Page 90 of Life Out of Order

“It feels personal,” she says, after Alba and I have left our coats and bags by the studio door.

“Yeah, it does.” Beck’s hands are shaking. The building feels lonelier than I remember. Usually I can hear people talking or music playing down the hall. Tonight all I hear is the heating system. Beck is waiting for a tow truck. I don’t understand why they can’t change the tires in the lot, but Beck says she wants someone to put the car on a lift, to make sure there’s no other damage, or tracking devices. This isn’t the first time Beck has felt menaced—she sometimes wonders if she’s being followed—but it’s the most aggressive incident so far. I make tea, just to have something to warm us while we wait.

Alba has placed her violin case on the floor, by the door. She’s never visited Beck’s studio before. She makes a circuit of the room, pausing to look at the bookcases and detouring to orbit around the 3D rig. She comes to the stand that holds Isadora and stops. Alba is not quite as tall as Isadora. The robot’s head droops; it seems bulkier than before, less like something a magpie might assemble and more like a machine.

“What is it?” Alba asks Beck.

“It’s an artificial intelligence named Isadora Hardwick. Would you like to meet her?”

Alba looks at me. I nod. “Okay,” she says, apprehensively. Beck picks up her phone and taps. The head jerks on its neck and makes a half circle. The motion reminds me of a swan getting ready to fight.

“Good evening, Isadora,” Beck says. “Clare is here to visit you again. She’s brought her daughter, Alba. Alba would like to meet you.”

I walk over so I am standing next to Alba, in front of Isadora. The head swivels blindly. Where there were camera lenses before, now there are eyelids, shutters with clumsily glued-on fake lashes. The shutters tremble and snap open. I startle and Alba steps back: Isadora now has glass eyes, brown eyes that move randomly and then fix on us: instead of being pleasantly impersonal the head is now uncanny, like a cadaver missing its skin.

“It’s nice to see you again, Clare. Hello, Alba,” the head says. The jaw moves but it isn’t in sync with the voice, which is somehow bigger and more melodious. I turn my head and see stereo speakers, big floor models, on either side of us.

“Hello, Isadora,” I say.

“She is a child?” Isadora asks.

“Yes,” says Beck. “You’ve never met a child in real life before, have you?”

“You’re pretty,” says Isadora, her awful eyes trained on Alba.

“You’re not,” Alba replies.

Isadora turns her head toward Beck, who looks tense. “Am I not pretty?”

“You will be pretty, Isadora. Right now, you are a work in progress.”

Isadora says, more confidently, “‘I’m pretty, pretty vacant!’”

Beck and I laugh. Alba says to Beck, “Why don’t you give her a nice face?” Isadora regards Alba impassively.

Beck says, “I’m working on Isadora’s brains. One of my grad students, Kyle, made her head and face.”

Alba steps closer to Isadora. “You should let a girl make your face. Boys don’t know about girl stuff.”

I watch Beck for clues: Should I hush Alba the way I would if she were this rude to another human child? But Beck seems disinclined to intervene.

Isadora says, “I’m not a girl. I’m a wild thing!”

Alba laughs. “I’m a wild thing, too.”

“Do you like math?” Isadora tries.

“No,” Alba says. “I’m not very good at it.”

“Beck says I’m made out of math,” Isadora says. “Little boys are made of snips and snails and puppy-dogs’ tails, little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice, and Isadora is made out of math.”

Alba smiles. “I don’t think I’m made of sugar and spice. I’m a bag of chemicals, my dad says.”

“Is that why you are not very nice?”

Beck and I laugh. Alba tries not to smile. “My mama says I’m incorrigible.”

“That’s a fine thing to be,” Isadora says. “Why does your mama say this to you?” I glance at Beck, who is sitting at the table furiously taking notes.