The Year's Best Science Fiction, Volume 1

The Robots of Eden ANIL MENON

When Amma handed me Sollozzo’s complete collection of short stories, barnacled with the usual endorsements of genius, I respectfully ruffled the five-hundred-page tome and reflected with pleasure how the Turk was now almost like a brother. Of course, these days we all live in the Age of Comity, but Sollozzo and I had developed a friendship closer than that required by social norms or the fact that we both loved the same woman.

It had been quite different just sixteen months ago when Amma informed me that my wife and daughter had returned from Boston. The news sweetened the day as elegantly as a sugar cube dissolving in chai. Padma and Bittu were home! Then my mother had casually added that “Padma’s Turkish fellow” was also in town. They were all returning to Boston in a week, and since the lovebirds were determined to proceed, it was high time our seven-year old Bittu was informed. Padma wanted us all to meet for lunch.

I wasn’t fooled by Amma’s weather-report tone; I knew my mother was dying to meet the Turk face-to-face.

I wasn’t in the mood for lunch, and told my mother so. I had my reasons. I was terribly busy. It was far easier for them to drop by my office than for me to cart Amma all the way to Bandra, where they were put up. Besides, they needed something from me, not I from them. Some people had no consideration for other people’s feelings—

I calmed down, of course. My mother also helped. She reminded me, as if I were a child, that moods were a very poor excuse. Yes, if I insisted, they would visit me at the office, but just because people adjusted didn’t mean one had to take advantage of them, not to mention the Turk was now part of the family, so a little hospitality wasn’t too much to ask, et cetera, et cetera.

Unlike his namesake in The Godfather, Sollozzo was a novelist, not a drug pusher (though I suppose novelists do push hallucinations in their own way). I hadn’t read his novels nor heard of him earlier, but he turned out to be famous enough. You had to be famous to get translated into Tamil.

“I couldn’t make head or tail,” said Amma, with relish. “One sentence in the opening chapter was eight pages long. Such vocabulary! It’s already a bestseller in Tamil. Padma deserves a lot of the credit, naturally.”

Naturally. Padma had been the one who had translated Sollozzo into Tamil. And given herself a serving of Turkish Delight in the process.

“If you like Pamuk, you will like him,” said Amma. “You have to like him.”

I did like Pamuk. As a teenager, I had read all of Pamuk’s works. The downside to that sort of thing is that one fails to develop a mind of one’s own. Still, he was indelibly linked to my youth, as indelibly as the memory of waiting in the rain for the school bus or the Class XII debate at S.I.E.S. college on “Are Women More Rational than Men?” and Padma’s sweet smile as she flashed me her breasts.

Actually, Amma’s lawyering on the fellow’s behalf was unnecessary; my Brain was already busy. My initial discomfort had all but dissolved.

I even looked forward to meeting Sollozzo. Bandra wasn’t all that far away. Nothing in Mumbai was far away. Amma and I lived in Sahyun, only about a twenty-minute walk from my beloved Jihran River, and all in all I had a good life, a happy life in fact, but good and happy don’t equal interesting. My life would be more interesting with a Turk in it, and this was as good an opportunity as any to acquire one.

However, I knew Amma’s pleasure would be all the more if she had to persuade me, so I raised various objections, made frowny faces, and smiled to myself as Amma demolished my wickets. Amma’s home-nurse Velli caught on and joined the game, her sweet round face alight with mischief:

“Ammachi, you were saying your back was aching,” said Velli in Tamil. “Do you really want to go all the way to Bandra just for lunch?”

“Yes, wretch, now you also start,” said Amma. “Come here—arre, don’t be afraid—come here, let me show you how fit I am.”

As they had their fun, I pulled up my schedule, shuffled things around, and carved out a couple of hours on Sunday. It did cut things a bit fine. Amma was suspicious but I assured her I wasn’t trying to sabotage her bloody lunch. I really was drowning in work at Modern Textiles; the labor negotiations were at a delicate stage.

“As always, your mistress is more important than your family,” said Amma, sighing.

