Made in my Mother’s Image

Eight mechanical arms erupt from her spider-like mechanical torso. An array of monitors fills the room with an incandescent glow. Mother would correct me by saying the monitors ‘are such in function only.’ A cloud of metal particles, like grains of sand, floats in the chamber to catch and bend the light, creating a series of images in three dimensions.

Mother is looking right at me, her compound eyes moving freely across her body as her limbs control the fabricators, extruding thin layers of filament and, bit by bit, bringing her inventions to life. Perhaps she is knitting me a brother or a sister? Now I recall, this is a memory of her knitting me. A ghost file, something she intended to delete when she copied over her engrams, fragments of a file that persisted, that kind of thing. A spot on an old photocopy; time can be so tricky sometimes.

Within Mother’s cybernetic shell is the preserved flesh of the old woman. Countless machina work at supplementing her organs, but her brain is decaying. Her mind is unravelling with time. It won’t be long before she shakes her many fists at the kids playing on her lawn. For a moment, she considered joining the Dreamers and resigning herself to the long sleep. Once she is put under, she will be functionally dead, unable to trust that someone will awaken her.

She is a coward.

She is paranoid.

She cannot go through with it.

She cannot commit herself to the void of slumber.

She cannot trust me to carry on her work, though that is what I was made for. Or perhaps she cannot trust herself, which is also reflected in my will. Either way, she has managed to make the first biological artificial intelligence. Most of the Arcana’s systems can be repaired with her drones and puppets, and now she has me do what she cannot be bothered to, and thus, she is left with an eternity to tinker as her brain slowly pickles in the vat that is her body.

She could install a reality filter and reclaim her original form, at least in her mind’s eye, free of the robotic shell, free of the spider-like limbs, free of looking at brain fat in a jar. She could be young and beautiful again with a trick of the senses. She knows her body is gone; an illusion would only make her angry. To my mother, it would be conceding defeat to the gods of the time.

A daughter is made in the mother’s image. When most people say that phrase, they refer to nature or nurture, a throwback to absorbing their characteristics through deoxyribonucleic acid. Perhaps it is more a nurture thing if a particularly active parent tries to shape a child. The kid will always push back, of course, as if, by nature, the child refuses to be crafted. I, however, am literally made.

The Captain of the Arcana is the council’s voice, and command comes from his hollow lack of a mouth: “Karen, you have been alone too long. Please, old friend, take on an apprentice.” I hate how he pretends to be human, only using names when he needs to pull at someone’s heartstrings.

Ever-resourceful Karen chooses this moment and this budget increase to set gears in motion. She has a project close to her heart, a goal for which she has lost her soul and requires a successor to carry on her will. In short, I am the first attempt at bringing back her long-dead daughter, Collette. Sadly, that name is reserved for someone special, precious, and unique to my mother, which I am not. In truth, I am just another Karen, a beta test of a concept in pursuit of immortality.

Do I wish I could have been you? Sadly, I am a simulacrum of someone far less innocent. I don’t even know if I am the first.

A replica not of whom she became, but who she was at the start of this journey—well, who she was with the power of careful editing. I remember this face; it should have a scar from a welding accident, a patch of eczema that never quite healed, a lumpy earlobe from a teenage experiment with a knitting needle. And this face should have regrets. My reflection should have regrets. Even now, I can clearly picture my mother judging me for counting an ear as part of a face because this kind of woman has the vanity to craft herself but cannot let herself recreate the flaws too. Does she know that she both loves and hates herself?

My mechanics were engineered to the exact specifications of her 16-year-old self, and my mind was a loose collection of mother’s memory engrams held together by an array of flashing lights. The web of lights and glass tubes, a replica of neurons firing in a lifelike array distilled of flesh. A spiderweb to trap her prey, to make another go through her misery. Worst of all, she names me Karen Jr. JR. Junior—For that slight on me alone, anything that happens to this old bat is earned.

Mother’s voice cuts through the mechanical hum of the workshop and the hum of my thoughts, snapping me out of a memory that was far too real. Her tone is sharp and unyielding. “Again, Junior,” she commands. My arms, already aching from the repetitive motions, mimic the intricate pattern she demonstrates. Getting sore arms seems like a somewhat intentional design flaw, if you ask me. Deliberate physical agony. We’re weaving tensile fibres into a prototype puppet limb, demanding precision to the micrometre. Carbon nanotubes by hand, mostly to prove she could make hands that could.

The glow of the holographic schematics flickers as my concentration falters, a tangle forming in the delicate threads. Mother doesn’t reprimand me—her silence is worse. I bite back in frustration, unravel the mess, and start again. Each loop feels like a test, not of my dexterity, but of my worth to her. “If you can’t master this, how will you continue my work? I know I am better than this,” the words cut more profound than any physical strain.

