The Lifecycle of Software Objects (7 page)

Ana prefers that they find activities that develop skills but which the digients enjoy enough to do on their own. Other owners argue that the tutors ought to give the digients actual assignments to be completed. She's surprised to read a forum post from Derek in which he supports the idea. She asks him about it the next time they talk.

"Why would you want to make them do homework?"

"What's wrong with that?" says Derek. "Is this because you once had a mean teacher when you were a kid?"

"Very funny. Come on, I'm serious."

"Okay, seriously: what's so bad about homework?"

She hardly knows where to begin. "It's one thing for Jax to have ways to keep himself entertained outside of class," she says. "But to give him assignments and tell him he has to finish them even if he doesn't enjoy it? To make him feel bad if he doesn't do it? That goes against every principle of animal training."

"A long time ago, you were the one who told me that digients weren't like animals."

"Yes, I did say that," she allows. "But they're not tools either. And I know you know that, but what you're talking about, it sounds like you're preparing them to do work that they wouldn't want to do."

He shakes his head. "It's not about making them work, it's about getting them to learn some responsibility. And they might be strong enough to take feeling bad once in a while; the only way to know is to try."

"Why take the chance of making them feel bad at all?"

"It was something I thought of when I was talking with my sister," he says. Derek's sister teaches children born with Down syndrome. "She mentioned that some parents don't want to push their kids too much, because they're afraid of exposing them to the possibility of failure. The parents mean well, but they're keeping their kids from reaching their full potential when they coddle them."

It takes her a little time to get used to this idea. Ana's accustomed to thinking of the digients as supremely gifted apes, and while in the past people have compared apes to children with special needs, it was always more of a metaphor. To view the digients more literally as special-needs children requires a shift in perspective. "How much responsibility do you think the digients can handle?"

Derek spreads his hands. "I don't know. In a way it's like Down Syndrome; it affects every person differently, so whenever my sister works with a new kid, she has to play it by ear. We have even less to go on, because no one's ever raised digients for this long before. If it turns out that the only thing we're accomplishing with homework assignments is making them feel bad, then of course we'll stop. But I don't want Marco and Polo's potential to be wasted because I was afraid of pushing them a little."

She sees that Derek has a very different idea of high expectations than she has. More than that, she realizes that his is actually the better one. "You're right," she says, after a pause. "We should see if they can do homework."

It's a year later, and Derek is finishing up some work before he meets Ana for lunch on a Saturday. For the last couple of hours he's been testing an avatar modification that would change the proportions of the digients' bodies and faces to make them look more mature. Among those owners who have opted to further their digients' education, more and more are commenting on the incongruity between the digients' eternally cute avatars and their increasing competence. This add-on is intended to correct that, and make it easier for the owners' to think of the digients as more capable.

Before leaving, he checks his messages, and is puzzled to see a couple from strangers accusing him of running some kind of scam. The messages seem legitimate, so he reads them more closely. The senders are complaining about a digient approaching them in Data Earth and asking for money.

Derek realizes what must have happened. He recently began giving Marco and Polo an allowance, which they usually spend on game subscriptions or virtual toys; they've asked for more, but he's held the line. They must have decided to ask people in Data Earth at random for money and been rebuffed, but since the digients are running under Derek's Data Earth account, people assumed that he had trained them to beg for money.

He'll send complete apologies to these people later on, but right now he tells Marco and Polo to enter their robot bodies immediately. Fabrication technology has reached the point where he was able to afford two robot bodies of his own, customized to complement Marco and Polo's avatars. A minute later, their panda-bear faces appear in the robots' helmets, and Derek reprimands them for asking strangers for money."I thought you would know better," he says.

Polo is apologetic. "Yes, know better," he says.

"So why did you do it?"

"My idea, not Polo's," says Marco. "Knew they wouldn't give money. Knew they'd message you."

Derek's astonished. "You were trying to get people angry at me?"

"This happen because we on your account," says Marco. "Not happen if we have own accounts, like Voyl."

Now he understands. The digients have been hearing about a Sophonce digient named Voyl. Voyl's owner—a lawyer named Gerald Hecht—filed papers to create the Voyl Corporation, and Voyl now runs under a separate Data Earth account registered to that corporation. Voyl pays taxes and is able to own property, enter into contracts, file lawsuits and be sued; in many respects he is a legal person, albeit one for whom Hecht technically serves as director.

The idea has been around for a while. Artificial-life hobbyists all agree on the impossibility of digients ever getting legal protection as a class, citing dogs as an example: human compassion for dogs is both deep and wide, but the euthanasia of dogs in pet shelters amounts to an ongoing canine holocaust, and if the courts haven't put a stop to that, they certainly aren't going to grant protection to entities that lack a heartbeat. Given this, some owners believe the most they can hope for is legal protection on an individual basis: by filing articles of incorporation on a specific digient, an owner can take advantage of a substantial body of case law that establishes rights for nonhuman entities. Hecht is the first one to have actually done it.

"So you were trying to make a point," says Derek.

"People say being corporation great," says Marco. "Can do whatever want."

A number of human adolescents have complained that Voyl has more rights than they do; obviously the digients have seen their comments. "Well, you're
not
incorporated, and you definitely
cannot
do anything you want."

"We sorry," says Marco, suddenly appreciating the trouble he's in. "Just want be corporations."

"I told you before: you're not old enough."

"We older Voyl," says Polo.

"Me especially," says Marco.

"Voyl's not old enough for it, either. His owner made a mistake."

"So you not let us be corporations ever?"

Derek gives them a stern look. "Maybe one day, when you're much older; we'll see. But if you two try a stunt like this again, there are going to be serious repercussions. You understand?"

The digients are glum. "Yes," says Marco.