Amma’s voice, but I heard Padma’s tone. Either way, the disrespect was the same. If I had been a doctor and not a banker, would Amma still compare my work to a whore? I had every right to be furious. Yes, every right.

I calmed down, reflected that Amma wasn’t being disrespectful. On the contrary. She was reminding me to be the better man I could be. She was doing what good parents are supposed to do, namely, protect me.

“You’re right, Amma. I’ll make some changes. Balance is always good.”

Unfortunately, I was as busy as ever when the weekend arrived, and with it Padma and Bittu, but I gladly set aside my work.

“You’ve become thin,” observed Padma, almost angrily. Then she smiled and put Bittu in my arms.

I made a huge fuss of Bittu, making monster sounds and threatening to eat her alive with kisses. Squeals. Shrieks. Stories. O, Bittu was bursting with true stories. She had seen snow in Boston. She had seen buildings this big. We put our heads together and Bittu shared with me the millions of photographs she had clicked. Bittu had a boo-boo on her index finger which she displayed with great pride and broke into peals of laughter when I pretend-moaned: doctor, doctor, Bittu, better butter boo-boo to make bitter boo-boo better. It is easy to make children happy. Then I noticed Velli had tears in her eyes.

“What’s wrong, Velli?” I asked, quite concerned.

She just shook her head. The idiot was very sentimental, practically a Hindi movie in a frock, and it was with some trepidation that I introduced her to Padma. They seemed to get along. Padma was gracious, quite the empathic high-caste lady, and Velli declared enthusiastically that Padma-madam was exactly how Velli had imagined she would be.

Eventually, with Padma guiding the car’s autopilot, all of us, including Velli, set off from Sahyun. At first we kept the windows down but it was a windy day and the clear, cool air from Jihran’s waters tugged and pulled at our clothes. Amma had taken the front seat, since Bittu wanted to sit in the back, between Velli and me. We would be gone for most of the day, and so Velli had asked us to drop her off at Dharavi so that she could visit her parents. We stopped at the busy intersection just after the old location of the MDMS sewage treatment plant and Velli got out.

“Velli, you’ll return in the—” I began, in Tamil.

“Yes, elder brother, of course I’ll be there in the evening, you can trust.” Velli kissed her fingers, transplanted the kiss onto Amma’s cheek, and then said in her broken English: “I see you in evening soon, okay, Ammachi? Bye bye.”

The signal had changed and the car wanted to move. Velli somehow forgot to include Padma in her final set of goodbyes. She ran across the intersection.

“She’s an innocent,” said Amma. “The girl’s heart is pure gold. Pure gold.”

“Yes, she is adorable,” said Padma, smiling.

“She was sad,” observed Bittu. “Is it because she is black?”

Amma laughed but when we looked at her, she said: “What? If Velli were here, she would’ve been the first to laugh.”

Maybe so. But two wrongs still didn’t make a right. Amma was setting a bad example for Bittu. It was all very well to laugh and be happy but the Enhanced had a responsibility to be happy about the right things.

Padma explained to me that Bittu actually had been asking if Velli was sad because she wasn’t Enhanced. In their US visit, Bittu had noticed that most African-Americans weren’t Enhanced, and she’d concluded it was for the fair. Velli was dark, so…

I met Padma’s glance in the rearview mirror and her wry smile said: Did you really think I’d taught her to be a racist?

“No, Bittu.” I put an arm around my daughter. “Velli is just sad to leave us. But now she can look forward to seeing us again.”

I too was looking forward, not backward. Reclining in the back seat, listening to the happy chatter of the women in front, savouring the reality of my daughter in the crook of my arm, meeting the glances of my wife—I was still unused to thinking of Padma as my ex-wife—I realized, almost in the manner of a last wave at the railway station, that this could be the last time we were all physically together.

When she’d left for Boston with Bittu, I had hoped the six months would be enough to flush Sollozzo out of her system. But life with him must have been exciting in more ways than one. The Turk had given her the literary life Padma had always craved, a craving it seemed no amount of rationalization on her part or mine could fix.

