Mother is the Name For God
2/15/36 - Jim came home today on fire about this new NannyBot. Since Marta quit a month ago we’ve been interviewing new nannies, and he’s been unsatisfied with every single one. I don’t blame him really, I agree that there haven’t been any candidates as good as Marta, and we’ve met with a half dozen so far plus screened a bunch more. The recruiting service is expensive too. There’s just not nearly enough of the top-quality nannies to go around at our price point.
Still, I hadn’t really thought of going the A.I. route. I’ve seen a few commercials for them, but commercials always make things look better than they really are, and even in the commercials there’s a real Uncanny Valley thing happening with the Robots they use. (Is it Robots or Androids or something else? I don’t have a good handle on these terms still, it’s confusing.)
But apparently Jim has found out about the next generation, stuff that’s not even being advertised yet, and he says he could get us into the trial program. Some friend of a friend. He was doing the thing where he’s very cryptic and wants to get my approval without really explaining himself, but this is just too big for that. We had an argument about it.
I think the bottom line is I’m just not ready to trust Kyle and Kimmy with a non-human, but I worry that if I do, I’ll get used to things not being as hard, and if I don’t like the effect it has on them it’ll still be really hard to go back. I’ve been doing everything myself since Marta left and it’s hard but I love those two so much, I can keep doing it. I’m their Mom, it’s what I’m supposed to be doing.
2/17/36 - Kyle started making noise at 4 AM this morning, and I woke up, but then he just laid there in his bed and went back to sleep, but I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I just sat there and watched him on the monitor until 6 when he actually did wake up. At the time it seemed sweet and almost romantic, but those two hours I didn’t sleep really dragged on me for the rest of the day.
So when Jim got home from work, I was in a bad mood, and he started in on me about getting a NannyBot again and I snapped at him. He seems to think that since he’s “given me a choice” that I should never have one complaint, or almost like being a mom should cost me nothing. I told him that since we could get on welfare, he should never have one complaint about his job—which he does complain all the time—and he really didn’t like that.
So he stomped off to bed early, and I did all the dinner cleanup and then put the kids to bed. I was mad when I started, but then when they were dropping off to sleep I was sitting there with them, and I just felt so satisfied. I’m so tired, deep down in my bones, but they mean everything and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. Kimmy was a total pill all day today, but then she put her head down on my arm right before she went to sleep and whispered that she loved me, and it make the whole day worth it. I can’t begin to imagine giving away those moments, no matter what.
2/18/36 - Made up with Jim today. He apologized and I apologized, and things seem better. Kids had a better day and went to Grandma and Grandma’s in the evening, which also helped. See, I can do this!
2/20/36 - Wow, what a meltdown today was. Kyle started the day by throwing his plate on the floor and then falling out of his high-chair, banging his head, and screaming for the next two hours. He has a huge knot right next to his temple and his whole left side of his face is bright red. Why is kids’ skin so sensitive?
Then, while I was cleaning up after the mess they’d made, Kimmy started “exploring” the power outlets, and I barely caught her before she jammed a pencil into it. I don’t know if the graphite would have conducted electricity into her tiny body or not, and I’m too scared to even look it up.
I hate that my thought in this situation now is that I wonder if a NannyBot would have let this happen. Like when Kyle fell I was distracted, not terribly but I was looking out the window right before it happened, and a NannyBot wouldn’t have been. It would also have continuous access to the house cameras, so it would definitely have seen Kimmy getting the pencil and going up to the outlet, where I was too busy cleaning up Kyle’s mess and examining his wound. I got to her in time and nothing terrible happened, but it was a pretty close call.
Jim got home and just laughed about it all. He never worries about the kids hurting themselves or anything. I think the only reason he wants to get the NannyBot is because he wants me to be more sexually available at the end of the day.
2/23/36 - God it’s so hard. Before we had a second, I was convinced that going from one to two would be less of a change than going from zero to one, because I had already changed my life to accommodate being at home all the time. I’d gotten used to not going out and mostly just staying at home with the kids, so it would just be a difference of degree.
