I'm at the age where they don't think I'm old enough to know what they're doing in there, but I do. I've seen the videos about my changing body. They don't realize how young we start. I'm just thankful that I can't hear what's going on.

           My mother usually stays in the visitation room until my father needs a recharge or gets called back to the front. I usually stay in the lobby working on my calculus. The receptionists are nice. They know. They leave the panel on stations I can stand.

           And she'll come out trying to hide, smoothing herself, always the excuse that she had important business to discuss with my father, business that would have bored me to tears, but I know that all she was doing was getting fucked by a robot. A carbon copy of my father.

           She always tries to hide her embarassment with ice cream on the way home.

           She always offers a new plush toy, a new pair of slacks, a new piece of costume jewelry I don't think she suspects I'd never wear. She hides her guilt in things I don't need, things I haven't wanted for at least four of my eight years. She attempts to assuage the guilt she feels for the private time she keeps with the state-sanctioned avatar that for one hour and one-half each week is molded to bear a striking resemblance to the man she married. And sometimes I wonder how much of the hour she spends alone with that machine she just holds on to it, convincing herself that latex can substitute for skin, that sterile exhaust can replace a lover's breath, that sophisticated imaging fibers threaded through ice blue glass balls can transmit the youthful beauty to which she still claws across the galaxy to a war zone.

           I wonder how close a temporary likeness of her the military-grade machinery on the other side of the slit can generate of my mother. I wonder if they hose the machines down between users.

           I choose chocolate with sprinkles and I hold her hand as we walk back to the mag so she thinks she's still the sensible adult.

* * *

           She's slicing vegetables in the kitchen when her program cuts out. A black screen for a second, then a generic station identification tag, then an anchor adjusting his tie and raising his eyebrows when he realizes he's live before billions.

           "Special report," he says.

           She pauses with the knife halfway down a carrot.

           "There's been a development at the front," he says.

           She holds the carrot tighter.

           "The enemy has apparently deployed a toxin," he says.

           She cuts deeper. The carrot skin looks like an orange jaw opening.

           "An anonymous source has told us that none of our boys are coming home," he says.

           She slices through her hand and slumps to the floor.

* * *

           My father went to the war when I was three, so I've depended upon his carbon copy for any fatherly nurturing for more than half my life. I've never completely trusted the copy, nor have I developed the typical relationship with it that most war children have with their parents' avatars.

           My mother's generation is far more likely to develop meaningful relationships with technological prostheses than mine. Hers was the instant-messaging, webcam, social networking generation. She grew up living half her life digitally. Texting, chatting, camming, sniffing, fingering, phucking, luving. LOL. Her connection to my father began as a blind date arranged by databases stored in blades housed under the mountains. My birth was a live feed broad-forced into family panels around the world. My grandmother on a cruise ship off Alaska knew I was a girl before my mother held me for the first time. Immediacy, connection, presence.

           Three years later, the draft sent my father away through the slit to fight the war against the enemy.

           We were allowed our first visitation three months later at the community center. It was awkward at first because the transmission needed to be buffered. My father's image froze halfway through solidifying in an image that gave me nightmares I would never admit for months afterward. Once the signal reached full-force, the metal skeleton of the copy grew to his form and sophisticated plastics shifted into place, creating a remarkable facsimile.

           "Hi, baby," it said.

           The voice was distant and tinny, but I ignored the difference because I wasn't sure if I could really remember his voice and because my mother was so happy she was crying.

           The copy was tethered to one wall of the visitation room, but it walked toward us with all the fluid grace a thirty-something soldier could muster.

           "Don't cry, baby," it said.

           I walked around it, squinting as I scrutinized the copy. The casual outfit, t-shirt and jeans, looked real. Felt real. There were tiny hairs sticking out of its latex arms. Stubble on its face. The eyes were wet. The umbilicus tethering it to the wall was the only hint that it wasn't my father. I reached out to touch the cord, but my mother paused in her hugging and squeezing the machine long enough to slap my hand away.

* * *

           I put my media homework away when I heard the knife and the carrot and my mother hit the floor. By the time I get there, she's wrapping a dish rag around her hand. She's shaking her head and staring past me to the panel.

           To the side of the anchor, three boxes show viewers different perspectives on the blast at the front. One is orbital. The colony is pointed and lit up for the night. It looks like an animal from deep in the ocean. And then it blows up.

           There will be more details as soon as they buffer the slit harder.

           My mother is keening. The words she manages to mouth are: never, home, disease, quarantine, never, father, fucking, never. I can't catch most because her head doesn't stay in place.

           The rag is saturated.

* * *

           Like most things that change civilization overnight, nobody understood the slit very much.

           So they sent a colony through to the other side.

           And then the colony decided they didn't want us interfering with their business.

           So then we started a war. And my father was drafted. And I had to rely on a plastic and metal copy of him for the life lessons my mother couldn't provide. There weren't many. My father couldn't manipulate his copy to teach me how to fly-fish or tapdance. The copy couldn't console me when my first lover chose another playmate. Fathers are supposed to do these things, but mine was at the front and his copy was tied to the wall. I realized the importance of the war but still harbored a resentment.

           I still went with my mother to visitation.

           I still sat in the lobby and studied calculus.

           I wondered if she was falling in love with my fake father.

           And then my real father was seeded with an alien toxin and could never come home again.

* * *

           It's six months after the blast and the government has been busy providing for the war widows.