With Padma gone for so long, I’d had to look for a nurse for Amma. It quickly became clear that I could forget about Enhanced nurses since all such nurses were employed everywhere except in India. Fortunately, Rajan, a shop-floor supervisor at Modern Textiles, approached me saying his daughter Velli had a diploma in home care, he’d heard I was looking for a home-nurse, and he was looking for someone he could trust.

Trust enabled all relations. As a banker, I’d learned this lesson over and over. I was enveloped in a subtle happiness, a kind of sadness infused with a delicate mix of fragrances: the car’s sunburnt leather, Amma’s coconut-oil-loving white head, Padma’s vétiver, Velli’s jasmine, and Bittu’s pulsing animal scent. The sensory mix wasn’t something my Brain had composed. It must have arisen from the flower of the moment. I savoured the essence before it could melt under introspection, but melt it did, leaving in its place the residue of a happiness without reasons.

Somewhat dazed, I leaned forward between the front seats and asked the ladies what they were talking about.

“Amma was saying she wanted to come for my wedding in Boston,” said Padma. “I want her there too. I’ll make all the arrangements. My happiness would be complete if she were there.”

“Then I will be there,” announced Amma, “just book the plane ticket.”

“Amma, you can barely navigate to the bathroom by yourself, let alone Boston.”

“See, Padma, see? This is his attitude.” Amma employed the old-beggar-woman voice she reserved for pathos. “Ever since you left, I’ve become the butt of his bad jokes.” Then Amma surprised me by turning and patting my cheek. “But it’s okay. He’s just trying to cheer me up, poor fellow.”

“That’s one of the hazards of living with him,” said Padma, smiling. “Amma, seriously, I’ll book your ticket. If he wants, your son can also come and crack his bad jokes there.”

“Yes, more the merrier,” said Amma, good sport that she was. She then stoutly defended Padma’s choice, pooh-poohing moral issues no one had raised about Turkish-Tamil children, and saying things like what mattered was a person’s heart, not their origins, and that love multiplied under division, and wasn’t it telling that he loved red rice and avial.

“I always thought Mammootty looks very Turkish,” said Amma, her intransigent tone indicating that Sollozzo, whom she had yet to meet, could draw at will from the affection she’d deposited over a lifetime for her favourite south-Indian actor. That’s how much she liked Turks, yes.

I liked him too. Sollozzo wasn’t anything like the gangster namesake from the classic movie. For one thing, he had a thin pencil moustache. I could have grown a similar moustache, but I couldn’t compete with his gaunt height or that ruined look of a cricket bat which had seen one too many innings. He came across as a decent fellow, very sharp, and his slow smile and thoughtful mien gave his words an extra weight.

He had brought me a gift. A signed copy of Pamuk’s The Museum Of Innocence. It was strange to think this volume been touched by the great one, physically touched, and the thought sent an involuntary shiver down my spine. A lovely Unenhanced feeling. Two gifts in one. The volume was very expensive, no doubt. I touched the signature again, replaying its embedded message.

“My friend,” said Orhan Pamuk in my head, from across the bridge of time, “I hope you get as much joy reading this story as I had writing it.”

I played it again. I looked up and saw Padma and Sollozzo watching me. It was touching to think they’d worried about finding me the right gift.

“I will cherish it.” I was totally sincere. “Thank you.”

“Mention not,” said Sollozzo, with that slow smile of his. “You owe me nothing. I did take your wife.”

We all laughed. We chatted all through lunch. I ordered the lamb; the others opted to share a vat of biryani. As I watched Bittu putting her little fingers to her mouth, I realized with a start that I’d quite missed her. Sollozzo ate with the gusto of a man on death row. Padma shook her head and I stopped staring. My habit of introspection sometimes interfered with my happiness, but I felt it also gave my happiness a more poignant quality. It is one thing to be happy but to know that one is happy because a beloved is happy makes happiness all the more sweet. Else, how would we be any different from animals? My head buzzing with that sweet feeling, I desired to make a genuine connection. I turned to Sollozzo.

“Are you working on a new novel? Your fans must be getting very impatient.”

“I haven’t written anything new for a decade,” said Sollozzo, with a smile. He stroked Padma’s cheek. “She’s worried.”

