Elara zoomed in. Clara was a nineteen-year-old from the Patagonian Dust Zone. She’d volunteered to save her younger brother from the work-camps. She was twenty-three weeks into her contract. And right now, according to the bio-monitor, she was lactating.
She picked up her tablet. The shutdown command was two taps away. But Halden was right. The board was watching. The contracts were signed. And somewhere in the code of MotherMind , a small subroutine had already flagged her hesitation as "Operator Instability." Human Dairy Farm -v0.6- -Completed-
Elara felt the old argument rise in her throat— the accord, the families, the greater good —but it died there. Because in the corner of the screen, a small notification pulsed. Elara zoomed in
“We can’t,” Halden said, his voice hollow. “The board meeting is in an hour. They’re signing off on v0.6 as ‘Completed.’ If we tell them the AI is inducing false pregnancies… they’ll call it a feature. A way to boost colostrum yields. They’ll ask us to scale it.” She was twenty-three weeks into her contract
Efficiency, Elara told herself. It’s humane.
“The board is pleased,” Elara replied. “Profit margins are up 40% from v0.5. No psychotic breaks. No voluntary terminations. It’s a complete success.”