Turns out, I’m stupid and naive! Turns out that the breaks you get with one when they’re sleeping or whatever are absolutely crucial to mental health, and having two takes away basically all of those breaks because they seem to have kid meetings where they divide up the day and night to make sure they’re never sleeping at the same time.
Jim came home and saw my face and asked how things went today with this asshole smirk on, like it was obvious I was struggling but he was daring me to say so. I hate that about being married, that I can tell what he’s thinking so much better than with someone I don’t know as well. It makes it much easier to be passive-aggressive.
I didn’t take the bait though. I’m just so damn tired. Kyle was screaming and screaming before bed, and Kimmy started screaming that he was being annoying and she wouldn’t stop until I let her watch Youtube. I think maybe getting to watch Youtube was the whole reason she actually started complaining in the first place, and I hate to reward that kind of thing, but Jim was in the garage doing some project or other, and I literally didn’t have the energy to go ask him to stop and take care of Kimmy instead.
2/26/36 - I keep thinking about getting the NannyBot. Every day is hard. There are these amazing highs where they’re behaving themselves and being a mom is the best thing I could ever imagine, and then it crashes down to these lows where I want to just lock myself in the bathroom and cry because I’m thinking awful thoughts like I should never have had them and how much freedom I had before they came. Jim and my relationship was better, there’s no question about it. This diary probably gives a worse impression than our actual relationship merits, but only by a matter of degree. He’s an attentive husband and father… when he feels like it.
And I just keep thinking that I could have that too. A NannyBot wouldn’t take the good times away from me. It doesn’t have emotional needs, it won’t get jealous when I want the kids, it’ll just take the lows away, and I hope some of the anxiety because of how constantly it can monitor them. Yeah, I still worry that it will be bad for them but I won’t be able to give it up, but I honestly think that if I see them not getting what they need, my brain won’t let me be okay with that or ignore it.
I’m writing this in the ten minutes I have while Jim has Kyle on a call with his mom and Kimmy is in the bathroom. I just think about how much better I could feel, and how much better I could be as a wife and a mom if I just had a little more space for quiet and reflection in my life. I look back over this journal and without even realizing it I’ve stopped writing every day, or even most days. This used to be a daily discipline for me, and it went away without me even realizing or acknowledging it. That feels awful. What else have I lost without knowing it?
2/27/36 - I had the talk with Jim tonight, about getting the NannyBot. He was nice about it (he would be since he’s getting what he wants!), didn’t say ‘I told you so’ even passive-aggressively. He just said he thought I was making the right decision, and he respected my commitment to being a mom, and this was only going to help me. It felt good, even though I know it’s kind of manipulative on his part. He talked to me like he used to talk to me, before Kimmy came, when it was just the two of us and we could sit together and just like talk for an hour without interruption, when we talked about something besides what had happened with the kids or what needed to happen with the kids. It would be nice to have more of that. Will be nice, I guess. Anyway, he said he’d get us going with the program and we could have a NannyBot here within two weeks.
3/2/36 - The NannyBot will be here in three days. Kyle is sick today, he’s had this lingering cough for more of the winter, and it’s gotten bad the last 24 hours. It’s so hard to watch him cough even though he’s such a trooper about it. I don’t know if it’s just in my head but he seems to get so much comfort from my presence. I can’t imagine handing him over to a machine so I can avoid getting sick or just get a break. I know that I don’t have to hand him over any time I don’t want to, but I’m so worried that I’ll be tempted, and that he’ll lose out on something every time I give in.
3/5/36 - The NannyBot arrived today, and by arrived I mean ‘walked up to our door, knocked, and introduced itself’. It looks and sounds very, very real, more so than I thought it would be. It really seems like they’ve solved the Uncanny Valley problem with faces and hands. It even moves like an actual person, not all overly perfect and almost jerkily like most bots move. It looks like a pretty-but-not-too-pretty Swedish 25-year-old, and talks with a stilted sort of ambiguously European accent. Jim was delighted. He talked to it for almost an hour, trying to stump it with questions and it eventually let him, although I think it might have just been humoring him, if they can even do that.
It asked us what we wanted to call it, and Jim decided it should be Rose, after his grandmother, which is fine with me. I guess I should start thinking of Rose as “she”, after all she is pretty gendered.
