They reached the Medical Authority Center just before 5:00 PM
and Savina’s parents coaxed her to her feet. Savina felt in her back pocket for her moneycard – she had almost a thousand in her bank account, enough to get her by on her own for at least a little while. She felt a thrill as her resolve strengthened. She was going to run. She was going to do it.
Her father must have sensed this. He kept a strong grip on her arm as they stepped out onto the platform, and he held firm all the way to the lobby of the main building. Savina didn’t have a chance to break away.
Her mother filled out all her forms at one of the terminals at the registration desk, then a human attendant, a police academy medical intern, led Savina away. The intern was a thin and feminine man with a sway in his walk and subdued – but still startling – punk-resurrection style orange hair. “So,” he said, “your admission says that you already know you’re pregnant.”
“My mother put that on the form?”
He nodded. “You came in here voluntarily?”
“Not quite,” she said, her voice sullen.
“Well, your parents know what’s best for you. Through here please.” He directed her into another hallway.
“Am I going to be sterilized?” Savina asked.
“I’m afraid so.”
“Even if I was raped?”
“It’s a part of the process. It’s a shame, really, but it doesn’t mean you can never have a baby. You can have a gamete made from your genes. That’s how lesbians accomplish it.”
“I’m not a lesbian.”
“I didn’t say you were.” They reached the end of the hallway and entered an elevator. It was all shiny metal inside and looked very sterile. “Floor seven,” he told the elevator, and the shiny metal doors slid shut. The elevator lurched into motion.
“Are you going to do it?” she asked.
“The abortion? No. I’ll be there, but something this routine is handled automatically by the table.”
“You mean a robot is going to kill my baby.”
“Yes.” He looked at her with no sympathy whatsoever.
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. The intern led her down a narrow corridor to a small dark room; he touched a switch and lights came on, and instruments began beeping and whirring. One whole wall was made up of computerized equipment, several dozen modular components mounted within a set of black steel racks. In the middle of the room was a robotic operating table with four highly articulated surgical arms. Across the table was draped a white hospital gown.
“You’ll have to take off your clothes and put that on,” he said, indicating the gown. He turned his back and began fiddling with buttons and peering into readouts while he waited for her to change.
Savina slowly kicked off her sandals, staring down at her feet. She felt helpless, a doll moving to rigid programming, no free will at all. She slipped off her blue jumpsuit and tossed it across a chair in the corner, then dropped her panties around her ankles and stepped out of them. She used her toes to pick them up and drop them on her sandals.
“You don’t have to worry about your bra,” the intern said, his back still turned.
Savina snatched the bit of cloth that passed for a gown in a hospital and pulled it over her arms, fastening the tabs at the back. “Okay,” she said. “Now what?”
The intern glanced over his shoulder. “Get on the table and put your legs through those supports. Watch out for the arms, one has a steel blade.”
Savina reclined on the cool, soft table, reluctantly spreading her legs and resting them in the supports that would hold them open. There was a draft; her vagina was exposed and aimed at the intern. Turning, his face preoccupied, the intern touched a button and watched as all four of the surgical arms twitched and pulled back, resetting themselves. They made tiny electric whines as they moved.
“You ever had an operation before?”
“No,” Savina said.
“Don’t worry, it’s simple. These tables don’t make mistakes.
I’ll be here watching carefully throughout the entire process.” He stepped across to the side of the table, fumbling with controls.
Savina noticed lenses on moveable stalks mounted at various angles on the ceiling, and miniature electric eyes on the robot arms themselves. She felt on display. The intern picked up a headset and held it in front of her. “This is a neural-induction set, very simple. I’m going to put them over your forehead and turn it on, and the next thing you’ll know the whole thing will be over and you can go home.” He opened them up and made a motion to put them on her head, but she reached up and caught his arms.
“Wait a minute!”
“What?”
Savina swallowed nervously. “Aren’t these the sets they use in euthanasia centers?”
The intern scoffed. “They don’t use these in euthanasia centers.”
“I heard they put a headset on you and it stops your heart.”
“No, no, they inject an overdose of Msunginol into your jugular vein, kid. Nobody produces a headset that kills.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. This just puts you into a deep sleep and blocks pain. It’s a sedative.”
“I’m sure that’s what they tell you in the euthanasia centers.”
“Have you ever been in a euthanasia center?”
“No. Have you?”
“No. Look, this has nothing to do with euthanasia.”
Tell that to my baby, she thought. “I don’t want you putting those things on me.”
“I have to put these on you.”
“You’re not going to. They give me the creeps.”
The intern gave her a funny look, as if he thought she might be up to something, but he sighed and said, “Look, I’ll show you how they work. You see this knob over here? I can adjust it so that it only makes you feel relaxed, then when you’re more assured I can sink you slowly into sleep.” He tried once more to put them on her head, but she still held him back with trembling hands.
“Please,” she said, “they scare me.”
The intern had a disgusted look, now. “Believe me, they’re not going to hurt you. I’ll put them on myself – see?” He clamped the headset onto his forehead, right behind his temples.
He touched a button and gave her a pleasant smile. “There –see?
– they’re on low. I’m not twitching. My heart hasn’t stopped.
I’m fine. It’s great, in fact … in fact I’m totally relaxed.”
The intern didn’t say anything for several seconds, he just stood there with a dreamy smile and a faraway look in his eyes. Savina, holding her breath, moved her hand closer toward the little gray knob. “Yes,” he said, “this is really nice … we used to play around with these at the academy.” He licked his lips, slowly, and then his eyebrows suddenly dropped in concern. “Something like this can be quite addicting. If we were to–-” He broke off, sighing, his eyes rolling up into his head. His legs gave out and he sank to the floor, half-sitting and half-lying up against the base of the table, the headset still firmly clamped against his forehead. Savina pulled her hand back from the control knob, staring down at him. The control knob was at full power, and as far as she could tell there was no timer. The man would be asleep until someone found him.
She slipped off the table, stepping gingerly over the intern, pulled the hospital gown off and began dressing. The room was full of video pickups, but none of them looked like a security monitor.
She had no idea if the building’s security AI was watching or not.
In some places an AI will be watching every monitor at all times, in others an AI will only watch some of the time. If one was watching now she wouldn’t get off the floor without being intercepted. She squirmed into her jumpsuit, checked her pocket to make sure she still had her moneycard, then opened the door and strode as calmly as she could into the corridor.
She took deep breaths, relaxing her muscles, calming herself down. Security monitors could sense tension even better than they could see. In order for them to completely ignore you, you had to remain calm, avoid direct eye contact with them, and restrain from quick movements. Every school kid knew this. One was right outside the door, pointing right at her. She turned with a fluid motion and walked calmly down the corridor toward the elevators. Ignore it, she told herself. It’s not interested in you.
“Excuse me, are you lost?”
Savina whirled around, staring, her heart pounding. A male security nurse in a white and green uniform, with graying hair and wrinkles around his eyes, stood staring at her. He must have seen her walking out the door. “Yes,” she told him, stepping up to him.