Exhalation

“The Lifecycle of Software Objects” is a novella that takes place over 20 years in 10 sections.

Part 1 Summary

The story centers on Ana Alvarado, a former zookeeper, who shifts her career focus to software testing after the zoo she works at closes down. In this near future, everyone spends most of their time in digital worlds, one of the most popular being Data Earth. Ana receives a job offer from her friend Robyn’s company, Blue Gamma. The company is developing advanced forms of “digients, digital organisms” using software called “Neuroblast” (64-65). The digients vary in appearance, from animal-like to more robotic, but always with appealing features. The Neuroblast digients learn over time and require training, making Ana a strong candidate to help them. Ana hesitates to take the job at first, as she always dreamed of working with real animals. She ultimately decides to take the position, reasoning it’s closer aligned with her interests than most software jobs.

The other central character is Derek Brooks, a designer at Blue Gamma with an animation background. Derek enjoys his job, and “feels that helping a new life-form express itself is the most exciting work an animator could be doing” (67). Over the next year, the Blue Gamma team prepares their digients for launch. The digients learn language and eventually speak in a childlike English. If the Blue Gamma team makes an error in how they are training the digients, they can return the digients to a previous “checkpoint” (74) to try to fix the mistake.

Part 2 Summary

Blue Gamma is ready for launch, and their digients are a commercial success. Other companies make competing products, but Blue Gamma maintains a stronghold in the digient market. A toy company, “SaruMech Toys” (79), even gives Blue Gamma a small robot that the digients can be uploaded to, allowing them to explore the real world. Ana loves seeing the digients explore the real world and thinks “if she could afford it, she would buy one of [those] robots in a heartbeat” (83). She forms a particularly strong bond with the digient Jax. Meanwhile, Derek works on other assignments, including “[designing] an intelligent alien species” called “Xenotherians” (86-87) for a group of odd hobbyists.

Part 3 Summary

Over the next year, Blue Gamma’s sales slow, with many customers finding the responsibility of raising a digital life too time consuming. Some digients are suspended or taken to digital rescue shelters. Outside of work, Ana starts spending some of her free time taking care of other digients.

Another year passes, and Blue Gamma is forced to close. Ana’s compassion for the digients continues to grow, and she takes in Jax as her own digient. Derek takes in the panda-like Marco and Polo, too, but many Blue Gamma employees don’t adopt digients.

Part 4 Summary

Derek finds work “animating virtual actors for television” (94). Outside of work, Derek and Ana bond while taking care of their digients. Both agree they don’t want to suspend them. The time Derek spends with Ana and his digients causes friction with his wife, Wendy. Derek admits to himself that if circumstances were different, he might pursue a romantic relationship with Ana, but he brushes those feelings aside. Over time, however, Derek’s feelings grow “beyond friendship” (107). He doesn’t mention this to Ana, suppressing his feelings instead.

Ana discovers some of the digients have been illegally copied and tortured. A security patch comes out, but she and other digient owners are worried about the digients living in an online world. Some resort to suspending their digients to keep them safe.

Part 5 Summary

A more advanced virtual world appears, “Real Space” (108), and Data Earth’s popularity as a platform begins to dwindle. A Neuroblast competitor, “Sophonce” (109) is also developed, with the intention of creating digients that can be trained to work. While Ana isn’t interested in teaching Jax sellable job skills, she is intrigued by the idea of expanding his education. She converses with the small group of Neuroblast digient owners left, and they even decide to start giving their digients homework.

Derek designs a modification to let the digients “look more mature” (117) to correspond with their intellectual growth. At the same time, Derek’s digients Marco and Polo tell Derek they want to become incorporated, which would allow them more independence. Derek tells them “you’re not old enough” (119), and that they can talk about it at a later date.

The time Derek spends with his digients is too much for Wendy, and they file for divorce. Derek thinks this might be his chance to be with Ana, even though she’s dating someone, Kyle. Before Derek has a chance to tell Ana how he feels about her, Ana informs him she is actually moving in with Kyle.

Part 6 Summary

Two years pass. The Neuroblast digients continue to learn and develop their own interests. No longer the juggernaut it once was, the owners of Data Earth decide to let it “[become] part of Real Space” (124). Neuroblast, however, is not compatible with Real Space. The merger “essentially means the end of the world” (125) for the Neuroblast digients. Jax and the other Neuroblast digients must live on a private server of Data Earth, which is sadly “almost entirely devoid of inhabitants” (126). The digients are therefore cut off from many of the social interactions they came to enjoy. The only upside Ana sees is that they “are safe from the dark side of the social world” (128).

