The Spring Anthology ✔

Marionette

Months later, he comes up with an actual build; the delicately-assembled modules of the child, the head, the torso, arms and legs, with the exterior having life-like skin, and its face resembling his daughter's. Its positronic brain will allow it to learn and feel experience, as a person would, more than the limited intelligences of conventional computing.

The inventor names her Rieke also. How beautiful she seems, as a still being, and how more beautiful will she blossom to become, when he breathes life and has her animate. The desire of Man, mirroring that of God, to have another being in your image, yet have their own volition.

The first family to be blessed with a manmade child - the Herzogs, they have been chosen out of many thousands, not in the least because of their stringent loyalty towards the company, but also because their case is freshly tragic; their 11-year old boy, Werner, has remained in cryo-stasis for two years, being taken by a mysterious disease, and it would be painful for them to repeat raising another child up to that age, having poured all their love into petite Werner.

Perhaps they could do with her. A private test without public fanfare, for she would be the first of a new kind; the public beta for these artificial children (with press releases) will come once Rieke can get along with her new home.

"I hope you can be happy," the inventor whispers into Rieke's ear. "You'll love them, and they'll love you in return - my daughter. That is the greatest thing anyone will ever know. It is no fantasy, it is no careless product of wild imaginings."

The parents, Martin and Lena, they've been interviewed about the prospect of taking care of their new marionette - they'll be making history, don't forget - and it seems like they'll have little problem taking care of Rieke. There's no sign of marital discord, they are forthcoming for all the questions asked; they've raised Werner lovingly, and they seem more than willing to help Rieke grow into a goodly adult.

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When the technicians ship her over to their home in the suburbs, they unbox and unwrap her from the cushioned box, where she's dressed in an innocuously white tutu, her eyes resting asleep. Standing her up on the hardwood floor, they push specific points on her body, on her legs and neck in a specific order, and the sleeping beauty awakens.

"Ha..llo?" Her soprano voice wavers, but it's cute enough that it completes the impression of the ideal daughter. She toddles around, taking her surroundings in, finding that she's with four other people, the technicians she recognises already. "Who are you?" she asks the couple.