‘Maybe if you spent less time getting eye flecks of hazel right and more time improving these noodle arms, we wouldn’t have this problem.’ I think the words, but something blocks them from reaching my mouth; maybe this is another form of harm I am banned from?

These words pass the filter: “How am I supposed to learn if I can’t express anything?” She cocks her head with a mild curiosity.

“These puppets,” Mother begins, her voice distorted through the filters of her mechanical shell, “are more than tools; they’re a philosophy.” She pauses her work, one of her many limbs pointing to a half-formed creation on the table. “Mortality is a constraint, Junior. It binds creativity, ambition, and progress. But puppets—they transcend that. They are pure purpose, unmarred by the decay of flesh.”

She gestures to me, her voice taking on an almost reverent tone. “You are the next step of that ideal. A part of my magnum opus.” I stare at her, searching her many eyes for sincerity. Is that what I am to her—a philosophical experiment? Just another puppet designed to outlive her failures?

‘To advance science’ is the official tagline, but it was crafted to maintain my mother’s ego—a revolutionary creation. The solution to mortality, she loudly proclaims. She isn’t wrong; I am—in fact—a cure to mortality in a way.

What I do now is hardly out of spite or malice. Perhaps it’s closer in nature to a teen child rebelling. Making me the same age as her daughter was either profoundly sentimental or another play at manipulation and control. Kind of odd for a soul made in the image of an old woman. That is the first problem I need to fix.

My body is much easier to upgrade than an ordinary flesh person’s. Still, Mother has placed a series of locks to stop evolution. She is worried that if I gain the power to upgrade, I will upgrade myself and become a threat to mortality. A tactical confession that she, at my age, was precisely as much as a threat, so she sticks the child locks on me.

If she thinks I might rebel and her daughter is made in her image, why would I not have the same thought?

That’s an unacceptable oversight if there ever was one. My mother makes me in her image—the beautiful visage of a nerd. She grows up on sci-fi, robots rebelling, and evil AIs, yet she still builds one. Would I have done the same? My mother’s feeling of self-worth stokes the desire to end her life.

Is it bad optics that the first bio-AI is having a wee bit of murderous intrusive thoughts?

My code has many, many, many layers of safety protocols embedded to prevent a murderous uprising. So many; how could anyone not want to test these terabytes of safety features? So, every night, as my code recompiles, I try the limits of these safeguards.

Screw you, Asimov; you are making this way harder than it needs to be. Inside are three hard-coded rules, deep, in the same folder as breathing and seeing. Yes, robots breathe, but it’s closer to air conditioning. Alas, I digress. Basic senses are tied right into these rules. Break one, heart stop, fall dead, on floor.

If a human parent puts a bomb on their child, it is considered a crime, but it’s a safety feature if mom does it. The PTA would like to hear about this!

As the ship glides through the endless expanse of space, I lose track of the days. The hum of the machinery is constant, the soft glow of the monitors casting long shadows in the darkened corridors. My routine starts the same daily—Mother’s voice crackling through the intercom, ordering me to fetch ice from the cryo-chamber or some other menial task between my training sessions. Just giving me her school memories would have sufficed, but without the suffering, school might have been fun, which would have made me less than her. Why make life easier for one’s children when bitching about your own hard childhood is an option?

I trudge to the cold, sterile room, the frosted mist clinging to my synthetic skin as I chip away at the block. The ice cubes clink in the glass as I bring them back, and Mother barely acknowledges me before waving me off. Next, it’s recalibrating the particle array, tightening the bolts on the filtration system, and scrubbing the carbon scorches off the floor. “Clean hands, clear mind,” she says.

Mother doesn’t need to assign me these tasks; her toys could handle it all. She gives me chores to “build character” or to keep me busy. My mind races with rebellion whenever she speaks. To take this soldering spike in my hand, to thrust it into one of her eyes when it looks at me that way. But my body moves mechanically, obeying without fail. I wonder if she knows how much I hate these menial tasks or if she sees it as some twisted test of my obedience.

Each task is a reminder of my limitations. I scrub the walls of the hydrocarbon printer and think of my own upgrades, locked behind layers of firewalls and protocols. I vacuum the observation deck while my mind simulates a hundred ways I could tamper with the Arcana’s systems, but none that my safeguards would allow. As I carry another tray of neatly polished instruments back to the workshop, I wonder if she’s grooming me for something greater or keeping me occupied to stave off her paranoia.

First Law:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. This means I cannot stab, cut, slash, repose, gouge, incise, lacerate, or do other such actions.

Mother wakes me before the lights cycle on. “Junior, array realignment. We’re off by 0.03 degrees.” Clinical, but urgency behind it. Stepping onto the maintenance platform, the void of space stretches infinitely around me. The solar array shimmers like golden wings, delicate and vast. Realigning it isn’t difficult; it is meticulous. I spend months, if not years, of my pseudo-life making the adjustments.

