Read iD for Free Online Page B

just had no idea how Amy was really planning to use them. She hadn’t really mentioned that part.
    “Javier?”
    He rewound. “Oh. Yeah. The shipment. I think Matteo and Ricci stopped looking, once the munchkin came along.” He cupped both hands around his mouth. “José!”  
    Giggles drifted through the fog. Javier could just make out shapes moving in the trees. “José! ¡Viene acquí!”  
    His grandson dropped out of a tree and onto his back. His grip was true and flawless, but Javier grabbed him under the knees anyway just to be sure.
    “Who’s there?” He twisted and turned, trying to see the child on his back. “Who’s got me? Is it a monkey?”
    His grandson giggled and hugged him around the neck.
    “It’s a big spider, isn’t it? Help! Help! ”
    The laughs grew bigger. His iterations all had the same laugh; as it turned out, they’d succeeded in passing it down.
    “I guess I’d better crush it! If I flop down on the ground and roll around, it’ll go squish !” He knelt on the ground. “Okay, I’m rolling around! I’m killing this bug!”
    “¡Abuelito, no!”  
    “Who’s that? Who’s talking?”
    “It’s me!” José hugged him hard.
    “Oh, good, it’s you. You scared me.” Javier let his grandson back down to the ground. “You’ve gotten bigger.”
    José nodded emphatically. “I eat four times a day, now. Not just three.”
    “Good for you. And your father?”
    “Which one?”
    Javier shrugged. “Both. How are they?”
    His grandson returned the shrug. “They told me to play in here today. All day.”
    “Because of the shipment?”
    “Yeah.” José turned to Amy. “You get to go on the boat, right?”
    Amy crouched on the ground. “Yes, I do.”
    “Can I come?”
    Amy shook her head. “Nope.”
    “How come?”
    Amy brushed imaginary dust from the child’s hair. He looked about three years old, but was really about four or five months. Unlike most of the other children, he wore a complete set of clothes: shorts, t-shirt, even a little belt with a logo Javier didn’t recognize. Matteo and Ricci scored a lot of free toys and playwear, these days. They’d sold their lives to a content development agency that made the story of twin robots raising an exact replica of themselves available in the US, Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Korea. Women loved it. At least, organic women did. Javier had always encouraged his boys to get by on their looks whenever possible, but his twins had perfected the practise. They didn’t even have to fuck the humans, anymore, and they still made money.
    “Every grown-up here has a job,” Amy said. “And dealing with humans is mine.”
    “Nobody else can do it?”
    “Nobody else can do it.”
    José blinked. “ Papi said it’s because they’re scared of you.”
    For a picot-second, Javier saw Portia flicker across Amy’s face. Her smirk rose to the surface like a shark’s dorsal fin and then submerged again, replaced by Amy’s far softer and more reassuring smile. Javier blinked. No. It wasn’t Portia. It was just an expression. Portia – whatever was left of her – was in quarantine. Deep beneath the waves, the old bitch lay dreaming.
    “Maybe,” Amy said. “But that doesn’t matter. What matters is whether or not you’re getting new uncles, today. Have your dads said anything about that?”
    José shook his head. “No. I don’t think they’re looking for my uncles, any more.” He looped an arm around Javier’s leg. “Can abuelito come play?”
    Amy stood. “Of course!” She glanced at Javier. “I’ll see you later.”
    He watched her vanish into the fog. His grandson hugged his leg as tightly as if it were the trunk of a tree. Javier tousled his hair.
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    José looked up at him. “Is she going to eat me?”
    “Of course not. Your abuelita loves you.” He gestured. “That’s why she built all of this for you.”
    His grandson leaned away from his leg and wobbled from right to left