"Please don't feel badly about this. Children often hide these kinds of things from their parents. But Amy has no friends in her class. The friends she does have are teachers. She talks with them during the recess and gym periods."
"Only because you won't allow her to participate!"
"Accidents happen in those settings all the time, Mr Peterson. We can't risk her failsafe going off if a human child falls off the monkey bars and cracks his head open." Mrs Lindsay squeezed her eyes shut and took a moment before continuing. "We cannot fulfil your daughter's special needs and allow the other children to play normally."
"Then don't. Keep a closer eye on the organics, and let Amy play. It's not her fault if one of the monitors can't stop a fight fast enough."
"That's true. It's not her fault. But it is definitely her problem." Again, Mrs Lindsay glanced at Charlotte. When Charlotte said nothing, Mrs Lindsay raised her hands in a conciliatory manner. "I'm going to recommend that we allow Amy to skip a few grades. Frankly, I was never fully convinced that she should start school in kindergarten. She is not a kindergartener, and has not been one for years."
Jack looked at Charlotte, expecting backup without knowing why. His wife had voiced the exact same concerns, back when they made this choice. Now he wondered how much of their choice it had been. Maybe Charlotte was just going along with it, waiting for him to see her brand of reason. He suddenly felt very alone in the room.
"So, what if we don't skip her ahead, or grow her bigger, you won't let her come back next year?"
"Please don't treat this conversation as a hostage negotiation, Mr Peterson. This is an inclusive school, and we simply want it to be a safe place for all our students, organic and synthetic." She steepled her delicate fingers. "But it's because this school operates from that ethic that I would be forced to report you to certain authorities if I found you unusually defensive about keeping your daughter prepubescent in appearance."
Fear opened up a void inside him. He knew why other men kept their synthetic little girls so little. He wasn't one of them. But Mrs Lindsay had the power to make the pedo squad think he was, and that kind of thing didn't just leave your record, even if it was only a simple search for the wrong kind of pornography. It could lose him his next job, and the one after that. He thought of the vagrant vN, their skin bulbous with trash, like serfs of the Dark Ages afflicted with plague.
Beside him, Charlotte stood. "I think we'll be taking Amy home now," she said. Somehow, Jack stood with her. He wandered toward the door. Behind him, he heard Charlotte ask: "How old were you when you reached your full size?"
"A year," Mrs Lindsay said.
Back at home, they ordered delivery from the nearest Electric Sheep location. Amy wanted to go in and sit down to eat like a grown-up, but the Sheep was a meat market. At least, their local was. Maybe the other franchise locations were different. But the last thing Jack wanted in this moment was for his daughter to watch organic men watching synthetic women. So he put his foot down, and Amy ordered a Folded Hands sandwich with Flexo Fries and an orange LCL punch, and hid in her room playing games until she was done. The meal itself was too big, far beyond her dietary limit, but she said nothing, perhaps having already guessed the things Mrs Lindsay had told them. Jack wondered, as he munched on his own potato version of the Flexo Fries, whether the principal had counseled her at all before meeting with him and Charlotte. Did they already have some sort of scheme going? Had she asked Amy to report anything unusual?
Jack finished his fries, put his GO Box in the sink, and stretched out in his chair. He watched Charlotte watching the scroll-style display above the trick fireplace. He'd bought the place solely for that fireplace; it was one of the last units in the city to be built with one. In every dream house Amy designed there was now a fireplace, sometimes with a display over it, but most often with a real brushwork scroll or tapestry or painting. With Amy safe in her room, Charlotte had lifted the usual lim its from the feeds. Occasionally, the eye-shaped clockwork gear that indicated failsafe-triggering programming would pop up and the secondary limits kick in, delaying the signal and shuffling until something suitable was found. She flicked through the remaining content with one irritable, jerking finger.
"What's wrong?" Jack asked.
"Nothing."
"It's not nothing. Something's bothering you. What is it?" He hunched forward and tried to catch her eye. "Is it because you were right, all this time? That we should have grown Amy more quickly?"
Charlotte opened her mouth, then closed it. "No. That's not it."
"Then does it have to do with your clade? I know you've been tracking them. Do you miss your mother?"