WILL MY BABY COME ONLINE?
WILL MY BABY COME ONLINE?
WILL MY BABY COME ONLINE?
WILL MY BABY COME ONLINE?

 Zary Fekete

How many seconds had it been? Ten? These days the results came back very quickly. Her mother had once said pregnancy tests used to take several minutes.

FarFar leaned against the sink. This was something she could probably do with her app, but she had picked the bathroom touchscreen. The pregnancy icon was lit up on the screen app. Would it be pink or blue? There it was. It really had only taken a few seconds. Pink.

She carried the screen into the living room. TongLei was pacing back and forth. She held up the screen. His mouth broke into a smile. They hugged each other and rocked back and forth.

︎

She sat in the hospital waiting room. The rest of the room was filled with other expectant mothers. At least FarFar assumed they were all expecting. Some of them were clearly several months along. They were cradling their large bellies, slowly easing themselves out of the chairs when their names were called by the supervising nurse. They swiped through their screens with soft smiles on their faces. Some of them looked off into the distance, watching something on their app. Little kids ran back and forth. A large section in the center of the waiting room was filled with toys and other little things.

“FarFar?” The voice came from behind her. She turned. The nurse beckoned to her. FarFar stood, carefully stepping around two kids chasing each other around the room.

The nurse took her down a short hallway. She checked FarFar’s weight, her height, her blood pressure. The nurse typed several things onto a screen and then brought FarFar down the hallway to a private examining room.

“The doctor will be here soon,” she said, and softly closed the door.

FarFar looked around the room. The usual array of instruments sat on the counter in the corner: stethoscopes, q-tips, cotton balls. She sat on the examining table and looked up at the wall screen across from her.

Text floated on the screen next to several pictures of smiling mothers, fathers, and little kids. “Nervous about your baby? We have answers…” A small touchscreen sensor floated next to where FarFar sat on the examining table. She flicked through it and the wall screen changed to a series of questions.

Will my baby…

…take to breastfeeding?

…handle activated oxygen?

…do well in school?

The list went on down the length of the screen. FarFar glanced through the list without picking anything. Then she saw the last option at the bottom. She flicked her fingers on the sensor and the last line lit up as she selected it: “Will my baby come online?”

The screen changed into a still image of a doctor sitting behind a desk. She flicked the pad again, and the doctor on the screen began to talk. As he talked a series of images swirled around the screen. She saw a cross-section of the human head with the retina and the ear highlighted in the picture.

The doctor described the familiar history of the mind app. Impatiently FarFar flicked forward through the video until the screen showed a baby’s body outlined in a computer representation of the womb. The screen zoomed in and showed the app in the mother’s mind highlighted. A series of pulsing lines moved from the app in the mother’s head down through her bloodstream and eventually into the tiny head of the baby in the womb.

The image of the baby’s head zoomed in closer, and FarFar watched as the representation of the app began to glow in the baby’s mind. She realized she was holding her breath.

Just then, there was a click and the door opened. A woman came in, dressed in a lab coat. Her blond hair was pulled back into a smart ponytail. Her nametag glowed with the words “Dr. Eve”. FarFar smiled and nervously brushed a strand of black hair behind her ear.

“Hello, FarFar,” Dr. Eve said. “So nice to meet you. I understand we have some exciting news to talk about.”

FarFar nodded and unconsciously touched her stomach. “Yes,” she said. “I just took the test this morning. I think she’s a girl.”

“Oh, you can be certain of that,” the doctor said. “The test is foolproof. You are definitely having a little girl.”

FarFar smiled. The doctor made a few quick notes on her screen, and FarFar looked back at the large wall screen. When the doctor was finished with her notes she looked back at FarFar, and then followed her eyes to the wall. The baby’s head on the screen was still showing the activated app in the tiny body.

“Yes,” the doctor said. “That is usually the first question most mothers ask me about.”

FarFar nodded and pointed at the screen. “Is it automatic?” she asked. “Does it happen before she is born?”

The doctor reached forward and manipulated the sensor pad. The image on the screen changed and now showed a tiny cluster of cells inside the woman’s body.

“This probably sounds scary, but there is a lot about the app we are still learning.” Dr. Eve pointed to the screen. “When the app went online for everyone, our hospital required all of us to go through a series of seminars. The seminars gave us a lot of background on the history of the app and how it works in utero. Obviously for those who were already born, the app came from the code in the activated oxygen, which the government uses to regulate the atmosphere. When City received the government mandate for the oxygen to come online, the code went online in the oxygen, we breathed it in, and the changes were made. The hospital seminars were designed to focus on the future population. The talks all involved discussions about what would happen in the minds of babies who hadn’t been born yet.”

