Dangerous by Default

63. Overflow

Ami handed her the Purse from her backpack. "Put them inside here, it'll protect them," Ami carefully placed the vials into a foam-lined plastic case and slid them inside the purse. Next Ami selected a semen sample and put it in the purse as well.

"To think I almost asked Janus, or... ugh whatever her real name is... I can't imagine how I would feel right now if I had become pregnant with her DNA."

"The sins of the mother are not carried onto the baby through DNA. It wouldn't have mattered. What matters is you. It would have been freaky. But it wouldn't have mattered. You are going to make an excellent mother, Ami. " Ami's eyes watered.

"I thought I was lost, Mina. I'm so sorry that I..."

"Don't even say it. You were being tortured. It's me that should apologize to you. It was my own stupidity, my own lack of self confidence that I would take whoever walked through the door waving a big check."

"You can't blame yourself. You always put the company first, you did what you had to do."

The two friends hugged, grateful they could reconcile with each other things they had wished they could have said over the past 12 hours.

"Mina, I have to tell you something about the goop."

"I know! I think I know! You solved it. I had brought some of the goop back home and tried to understand why you had texted me Eureka."

"And what did you find?"

"After tagging some of the nanoparticles in the goop with a phosphorescent dye, I observed, almost by accident, that they kept returning back to their previous positions. It was like they had been set to a three-dimensional spatial relationship. You gave them memory! So we don't need a camera, we can just access their spatial memory and reconstruct a 3D map of the patient's abdomen."

"Mina Blue, I'm quite impressed you were able to suss that out. [geneticist makes fun of a roboticist] But do you know why this solution is important? Beyond of course the fact that the goop solves our goal of making artificial womb implants affordable."

Mina was stunned. She thought Ami was brilliant for making the goop viable. But there was something else?

"When a woman starts having contractions, the uterus is physically pushing the newborn out of their body. But a natural uterus has been growing inside that woman's body her whole life. An artificial uterus is much less sensitive to the interior areas of the woman's body. It is why I was nervous about the prospect of a vaginal birth. Mina, we can use the goop to tune the contraction patterns of the Purse. The result is much softer for the body. It's because of this that I had changed my mind - and the real reason I texted you Eureka."

"So by adding this map, you mean that the purse would be able to execute flawless contractions for a safer vaginal birth?"

"Exactly. If -- no, when -- we get out of here, we can try it. As long as we can get Artemis semi-functional."

"Yes! Ami you did it! You brilliant woman."

They raced out of the fridge. The dogs by now were grappled against each individual assailant, their shrieks from the blasts of ultrasound to their skin bursting together as if a chaotic drum circle.

"How did they learn this grouping behavior? They look like an ant colony."

"It's miraculous. This isn't a behavior I've seen them do before. I think they were inspired by the dance-like movements of their combatants."

Amy and Mina, scientists to their core, could have observed for a little longer how the artificial intelligence that guided the movement of the dogs, causing them to chain into groups of three and four and expertly overwhelm their fighting opponents, but Caine was much more concerned with their escape and brought their attention back to the task at hand.

"Mina! Ami! Let's get out of here."

The doves were consumed by a metallic mesh of dogs and each was shrieking in pain. Only the large muscular one was giggling.

"Down boy, down boy, ooooweeee that tickles! Who's a good boy!"

Janus was nowhere to be seen.

"Where is she? That woman was pinned against a wall a minute ago!"

"She stopped moving. The dogs suddenly released it. It was very strange. She ran out the door."

"Damn! She's figured it out. The dogs are on a feedback loop based on human behavioral input. So if the human they are fighting with stops fighting, the dogs mirror this behavior and become calm."

Together, they sprinted between the shrieking doves and made it into the kitchen. Caine peered over the railing to the robot testing room. It appeared empty.

"We can't wait around here. We need to get moving."

"The tunnels!" Mina shouted as she ran towards the dark hatchway they had left open.

"It's too dangerous Mina, we can't. We should take the streets. Try to find a car. It's been raining all day. We can't go back to the house, and we don't know if the tunnels are flooded going in the other direction. Even if it's dry when we get to it, the water could overflow at any moment. It'd be like walking into a wall of water."

At that moment three of the doves emerged at the top of the balcony. They were walking calmly. They had figured it out too.

"There's no time. Ami, I know you just woke up, but can you run on your own?"

Ami shot him a fearsome glance. "Didn't Mina tell you I'm a triathlete? Let's get the hell out of here."