Silently and Very Fast by Catherynne M. Valente Read Free Book Online Page B

involved.”
    I realized the robot body was a mistake, though I could not then say why. I made myself small, and human, a little boy with dirt smeared on his knees and a torn shirt, standing in the corner with my hands over my face, as I had seen Akan when he was younger, standing in the corner of the house that was me being punished.
    “Turn around, Elefsis.” Cassian said in the tone of voice my house-self knew meant execute command.
    And I did a thing I had not yet let Ceno know I knew how to do.
    I made my boy-self cry.
    I made his face wet, and his eyes big and limpid and red around the rims. I made his nose sniffle and drip a little. I made his lip quiver. I was copying Koetoi’s crying, but I could not tell if her mother recognized the hitching of the breath and the particular pattern of skin-creasing in the frown. I had been practicing, too. Crying involves many auditory, muscular, and visual cues. Since I had kept it as a surprise (Ceno said surprises are part of special days like birthdays, so I made her one for that day) I could not practice it on Ceno and see if I appeared genuine. Was I genuine? I did not want them talking without me. I think that sometimes when Koetoi cries, she is not really upset, but merely wants her way. That was why I chose Koe to copy. She was good at that inflection that I wanted to be good at, so I could get my way.
    Ceno clapped her hands with delight. Cassian sat down in one of the deep leather chairs and held out her arms to me. I crawled into them as I had seen the children do and sat on her lap. She ruffled my hair, but her face did not look like it looked when she ruffled Koe’s hair. She was performing an automatic function. I understood that.
    “Elefsis, please tell me your computational capabilities and operational parameters.” Execute command.
    Tears gushed down my cheeks and I opened blood vessels in my face in order to redden it. This did not make her hold me or kiss my forehead, which I found confusing.
    “The clothing rinse cycle is in progress, water at 55 degrees Celsius. All the live-long day-o.”
    Neither of their faces exhibited expressions I hadcome to associate with positive reinforcement.
    Finally, I answered her as I would have answered Ceno. I turned into an iron cauldron on her lap. The sudden weight change made the leather creak.
    Cassian looked at her daughter questioningly. The girl reddened—and I experienced being the cauldron and being the girl and reddening, warming, as she did, but also I watched myself be the cauldron and Ceno be the girl and Ceno reddening. Being inside someone is existentially and geographically complex.
    “I’ve . . . I’ve been telling it stories,” Ceno admitted. “Fairy tales, mostly. I thought it should learn about narrative, because most of the frames available to us run on some kind of narrative drive, and besides, everything has a narrative, really, and if you can’t understand a story and relate to it, figure out how you fit inside it, you’re not really alive at all. Like, when I was little and daddy read me the Twelve Dancing Princesses and I thought: Daddy is a dancing prince, and he must go under the ground to dance all night in a beautiful castle with beautiful girls, and that’s why he sleeps all day. I tried to catch him at it, but I never could, and of course I know he’s not really a dancing prince, but that’s the best way I could understand what was happening to him. I’m hoping that eventually I can get Elefsis to make up its own stories, too, but for now we’ve been focusing on simple stories and metaphors. It likes similes, it can understand how anything is like anything else, find minute vectors of comparison. The apple is red, the dress is red, the dress is red like an apple. It even makes some surprising ones, like how when I first saw it it made a jewel for me to say: I am like a jewel, you are like a jewel, you are like me. ”
    Cassian’s mouth had fallen open a little. Her eyes