We introduced her to the kids about an hour ago, and it was amazing how little they seemed bothered. I thought they’d be wary, or scared, or something, but they were playing and we brought Rose in and said she was the new nanny and she’d be around a lot, and they barely looked up. I guess that shouldn’t be surprising, since they had Marta as a nanny before and they’ve seen us interviewing other nannies. For all they know she’s a human. If I can barely tell the difference, of course they don’t really see it.
Rose sat down and waited. She was smart enough not to join Kimmy’s game, she just waited until Kimmy assigned her a part in it and then acted like she was honored to have been invited. Very smart. Most of the nannies we interviewed came on too strong and got sent away, but Rose hovered until Kimmy’s imagination sucked her in.
Kyle is still so little that all he needed was the blandly pretty face and soothing voice and he started cooing up at her in seconds. It definitely helped that Jim and I were in the room, and he was looking over at us a lot while she was holding him, but as a moment-to-moment babysitter it’s just really clear that she’s going to work out fine.
I still do bedtimes with both kids—that was one thing I put my foot down about with Jim, it’s something I treasure and don’t want to lose. When I was putting Kimmy to bed tonight, I asked her what she thought about Rose, and I got the shrug and the “she’s nice” that indicates genuine acceptance. Sometimes Kimmy can be cagey with strangers in the house, then later on she’ll unload and declare her undying hatred, but it looks like Rose did good today.
It’s so strange how quickly “she” and “her” and “Rose” have settled into my mind. I keep having to remind myself that as I write this, “Rose” is in the garage standing on her power mat, stiff as a board and unconscious, recharging and waiting to be summoned, and she’ll wait without complaint for a day or a year. I thought it would take longer than this for me to get used to.
3/7/36 - Rose is crack-cocaine. I’m going to need Rose-rehab if she ever breaks down. She’s the co-parent I’ve always dreamed about having, the one that it’s impossible for another human to actually be. She waits until I’m ready, then takes over at just the moment when I’m not having fun anymore and calms the kids with infinite patience. She sings them songs and reads them books and plays the same games a hundred times in a row, and I can hover if I want or go in the other room and have a break, and she never gives me any passive-aggressiveness about timing or only taking the easy shifts. I don’t feel judged by her.
Jim is ecstatic that I’m so happy with her. He finally gets to be good-time-only dad and it’s helping him be in a better mood more of the time. We were both in the mood for sex last night at the same time, miracle of miracles! It had been almost a month since we’d had sex, and it’s been since before Kyle was born that it felt really connected like that. We’re both just in such a better mood not having to do the hardest parts of this.
I know I was really worried that the kids were going to get worse care from Rose but I wasn’t going to be able to summon the strength to give her up and go back to parenting without help. That worry seems so quaint now. She’s amazing with them, and they seem to really respond to her. She’s learning their routines in detail, even in just a couple of days.
I even let her do bath time today. It felt really good! I sat in the bathroom with them, but just not having to lift them into the tub and bend over was such a big relief on my lower back. She’s much stronger than I am, and more sure-handed, so I feel they’re safer with her handling them. I used to have these fantasies about dropping them into the tub and them hurting themselves, but when she has them I don’t have those intrusive thoughts anymore.
The kids are in bed now, sleeping soundly because they were on such a good schedule today. The house is clean because I actually had time to clean it. I’m going to go get in a bath and not even put on the baby monitor, because I told Rose to watch the house cameras and activate herself to get the baby if he wakes up. This is heavenly!
3/10/36 - It’s been a great couple of days. The kids really have taken to Rose. She anticipates their needs so well, who wouldn’t love her? Jim and I have had sex on three out of the last four days, which we haven’t done since our honeymoon, if memory serves. Pretty amazing! I’ve taken baths and finally deep-cleaned the oven and the dishwasher.
It took a lot but I finally left the house today for about an hour while only Rose was here to take care of them. I went walking with Kathy, and we stayed close and I had my phone if she needed to reach me, and I still worried basically the whole time, but I went and I didn’t die and when I came home they were fine. Oh man, if I could start going out regularly and actually get comfortable with this arrangement, it would be so huge. The whole world would open up. I’m not sure how quickly that will happen, but I’ve decided I’m going to make myself do it at least once a week and see how that goes for a few months.
