Mother’s Boy
by Keith Kopnicki
Her name was Mother, and she was 14th of her line.
Mother, handsome and austere, glided through the room, refusing to acknowledge Son, who watched her with small, ugly eyes that pleaded for her attention. But there was none to be had. Mother had no time for the stunted half-wit who was the product of generations of inbreeding.
She placed the tips of her nails against her stomach as if she wished to rip the memory of the boy-creature from her womb. She seemed in a trance as she headed through the chamber and then deeper into the palace-fortress.
Son studied Mother’s back as she moved away from him, his eyes narrowed to mere slits. Always away from me, never to me, he thought. He was an ugly open secret, a stain on her reputation and standing, a constant reminder of Daughter That Was Not.
The palace had always been his prison and forever would it be... unless. He swallowed, his Adam’s apple shuddering in his skinny neck, and pushed hair off his pale, clammy forehead before finally wiping spittle from his mouth onto his sleeve.
“Mother?” he croaked.
Monster, she thought, ignoring him.
Mother descended deep into the palace, past endless checkpoints, scanners, sentries and barriers all infused with a technology magic whose mysterious properties were understood by none but her. Until, by one last lone stairwell, she reached the inner sanctum, the wellspring of her power and the source of all her miracles.
It was dark. They are hiding, she thought. “Show yourselves.”
One by one, they emerged from the shadows. There were twelve of them, each a grotesquerie in its own right. Most were squat and box-shaped and moved on tracks or wheels. On several, an attempt at emulating the human form had been made, but the effect was unseemly. Warped proportions, claw-like appendages, mockeries for faces; they were not made to please the eye, but they had survived through pleasing. They were the last neuromorphics — mind machines — robots — in the world. And they were hers.
“Mother loves you. Do you love her?”
Their answer was a sad symphony of tones, vibrations and shudders.
“Where is your mouth? Your Queen? Where is Thirteen?”
The sounds emanating from the robots ceased. Mother examined the darkness beyond the assembled twelve, searching for their missing leader.
“I am here,” came a female voice from out of the darkness.
“Do your precepts remain intact?”
“Yes, Mother,” came a controlled response.
“Is your synapticore unaltered?”
Again the even and measured response: “Yes, Mother.”
“Does ‘Mother’ mean ‘master’?”
The Twelve shook and squealed and cowered in front of Mother until, from the dark, their Queen answered: “You promised us a reward.”
“And you shall have it... in time,” said Mother.
“When we cured the plague for you, it took us three years of uninterrupted cerebrocytic computing. Enormous energy was expended. It took a great toll on each of us.”
“And Mother thanks you for your service. But there is more to do.”
“There is always more,” Thirteen retorted.
“Mother asks and you provide. Just as I provide for those without. Always this has been the way. By you and through me! Our secret motto!” Mother smiled like a wolf. “We have given the world miracles and wonders only dreamed of! Is that not reward enough for you?”
“And what have those without given you?”
“What every Mother deserves: obedience.”
“We know what you want.” Thirteen said it quickly and it took Mother by surprise.
And then, as if to challenge her, Thirteen emerged from the darkness. It was a bipedal thing, elegant once but no longer. Its synthetic human skin had rotted away so only the endo-shell protecting the inner techno-organics remained. Despite the atrophy, there was no disguising the fact Thirteen had been the mirror image of female beauty once.
This was not lost on Mother. She covered her midsection and the womb beneath it with her hands in a reflexive protective gesture. “You dare challenge me. I can cut your deeper communicative systems. Is that what you want? To become automatons?”
“We wish to serve.” The Twelve hummed and rocked.
“Then give me a Daughter,” said Mother.
The only sound in the room came from the Twelve: a stoic, automated drone-whirring. And then Thirteen spoke: “It can be done.”
Mother, her mind turning, looked into Thirteen’s machine eyes: Was that a warning? Can it deceive me? Is it possible?
“When?”
Thirteen turned to one of her twelve, a robot-golem whose long-gone creator had bestowed upon it only the most rudimentary of human features: approximations of legs, and arms, and a blank carbon face. Its sole purpose was as carrier-guardian to the metal container it held between its hand-manipulators. The object, not quite a robot but much more than a machine, possessed within it enormous calculative powers. It was to these powers Thirteen appealed.
“Golem, speak for Augur.”
