had ribs to begin with.
I hit pause again, my gaze flying to Mom, but her goggled head was bent over my arm, her focus on aiming the laser’s bright-red line at a spot within it.
It felt like no more than a tickle.
I hit play.
“In an especially exciting development, the MILA 2.0 goes one step beyond just approximating feelings. By using experimental data on living girls, we were able to store the visceral and physical sensations that emotions produce and re-create them. Thus, the MILA 2.0 actually feels the same things that humans do, which we anticipate will facilitate blending in with subjects and add authenticity to her cover.”
Cover. Oh my god. Did he mean . . . my cover as a human?
“MILA contains just enough human cells to simulate biological functions, but it is in reality a machine. The launch date for this exciting project is August twenty-second.”
The recording cut off, but the ramifications of that last sentence remained. August 22. Just five days before Mom and I arrived in Clearwater.
I couldn’t even move, couldn’t breathe. Guess that not-needing-air thing really came in handy. The thought made me laugh, a gasping, hysterical gurgle that made Mom drop her tools and grasp my hand.
Mom. Just another lie in a whole string of them.
The pain in my chest, in my nonheart, was excruciating. Whoever had worked on “evoking appropriate emotional responses” had done a bang-up job.
Maybe I was dreaming. Maybe I would wake up and realize this was just a nightmare.
Maybe I’d even wake up back in Philly, with Dad still alive. A man who, if I believed the voice, had never been a part of my life.
As for “Mom”—well, according to the voice, I was more genetically related to our toaster than I was to her.
Another gurgle erupted.
“Is this all true? It can’t be, right? Please tell me it’s some kind of sick joke. Please!” But when Mom looked up from packing away the tools, all I saw was the sadness in her eyes. No matter what, I knew this was real to her.
“Mila, I’m so sorry. . . . I wish—”
“I don’t care what you wish,” I said, jumping to my feet. “Just tell me what’s going on. Where did I come from? Why am I here? And how—how could I not be real?” I whirled and faced a watercolor of a horse, wrapping my arms around my waist. I immediately wondered if that action had been programmed, too.
“You are real,” Mom said in her soothing calm-down-and-listen-to-me voice. I bet she didn’t know that, right now, it had the opposite effect. It made me want to jump up and down, scream bloody murder, and shake that poise right out of her. “That’s why I stole you from the military labs. I worked with you every day, Mila. Actually, I’m the bioengineer who helped create you. I know that you aren’t just a weapon . . . you’re too human for that. So yes, I stole you—to keep you safe. You deserved more than what the army had to offer.”
Stolen. I was stolen goods.
Mom’s hand smoothed my hair aside before gently stroking the nape of my neck. Everything inside me wanted to believe her, to know that she really did love me, that I really was part human. She’d always been there for me, when I was little, when Dad died . . .
. . . except—none of that was real. But how was that possible? I could see the memories etched in my head, so perfectly clear, playing out behind my eyes like detailed videos.
Like videos.
The pressure of her fingers on my neck went from comforting to oppressive in an instant. I jerked away and whirled to face her. “How did you do it? All those memories I have?”
Mom—no, Nicole—sighed, her shaking fingers reaching up to remove her glasses so she could rub the bridge of her nose. “I programmed them. The reason some of them feel especially real is because I created them using a virtual reality program, which allowed me to actually insert you into the memory.”
Programmed. My entire past, everything I’d understood to be true about my life, my family, what had formed me as a person. Stripped away with one simple word. Programmed.
“And the fire?” I
