Pygmalion Unbound Read Online Free PDF

back into her room just before five, as the techs and researchers and higher-ups were filing out of their offices. They had a dress code here, she noted — ties and slacks for men, rather than business casual over beer guts; skirts and dresses for the women, hemlines knee length or below. All no doubt carefully screened, given the nature of the work here, names cross-referenced with credit scores and law enforcement databases, social networking sites combed by name and face recognition software for embarrassing posts of college drink-till-you-puke contests or dorm room orgies, filtering a certain class of people out and leaving the cognitive elite.
    Maria changed back into her shift as Franklin waited outside. “That was — pleasant,” she told Kelly.
    “I thought so too, Maria,” Kelly said.
    Though Maria was a child, Kelly kept her voice adult, didn’t change her vocabulary. She had cousins who centered their existence on their children, and she grated her teeth when they used their over-excited, gushy child voices. Kelly hated grown women who reverted to children.
    “Can we do it again?”
    “Of course. I’m going to be here every day, working with you.”
    “Working on what?”
    “I’ll be teaching you things.”
    “What sorts of things?”
    “You’ll have to wait until tomorrow.” She kissed Maria on the forehead, and left her in the room.
    “Got her all tucked in?” Franklin asked.
    “I presume they have people to check up on her.”
    “They have a tech come in and put her in a standby mode — ”
    “Standby mode?”
    “The equivalent of sleep,” Franklin said. “Droids don’t require sleep like we do. Plug in a USB cable,” he tapped his temple, “and it’s off to dreamland.”
    Kelly frowned. “You’re treating her like a computer, putting her on a standby mode. Leaving her here alone.”
    “You got a better idea?”
    “She could stay with me.”
    “She’s an inquisitive child with an adult body, and you’re gonna watch her twenty-four seven? Let her loose in the big bad world?”
    Kelly sighed. “I see your point. I don’t like it, but I see it. But eventually — ”
    “You like Chinese?”
    Kelly had to stop and refocus. “Food or culture?”
    “Either, but I meant food.”
    “I love it.”
    “I know a great Szechuan place downtown. They make a great shiuzhu .”
    Kelly looked at him warily. “It’s generally unwise to get involved with colleagues, Doctor Franklin.”
    “Relax. Romance’s got nothing to do with it. I know you have plenty of questions, but they like to clear this place out after five-thirty, for security reasons. So we can talk. Alone.”
    “I see.” Without Crane around .
    “I promise not to molest you,” he smiled.
    “It’s a deal.”
    On the way home, Kelly pondered the day. Her head felt light, dizzy from the breathtaking new world opened up before her, before humanity. New life from old, not of woman born. Waiting for her to shape and mold.
    And to what end? Every jump in man’s progression from cave-dweller to astronaut had been ultimately used to dominate others. Fire warmed caves, but it burned wooden houses. Agriculture fed the masses and made civilization possible, but its bungling or withdrawal starved millions, as Josef Stalin had proved in the Ukraine. Iron, bronze, and copper all went to axes and swords and bullets, as well as pots and pans. Realizing the dream of heavier-than-air flight produced B-52s as well as 747s. The same kind of thinking that killed millions, that had taken her father from her, all came down to men swaggering about like children trying to cover their fear with tough playacting.
    She sat on her bed and thought. There were two roads ahead. One, the principled path, would have her quit in a huff, muttering about militarism and penis size and retreating back to her cloistered little air-conditioned world in Madison, washing her hands of the whole business and letting come what may. Maria Mark One and Maria Mark