Kinder des Schicksals 4 (Xeelee 9): Resplendent

bringing me to this place. The food.’
    ’You’re human. That’s our job,’ Mela said.
    ’I suppose it is. Thanks anyhow.’ He walked off down the street
towards the canal.
    When he looked back they were following. Perhaps they were waiting
for him to give them more commands. He wouldn’t have admitted it, but
he was glad to have some company.
    Walking along the line of the canal they soon left the city
behind. The canal continued to head towards the immobile sun, but now
the water looked turbid, muddy.
    While Mela walked with Symat, the two boys ran by themselves. They
played elaborate games of hide and seek, which could involve hiding
inside the fabric of a wall, which evidently didn’t hurt that much;
the air was full of warning pings, and the laughter of the boys. It
reminded Symat uneasily of their odd behaviour in the bedroom last
night. Maybe they had been inhibited about violating their protocols
around him. If so, the inhibition was wearing off.
    They came to a small township, as empty as the city. The boys ran
off to explore. Mela and Symat sat on a low wall.
    He asked her, ’How come I didn’t see you yesterday, before you
found me in the canal?’
    ’We didn’t want you to see us.’
    He wondered what a Virtual had to hide from. ’Why does Chem talk
about >parents    ’We did.’
    It had been a craze, a few generations back. It began after humans
had been pushed back to Sol system.
    ’People still wanted kids,’ Mela said. ’But you don’t want to
bring kids into a defeated world. So they had us instead.’
    A Virtual child could be a very convincing simulacrum of the real
thing. You could raise it from infanthood, teach it, learn from it.
It would have been trivial to realise a child physically, downloading
complex sensoria into a flesh-and-blood shell, but such ’dolls’ were
unpopular, apparently violating some even deeper set of instincts. It
was more comfortable to be with Virtuals, even if you couldn’t cuddle
them.
    And Virtual kids actually had advantages. You could back them up,
rerun favourite moments. You could even wipe them clean if you really
made a hash of raising them, though sentience laws discouraged
this.
    One feature, popular but hotly debated ethically, was the ability
to stop the growth of your child at a certain age. You could stretch
out a childhood for as long as you wanted, enough to match your own
long lifespan. Some people kept their Virtual children as perpetual
infants; generally, however, eight to ten years old was the chosen
plateau range.
    ’I’m twelve,’ Mela said. ’Few ever got as old as me. For a long
time I’ve been surrounded by kids younger than me.’
    ’A long time? How long?’
    Mela considered. ’Oh, two hundred years, nearly.’
    Symat, shocked, didn’t know what to say.
    Times changed, Mela said. Now, in increasing numbers, people were
leaving the world behind altogether, passing through the transfer
booths to an unknown destination beyond. And the Virtual children
couldn’t follow: you could take your pots and pans, but you couldn’t
take your Virtual child.
    More than that, Mela told him mildly, Virtual children had simply
gone out of fashion, as had so many technological toys before them.
It became embarrassing to admit you needed such an emotional
crutch.
    For all these reasons, the children were shut down - or more
commonly just abandoned, perhaps after centuries of companionship
every bit as intense as the bond between a parent and a real
child.
    ’Every last mother said she would come back. I always knew the
truth. I was twelve years old. But Chem is only eight. He’ll be eight
for ever. And he still believes. Every day he is disappointed.’
    Every day for centuries, Symat thought, Chem wakes up full of
pointless hope, trapped in childhood. ’Tod seems to understand.’
    ’He’s actually younger than Chem, but he’s tougher minded.’
    ’How come?’
    She shrugged. ’His parents had him designed that way. You could
choose what you liked. Chem’s parents must have wanted a child more
dependent, more vulnerable.’
    ’But they abandoned him anyway.’
    ’Oh, yes.’
    Symat said, ’But I still don’t see - ’
    He heard a piercing scream. Mela broke off and ran into the
township. Symat hurried after her.
     
    They came to an open plaza. A number of children had gathered,
perhaps a dozen, none older than eight or nine. No, not children -
they were more Virtuals, as Symat could