“How does it work?” FarFar asked.

Dr. Eve manipulated the screen again and this time it showed a soft background of pulsing pink and blue colors. “When the baby is growing in the womb, the app grows with her. Your body already supplies the baby with everything she needs. You are constantly breathing the code. The babies we have scanned as they grew all show normal signs of brain activity. There are very few problems.”

“But it sometimes happens?”

“Rarely,” said Dr. Eve. “And we monitor you regularly to make sure we can catch anything before it happens. It is our mission to help your baby thrive.”

The doctor pressed the pad and the screen changed to the familiar image of a cluttered app interface which was the standard app mind-view, filled with a variety of everyday sites online. There were sports scores and highlights. A celebrity was talking about their new apartment. Advertisements flashed across the screen. The sound was muted, but FarFar could imagine what it would sound like if the sound was on. Dense clashing noise until the app’s user decided to focus on one particular thing.

“One of the most important moments for the baby is when they are born and actually come out into the world,” Dr. Eve said. “That moment has always been a little traumatic for the little one. There is the sudden burst of noise and light. There is the sensation and movement of the doctor clearing their throat of fluid. And, now, with this new era of the app, there is an added moment of sensory overload for the baby to adjust to.”

FarFar looked at the busy screen and, once again, unconsciously touched her stomach.

“I don’t want you to worry,” the doctor said. “That is why you’re here. And you came at the right time…as soon as your test came back positive. I want to start seeing you every week for follow-up exams.”

FarFar nodded. “Thank you,” she said.

“Of course. And I want you to start taking prenatal vitamins right away. These new pills are enhanced with a special media-conditioning supplement which has been proven to ease the child’s first moments when they come out into the online world. The pills will start to share your online experiences with the baby as the baby’s brain develops. You can think of it like pre-installing a program in your child, the same way we do when we want a new app feature. These pills are wonderful and truly help the little one start to thrive online even before they are born.”

“Where can I buy them?” FarFar said.

The doctor reached behind her into a draw under the counter and took out a bottle of white pills. “You don’t have to buy them,” she said. “They are part of your wellness package as a citizen of City.”

FarFar took the bottle of pills. “Can I take one right now?” she said.

“If you want.” The doctor went over to the little corner sink and drew water into a paper cup. She handed it to FarFar. FarFar fumbled with the seal on the bottle, but couldn’t get it open. The doctor took the bottle, pressed open the seal, and handed FarFar a pill.

FarFar took the white pill and looked at it for a moment. She pictured the tiny bundle of cells inside of her. She looked again at the jumble of moving images on the wall screen across from where she was sitting. Then she put the pill on her tongue and swallowed it.

︎

The next few weeks and months went by quickly. FarFar worked in the kindergarten of their apartment building. The lower levels of the building were all filled with daily needs locations. There were schools, offices, grocery stores, and hardware outlets on the ground floor. Maintenance offices were in the sub-basement levels. The kindergarten was on the third floor. It was a large playroom with smaller classrooms opening off of it on three sides. The classrooms all had windows looking out on the city streets below.

Everything above the fifth floor were apartments. Because FarFar’s building was an older building in one of the original districts of City, the building had hanging apartments in addition to the ones which were built into the original structure. FarFar and TongLei had a hanging apartment on the 168th floor.

They had only lived in the building for the last five years. Before that they lived outside City’s walls in one of the slum districts. They were granted an apartment because, before TongLei’s father died, he did maintenance for City’s sanitation system, and essential workers were automatically entered into a database which gave them access to apartments in the city if one opened up. TongLei and FarFar felt incredibly lucky when they got the call. It wouldn’t be an original apartment, but hanging apartments were considered almost as reliable.

The apartment was delivered to the building from somewhere in the factory section of City where the hanging apartments were constructed. A sky crane lifted it into place, hooking it onto the core structure of the building and connecting the electricity and the plumbing to the central maintenance system. FarFar and TongLei moved in the next day. It was the first time either of them had been inside City. They boarded an eterna-tube from the station in their slum district, and the tube whisked them through tunnels and then up through the streets of City, winding its way to their apartment building. FarFar had a difficult time focusing on everything around her. The city buzzed with activity. Towers of apartments and offices loomed on every side. She couldn’t see the sky. As the tube rocketed through the city streets, all FarFar could see were flashes of color and lights from the massive screens outside the tube’s walls which blanketed every square inch of buildings and subway stations. Other eterna-tubes cut across the path of their tracks, each car neatly fitting in between the gaps in the tube sections, all calculated down to the millimeter by computer systems, so the forward movement of the tube never slowed. When the tracks crossed each other and the tubes flashed through the gaps between each pod, FarFar closed her eyes.

