Owen

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Owen didn't realize his family was any different from any other family until his first week of second grade. Everything had been fine during kindergarten and the first grade, but in second grade there was a kind of awkwardness between him and the other kids in his class. Nobody would play with him; nobody wanted to sit at his table. Matters came to a head during recess.

Some kids were throwing a ball up onto the roof of the school to see if they could make it stick in the gutter. Owen thought this looked like fun and asked if he could play too. Jeremy Robb secured the ball and turned to face Owen coldly.

"No, because you're a freak," said Jeremy. "I don't even think you're a human being."

Owen had heard insults before, but this just confused him. Of course he was a human being! "Well, I don't even think you have a brain," replied Owen.

"I have a brain but you have a computer," taunted Jeremy. "Your mama's an adding machine, and what she and your daddy does is unnatural. That's what my parents told me, and they're both people."

"My parents are people!" said Owen.

"No they're not," objected Jeremy. "My name's Jeremy Clay Pursley. I got Jeremy and Pursley from my daddy's family and Clay from my mama's. You didn't get anything from your mama's side because her side doesn't have any names."

"You shut up," said Owen. "I hate your ugly face."

"I hate yours, freak!" shouted Jeremy, and it was on. They tumbled over and over on the playground deck, pushing and scratching at each other, with the other kids egging them on, until Mister Hillyard came up and pulled the boys off each other. Owen had a split lip and Jeremy had blood leaking from his nose. Owen took great satisfaction out of the fact that Jeremy was crying and Owen wasn't. But the boys were still taken to the principal's office, and Owen had to wait for his parents to come and pick him up.

Mom and Dad came together, hand in hand, and stepped in to talk to the principal. Mom was wearing a beautiful blue cotton dress which set off her birchbark-white skin; Dad still had his safety goggles and workboots on, and must have come straight from the plant. Owen waited for them with a sense of dread, uncertain what they'd say to him about getting in a fight. But when they came to collect him, they weren't angry; Mom made much of his cut and Dad slung him over his shoulder to take him back to the car.

"Am I thrown out of school?" Owen asked as he jounced upside down along the sidewalk.

"No," said Dad. "We're just going to make a short day of school today and come back again tomorrow."

"We have some things we want to talk to you about," added Mom.

They drove in silence back home. Greta the Spaniel met them at the door, and Owen played with her while Mom made some lunch. They all sat at the kitchen table together while they ate. Dad held Mom's hand, and she leaned into him and rested her head on his shoulder.

"I guess some kids made fun of you today about your family," Dad said.

"Jeremy is a butt," said Owen, picking at his Fritos. "I hate him. He said lots of mean things."

"We heard," said Mom. "Owen, we've explained how you were adopted, and you understood all that, right?"

Owen flicked corn chip crumbs uneasily around his plate. "Yeah, I guess," he said. "You and Dad couldn't have kids together, so you found somebody who had a baby they couldn't take care of, and that was me."

"Right," said Dad. "And you know why me and Mom can't have our own babies, right?"

"Well duh," said Owen. "It's because Mom's artificial. She doesn't have the parts that babies come out of."

Mom and Dad smiled at each other. "I suppose that's technically correct," said Mom. "But the part we want to talk about is that what you've always taken for granted – our family – may not be something that other people see as normal. Other people, like Jeremy and his family, may be very uncomfortable, or even angry, that we're together at all."

That made no sense to Owen. "How come?"

Mom looked at Dad, who leaped into the conversation. "So, okay. You know that artificial persons haven't really been around all that long, right?"

"Yeah," said Owen. "Mom, you were like one of the first ones that were ever made."

"I was the sixth," Mom said. "They started building my mind in 2016, and I became self-aware five years later."

"I remember when I first saw you at Harvard," said Dad with a little smile. "You were so beautiful in your commencement gown." His hand tightened over hers, and Mom blushed – two perfect circles of rose in each of her cheeks.

"Oh, gross," grumbled Owen, taking a big bite out of his sandwich. But he secretly liked that his parents were so lovey-dovey – not like Charlie Wilcox's parents, who were always fighting with each other.

"That was before you were born, but not very much before," said Mom. "People have only started to get used to having artificial persons around. It's hard for them to know how to deal with us."

"Sort of like when they had the Farraday Laws?" asked Owen, and Mom and Dad nodded. When he was little Mom had been required to wear a red dot in the middle of her forehead, to make sure that everybody knew she wasn't a real person. As if Mom would even want to pretend to be something she wasn't; that was just another of the many things in the world that he couldn't understand. But when he was five they had gotten rid of those bad laws, and Mom scraped off her red dot, and the whole family went out for ice cream cakes to celebrate. Owen remembered that his had been cherry fudge.
"But Owen, people are still adjusting to having artificial persons living near us, and having the same rights as biological persons. Some people aren't ready to accept that an artificial person isn't a robot, or an appliance, or a somebody instead of a something," said Dad. "And they're REALLY not ready for artificial and biological persons to be married."

"Especially in Alabama," Mom snorted. Owen remembered they were going to take a trip there once, but they had to cancel it. It was something about stupid laws again. Owen ate his pickle.

Dad leaned forward and put his hand on Owen's shoulder. "Son," he said, "your Mom and I want you to know this: our family may not meet some other people's definition of normal, but we have a great thing together in every way. We all love each other and that's what's important. Don't ever let anybody tell you that you're a freak because your parents aren't both biological. That's a tiny little detail that doesn't matter at all."

"Yeah, I know," said Owen. "And anyway, I'm not the only kid in school who's adopted, so I don't know what's such a big deal."

"That's exactly right," said Mom.

"I just wish Jeremy would shut up about family names," complained Owen. "That jerk made a big deal because he got some of his names from his Dad's side of the family and some from his Mom's. Like that makes him special." Owen rested his face on his arms and stared moodily at the remains of his lunch.

Mom and Dad exchanged glances. "But, darling," Mom said, "you do have family names."

"That's right," said Dad. "Your last name is 'Hughes', same as me. So you got that from my side of the family."

Mom got up and put her arms around Owen. "And for my side, it's true that I don’t have any ancestral names to contribute, so I had to make my own. You're my first child, so I numbered you in binary '01'. Oh-One. Owen."

Owen smiled. "Maybe I could have a brother some day," he said. "You could call him 'Juan-oh.'"

Mom and Dad laughed. "I was kind of hoping for a Juanita," Mom said.