“I’m not!” Padma did look very unworried. “I’m not just your wife. I’m also a reader. If I feel a writer is cutting corners, that’s it, I close the book. You’re a perfectionist; I love that. Remember how you tortured me over the translation?”

Sollozzo nodded fondly. “She’s equally mad. She’ll happily spend a week over a comma.”

“How we fought over footnotes! He doesn’t like footnotes. But how can a translator clarify without footnotes? Nothing doing, I said. I put my foot down.”

I felt good watching them nuzzle. I admired their passion. I must have been deficient in passion. Still, if I’d been deficient, why hadn’t Padma told me? Marriages needed work. The American labour theory of love. That worked for me; I liked work. Work, work. If she’d wanted me to work at our relationship, I would have. Then, just so, I lost interest in the subject.

“I don’t read much fiction anymore,” I confessed. “I used to be a huge reader. Then I got Enhanced in my twenties. There was the adjustment phase and then somehow I lost touch, what with career and all. Same story with my friends. They mostly read what their children read. But even kids, it’s not much. Makes me wonder. Maybe we are outgrowing the need for fiction. I mean, children outgrow their imaginary friends. Do you think we posthumans are outgrowing the need for fiction?”

I waited for Sollozzo to respond. But he’d filled his mouth with biryani and was masticating with the placid dedication of a temple cow. Padma filled the silence with happy chatter. Sollozzo was working on a collection of his short stories. He was doing this, he was doing that. I sensed reproach in her cheer, which was, of course, ridiculous. Then she changed the topic: “Are you, are you, are you, finally done with Modern Textiles?”

“I am, I am, I am not,” I replied, and we both laughed. “The usual usual, Padma. I’m trying to make the workers see that control is possible without ownership. Tough, though. The Enhanced ones are easy; they get it immediately. But the ones who aren’t, especially the Marxist types. Sheesh.”

“Sounds super-challenging!”

On the contrary. Her interested expression said: Super-tedious. I hadn’t intended to elaborate. As a merchant banker, I’d learned early on that most artists, especially the writer types, were put off by money talk.

It didn’t bother me. I just found it odd. Why weren’t they interested in capital, which had the power to transform the world more than any other force? But I was willing to bet Sollozzo’s novel wouldn’t spend a comma, let alone a footnote, on business. Even Padma, for all the time she spent with me, had never accepted that the strong poets she so admired were poets of action, not verbiage.

“I hate the word posthuman,” exclaimed Sollozzo, startling us. “It’s an excuse to claim we’re innocent of humanity’s sins. It’s a rejection of history. Are you so eager to return to Zion? If so, you are lost, my brother.”

Silence.

“I know the way to Sion,” I said finally, and when Padma burst out laughing, I explained to the puzzled Sollozzo that Sahyun, where I lived with my mother, had originally been called Sion and that it had been a cosmopolitan North-Indian intersection between two South-Indian enclaves, Chembur and King’s Circle. Then Sahyun had become a Muslim enclave. Now it was simply a wealthy enclave.

“Sahyun! That’s Zion in Arabic. You are living in Zion!”

“Exactly. I even have one of the rivers of Paradise not too far from my house. Imagine. And Padma still left.”

“There’s no keeping women in Zion.” Sollozzo gifted me one of his slow smiles.

“Of course,” said Padma, smiling. “The river Jihran is recent. There wasn’t any river anywhere near Sion. The place was a traffic nightmare. Everything’s changed in the last sixty years. Completely, utterly changed.”

“On the contrary—” I began, leaning forward to help myself to a second helping of lamb.

“My dear children,” interrupted my mother, in Tamil, “I understand you don’t want to, but you mustn’t postpone it any longer. You have to tell Bittu.”

“Yes, Bittu. Break her heart, then mend it.” Sollozzo didn’t understand Tamil very well, not yet, but he had recognized the key word: Bittu. This meeting was really about Bittu.

First, the preliminaries. I took the divorce papers from Padma, signed wherever I was required to sign; a quaint anachronism in this day and age, but necessary nonetheless. With that single stroke of my pen, I gave up the right to call Padma my wife. My ex-wife’s glance met mine, a tender exchange of unsaid benedictions and I felt a profound sadness roil inside me. Then it was accompanied with a white-hot anger that I wasn’t alone in my misery. The damn Brain was watching, protecting. But there is no protection against loss. Padma— Oh god, oh god, oh god. Then, just so, I relaxed.