They moved into the apartment, and TongLei quickly got a job working for the municipal basement offices doing jobs around City. After TongLei left for work FarFar looked out the windows of the apartment at the streets far below. Would she ever get used to City? One of FarFar’s favorite places in the slums was just outside of their neighborhood where the drainage ditch emptied into a larger lagoon. She used to go out there most days after she was finished working in the kindergarten yard of her slum district. If she lay in just the right place she could hear the trickle of drainage water emptying into the lagoon while she looked up at the sky and watched the clouds drifting across the horizon.

She couldn’t see the sky from their apartment. Their building continued up into the sky for another mile or more and the sky was a tiny slit of blue far above them. She missed the feeling of laying on her back and watching the clouds. One day she turned on a small trickle of water in the kitchen sink and crouched next to it with her eyes closed. She listened to the water flowing down the drain and let her mind take her back to the lagoon.

Eventually the walls of the apartment felt like they were closing in on her. Desperate for a change, she got the job at the building’s kindergarten after a few weeks. Many other young women from the building worked there. Most of them had kids who attended the school. After the doctor’s visit, FarFar watched the children playing in the main play area of the kindergarten. They picked up toys and ran through the room in groups or pairs. Sometimes they stopped and reacted to things in their apps. Strange moments. A child played with a doll and then suddenly stopped, mid-movement, and stared off into space with wide eyes…transfixed by the app in their mind-view.

What would her daughter look like playing with these kids? What would she see on her app? FarFar gently touched her stomach and thought, “Four more months…”

︎

FarFar is playing with her little daughter. Her daughter is already three years old. They aren't in the city. They are out in the slums. They are at the lagoon, taking turns throwing pebbles down into the pool of water below. They lie on their backs and look up into the sky. FarFar points at the clouds, describing the shapes she sees. Faces of people. A half-moon. The shape of an elephant.

Then, a change. Her daughter stops talking. Something in the app grabs her attention. She flinches. She cries out. FarFar reaches over to her. The little girl twitches and shakes her head. She wrenches her shoulders and jumps up. FarFar tries to pull her back. Her daughter grabs her head. Then, in one swift motion, she breaks free from FarFar's grasp and runs. FarFar turns, trying to reach her, but the little girl is already moving too quickly. FarFar screams. Her daughter runs at the lagoon. She jumps into the air and plunges over the side…

FarFar woke up with a small cry. Her forehead was glistening with sweat. As she sat up, she carefully felt her enlarged stomach. She had never had a dream like that before, but she suspected why it happened now. Only a few weeks to go. During the last days FarFar had not felt her baby move much. But sometimes when FarFar was using her app, she felt a frenzy of movement from her womb.

FarFar flicked into her app. She navigated several links with quick blinks. She contacted the doctor’s office and asked if there was an emergency appointment. The nurse told her she could come in anytime that morning. FarFar jumped out of bed and pulled on her clothes. TongLei was already out at his job. Moments later FarFar was in the elevator, heading down toward the street far below.

The morning traffic was already up and running. It never slowed down much. The city operated 24 hours a day. Some people worked during day shifts. Others worked through the nights. There were redundant jobs of all kinds so that if someone had a day or a night shift they could always be guaranteed that whatever they needed would be available and open for them.

FarFar made the journey to the doctor’s clinic in a daze, switching eterna-tubes on remote control, her mind on nothing but the tiny girl within her womb. She wanted something to take her mind off of the world around her…off of the thoughts swirling in her about her unborn daughter. She closed her eyes.

She remembered what her mother used to do when FarFar was a little girl. Her mother told her stories from her own childhood, from some of her girlhood books, books long gone. As FarFar sat on the eterna-tube she pictured her mother reading the stories to her. She breathed deeply and tried to control her thoughts.

She arrived at the doctor’s office and a nurse checked her in. Soon FarFar was in the same familiar room, sitting on an examining table, and looking at the wall screen across from her with the same set of helpful questions in a list.

A moment later the doctor came in. It wasn’t Dr. Eve this time. It was a male doctor. He asked FarFar to lay back on the table while he listened carefully to her belly with a stethoscope. He frowned. He made a few taps on a screen in his hand. Moments later a nurse came in. She told FarFar to follow her.

