We’re sitting around the table eating Cheerios—my wife sipping tea, Mika playing with her spoon, me suggesting apple picking over the weekend—when Yang slams his head into his cereal bowl. It’s a sudden mechanical movement, and it splashes cereal and milk all over the table.
Jim is the first-person narrator of the story, husband to Kyra and adoptive father to a young Chinese girl name Mika. And what of Yang? Yang is the alternative to the option of using clones to help take care of children. Jim’s next-door neighbor, George, has no problem with that: both his kids are clones. But Jim and Kyra are united in a moral opposition to the whole concept and, besides, there are other reasons for not wanting clones as a permanent babysitter when an option like Yang is available. Not only is he programmed with a college education level of general knowledge, but he also knows more about Chinese culture than Jim and Kyra will learn in a lifetime.
While he has lived with us almost as long as Mika, I don’t think anyone besides her has ever hugged or kissed him. There have been times when, as a joke, one of us might nudge Yang with an elbow and say something humorous like, “Lighten up, Yang!” but that’s been the extent of our contact. I hold him close to me now, bracing my feet solidly beneath my body, and lift. He’s heavier than I imagined, his weight that of the eighteen-year-old boy he’s designed to be. I hoist him onto my shoulder and carry him through the living room out to the car.
The sudden collapse of Yang’s head into his bowl of cereal—which he actually does “eat” and which actually does become “waste” which he himself evacuates by cleaning his stomach canister—marks the end of Yang as a member of the family. Although, as Jim here admits, neither he nor his wife really did much in the way of treating Yang like an actual member of the family. This quote also stands out for indicating the physicality of Yang. Most importantly, however, this is the moment in the story where an emotional pivot begins and Jim starts to view Yang as more than simply a machine.
“This is what men do for the family,” I said, gesturing with my beer to the leafless yard. Without realizing it, I had slipped into thinking of Yang as my son, imagining that one day he’d be raking leaves for his own wife and children. It occurred to me then that Yang’s time with us was limited. Eventually, he’d be shut down and stored in the basement—an antique that Mika would have no use for when she had children of her own. At that moment I wanted to put my arm around Yang. Instead I said, “I’m glad you came out and worked with me.”
Upon being informed by a racist repairman that he doesn’t fully trust, Jim eases into a state of wistfully nostalgic recollection. He recalls a day the previous fall when Kyra was taking care of the baby and he was about to start raking the yard and Yang asks if he needs any help. The subsequent imagery could one taking place on millions of yards on any weekend in the fall: the father raking leaves into the bag being held open by the son before heading inside where each grabs a beer. Except that in this case the son is a robot. And even the father is temporarily confused. The question, however, is what is Jim confused about exactly?