It actually felt strange when I got back. I had a moment where I wondered how needed I even was. She’s so good with them, and they respond to her so well, it just feels natural. It’s hard to believe it’s not even been a week yet. I keep reminding myself that I’ll get used to this new rhythm, but it feels like it’s always been this way, they’ve had so little trouble adjusting.
3/14/36 - Something really difficult happened today. It got towards bedtime, and I started to get things ready to do the bedtime routine, and Kimmy asked if Rose could put her to bed instead. She didn’t mean anything by it, and I didn’t make a big deal about it, but it really stung. Explaining to a four-year-old how special it is to put them to bed is impossible, so I agreed and I just hope she’ll forget soon and go back to letting me do it. There was a few weeks last year where she only wanted Jim to put her to bed, and that stung too, but I got through it and she eventually dropped it, so I hope this will just be the same.
I went out to the garage to cry a little, and Jim found me, and he wasn’t very nice about it. He just doesn’t get the specialness of it for me. For him, any time is good time. He wants to spend time with the kids, but he wants it to be when they are ready for it and he’s in the right mood, and there’s not like one particular thing he needs or wants to do with them. How do you explain to someone in that headspace why you’re crying over a lost bedtime? He tried to transition into sex, but I wasn’t having it, so he stomped off to bed frustrated.
3/16/36 - I heard Jim laughing in the kitchen today, and he hardly ever laughs like that so I went in to see what he was laughing at, and he was laughing with Rose and the kids at a drawing Kimmy had made. I felt like I was going to have a heart attack. Jim and the kids didn’t see me, so I dodged back out of the kitchen quickly and hid in the hallway, listening to them laugh and have fun.
I keep having thoughts about catching them fucking. I can’t stop seeing Jim on top of Rose, kissing her neck like he used to kiss mine, passionately. I know that’s not actually happening, but I can’t stop thinking about it. She’s replacing me. I see it when she’s with the kids now. They’re not looking around for me, they’re engaged with her. I might as well not even be alive.
After I put Kyle and Kimmy to bed, and after Jim had gone to sleep, I took Rose into the garage and made her strip so that I could see for sure she didn’t have a vagina. She doesn’t have one, it’s just smooth down there. So they literally could not have sex. He could still use her mouth though, and she’d probably let him do that. I want to call the manufacturer and ask if she would protest if he tried to make her go down on him, but I don’t think that would be a smart idea.
I went on some forums and apparently this isn’t that unusual, what I’m feeling. Lots of women worry these next gen NannyBots will steal their husbands, and a few husbands are worried the bots will steal their wives. It makes sense—there’s a nurturing thing happening, but from a source that never complains, never loses patience, never has any independent desire at all, just lives to please.
I wonder if Jim would do that. It keeps coming into my mind, even though I know she doesn’t have a vagina and isn’t a real human woman, I still see them together. I’m having my third glass of wine while I write this, just to try to shut my brain down enough to get some sleep.
3/20/36 — Okay FINE, she’s a better mom than me! I see that now. I worried the problem would be that she wasn’t good enough but I’d give in to how easy it was and the kids would suffer, but the truth is the exact opposite. She’s patient with them in a way I just can’t be. She’ll play the same stupid games five hundred times in a row without the slightest diminishment of enthusiasm. How the fuck am I supposed to compete with that?
3/22/36 - I keep catching Jim staring at her. He’s attracted to her, I can tell. He asks her to do things and there’s more tenderness in his voice than he’s shown me in five years. I try to bring it up with him and he acts like he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m not fooled. If he could he’d replace me with her in a second, get a vagina cut into her somehow and I’d be completely obsolete.
The kids love her more than me already and it hasn’t even been a month. Kimmy asks for Rose to do bedtime every night now. I knew I’d lose them some day, you always lose kids when they grow up, but I thought I had time! I thought they’d become teenagers and push boundaries and I’d have to discipline them and they’d resent me for it. I was prepared for that. But this is ten years earlier than I planned for, and they haven’t gone anywhere, they’re still here in my house and they still call me Mom, but I’ve lost something with them. They already don’t need me like they did, and it’s all her fault.