"Yes," says Polo.

"Okay. I've got to go; we'll talk about this more later." Derek scowls at them. "You two get back into Data Earth now."

As he drives to the restaurant, Derek again thinks about what Marco is asking for. A lot of people are skeptical about the idea of digients becoming corporations; they view Hecht's actions as nothing more than a stunt, an impression Hecht only reinforces by issuing press releases about his plans for Voyl. Right now Hecht essentially runs the Voyl Corporation, but he's training Voyl in business law and insists that someday Voyl will make all the decisions himself; the role of director, whether filled by Hecht or by someone else, will be nothing but a formality. In the meantime, Hecht invites people to put Voyl's status as a legal person to the test. Hecht has the resources for a court battle, and he's itching for a fight. So far no one has taken him up on it, but Derek hopes that someone will; he wants the precedents to be well established before he'll consider incorporating Marco and Polo.

The question of whether Marco or Polo would ever be intellectually capable of becoming corporations is another question, and to Derek's mind a more difficult one to answer. The Neuroblast digients have shown that they can do homework on their own, and he's confident that their attention spans for independent tasks will increase steadily over time, but even if they become able to do sizeable projects without supervision, that's still a far cry from being able to make responsible decisions about one's future. And he's not even sure if that level of independence is something he should encourage Marco and Polo to have as a goal. Turning Marco and Polo into corporations opens the door to keeping them running after Derek himself has passed away, which is a worrisome prospect: for Down Syndrome individuals, there are organizations that provide assistance to people living on their own, but similar support services don't exist for incorporated digients. It might be better to ensure that Marco and Polo are suspended in the event that Derek can't take care of them.

Whatever he decides to do, he'll have to do it without Wendy; they've decided to file for divorce. The reasons are complicated, of course, but one thing is clear: raising a pair of digients is not what Wendy wants from life, and if Derek wants a partner in this endeavor, he'll have to find someone else. Their marriage counselor has explained that the problem isn't the digients
per se
, it's the fact that Derek and Wendy can't find a way to accommodate their having different interests. Derek knows the counselor's right, but surely having common interests would have helped.

He doesn't want to get ahead of himself, but he can't stop thinking that getting divorced offers him an opportunity to be more than just friends with Ana. Surely she's considered the possibility too; after all the time they've known each other, how could she not have? The two of them would make a great team, working together for what's best for their digients.

Not that he plans to declare his feelings at lunch; it's too soon for that, and he knows Ana is seeing someone right now, a guy named Kyle. But their relationship is fast approaching the six-month mark, which is usually when the guy realizes that Jax isn't just a hobby, but the major priority in her life; it probably won't be long before the breakup follows. Derek figures that in telling Ana about his divorce, he'll be reminding her that there are other options, that not every guy will think of digients as competition for her attention.

He looks around for Ana in the restaurant, sees her and waves; she gives him a big grin. When he reaches the table he says, "You won't believe what Marco and Polo just did." He tells her what happened, and her jaw drops.

"That's amazing," she says."God, I'll bet Jax has heard the same things they have."

"Yeah, you might want to have a conversation with him when you get home." This leads to talking about the benefits and drawbacks of giving the digients access to social forums. The forums offer richer interaction than the owners can supply by themselves, but not all the influences the digients receive are positive ones.

After they've discussed digients for a while, Ana asks, "So aside from that, what's new with you?"

Derek sighs. "I might as well tell you: Wendy and I are getting divorced."

"Oh no. Derek, I'm so sorry." Her sympathy is genuine, and it warms him.

"It's been a long time coming," he says.

She nods. "Still, I'm sorry it's happening."

"Thanks." He talks for a while about what he and Wendy have agreed upon, how they'll sell the condo and split the proceeds. Thankfully the process is mostly amicable.

"At least she doesn't want copies of Marco and Polo," says Ana.

"Yeah, thank goodness for that," agrees Derek. A spouse can almost always make a copy of a digient, and when a divorce isn't amicable, it's all too easy to use one to get back at one's ex. They've seen it happen on the forums many times.

"Enough of that," says Derek. "Let's talk about something else. What's happening with you?"

"Nothing, really."

"You looked like you were in a good mood until I started talking about Wendy."

"Well, yeah, I was," she admits. "So is there something in particular that's got you feeling so upbeat?"

"It's nothing."

"Nothing's got you in a good mood?"

"Well, I have some news, but we don't have to talk about it now."

"No, don't be silly, it's fine. If you've got good news, let's hear it."

Ana pauses and then, almost apologetically, says, "Kyle and I have decided to move in together."

Derek is stunned. "Congratulations," he says.

Two more years pass. Life goes on.

Occasionally Ana, Derek, and the other education-minded owners have their digients take some standardized tests, to see how they compare with human children. The results vary. The Faberge digients, being illiterate, can't take written tests, but they seem to be developing well according to other metrics. Among the Origami digients, there's a curious split in the test results, with half continuing to develop over time and half hitting a plateau, possibly due to a quirk in the genome. The Neuroblast digients do reasonably well if they're permitted the same allowances in testing that dyslexic humans are given; while there's variation between the individual digients, as a group their intellectual development continues apace.

What's harder to gauge is their social development, but one encouraging sign is that the digients are socializing with human adolescents in various online communities. Jax becomes interested in tetrabrake, a subculture focused on virtual dance choreography for four-armed avatars; Marco and Polo have each joined a fan club for a serial game drama, and each regularly tries to convince the other of the superiority of his choice. Even though Ana and Derek don't really understand the appeal of these communities, they like the fact that their digients have become part of them. The adolescents who dominate these communities seem unconcerned with the fact that the digients aren't human, treating them as just another kind of online friend they are unlikely to meet in person.