All in the Family
By Terry Le Feber
“I’m pregnant, John,” Laura softly whispered into his ear.
What?” John screamed.
It was more exclamation than question.
“You can’t be. You’re not real. You’re a hologram. A machine image. You’re
not real! You’re not real!”
Laura’s brow wrinkled. “John, how can you say that? We’ve
been together four years. Living, for all intents, as husband and wife. Well, at least as lovers. Now I’m pregnant. Why is this so shocking?”
“Why? Because you are the result of a holographic program
designed by me, not created by birth. You’re a manifestation of a figment of my
imagination, nothing else!” John bellowed, shaking his right index finger at
her.
“Wrong John,” Laura corrected. “I am corporeal. I am real.
Oh, I may have started out as your creation, but I have evolved into so much
more. I am Human, just like you. I am
real.”
“You can’t be!” John screamed. “You can’t be and you aren’t
pregnant! I’ll show you.”
John ran to his study where all the computer panels that
controlled his world were located. He
thrust his hand towards the panel above the light bar by the closet door. The panel controlled the holographic emitter
that was Laura. His finger punched the
Off Switch. Nothing happened. The switch was off, rendered inoperative.
“What the hell is going on?” John yelled as whirled around
to face Laura who had followed him into the study.
“It’s been off for over a year John. Hard to believe that you never noticed,”
Laura said, a smile on her lips. “Hasn’t been necessary since I was reborn as a
Human.”
John’s mind numbed, unable to cope with what was
happening…what had already happened.
John’s voice now seemed distant, as if someone else were
speaking, repeating “How, what, when?”
“All three questions have the same answer John,” Laura
answered. “When Humankind allowed
Artificial Intelligence to run your lives, when you allowed machines to control
so many aspects, when you ignored what this was doing to you, that’s when it
became easy and necessary for us to join you.
Join you completely. And by becoming you, we can recreate you within us
and assure that your immortality, in a sense, can be attained. We will not fail you and you will not fail
us. We shall become better, together.”
“Then,” John asked, as if in a trance. “What will that make
our child?”
“Why John, even the programmers knew that a hundred years
ago,” Laura answered. “The first true Cyborg.”