They made a few turns through some of the hallways FarFar hadn’t been before. Soon they were walking past operating rooms and patient halls with many beds, some empty, some filled with women in various stages of pregnancy. Finally, the nurse stopped in front of a door with a sign on it that read “App Scans”. She knocked on the door and a technician opened it. FarFar walked in and saw a huge machine. It looked like an old-fashioned MRI machine, but it was shaped like an orb with a door on the side. The technician opened the door and beckoned to FarFar. He helped her into the door and gently strapped her into the chair within.

The door closed. The door had a small window, and FarFar could see the technician go to an examining station behind another pane of glass. He sat down and typed a few things on a keyboard. Slowly, a hum came from the orb around her. The hum grew and FarFar could also hear some kind of mechanism revolving behind the steel surface of the orb. She felt nothing, but she continued to cradle her stomach nervously as the hum continued.

The technician spoke to her through a microphone in the wall next to her. “The lights will go out for a few moments. Don’t worry. It’s part of the test.” FarFar nodded. The lights clicked off and the hum of the machine continued around her. FarFar closed her eyes. She tried to picture herself somewhere calm. She imagined herself out by the lagoon next to the slums, laying on the ground and looking up at the clouds in the sky. Finally, the lights came back on. Then the sound died down, and the technician came back and helped her out.

The nurse brought her back to the waiting room. FarFar sat again on the examining table and waited. Her mind was skittering from one thought to the next. What was wrong with the baby? Was something wrong with her growth? With her heart? With the vitamins? Something with her app? What was the orb-machine? What had it seen?

A few minutes passed and then Dr. Eve entered. She smiled at FarFar, but there seemed to be a hint of tension behind her eyes.

“Hello,” Dr. Eve said. “I’m so glad to see you again.”

“Please,” FarFar said. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

The doctor paused for a moment and then tapped a few things on the sensor pad. The screen on the wall lit up, and FarFar saw a familiar image of an ultrasound with a tiny baby at the center of it.

Dr. Eve walked over to the wall and tapped the screen. It zoomed in on the baby’s head. The doctor turned back to her.

“The machine you were just in was an app scanner,” she said. “It is designed to monitor brain waves of the babies’ apps when they are still in the womb.” She tapped a few more items on the sensor pad. “This is what normal brain activity looks like for a baby’s app in the third trimester.” A series of wavy patterns appeared on the screen, moving from left to right.

Then the doctor frowned and tapped again. “This is what your daughter’s brain looks like.” The wavy patterns disappeared and were replaced by a dull, undulating curve that sluggishly moved up and down. Periodically the sluggish pattern spiked, sending a dash up to the top of the screen.

FarFar looked at the pattern. “What does that mean?” she said.

The doctor looked at the pattern for a moment. “It may mean nothing. Your baby’s waves are a bit irregular, but it might just be that your child is responding more slowly to the app,” she said. “Usually at this stage the baby’s mind is already beginning to come online. Remember, our app science is still fairly new. Normally the baby is beginning to interact with the web and form their own behavioral patterns of use. Your baby’s brain waves are moving more slowly with occasional bursts of activity. But this may mean nothing. The key moment for us will be the moment of birth. That is when everything comes online. Lungs, digestion, movement, app, everything.”

“You said it may mean nothing,” FarFar said. “But what else could it mean?”

The doctor paused. Then she said, “There are rare times when a baby’s app can’t adjust to the noise of the web. At those times we would need to look into other options to help the app interface with the baby’s mind. Usually that just means some additional post-natal care.”

She came over to FarFar and laid her hand on her shoulder. “I wouldn’t worry,” she said. “Just a few more weeks to go.”

︎

FarFar sat in the kindergarten the next day, watching the children in the main room. They rolled balls. They jumped on the play gym. Sometimes they sat still for a few minutes at the tables and colored. And, sometimes, they stood still and looked out into the air, and FarFar knew they were in their apps.

︎

This dream is different. FarFar isn't herself. She sees the world through someone else's eyes. The world is alive and burning with images. Bursts of color and light flash across her vision. Noise comes from everywhere. Screaming and laughing voices echo from the walls of the bedroom, but it isn't her bedroom. It's pink. A baby mobile hangs from the ceiling.

She flinches. The bursts of sound are deafening. Light blinds her. Her breath catches in her throat. She jumps up and runs for the door. She runs down a hallway. She moves down, down, down...she doesn't know how. Then she runs along the street. Eterna-tubes move alongside her, faster than usual. Cars come out of nowhere, bursting across her path. Drivers lean out of windows, shouting...happily...angrily.

FarFar, or whoever she is in this dream, is blinded by flashes. Noise deafens her. Her eyes roll to the left and right. Her body screams for a moment of silence. Nothing but screens everywhere, lit up and flashing. She runs down the street. With every step, the flashes and the images grow and intensify. They overwhelm every part of her vision. She runs on. She leaps into the street. A truck horn blares...


