Engineering Infinity Read Online Free PDF Page B

wasn’t until the financial
disclosure forms that he understood why. She’d been taking her enhancement
money and funnelling it to Suzette - for music enhancements.
    Audio additions - no implants
yet, Suze was too young. But music appreciation adds, sight reading adds, piano
aptitude adds. Their daughter the prodigy. He’d approved one app for Suze, just
one. A music-appreciation app for babies. He would never have approved the
others. Some weren’t even for children.
    When he agreed to the child-sized
piano, he thought Suze wanted it to tinker on. He didn’t realize his wife had a
plan for their little girl. A horrible, accelerated plan. For Suze.
    His Suze, who hid in her room
when her parents fought. His Suze, who preferred a cloth doll to all those
life-like things that other people had given her. Who loved the doll because
her Grams had made it, because the doll was soft and huggable and never talked
back.
    He should’ve known that was a
sign.
    Now he stands here, in a
courtroom smaller than anything he imagined. His soon-to-be ex-wife stands with
her attorney on the other side, and rubs her hands together. Madeline no longer
looks like the woman he met or the woman he married. Her hair’s a mess, her
eyes wander, her hands are chapped from rubbing, rubbing, rubbing.
    He doesn’t look the same either,
face grey with stress, always tired. He still fits into his suits, though, the
ones he had before the marriage, and he doesn’t obsess. He has time for Suze,
which is more than Madeline does.
    Madeline, who only has time for
Suze’s projects.
    His expert says that’s bad. She
has no expert to counter. His lawyer says that’s good.
    Nils doesn’t know what’s good and
what’s not any more.
    The judge sits behind the bench -
a stern man, with a screen in front of him. He will read the judgment, but
before he does, he looks at Nils.
    “There were signs,” the judge
says. “You ignored them. You’re not blameless in the end of this relationship.”
    Nils knows that. But his lawyer
seems to relax, as if the judge’s harsh words for Nils bode well. Nils holds
his breath, trying not to think about all the debt, selling the house, moving,
trying not to let it all affect his job - his lesser job, the only one he and
Madeline had had in the end, because she had become unemployable. From a
perfectionist to unemployable in five short years. From brilliant to crazy in
nearly six. He wanted to ask the doctor they’d seen first, the man who knew how
to “improve” a foetus in the womb, whether hormones could cause this or whether
it had existed back when Madeline’s parents had her foetus tested. Had they
missed a tendency toward insanity? Or had they ignored it, figured it wouldn’t
matter?
    He’s concentrating so hard, he
almost misses most of the judgment. He gets Suze. Full custody. No visits from
Madeline, even, not for some time, because his psychologist and the
court-ordered psychologist say she’s dangerous, toxic to herself and to her
child.
    You’re not
blameless. There were signs. You ignored them .
    Nils flushes, and forces himself
to listen. The judge continues: Madeline ordered into a program for obsessives
- if, and only if, she ever wants to see her daughter again. Madeline curses - “She
needs me!” she shouts, and the judge, seemingly unaffected, says, “You have
just provided us with a perfect illustration of the problem,” which, for once,
shuts Madeline up.
    The judge gives a timeline, and
targets for Madeline. She may only see Suze if she achieves certain goals,
goals - the judge says - that will be hard for an obsessive.
    Then he looks at Nils.
    “Perhaps,” the judge says with a
surprising amount of dispassion, “you can undo the damage. Maybe it’s not too
late.”
    In a tone that says it is.
    Suze is five - too young for
permanent enhancements. Too old for genetic manipulation. Suze, who will have
to survive on his wisdom and his love.
    That’s all we
had, boy , Nils’