I couldn’t remember the question arising. “I guess my parents authorized it, as I was a minor.”
I tried to imagine taking it out, right now. It would be done in a second. Phris weren’t locked on like prisoners’ ankle bracelets or medieval chastity belts. It occurred to me that nothing had actually been preventing me from removing mine, ever since I’d become an adult at sixteen—only a sense of taboo that made my fingers tingle.
“Do girls talk about this stuff with each other?” Ned wanted to know.
“We joked about it—about being, you know, pregnable. The others were always, like, Nightmare! But over the years I did find myself thinking, what if? As in, if we were still like any other animal . . . might it be kind of thrilling to grow a tiny person inside myself?”
Ned spoke flatly. “I don’t remember a time I didn’t want a baby to hold.”
I tried to picture it: a tiny, soft-skinned version of him, tucked into the crook of his elbow. “Did guys call you a weirdo?”
“I’m sure they would have if I’d ever told them. A psychopath, actually, for wanting to put a woman through that. Quite apart from poisoning the planet.”
These conversations with Ned felt oddly dirty. Laying ourselves bare like this. Ours was an underground desire, an itch we were never going to get a chance to scratch. Wanting a child in the year 2060 made no sense; it had only dream logic.
I told myself that Ned was my pressure-relief valve. No better looking than some men I’d been partnered with, less good looking than most, in fact. It was only the words coming out of his mouth that stirred me, the secret picture in my head of him with a child riding on his thick shoulders. Mine. Ours. The smell of danger, like singeing hair.
I deliberately hadn’t looked up anything about this so far. When I cracked and did it, sitting at my kitchen counter, asking how long Phri effects—
—my Headpiece responded, “Can I help you, Miriam?”
I cleared my throat. “I’m just theoretically curious about, ah, taking out my Phri.”
“Is the device bothering you in some way?”
“No.”
“It works by sending a message to your anterior pituitary gland not to trigger a surge in your luteinizing hormone.” A 3D played in front of my eyes, showing the signals pulsing through the skull, from the ear to behind the bridge of the nose. “Without your Phri, within weeks or months, you’d be at a ninety-five percent risk of one of your ovaries releasing an egg, which in the presence of sperm would lead to a high danger of conception, and unless you prevented implantation of that fertilized egg, you’d become pregnant.”
“Got it.” (Dry-mouthed.)
“This would likely lead to a cascade of physical, emotional, and mental changes over the next approximately forty weeks. Normal symptoms of pregnancy include fatigue, breast tenderness, nausea, excess saliva, increased urination, bloating, mood swings, cramping, hunger, constipation, food aversions and cravings, indigestion, heartburn, flatulence, lines on skin—”
The list was filling me with rising panic.
“—nasal congestion, extreme weight gain, swelling of hands and feet, vaginal discharge, faintness, energy fluctuations, varicose veins, cysts, urinary blockage, alterations in sex drive, back pain, shortness of breath, and trouble sleeping.”
“Jesus!” How had any woman ever gone through this? But I reminded myself that it was like the list of possible side effects on every medication package; they wouldn’t all happen every time.
The Headpiece rolled on: “Then there are complications, which can include anemia, nutritional deficiency, urinary tract infections, depression, blood clots, preeclampsia, gestational diabetes, stroke, and death in labor.”
That left me speechless.
“After birth, you might continue to suffer long-term or permanent pelvic widening, flattened and enlarged feet, skin striations and scarring, labial deformation, stress incontinence, increased risk of heart failure, and changes to brain structure.”
“Brain structure?” I repeated, incredulous.
She answered: “Shrinkage of gray matter associated with social activities such as conversation. These phenomena may be caused or worsened by the stresses of caring for an infant, which include sleep deprivation, social isolation, loss of partner intimacy, and logistical and financial burdens.”
“So, yeah, what would it all cost?” I asked, just to get her off the medical-horror track.
“Increased expenses would begin with private medical care—”
“Hang on.”
The voice anticipated my question. “Pregnancy is one of the Elective Risk Factors that invalidates membership in your local free clinic.”
“Oh. And . . . the actual, ah, the birth itself?”
“Hospitals’ risk-assessment policies mean that you’d have to hire a freelance doctor to oversee your labor off-site,” she pointed out. “After birth, there’d be new costs such as performance-enhancing infant formula, diapers, clothing, safety equipment, furniture, rental of a new living space with additional room for an infant . . .”
That one hit me. “You’re saying I’d have to move out?”
“Your building has an over-sixteens policy clause.”
Had I known that? I’d never needed to. My mind roamed now, seeing terrors everywhere. “Would I be able to take medical leave from my job?”
“Not for a Voluntary Disablement.”
“What the—”
“Voluntary Disablement means that if an employee makes a decision that effectively incapacitates them by rendering them unable to work their previous schedule with their previous degree of energy and concentration, they’re deemed to have chosen to surrender employment.”
How could any of this be legal?
“Also, financially,” the Headpiece said, “you’d no longer be entitled to government incentives for keeping your emissions down: the Spring and Autumn Dividends, as well as free eldercare as needed.”
I thought I was going to puke. I rested my cheek on the kitchen counter.
“Just to summarize, Miriam, by removing your Phri, you’d be choosing to risk your health and life in order to create a person—initially immobile, nonverbal, and incontinent—who’d remain helplessly dependent on you as well as nonearning for at least sixteen years. At the same time you’d be making yourself homeless, unemployed, impoverished, and isolated.”
I jerked my head to the left to turn her off.
Ned and I walked through the streets a few nights later. He pointed at his switched-off Headpiece: “Mine said exactly the same things about what-if-I-impregnated-someone, because, guess what, it’s the same chatbot. Are we really going to take life advice from an algorithm?”
“Fuck that shit,” I told him.
“Fuck that shit, Miriam.”
The surge of shared defiance warmed me. “If I ever actually did such a crazy thing,” I said—without looking at him, in case I lost my nerve, “I think, I’m pretty sure, I’d want it to be with you.”
Ned stopped so suddenly I almost tripped. “You mean . . . conceiving it?”
“And raising it. The whole kit and caboodle.” Where had that ludicrous old phrase floated up from?