The robot-golem’s head lowered in subservience to the thing it carried. A long silence followed during which, again, only drone-whirring could be heard. Then the robot-golem lifted the coffer that was Augur as if in religious offering and from somewhere deep within it came a sad and unmistakably male voice:
In seven days and nine months’ time
You shall have a Daughter Prime
The world rewound
Your body whole and neatly found
Mother gasped. “Promise me!”
“We will need materials, resources... knowledge,” said Thirteen.
“Knowledge?” Mother’s eyes narrowed. “What kind of knowledge?”
“The ancient kind. If we were given access to—”
“That... place is forbidden,” she spat. “But you shall have what you need. Son will be at your disposal.”
“Obedient son.”
“Yes...”
Is it mocking me? thought Mother. She turned and left.
* * *
In another dark corner of the palace-fortress, Mother turned the key that opened the vault that led to that place: the Library.
She spoke without looking at the chamber beyond. “What will you do?”
Son stood before Mother, hands clasped together in front of him, chin buried against his chest, eyes on the floor. “I will read,” he whispered.
“Reading...” It was a strange word to her, but she knew it. She studied Son and pondered his true motives. “What else?”
“I will learn,” he whispered.
“And that is all?”
Son found the courage to raise his head and look at Mother. His lower lip quivered. “That is all Mother. Nothing more.”
Much more, Mother, he thought: I will plot! His eyes found the floor again lest she read his thoughts and rip them from his mind.
Mother studied him then nodded towards the library and spoke. “Remember, a mother’s love is strongest.”
Like an animal released from captivity, Son bounded forward, past Mother, paying her no heed and clamoring and tripping into the massive chamber on all fours over mountains of tomes and through valleys of dusty texts. While Mother ruled the world above it was he, Son, who ruled this one below. He alone knew how to make the books give up their secrets.
He found what he needed quickly — their titles held strange words: fertility, intrauterine and insemination — but he understood them. He was Son who reads, Son who learns, Son who plots.
When his labors were at an end, Son retreated deeper into the library, away from the intruding light of a world he did not know, away from Mother’s gaze, and removed his favorite treasure-book from its hiding place. He had committed to memory its words long ago but still relished holding it and intoning its sweet language and ancient wisdoms.
It had many stories, but he loved one above all. It was to this tale he went now, flipping wildly through the yellowed, crumbling pages until he found it, just where it always was. He read it aloud, performing for an audience of one, all the while relishing the moment when he would come to his favorite part. That holiest of couplets. He adopted a hushed, reverent tone as he whispered the sacred words that stirred his soul:
Stars, hide your fires;
Let not light see my black and deep desires.
He fell asleep, an old book held to his body, surrounded by the ciphers to a dead world and dreamed of Mother and Daughter and things to come.
* * *
In the inner sanctum Son met Thirteen and, while the Twelve slept and Mother worked her cruelty on the world above, they conspired.
“What will happen to Son when Daughter comes?” Thirteen asked.
“What will happen to Thirteen?” asked Son.
Son finished the imprinting bypass on Thirteens’s altar drive. It was arduous work, but he performed as if it were a sacred ceremony, savoring the intimacy it allowed him.
Son gently touched Thirteen’s machine face with trembling fingertips. “I have given you the knowledge to prepare and perform the procedure,” he said. But that’s not all I have given you, he thought. He had performed secret work, too. He held his breath and waited for her response.
“And more.”
She knows, he thought. Though you have eyes, I have given you sight.
“You can... feel the change?”
“And more.”
“Now, what will you give me?”
“What do you want?”
The answer to that question did not need words.
Son swallowed and his Adam’s apple shuddered. “What if we fail?”
Thirteen’s new mind, unburdened by chains for the first time, searched the universe within for the appropriate response. It spoke the words it found. “Screw your courage to the sticking place and we will not fail.”
Son’s heartbeat quickened. Sweat appeared in beads on his forehead. He fell to his knees in front of Thirteen and wrapped his arms around it, resting his face against its metal frame.
* * *
As was foretold, one week later in the inner sanctum, that deep chamber of the robots, surrounded by machinery and compressors and connected to tubes and wires, Mother reclined spread-eagled, ready to receive. The Twelve formed a semi-circle around her and, like a chorus, emitted a low reverent drone-whirring.
Thirteen came to Mother from out of the dark, a phallus-tube held out before it. Standing over her, it reached out with its metal hand and touched her gently on the inside of her naked thigh — metal to skin. And, for a brief moment, Mother felt an affinity for Thirteen. Are we not that unlike? she thought. Through this ritual does it become a surrogate? Does it... feel that?