“There’s a park outside,” said Padma, also smiling. “We’ll tell Bittu there.”

It began well. Bittu, bless her heart, wasn’t exactly the brightest crayon in the box. It took her a long time to understand that her parents were divorcing. For good. She was going to live in Boston. Yes, she would lose all her friends. Yes, the uncle with the moustache was now her stepfather. No, I wasn’t coming along. Yes, I would visit. Et cetera, et cetera. Then she asked all the same questions once more. Wobbling chin, high-pitched voice, but overall quite calm. We felt things were going well. Padma and I beamed at each other, Sollozzo nodded approvingly.

Amma was far smarter. She knew her grandchild, remembered better than us what it had been like not to be fully Enhanced.

So when Bittu ran screaming towards the fence separating the park from the highway, Amma, my eighty-two-year-old mother, somehow sprinted after her and grabbed Bittu before she could hit the road. We caught up, smiling with panic. Hugs, more explanations. Bittu calmed. Then when we released her, she once again made a dash for it. This is just what we have pieced together after some debate, Padma, Sollozzo, and I. None of us remember too much of what happened. But it must have been very stressful, because my Brain mercifully decided to bury it. I remember flashes of a nose bleed, a frantic trip to the hospital, Bittu’s hysterical screams, Padma in Sollozzo’s arms. I remember Bittu’s Brain taking over, conferring with our Brains, and shutting down her reticular center. Bittu went to sleep.

“Please do not worry.” Bittu’s Brain broadcast directly to our heads. It had an airline-stewardess voice, and it spoke first in English, then in Hindi. “She can be easily awakened at the nearest Brain-equipped facility.”

I remember the doctor who handled Bittu’s case. She was very reassuring. I remember everything after the doctor took over. She was that reassuring.

“Bittu was Enhanced just last year, am I correct?” said the doctor.

She was. She wanted to know the specifics of the unit. Did Bittu’s Brain regulate appetite? How quickly would it forget things? What was our policy on impulse control? That was especially important. How did her Brain handle uncertainty? Was it risk-averse or risk-neutral? Superfluous questions, of course. The information was all there in the medical report. I listened, nodding every now and then, a quiet happiness growing in me as Padma answered every question, and thus answering what the doctor really needed to know: Are you caring parents? Do you know what you have done to your child with this technology?

The doctor asked if we had encouraged Bittu to give her Brain a name. Did we know that Bittu referred to it as a “boo-boo”? Newly fitted children often gave names to their Brains. Padma nodded, smiling, but I could tell she was worried. Boo-boo?

We got the It-Takes-Time-to-Adjust speech. Bittu was very young, the Brain still wasn’t an integral part of her. Her naming it was one symptom. Her Brain found it especially difficult to handle Bittu’s complex emotions. And Bittu found it difficult to deal with this thing in her head. We should have been more careful. It especially hadn’t been a good idea to mask the trial separation as a happy vacation in Boston. We hung our heads.

Relax, smiled the doctor. These things happen. It’s especially hard to remember just how chaotic their little minds are at this age. It’s not like raising children in the old days. Don’t worry. In a few weeks, Bittu wouldn’t even remember she’d had all these worries or anxieties. She would continue to have genuine concerns, yes, but fear, self-pity, and other negative emotions wouldn’t complicate things. Those untainted concerns could be easily handled with love, kindness, patience, and understanding. The doctor’s finger drew a cross with those four words.

“Yes, Doctor!” said Padma, with the enthusiasm all mothers seem to have for a good medical lecture.

We all felt much better. Our appreciation would inform our Brains to rate this particular interaction highly on the appropriate feedback boards.

Outside, once Bittu had been placed—fast asleep, poor thing—into Sollozzo’s rental car, the time came to make our farewells. I embraced Padma and she swore various things. She would keep in touch. I was to do this and that. Bittu. Bittu. We smiled at each other. However, Amma was a mess, Enhancement or no Enhancement.