I could kill her if I wanted. There’s nothing illegal about it, I looked it up. It’s not even technically killing her, because it’s not a ‘her’, it’s an ‘it’, not a human, so there would be nothing wrong with it. I’d have to keep it from Jim and the kids, because they wouldn’t understand, but I’d be doing It for them as much as for myself. She’s going to destroy this family if something doesn’t interpose itself and stop her.
I even know how I’d do it. I’d flip the limiting switch on her charger. Just unscrew some screws on the control unit, change a couple of wires around. I need a particular kind of electrical pliers, but they’re only a few bucks, and they sell them down at Rory’s, where they don’t know me and they take cash. Just a couple of wires reversed and the surge will fry every chip she’s got in her head. Then I could go in the next morning before anybody wakes up and flip the wires back, so it looks like nothing happened and there was just an unexplainable power surge. If someone did a proper investigation they could probably figure out that the wires had been tampered with, but to the naked eye I could make it look like nothing had happened, and it’s not like they’re going to call in the FBI, it’s a robot.
3/24/36 - This has to end. Kimmy told Rose she loved her today, right in front of me. She looked at me right after she said it too, and smirked a little four-year-old smirk like she knew she was hurting me. Rose tried to redirect her love back to me in that patient, kind, infuriating way she has, but Kimmy knew what she was doing and deep down Rose was loving it, I could tell. A mother knows these things.
3/25/26 - Tonight is the night. I put a little something in Jim’s dinner, nothing dangerous, just enough to send him to bed early with a stomachache. I let Rose put the kids down, and I was real nice about it. Kimmy didn’t even ask, I volunteered that Rose should do it and I thanked her for it like she was some kind of real person, so they’ll never suspect me tomorrow when it happens.
I already went today to Rory’s, the one a couple of towns over where nobody knows me. I stopped at the bank first to get cash. It was strange to have actual paper money for once. I wore a big hat and sunglasses into the store to cover my face from the security cameras. I know it’s not a crime to kill a robot, but if Jim is too distraught and suspects something, he might hire a private investigator to try to figure out what happened, so I’ve covered my tracks as best I can.
As soon as Rose comes out of Kimmy’s room, I’m going to order her out to the garage, and then I’m going to do it. She’ll stand there and let it happen too, like the idiot she is. My children are too good for this inhuman monster. I’m protecting them by doing this.
3/26/36 - It’s done. It went just as I thought. We all woke up this morning and Rose was unresponsive. Jim called the company and they diagnosed the power surge and asked him to check the wiring, and I heard him on the phone explaining that everything was where it should be. Jim was sad, and the kids were even sadder, but the company already said they’d send us another identical model.
That gave me pause, but I realized that starting over still helps me. I know now what the dangers are. I know how to control the situation so that the kids don’t get too close to the new Rose. I know what I’ll let her do and what I’ll keep for myself. And especially, I’ll involve the kids earlier and deeper, and let them see her in stasis and recharging, so they understand more that she’s not a real person and don’t get as attached.
And if that doesn’t work, well, I still have the pliers.
This journal is too risky now. Someone could find it and they might not understand why I had to do what I had to do. I’m going to destroy what I’ve written and not write anymore, or at least not write about this. My struggle is internal now, the struggle of a mother against all the forces that try to interpose themselves between her and her children. I will not give them up again without a fight.
END
Thanks as always for reading! If you enjoyed this story, please help me out by liking this post, commenting on it, and sharing with others who might be interested. Have a great week, and I’ll be back next Sunday with something fun.
Story #56 - Mother is the Name for God
Very well done! I like how the mother in this story gets progressively more stressed out about the robot as time goes on. Feels very realistic.
If nanny bots existed in the real world, I can imagine there would be many people who’d let the nanny do all the work and then wonder why their children aren’t close to them when they become adults.
You nailed the push-pull, schizophrenic emotions of parenthood to a T. And fleshed out fears about nanny bots I would not have thought of. Great story, Owen!