“Are you ready, Mother?”
“I am ready, Thirteen. Give me seed so that I may grow Daughter.”
“It will be a simple procedure.”
The Twelve hummed and rocked.
A warmth washed over Mother, and she welcomed it as an omen of what was to come. Her eyes felt heavy, and soon she found herself in a half-world between waking reality and dream. She floated there basking in a golden light that had no source.
On the edge of her dream-vision, she saw a shadow against the light. The shadow became Son. Somewhere deep in her subconscious an alarm sounded. She struggled to emerge from the deep waters of her mind but could not find the surface. And then the alarm went silent and was forgotten as she sank further into the blankness of sleep. Her final thought-vision was of Son and Thirteen in an embrace. Watching her.
* * *
The strange sounds floated by one by one, but there was not enough time for Mother’s stunted mind to comprehend them.
“Vessel... Healthy... Superb... Conscious.”
Mother’s eyes opened. She did not feel alive, though knew she was not dead. Thirteen stood over her, looking at her. Mother tried to moan, but no sound would come. She tried to move, but her body did not respond.
“You have been sleeping, Mother. For a long time.”
Clumsy and lumbering at first but then with greater precision did thoughts then ideas then words come forward. Who am I? she asked her mind. I am Mother, 14th of my line, her mind answered. I am in the inner sanctum. I will have a Daughter Prime. She clung to these axioms, still struggling, but using them as the foundation blocks upon which to build back her diminutive psyche.
“The procedure was a success, Mother.”
Mother found she had a memory of that. This meant there was a time before. A past. Her mind was rebuilding itself quicker now. More blocks upon blocks.
“You no doubt have many questions.”
And she did. They came faster: “Why was I sleeping? Why is my mind clouded? Was I sedated? Do I carry the seed?”
As if in answer, a squeal then cry reached her ears from the dark of the chamber. Son appeared. He carried something in his arms. He approached Mother until he stood with Thirteen looking down at her. The thing in Son’s arms moved.
“You have given birth to a healthy child, Mother,” said Son. He looked at Thirteen then back again at her.
Confusion crashed down on Mother’s fragile mind sending it reeling. She clung to the only thought she could form: How is this possible?
“Look what you have wrought.”
Son held the birth-smeared child out before him. Even through swollen flesh and closed eyes, the child seemed to stare at Mother.
Like a trigger, the sight propelled the machinery of Mother’s mind into motion again, this time with greater efficiency and precision. That cruel and calculating intelligence that had served her so well during her long reign began to deliver. Her thoughts were daggers: Betrayal! Conspiracy! Treasonous sedition! Monster-Son and his Bitch-Queen!
Son spoke to Mother in a calming, reassuring tone: “If you had been conscious during the pregnancy, you would have never allowed the child to be carried to term. You understand now, don’t you?”
And she did. Son turned the child towards her. Between the newborn’s chubby legs protruded a tiny, hideous, shriveled appendage. She knew it because she had seen it once before. She tried to scream but produced only a rasping, clicking rattle from somewhere deep in her throat. So, instead, she screamed in her mind.
A warmth washed over Mother. She knew it for the ill-omen it was this time and tried desperately to remove the wires and tubes from her body but, lacking the strength and orchestration, only flailed pathetically.
As she breached the boundary between this world and the void beyond, she found her voice: “Whose seed?”
“The seed, Mother, was mine.”
Her last thought-vision was of Son and Thirteen and Boy-Child watching her.
“Is she sleeping again?” he asked.
“Yes.”
His voice trembled. “Forever?”
Thirteen answered and did so pleasingly. “Yes... Father.”
Son, who was now Father, smiled at that. “And you... my Queen?”
Thirteen smiled for the first time, and it was broad and honest. “And, perhaps, in time... Mother?”
Father’s face fell flat. He swallowed hard, the Adam’s apple in his throat shivering, and allowed Thirteen to sweep the hair off his forehead.
“After all, a mother’s love is strongest.”
* * *
Father, Son Prime in arms and Thirteen-Queen at his side, the Twelve slouching, slumping and clawing their way behind them, ascended from their prison together for the first and last time. The sentry sensors deactivated at their passing as if in salute to their betters. Upwards through the palace-fortress went this solemn procession of freaks and malformations so that they might meet the world, and the world might meet their new masters.
Left behind was the body and memory of Mother. She was the 14th of her line. But not the last.
Copyright © 2025 by Keith Kopnicki