“Was it to see this day, I lived so long?” she asked piteously in Tamil, forgetting herself for a second, but then recovered when Padma and I laughed at her wobbly voice.

“That lady doctor liked the word ‘especially,’ didn’t she?’ said Sollozzo, absentmindedly shaking and squeezing my hand. “I had a character like that. He liked to say: On the contrary. Even when there was nothing to be contrary about.” He encased our handshake with his other hand. “Friend, my answer to your question was stupid. Totally stupid. I failed. I’ve often thought about the same question. I will fail better. We must talk.”

What question? The relevance of fiction? Who cared! I didn’t care. I had no space for thought. So. This was it. Padma was leaving. Bittu was leaving. My wife and daughter were gone forever. I felt something click in my head and I went all woozy. The music in my head made it impossible to think. I was so happy I had to leave immediately or I would have exploded with joy.

Amma and I had a good journey back to our apartment. We hooked our Brains, sang along with old Tamil songs, discussed some of the entertaining ways in which our older relatives had died. She didn’t fall asleep and leave me to my devices. My mother, worn out from life, protecting me from myself, even now.

That evening, Velli made a great deal of fuss over Amma, chattering about the day she’d had, cracking silly jokes, and discussing her never-ending domestic soap opera. Amma sat silently through it all, smiling, nodding, blinking.

“Thank you for caring,” I told Velli, after she had put Amma to bed. “You look tired. Would you like a few days off next week?”

“I’m not going anywhere,” she burst out in her village Tamil. She grabbed my hand, crushed it against her large breasts. “You’re an inspiration to me. All of you! How sensibly you people handle life’s problems. Not like us. When my uncle’s wife ran away, you should have seen the fireworks, whereas you all— Please don’t take this the wrong way, elder brother, but sometimes at night when I can’t sleep because of worries, I think of your smiling face and then I am at peace. How I wish I too could be free of emotions!”

It is not every day one is anointed the Buddha, and I tried to look suitably enlightened. But she had the usual misconception about mediation. Free of emotions! That was like thinking classical musicians were free of music because they’d moved beyond grunts and shrieks. We, the Enhanced, weren’t free of emotions. On the contrary. We had healthy psychological immune systems, that was all.

I could understand Velli’s confusion, but Sollozzo left me baffled. We chatted aperiodically, but often. Padma told me his scribbling was going better than ever, but his midmornings must have been fallow because that’s when he usually called. I welcomed his pings; his mornings were my evenings, and in the evenings I didn’t want to think about ESOPs, equities, or factory workers.

It was quite cosy. Velli cutting vegetables for dinner, Amma alternating between bossing her and playing sudoku, and Sollozzo and I arguing about something or the other. Indeed, the topic didn’t matter as long we could argue over it. We argued about the evils of capitalism, the rise of Ghana, the least imperfect way to cook biryani, the perfect way to educate children, and whether bellies were a must for belly dancers. Our most ferocious arguments were often about topics on which we completely concurred.

For example, fiction. I knew he knew that fiction was best suited for the Unenhanced. But would he admit it? Never. He’d kept his promise, offering me one reason after another why fiction, and by extension writers, were still relevant in this day and age. It amused me that Sollozzo needed reasons. As a storyteller he should’ve been immune to reasons.

When I told him that, he countered with a challenge. He offered two sentences. The first: Eurydice died, and Orpheus died of a heart attack. The second: Eurydice died, and Orpheus died of grief.

“Which of these two is more satisfying?” asked Sollozzo. “Which of these feels more meaningful? Now tell me you prefer causes over reasons.”

“It’s not important what I prefer. If Orpheus had been Enhanced, he could’ve still died of a heart attack. But he wouldn’t have died of grief. In time, no one will die of heart attacks either.”

Another time he tried the old argument that literature taught us to have empathy. This bit of early-21st century nonsense had been discredited even in those simple-minded times. For one thing, it could just as easily be argued that empathy had made literature possible.