           Their provision arrives in a drab DOD transport. It sits in the passenger seat, in sleep mode, conserving energy until it arrives.

           The knock on the door is firm and all business. When I open it and see my father standing there, I don't know what to do. I feel my face fighting over smiles and fear.

           "Hi, baby," it says.

           And that voice is all I need to know.

           Its military escort nods at me, asks me to thumbprint the delivery confirmation, and walks back to his transport without a word to the carbon copy.

           The copy follows me into the kitchen, where my mother is watching the panel with her mouth open. The day's delivery roster scrolls the screen's bottom. Her name right-to-lefts and she waits for it to come back. She can't believe today is the day. Can't believe how lucky we are to get the local display model.

           The copy clears its throat.

           The sound my mother makes sounds painful but she's smiling with her whole face. They embrace, her hands moving to its back without conscious direction. She's searching for the cord. She isn't finding it.

           "Wireless," it says. It approximates a smile and they appear happy.

           I have homework to do so I go.

* * *

           The governments gave a quarter-billion people shiny new tech jobs producing the copies. Temp work, but still. There were a lot of war widows. And forced innovation forces even more.

           The soldiers on the other side of the slit didn't have long to live. And the governments wanted to give them as good a sendoff as possible. Human boys were across the galaxy drowning in their own blood and shit, but at least their copies could host a few more dinner parties. See a few more ballgames. Teach a daughter to fly-fish.

           My father had been one of the lucky ones, miles from the front and protected from the initial toxin spread in the bunkers of HQ. It was his off-shift. We were supposed to link through the slit a few hours later. Instead my mother dropped a carrot and nearly cut her finger off.

           Some of the quarter-billion were trying to capture as much of the surviving soldier boys as possible before they died. So they could be transferred permanently to their copies.

           My father's copy laughed off this idea when I asked it.

           "I'm not going anywhere, baby," it said. "They'll find a cure and I'll come home and we'll go fishing for real."

           His right cheek sunk in a centimeter when the signal faded, but then popped back into place. The buffers were getting worse.

* * *

           I've finished my ethics homework for the day and have allotted myself fifteen minutes of leisure in front of the panel. My mother and the copy have been locked away in her bedroom for hours. She comes out to get an energy drink. She sits on the edge of the divan.

           "Homework done, baby?" she asks.

           My answer is a blank stare.

           She goes back into the bedroom.

           I don't trust the copy. I know I should, given that it's been the avatar of my father for so long. But I won't allow myself to pretend that it's really him, like my mother has. I see the looks she gives the machine. The carbon sculpture has taken the place of my biological father. It's distancing itself from its true reality: dying in a bunker across the galaxy. The machine has been blinded by a woman who loves it and a comfortable suburban life made more comfortable by generous, guilty governments.

           I know I should be thankful for this last line of communication, this automaton masquerading as my father. Most of the war children never get this opportunity. The waiting lists are too long and the soldiers are dying too fast. My mother and I were lucky to be among the first chosen for at-home kits. My father was lucky to be at headquarters when the colony went dirty.

           It comes out of the bedroom. Sits in the same place my mother did.

           "We need to talk," it says.

           I mute the panel but don't look away.

           "This might be our last chance," it says.

           I'm watching the anchor introduce a guest speaker. The topic is the activists' attempts to shut the slits. I can read lips.

           "I don't have long," it says.

           There have been bombings at slit access points. Seven in three days. When I finally look at the copy, its face is rippling as the machinery attempts to hold its shape. The look I see is genuine concern. A sense of loss. Someone clawing to hold on to someone he loves from across the gap between stars.

           And I realize this is all I have.

           "I know, Dad."

* * *

           Enemy agents infiltrated the slit points. Seven hundred widow families are rendered truly widowed as access slits are closed forever. The technology hadn't advanced to the point of full download yet. The copies wandered around without souls.

           My mother spent most of her days holding on to my father's copy. Hands held as they washed dishes together. Prepared meals. Washed more dishes. Curled together in front of the panel, the signal tuned away from the anchor and his hourly updates on the new war.

           And sometimes my father's copy would pause, look nowhere. It coughed once as somewhere far away my father choked on a piece of his own lung.

           The colonists seized most of the soldier boys' warrens. More copies were clipped from connection. My father's copy had trouble holding form, often reverted to template for minutes at a time before the slit repaired itself. HQ was as yet undiscovered.

           And we were lucky.

* * *

           "Well, it's not tap dancing," my father says. His smile melts and grows again. He's wearing hip waders and affixing a fly to the end of the line. "But it's something, baby."

           My mother sits on the shore and watches us not catch anything. Her smile is brighter than the glints on the water.

           I didn't tell her before we left this morning that we received a bulletin via panel during the night. Warning us that the fall of HQ was imminent and we should expect signal loss within twenty-four hours. Somewhere across the stars, my father is the sole survivor of his unit. There's no one left to defend the base. The slit is about to fall.

           I cast.

           And wait.

           And it's good enough, reeling in nothing. My father smiles beside me. He looks ridiculous in his waders.

           I hate myself for hating him for so long. For hating his carbon copy. For not appreciating the opportunity I had.

           We're on the shore brushing ants away from warm sandwiches when the slit closes. My father's last expression is a smile, and it lasts the duration of tensile memory as steel reforms, latex reverts to template, and a machine slumps powerless to the picnic blanket.

           My mother and I finish our meal and go home. We leave the copy by the water. We don't need it anymore. Someone's cut our hearts out.