Mr. Boy

Mr. Boy

James Patrick Kelly

I was not only one in my family with twanked genes. My mom was a three-quarters scale replica of the Statue of Liberty. Originally, she wanted to be full-sized. But then she would have been the tallest thing in New Canaan, Connecticut. The town turned her down when she applied for a zoning variance. Her lawyers and their lawyers sued and countersued for almost two years. Mom’s claim was that since she was born human, her Freedom of form was protected by the Thirtieth Amendment. However, the form she wanted was a curtain of reshaped cells which would hang on a forty-two meter high ferroplastic skeleton. Her structure, said the planning board, was clearly subject to building codes and zoning laws. Eventually they reached the out-of-court settlement, which was why Mom was only as tall as an eleven story building.

She complained with a town’s request for a setback of five hundred meters from route 123. As Stennie’s Alpha drove us down the long driveway, Comrade broadcast the recognition code which told the robot sentries that we were okay. One thing Mom and the town agreed from the start: no tourists. Sure she loved publicity but she was also very fragile. In some places her skin was only a centimeter thin. Chunks of ice falling from her crown could punch holes in her.

Mr. Boy. Photo by Elena

The end of our driveway cut straight across the lawn to Mom’s granite-paved foundation pad. To the west of the plaza, directly behind her was a utility building faced in ashlar that housed her support systems. Mom had been bioengineered to be pretty much self-sufficient. She was green not only to match the real Statue of Liberty, but also because she was photosynthetic. All she needed was a yearly truckload of fertilizer, water from the well and a hundred and fifty kilowatts of electricity a day. Except for emergency surgery, the only time she required maintenance was the fall, when her outer cells tended to flake off and had to be swept up and carted away.

Stennie’s Alpha dropped us off by the doorbone in the right heel and then drove off to do whatever cars do when nobody is using them. Mom’s greeter was waiting in the reception area inside the foot.

“Peter”, she tried to hug me, but I dodged out of her grasp. “How are you, Peter?”

“Tired”. Even though Mom knew I did not like be called that, I kissed the air near her cheek. Peter Cage was her name for me, I had given it up years ago.

“You, poor boy, here, let me see you”. She held me at arm’s length, and brushed her fingers against my cheek. “You don’t look a day over twelve. Oh, they do such good work – don’t you think?” She squeezed my shoulder. “Are you happy with it?”

(Excerpt from The Year’s Best Science Fiction, eighth annual collection, edited by Gardner Dozois, 2008)