Ana, Derek, and the other digient owners seek out ways to raise the funds required to port the Neuroblast-digients so that they’ll be compatible with Real Space. Various avenues fail. Felix Radcliffe, “one of the last participants in the Xenotherian project” (131) reaches out to Derek, although he is an odd and isolated person. Felix is also trying to port his alien-like Neuroblast digients. Derek and Ana mull over working with Felix to port their digients.

Part 7 Summary

As more fundraising attempts fail, some of the remaining digient owners consider suspending their digients until they can pay for the port. Ana worries suspension will put their goal into “perpetual postponement mode” (136) and the digients will stay suspended. Jax tells Ana part of him wants to be suspended, another part of him wants to be awake and know what’s going on. Jax asks, “You sometimes wish you don’t have take care me?” (137). Ana replies, “My life might be simpler if I didn’t have you to take care of, but it wouldn’t be as happy. I love you, Jax” (137). Jax responds, “Love you too” (137).

Ana receives a job offer to training Sophonce digients at a company called Polytope. The pay is good, but the job would require Ana to use InstantRapport, a “patch that delivers doses of an oxytocin-opioid cocktail” (138) which would cause her to feel affection toward the digients she’s assigned to train. Ana doesn’t make up her mind right away but thinks she might be able to talk Polytope into porting Jax if she took the job. Derek tells her he doesn’t like the idea.

Derek talks with Felix, who pitches a company called Binary Desire, “maker of sex dolls both virtual and physical” (140). Derek immediately objects to letting the digients be used for sex. Felix counters that Binary Desire will pay them just to listen to their sales pitch, which Derek considers.

Part 8 Summary

Ana, Derek, and the rest of the group meet with a Binary Desire spokesperson, Jennifer Chase. Jennifer assures them that their digients will “be treated with respect” (142) and details a two-year plan to make them anatomically correct and familiarize them with sexuality before finding them a human partner. They would then modify digients to enjoy the same sexual behaviors as the human that purchased them. The group is skeptical, having never imagined their digients as sexual beings, and question the agency the digients’ have in being made to enjoy the same pleasures as a person. The deal is still enticing, as it would pay for the Real Space port, and the group thinks it over.

Initially opposed to the idea, Ana considers whether Jax is missing something in being asexual. Derek, too, considers the offer more closely when Marco expresses interest in working for Binary Desire, stating “if digient agree before be edited, then not wrong” (154). Derek and Ana talk the proposal over, but still aren’t able to come to a decision, although Ana leans toward taking the job at Polytope instead.

Part 9 Summary

In a last-ditch effort to avoid the Binary Desire deal, Ana meets with a company called “Exponential Appliances, maker of household robots” (158). After a brief meeting, the representatives tell Ana the Neuroblast digients have too much personality and take too much time to raise. The meeting is brief and ends with no deal.

Ana still opposes to the Binary Desire contract. She feels her only option left is Polytope. She doesn’t like the idea of taking the job, but loves Jax, and “Loving someone means making sacrifices for them” (164). Kyle doesn’t like the idea either, but for Jax, Ana’s willing to take the job if that’s the only option.

Part 10 Summary

Ana tells Derek about the bad meeting with Exponential Appliances. He senses she is going to take the Polytope job. Derek considers his options. If he lets Marco go to Binary Desire, Ana won’t have to take a job that forces her to use InstantRapport. However, Ana will be upset he let Marco go, and “it’ll ruin his chances of ever getting together with her” (168). Knowing the sacrifices, Derek signs the Binary Desire contract.

Ana learns that Derek sold Marco and argues with him. Derek doesn’t tell Ana how he feels and offers short excuses. Angrily, Ana “assumed Derek felt the same way she does, that he understood the need to make sacrifices” (171), not knowing the interior turmoil Derek just went through.

Still, Ana is happy that Jax can reenter Real Space to socialize. Ana imagines all of the possibilities for Jax, growing more and more into a unique and mature being who will find others that love him. First, though, “she has to get on with the job in front her now: teaching him, as best she can, the business of living” (172). The story ends with Ana resuming her parenting duties with Jax.