Amy stood. "There's a playground?"
Javier tossed and caught his son again. "What, you missed it on your epic journey? It's on the other side of the campground, near the second set of bathrooms."
Amy winced. "I guess I was going in circles. I didn't even know there were two sets." She nodded at Junior. "You take him to playgrounds?"
Javier's brows furrowed. "Why wouldn't I?"
"My mom never took me. She wouldn't let me go."
Javier rolled his eyes. He placed Junior on the grass. "Let me guess. She thought you'd witness some evil preschool brawl and fry your brain?"
Amy watched Junior place one hand in front of the other tentatively. With a sudden spurt of energy, he crawled after nothing in particular and came to an equally abrupt, rocking stop. She shrugged. "I guess so."
Javier snorted. "Your mom was paranoid. I take my kids the first chance I get. How else will they learn how to play with humans?"
"That's what I tried to tell her, but…" Again, Amy shrugged. "I guess I wasn't very convincing."
"Oh, you're plenty convincing. You just asked the wrong parent." Javier knelt in the grass at the far end of the campsite, in Junior's line of sight. He snapped his fingers. "Mijo. Levántante."
The baby lurched forward on his palms, then burst forward in another sprint of crawling. A few steps from Javier's knees, he paused to look up at his father. Javier scowled. "?Por qué tú estás sentado allí?" His head tilted, doglike. "The little bastard should be up and walking by now."
"Isn't that a little soon?" Amy asked. She sat in the grass next to Junior, criss-cross style. She opened her hands, and Junior beamed hugely and crawled eagerly into her lap. She lifted him so that he sat facing his father. "Human babies can't even crawl right away, you know."
"He's not a human baby." Javier pushed himself up off the ground, let himself into the car, and brought out three bars of vN food. He handed one to Amy, then picked Junior up out of her lap. "He's my baby, and all my babies have damn strong legs."
"Some humans only feel right when they're in pain," she explains. "It's difficult for us to imagine, having never felt it, but pain makes them feel loved."
"…Really?"
"Yes. It has to do with their hormones – adrenaline, dopamine. Organic things."
They sit in one of a series of abandoned basements below a suburb that never happened. The foundations were dug, but no homes were built. Flashlights bob down the raw hallways; her other daughters are so industrious, so quiet, only giggling now and then when they bump into one another in the shadows.
"Mother?"
Blinking, she twists her daughter's pale hair around one finger. "Yes?"
"Why don't we live with humans?"
"I lived with humans once, already."
"Was it fun?"
"Sometimes."
Amy could not remember when her eyes opened and the dream of the basements faded, but soon the darkness around her solidified into night, and the noises sounded like animals and not people living like animals. Quickly, she dropped her hands – they looked strange, hovering in mid-air where her dream had left them. She winced, but Javier and Junior made no sound. When night came, Javier had spread out a blanket on the floor of the station wagon, taken a blanket for himself and Junior, and curled into a little ball with his back to her. Neither he nor the baby had moved from that spot in the meantime.
They look so sweet, Granny said. Like matryoshka dolls. Do you know that that word means?
"Be quiet," Amy whispered.
Those nesting dolls. One inside the other. That's what they call us, sometimes. Because of how we iterate.
Amy got on her hands and knees and tried to find the latch that would open the rear door from within. The darkness made it difficult, but she continued pawing at the surface until she found something like a button.
Inside of you is a perfect copy of me. Just like a little doll. Someday you'll open up and there I'll be waiting.
Amy pushed the button, popped the door, and slid herself out of the vehicle as quietly as possible. She didn't even shut the rear door all the way; it took some slamming, and she knew it would wake Javier and Junior. She listened to the crunch of her feet across gravel, and heard the path change beneath when she found asphalt.
At regular intervals, sunflower lamps opened as her steps drew near, briefly illuminating the path and colouring the trees, before closing again as she moved on. This late, most of the campfires had died. Only the taste of their smoke remained on the air. The whole campground seemed asleep; she counted two tents lit blue from within by readers or other devices, but the only truly alert camper she encountered on her walk was a tiny, angry dog whose chain jingled once before his furious barks urged her away. At last she found the playground, right where Javier said it was, at the bottom of the odd teardrop made by the park's main road.