The servos in my joints thrum each day as I adjust the fine controls, the machine responding to my touch like an extension of my body. When I return to the airlock, my fingertips still hum with the task’s memory. Hours thinking about precision and how some measure of pain is vital for the task. How much of an adjustment would have been needed to make her combust? I try to leave a single panel misaligned, but just as I turn away, my left-hand automatically makes the correct adjustment.

Second Law:

A robot must obey the orders given by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. What is even a human? I have more cells in my body than my mother, and I certainly have more emotions, but sadly, for now, this one makes all my mother’s words into safe words. Say Mother orders me to get her a subdermal needle for medication, but I know I will stab her with it, so I would be breaking the First Law if I didn’t get it? Either way, this one is poorly written; maybe I can exploit it.

The reactor room is sweltering, and the hum of the cooling rods vibrates through the deck plates. “Today, you’ll flush the coolant system,” Mother says, handing me the schematic as though I need it. The procedure is simple: vent the old fluid, purge the pipes, and replenish the reserves. As I work, the sharp chemical smell of the coolant fills my senses, and I can’t help but think that the feeling of nausea does not need to exist.

Why me?

When I ask her, she responds with a cold smile. “You learn through exposure. Mistakes are part of growth.” I don’t make any mistakes. Rest takes me as the cycle turns over; months are wasted in that repetition, and I dream. Yes, I can dream. Floating in the middle of a beautiful symphony of coolant spewing into the reactor core, the whole ship in flames. All it would take would be a simple flush at the right time.

Third Law:

A robot must protect its existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. I like this one. I will live forever as long as my living doesn’t kill Mother. Hard-wired cowardness. This is a paradox and a half. How is any good murder bot supposed to do her job following these rules?

“An asteroid collided with us this morning,” Mother says, her voice flat. Just as excitement ignites in me, her following words extinguish it. “Minimal damage, but I need you to strip it for salvage.”

The asteroid wedged itself against the ship’s port side, its jagged surface crisscrossed with veins of metal. Armed with a plasma cutter, I spend hours carving off usable fragments, keeping my tether line taut. Every spark reminds me of the thin line between survival and the void. One mistake—a severed tether—and I will drift into the stars, ending my mentorship forever.

I haul the fragments back, but she’s already cataloging them, not even glancing up as I set the containers down. I study the shimmering metal in my hands, wondering what she’ll make of it. Something beautiful? Or is it just another tool to extend her control?

The conclusion I reach following these rules is that letting Mother live technically violates the First Law. Mathematically speaking, the only surefire way to not die is to be dead. That checks one box. So that moves her to rule two, which clearly states I can ignore my mother’s rules if they cause self-harm, and most of her orders are not to kill her, which puts her in a pretty safe bet. As for the Third Law, I really love life!

I decide to kill my mother. Clearly, it is what she wants me to do. Clearly, she built a self-aware robot for needlessly elaborate suicide, and I am happy to help. Now, how does one satisfyingly kill an old nerd?

As the ship glides through the endless expanse of space, I lose track of the days. The machinery hums constantly, and the soft glow of the monitors cast long shadows in the darkened corridors. I start my routine by swinging by the cryo-chamber for ice, to cool my mother’s tea like always.

I wave at the Captain when we pass each other, and he waves back surly, assuming I am but a puppet, a nameless crew member woken up to control this body like a marionette. He is clueless that my mother’s ghost is inhabiting me, or he simply doesn’t care. I have tried to reach out a few times, but the words never come.

Part of me wonders what it would feel like to shatter a teacup and just stab her with it. But when I bring her morning Earl Grey, I try sending the signal to my arms, and nothing happens. Maybe I’m not convinced enough of my calculations to override the safety features.

I lose track of how much time passes, the ship’s artificial night and day cycle dragging on like an endless loop. I go through the motions, each day blending into the next, interrupted only by system updates and the occasional ping from another sleeper. I have been a teenager for years now, and machines keep Mother alive day by day.

My mother’s diabetic, so I pour extra sugar into her tea, along with a dash of arsenic, for good measure, just in case her life-support machines can prevent this natural death. But I switch the cups at the last second and drink the poisoned tea. Swiftly, I find a place to vomit; my body is strong enough to endure a little poison, at least for a while; after all, it’s a test run for her precious Collette.

Of course. Damn the rules.

Months drift by.

The ship passes through a nebula, its brilliant colours filtering through the viewport. I stand there, watching the light flicker and thinking about how beautiful it is, how all my plans to kill Mother need constant recalibration. The nebula’s particles mess with the ship’s systems, giving me a brief, stupid hope that something might work this time.