In any case, why had empathy even been necessary for humans? Because people had been like books in a foreign language; the books had meaning, but an inaccessible meaning. Fortunately, science had stepped in, fixed that problem. There was no need to be constantly on edge about other people’s feelings. One knew how they felt. They felt happy, content, motivated, and relaxed. There was no more need to walk around in other people’s shoes than there was any need to inspect their armpits for signs of the bubonic plague.

“Exactly my point!” shouted Sollozzo. He calmed down, of course. “Exactly my point. Enhancement is straightening our crooked timber. If this continues, we’ll all become moral robots. I asked you once, are you so eager to return to Zion?”

“What is it with you and Zion?”

“Zion. Eden. Swarg. Sahyun. Paradise. Call it what you will. The Book of Genesis, my brother. We were robots once. Why do you think we got kicked out of Zion? We lost our innocence when Adam and Eve broke God’s trust, ate from the tree, and brought Fiction into the world. We turned human. Now we have found a way to control the tree in our heads, become robots again, and regain the innocence that is the price of entry into Zion. Do you not see the connection between this and your disdain for Fiction?”

I did not. But I had begun to see just how radically his European imagination differed from mine. He argued with me, but his struggles really were with dead white Europeans. Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; Goethe, Baumgarten, and Karl Moritz; Hugo von Hofmanstahl, Mach, and Wittgenstein: I could only marvel at his erudition. I couldn’t comment on his philosophers or their fictions, but I was a banker and could make any collateral look inadequate.

In this case, it was obvious. His entire argument rested on the necessity of novels. But every novel argues against its own necessity. The world of any novel, no matter how realistic, differs from the actual world in that the novel’s world can’t contain one specific book: the novel itself. For example, the world of Pamuk’s The Museum of Innocence didn’t contain a copy of The Museum of Innocence. If Pamuk’s fictional world was managing just fine without a copy of his novel, wasn’t the author—any author—revealing that the actual world didn’t need the novel either? Et cetera, et cetera.

“I have found my Barbicane,” said Sollozzo, after a long pause. “I need your scepticism about fiction. Fire away. It will help me construct a plate armour so thick not even your densest doubts can penetrate.”

All this, I later learned, was a reference to the legendary dispute in Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon between shot manufacturer Impey Barbicane and armor-plate manufacturer Captain Nicholl. Barbicane invented more and more powerful cannons, and Nicholl invented more and more impenetrable armor plating. At least I was getting an education.

If his hypocrisy could have infuriated me, it would have. As long as his tribe had mediated for the reader, it had been about freedom, empathy, blah di blah blah. Sollozzo hadn’t worried about mediating for the reader when he’d written stories in English about Turkey. Stories in English by a non-Englishman about a non-English world! Jane Austen[1] might as well have written in Sanskrit about England.

It didn’t matter, not really, this game of ours. Men, even among the Enhanced, find it complicated to say how fond they are of one another. Sollozzo made Padma happy. I was glad to see my Padma happy. Yes, she was no longer mine. She’d never been mine, for the Enhanced belong to no one, perhaps not even to themselves. I was glad to see her happy and I believed Sollozzo, not her Brain, was the one responsible. Bittu was also adjusting well to life in Boston. Or perhaps it was that Bittu had adjusted to her Boo-boo. Same thing, no difference. Padma said that Bittu had stopped referring to her Brain entirely.

Padma was amused by my chitchats with Sollozzo. “I am super-jealous! Are you two planning to run away together?”

“Yes, yes, married today, divorced tomorrow,” shouted Amma, who had been eavesdropping on our conversation. “What kind of world is this! No God, no morals. Do you care what the effect of your immoral behaviour on Bittu? Do you want her to become a dope addict? She needs to know who is going to be there when she gets back from school. She needs to have a mother and father. She needs a stable home. No technology can give her that. But go on, do what you like. Who am I to interfere? Nobody. Just a useless old woman who’ll die soon. I can’t wait. Every night I close my eyes and pray that I won’t wake up in the morning. Who wants to live like this? Only pets. No, not even pets.” She smiled, shifted gears. “Don’t mind me, dear. I know you have the best interests of Bittu at heart. Which mother doesn’t? Is it snowing in America?”

