Artificial Grandma
"Let's have it plain and simple," said Bea. A toddler was bouncing in her lap. She stroked his fringe. "I don't want us to mince words. You are planning to - do what? Get rid of Grandma?"
***
Last night I dreamt that I was in Manderlay again, wrote Grandma. Everything was as I remembered it: the white silhouettes of nurses sliding along the grey corridors, the whisper of wheelchairs, the cloying smell of disinfectant. It was a Home, it was supposed to be my home. It was a cage.
"You will get to like the people, Mother," said Leo, placing his cool lips on my forehead for a second, "you have much in common."
I stifled a sigh, "You will come visit, son, won't you?" I tried to keep my voice steady, I could feel the tears under my eyelids.
When I awoke this morning, my cheeks were wet. Tears? Sweat? I couldn’t tell. My heart was racing. My hands were shaking. And I prayed, thanking all the gods I could recall from mythology classes, that it had only been a dream.
Grandma shuddered. She had to draw a deep breath before she was able to type again.
My first day at the Home was all right, we reminisced about our families and cybersex. On the second day, I felt like running away. Or propositioning the waiter. Or curling up and dying.
Grandma hesitated, her fingers poised over the keyboard. How well she remembered it all, her mind still as clear as a low-glare screen. The dullness of the daily routine, the meals that had tasted of cardboard, the tedious dialogues. And how well she remembered that day, her last day in Manderlay, when the cloning news came, and Helga arrived with a big box of chocolates....
***
Grandma looked up from her computer and sniffed. She clutched her stick and heaved herself up. The first couple of steps were shaky, but they steadied as the old muscles woke up.
"Helga!" Grandma called out. "The soup smells ready!"
There was a patter of bare feet and a young woman appeared in the doorway, supporting a baby at her breast.
"The pasta is not quite done yet, Grandma."
Grandma sneered. Today's youth!
"All right then, let me help you get it into the microwave. I’m starving!"
Sitting at the head of the table, Grandma felt thankful. This was a good life, her whole family under one roof. Three daughters, already married and producing daughters of their own. All of them together in one house. A house of women. Grandma took another loud sip of the broth and grimaced. She glanced around. But her family spooned the soup mechanically, without tasting it.
***
Helga was changing Annie's nappy. All this technology, she thought, and nappies still had to be changed by hand.
"Don't you think Grandma has become worse?" she whispered to her husband. The partitions in their house were thin. To her right, she could hear Grandma's snoring.
"Whatever do you mean? The soup was not that bad."
"I don't mean the soup, silly. I mean her behaviour. She's become intimidating . She decides where we go on holidays and whose turn it is to get a new bed."
"Old people are like that," Roger yawned, "they think they know better because they've lived longer. And perhaps they're right. With white hair comes wisdom and experience -"
"Nonsense!" interrupted Helga. "With white hair come trembling hands, poor eyesight and a childish mind. I'm telling you, I can’t take it any more. Living here in this big house, ten people dependent on one despotic crone! In the old days, husband and wife alone formed the smallest family unit. Grandparents would keep a separate house. They were called in to babysit," Helga gave Annie's bottom an affectionate slap, "and the couple would come home to a tray of cookies in the oven...."
"True," Roger sat on the bed, the foam sighed under his weight. "But in your glorified old days, when the grandparents got too feeble to look after themselves, when they became a burden, they were simply shipped off to an old-age home."
"It was a nursing home, dear. They had doctors looking after them, and friends of their own age to entertain. It was a good life."
***
"How did it happen?" Mr. Grenoble asked me one day. "It was all going elsewhere. Computers, faxes, e-mail. The world was getting smaller, people were starting to work from home. And yet, we have reverted back to the traditional model. How did it go - askew?"
I waited for the nurse to arrange the blanket around my knees.
"Askew?" I asked when she had left. "Do you see anything improper in the fact that women are home-makers again, as opposed to breadwinners? In my youth, I was expected to be a career woman, a wife, a cook, a cleaner and a mother, all of it simultaneously. I think society's much better organized now that it’s family-oriented. We have become less selfish, more family-proud, more responsible...."
Mr. Grenoble coughed.
"In that case, dear lady, what are we doing here? You and I, in a Home? Why hasn't my son, or yours, chosen to let us share in their 'large family units'?"
Grandma couldn't type. Tears were impairing her vision. Perhaps it was all her own fault, perhaps by trying to juggle a job and a household, she had somehow failed Leo. Just as he was failing her now. Leo - no, she would not think of Leo. She had Helga, and Bea, and Doris. Her new family. How well she remembered her last day in Manderlay, when genetic engineering of humans was legalised.
"The current proposal suggests that they enjoy the same rights as everybody else," remarked Mr. Grenoble.
"Impossible," I exclaimed, "the donors are all dead. Bringing their clones to life will be doing them a favour."
"But think of the ramifications! Slavery all over again. Or feudalism, at best. Imagine that you die tomorrow, and then some granny-starved family clones you -"
"All right, don't personalise it so," I waved my hand. "But you must admit it’s a good idea. It can solve the problem of parentless children. And of old people who are stuffed into a Home..."
***
"Let's have it plain and simple," said Bea. "I don't want us to mince words. You are planning to - do what? Get rid of Grandma?"
"Shshsh..." Helga glanced at the partition.
"Don't worry," Bea waved her hand, "can't you hear her snoring?"
"But it’s against nature! Grandmothers bake cake and spoil the grandchildren, they sit by the heater and tell interesting stories about the good old days -"
"Not she," snorted Doris. "The only stories she ever tells are on the computer!"
"Look, we all agree that Grandma's been useful, but her time is past. Now she's too much trouble to keep."
"How are you going to do it?"
"How are we going to do it, you mean."
"Peacefully, in her sleep. Like now...."
In the sudden silence, six pairs of ears listened to the snoring.
***
Grandma snored again, for the benefit of those behind the partition, and sighed. The trouble with people of the third millennium, she thought, is that they don’t have our passion for life. They go through the motions, of course, they eat and sleep and breed, but they don't know the meaning of the word 'live'. And no wonder, with so many life forms around: clones, artificial intelligence, and what with some radicals claiming now that computer viruses should be added to the protected species list....
Her mind was wandering again, when she could least afford it. She sat up and strained her ears, letting out a loud snore.
***
"Murder’s not the answer," Roger was saying. "Can't we simply send her back to Manderlay?"
"She won't go. She hated it there. We'd have to trick her."
"How?"
"Make her grow tired of us -" Peter halted. There was a regular clatter of wood on wood, getting closer, and closer.
Grandma appeared in the door. The hands clutching the stick were trembling.
"Dispatch her back to Manderlay, huh?" she wheezed. "Send her off to a Home. Let her spirit die before her body does. Convenient, out of the way. Don't!" she raised her stick and pointed it at Peter. "Don't move. Listen. You thought it would be that easy? Send her flowers on Mother's Day. And a Christmas card perhaps. Let her rot in a Home! But you have forgotten something. And what have you forgotten?" she pointed her stick at Helga. "Answer me!"
"I don't know, Mother," the woman's voice was meek. "What have we forgotten?"
"You've forgotten the rights of cloned people," with a steady finger, Grandma turned the handle of her stick.
The cyborg control unit uttered a soft click. She watched the inert bodies collapse, one by one. "The rights of cloned people. And as such," she continued, to nobody in particular, "you, my dears, have none."