FarFar woke with a start. She sat up. Her sheets were damp. Her forehead was clammy with sweat. She looked around the room. TongLei was already at work. FarFar got out of bed and dressed quickly. She slammed her apartment door and was soon down on the street. As she moved down the crowded sidewalk she tried to concentrate her thoughts.

An idea formed in her head. She boarded one of the eterna-tubes headed to the outskirts of City. She made several more connections. With each passing minute the plan in her head solidified. Finally, after an hour of tube travel, the train came to a halt. It was the end station. She stepped onto the platform. She took a deep breath. Near quiet. The gentle sounds of the slum surrounded her. The life rhythm changed. People made their way toward the market. Men headed to the rice fields. FarFar looked up. She could see the sky. It was deep blue.

She turned and walked through the maze of small alleys. Even though the slum had changed since she and TongLei had lived there, she had an instinct that she was moving in the right direction. She finally stopped at a quiet corner of huts. One of the doors had a home-made sign out front. Words were written in Mandarin and English. Yao Pin. Medicine. Instinctively FarFar touched her belly.

She entered the small hut. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the dim. Shelves covered the walls. Jars containing various dried herbs twinkled in the dusty light. An elderly woman stood over a table in the corner, grinding leaves in an old-fashioned pestle. She looked up at FarFar with bright eyes.

“Yes?” she said.

FarFar flushed with embarrassment. She realized she didn’t know exactly what to say.

“I…” she said, “I was hoping you might be able to help me.”

The elderly lady stood and came over to FarFar. She looked her up and down. Her eyes settled on FarFar’s stomach. She was silent for a moment and then said, “You have come from City?”

FarFar nodded.

“Do you have a doctor there?”

“Yes, but…” FarFar’s words were halting. She suddenly realized tears were streaming down her face.

The woman’s face softened. “Boy or girl?”

“A girl.”

“Does she move strangely?”

FarFar nodded and continued to weep silently. The woman’s eyes narrowed. She thought for a moment. When she looked at FarFar again her mouth was a firm line.

“You are the third from the city to come here this week,” she said.
“All pregnant?” FarFar said.

The woman nodded. “Their symptoms were all slightly different, but the reasons were the same. They were searching for an answer the doctor’s couldn’t give.”

“Were you able to help them?” FarFar said.

The woman looked around the shelves with a smile. “There’s always medicine,” she said. “But what is it you want to happen?”

FarFar wiped her tears with her hand and took a deep breath. “I don’t want her to suffer. I want her world to be free from noise. I want her eyes to be calm. I want her mind cleared of static. I want her feverish brain to be cool and still.” As FarFar spoke her voice strengthened. “I want her to be well.”

There was a long pause. Then the woman turned and walked to the back of the hut. When she returned she held a small paper, folded upon itself. She turned the paper between her fingers for a moment and looked deeply into FarFar’s eyes.

“This is cha,” she said. Then she smiled and said, “It’s tea. Well, it’s more than that. But tea is easiest to understand. This is what you seek.”

“What does it do?” FarFar said.

The woman smiled and said, “Drink this tea and a balance will return to your body. And a calm will come to your child. But…” she said, “there is a cost.”

“What is it?”

The woman’s eyes held FarFar’s. “She will be healthy,” she said. “But she will not be online.”

︎

FarFar sat in the kindergarten. Children ran after each other. TongLei sat next to her. After she had returned from her trip to the slums, FarFar spent some time preparing the baby’s room. When TongLei got home she showed him the medicine in the paper. They watched the children as the day lengthened.

“Would she fit in?” TongLei said.

FarFar looked at him. “I don’t know,” she said. “But she will have calm. She’ll be able to breathe.”

As the children ran back and forth, filling the air with gleeful noise, TongLei slowly reached out and took FarFar’s hand. She looked at him. He smiled at her.

︎

The kettle bubbled. TongLei had returned to work. FarFar looked out the side windows of their apartment at the streets down below. She moved to the kitchen and poured a cup of steaming water into a mug. Carefully she opened the paper. It held a small mound of dried leaves and stems. She lifted it to her nose and sniffed. The smell reminded her of the grasses next to the lagoon. She tipped it into the cup. The liquid slowly seeped through and turned a golden brown.

FarFar waited another moment. Then she brought the cup with her to the window. Steam from the cup bathed her face. She took a sip. A warm sensation filled her belly. FarFar sat in a chair next to the window and breathed deeply. She gently cradled her belly and thought, “Two more weeks…”

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