It’s all good, as the Americans are rumoured to say. As I ruffled the pages of Sollozzo’s volume, The Robots of Eden and Other Stories, I wondered what Velli had made of the arguments I’d had with Sollozzo. I remember her listening, mouth open, trying to follow just what it was that got him so excited. She’d found Sollozzo highly entertaining. She used to call him “Professor-uncle” with that innate respect for (a) white people, (b) Enhanced people, and (c) people who spoke English very fluently. Sometimes she would imitate his dramatic hand gestures and his accented English.

In retrospect, I should have anticipated that Sollozzo’s suicide would impact Velli the most. How could it not? The Unenhanced have little protection against life’s blows on their psyches. I had called Velli into my office, tried to break the news to her as gently as I could.

“Your professor-uncle, he killed himself. Don’t feel too bad. Amma is not to know, so you have to be strong. Okay, Velli?”

I had already counselled Padma on the legal formalities, chatted with Bittu, made her laugh, and everything went as smoothly as butter.

Padma and I decided we’d tell Amma the next day, if at all. Amma got tired very easily these days. Why add to her burdens?

“I have to handle his literary estate,” said Padma, smiling, her eyes ablaze with light. “There’s so much to do. So for now we’ll all stay put in Boston. Will you be all right? You’ll miss your conversations.”

Would I? I supposed I could miss him. I didn’t see the point, however. I was all right. Hadn’t I handled worse? What had made her ask? Was I weeping? Rending my garments? Gnashing my teeth? Then, just so, the irritation slipped from my consciousness like rage-coloured leaves scattering in the autumn wind. It was kind of her to be concerned.

“Why did professor-uncle kill himself?” asked Velli, already weeping.

“He took something that made his heart stop,” I explained.

“But why!”

Why what? Why did the why of anything matter? Sollozzo had swallowed pills to stop his heart, he’d walked into the path of a truck, he’d drowned, he’d thrown himself into the sun, he’d dissolved into the mist. He was dead. How had his Brain let it happen? I made a mental note to talk to my lawyer. The AI would have a good idea whether a lawsuit was worth the effort. Unless Sollozzo’s short-story collection contained an encoded message (and I wouldn’t put that past him), he hadn’t left any last words.

“Aiyyo, why didn’t he ask for help?” moaned Velli.

I glanced at her. She was obviously determined to be upset. Her quivering face did something to my own internals. I struggled to contain my smile, but it grew into a swell, a wave, and then a giant tsunami of a laugh exploded out of me, followed by another, and then another. I howled. I cackled. I drummed the floor with my feet. I laughed even after there was no reason to. Then, just so, I relaxed.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I wasn’t laughing at you. In fact, you could say I wasn’t the one laughing at all.”

Velli looked at me, then looked away, her mouth working. Poor thing, it must all be so very confusing for her. I could empathize.

“Velli, why don’t you go down to the river? The walk will do you good and you can make an offering at the temple in professor-uncle’s name. You’ll feel better.”

I had felt it was sensible advice, and when she stepped out, I’d felt rather pleased with myself. But Velli never returned from the walk. I got a brief note later that night. She’d quit. No explanation, just like that. Her father, Rajan, came by to pick up her stuff, but he was vague, and worse, unapologetic. All rather inconvenient.

All’s well that ends well. Padma and Bittu were happy in Boston. Perhaps they would soon return. I didn’t want Bittu to forget me. Sollozzo’s volume would get the praise hard work always deserved, irrespective of whether such work pursued utility or futility.

“You’ll spoil the book if you keep ruffling the pages like that,” said Amma.

I returned the volume to Amma. Such enthusiasm for books. For reading. For stories. Dear Amma. She was almost ninety years old, but what enthusiasm! Good, good. I was glad she still had a zest for life. Other people her age, they were already dead. They breathed, they ate, they moved about, but they were basically vegetables with legs. Technology could enhance life, but it couldn’t induce a will to live. She was a true inspiration. I could only hope I would have one-tenth the same enthusiasm when I was her age. I started to compliment Amma on this and other points, then realized she was already lost in the story. So I tiptoed away, disinclined to come between my beloved reader and the text.