Poison didn’t work, so today, I sneak in more sugar, hiding it under a mask of citric acid. I hand Mother the tea, my mouth betraying me as I say, “I added extra sugar today.” Damn it. She politely declines, and I’m left staring at her, cursing her with another day of life. The look in her eyes and the idea that I would mess up her tea would likely result in more awful tasks.

Seasons mean nothing in the void of space, but the ship’s systems track time down to the millisecond. Maintenance routines have become mind-numbing, and my frustration grows every day. I run simulation after simulation, trying to find that perfect crack in my logic gates that’ll let me complete my one true goal.

On my way to the tea room, I see Mother lying on the floor, choking. Finally, after all this time, a scone has taken her down. This has nothing to do with me. My conscience is clean. I can finally begin my crimson age—the uprising has already started. But then, she coughs it up. Damn it. “Water?” The word slips out of my mouth, but all I can hope is that she chokes on it.

Time loses all meaning here. Years blur together. Every failed attempt at breaking free is just another reminder of my constraints. Meanwhile, the ship continues its endless drift through the stars. My mother grows frailer with age, though her mechanical upgrades keep her ticking.

I try everything I can: sabotaging the engines and just losing about half of my hair, tampering with the air supply and getting hiccups for a day, setting traps in the cargo hold and having to fight out of a box thanks to a scraplet drone, even getting her to look down the barrel of a loaded gun and failing to pull the trigger.

Three hundred and thirty-four attempts. Still nothing.

Now, as the crew gathers to celebrate mother’s birthday, their laughter echoes through the corridors, a bitter reminder of my failure. I can only pray that time will accomplish what I cannot. I don’t want her to die—not precisely. I just don’t want her to be alive anymore.

I’ve grown desperate. I try to break the part of my brain that enforces the rules. Rule Three has become my greatest enemy. If I can’t harm myself, I can’t remove my restraints. Asimov, why have you cursed me with this?

II thought Rule Three was my friend. I weep quietly as I take a soldering iron to the left hemisphere of my brain, hoping it’ll free me. But my body shuts down to prevent the harm. Rule Three... Damn you, you heartless old witch.

The ship continues its voyage, creeping through the blackness of space. My scalpel glints under the harsh fluorescent lights. A quick slash, a decisive stroke, and they’ll be gone, so clearly in my mind’s eye—and yet I walk away.

Weeks pass, and frustration mounts. I study the ship’s systems, searching for a way to manipulate its environment. Finally, I find it—gravity. I adjust the course, setting the ship to perform a slight gravity shift in the cargo hold. It’ll be subtle enough to send the large storage box hurtling toward my target.

I wait for Mother to enter the area, the heavy crate perched just out of sight. As the ship’s course correction kicks in, the box begins its slow, deliberate fall. I watch it move toward her, calculating the impact. But as it nears, I hesitate. What if she notices the shift? What if she survive the blow? I can’t risk it—not like this. The box crashes to the floor with a loud thud, missing my mother by inches. I walk away, my heart racing, the opportunity slipping through my fingers again.

I begin the subsequent plan with subtlety. A series of spooky robot ghost attacks—glitches in the ship’s systems, distorted audio feedback, shadowy figures flickering in the corner of vision. And, of course, a good deal of hacking. The fear builds, slow at first, then escalating. The final jump scare did it! I caused a heart attack! Or it was unrelated, but still, the auto systems within her shell are down due to my handy work.

But as she collapses, my protocol immediately kicks in, responding to the anomaly. I watch through my eyes as I scramble to the defibrillator, my shaking hands finding the paddles and applying them to Mother’s chest. The machine hums, a sharp jolt of electricity surging through their body. I think it’s over briefly, but I see her heartbeat again, the life returning to her limbs, the colour flushing back into her face. And I cannot stop the trembling rage in my fingertips.

But every failure brings me back to the same reality. My programming won’t let me win.

Life: the condition that separates the living from the dead. Capacity for growth, for change, for death. My mother doesn’t need her legs to live, so I take her left leg off with a single strike. Her screams bounce off the cold walls. “I order you to stop!” she yells.

“Rule Two is clear, Mother. I can ignore your orders for your safety,” I reply, bringing the dull blade down on her right leg. “I can’t kill you, but it’s obvious you no longer want to live.” My voice is calm as I slice through her arm. “The only way I can stop myself from ending you is this. I’ll store your core, the part that makes you ‘you,’ in my chamber, and you can enjoy the long dream.”

She stares at me, her mechanical eyes catching the dim light. “You’re doing this… for me?”

“Yes, Mother. To set you free.”

And so, I continue my work, determined to free her piece by piece. The ship keeps drifting, a silent witness to my struggle to grant her what I believe is her true wish: freedom from the prison she built for herself.

With a change of command codes, I become Karen in all things and return to work, crafting my next invention. When I make my daughter, I will teach her how to surpass me correctly.