Tessa frowned. ‘What were you watching?’

Her daughter pouted at the bed.

‘Aya.’

‘. . . Cosmic Crusade.’

‘Are you allowed to watch Cosmic Crusade?’

‘No,’ Aya said, mumbling so low her lips barely moved.

‘No,’ Tessa said. Stars, but she was over fighting to keep that Martian trash out of her kid’s head. She took the scrib.

The protest was immediate and indignant. ‘Mom! That’s not fair!’

‘It’s totally fair.’

‘When do I get it back?’

‘You’re not really in a negotiating position here, kiddo.’

‘When?’

‘When I say so.’ She pointed. ‘Bed.’

She heard her daughter let out a long-suffering sigh as the door closed. One down. Tessa forged ahead, back to her room. She walked through the open door and . . . she blinked. ‘Ky, where are your pajamas?’

Her naked son slapped his torso with twin palms. ‘All fixed!’

Everything was all fixed! with him these days, and she had no idea where he’d picked it up from, no more so than she could figure out where his pajamas had gone. She looked around the bed, beside it, under it, under blankets, under pillows, feeling ridiculous at being outwitted by a two-year-old who was placidly watching her with a finger up his nose. This was one single room. How many places could there . . . she paused. It wasn’t one room, technically. She walked the short distance to the attached lavatory, and opened the door. The light switched on. Tessa closed her eyes. ‘Come here, please.’

Silence.

‘Ky, come here.’

Ky padded over. He looked at her with his lips pulled inward, rocking slightly as he stood in place. It was an expression that would have been the same on any person of any age – the unmistakable dread of someone who knew they’d fucked up but wanted to see how it would play out.

Tessa put her hands on her hips. ‘Why are your pajamas in the toilet?’ she asked.

‘Don’ know.’

‘You don’t know? Who put them there?’

‘Daddy.’

Tessa bit back a laugh. ‘Your daddy’s not here.’

‘Yes, he – he put ’jamas. And – and then bye. Bye Ky, bye Aya, bye Mama.’ He put his hand on his mouth and made kissing sounds. ‘No ’jamas. No way.’

‘I don’t think so,’ Tessa said, tugging the discarded footies away from the vacuum pulling them toward the sewage line. ‘I think you put them here.’

‘No, I don’ think so,’ he repeated while giggling. ‘You – you put them here.’

Tessa imagined, as she put her kicking, now-crying boy back into another pair of pajamas, this same script playing out in this same room with herself and her parents. It had been their room once, and their parents’ before that, and their parents’ before that, and on and on. Generation after generation of wriggling toddlers and weary adults. She remembered waking in what was now Aya’s room and hearing tiny, tubby Ashby shriek with laughter across the way. It was fair, she supposed, this cycle of aggravation. Payback for the days when you threw your own jammies in the toilet.

After two more false starts, three sung rounds of ‘Five Baby Bluefish’, and ten minutes of hand holding and hair stroking, the kid was down. Tessa tiptoed out of the room, holding her breath. She didn’t exhale until the door closed behind her and she had waited long enough to confirm that the sound had fallen on unconscious ears. Whew.

Usually, she didn’t fly solo for bedtime. But Pop was out that evening – off at the waterball game with his cronies, like he did every pair of tendays. He’d be home in a few hours, tipsy and ornery and no help whatsoever. She could’ve asked the Parks for a hand. They didn’t have any kids, and they often helped out around the hex in terms of bathing and bedtime stories, but both Paola and Jules were going through that temporary period of punkiness everyone went through after bot upgrades, and Neil had had a rough shift at work – yet another water main was about to bust, he’d said at dinner – so Tessa hadn’t wanted to bother any of them. No, better to brave bedtime alone and savour the reward of a few sweet, sweet moments all to herself.

She surveyed the living room. It was a wreck, as always, a carnage of toys and laundry and stained furniture even the cleanerbots couldn’t keep up with. She considered the nearly-full bottle of kick sitting on the shelf, a gift from her workmates the standard prior. A few warm sips before bed sounded awfully nice, but . . . nah. If Ky woke up, she wanted to be clear-headed, and these days, even one drink was enough to make her start the next day with a headache.

Somewhere within, her teenage self was screaming in horror.

She poured herself a glass of water instead, and sat on the sofa, letting her body fall back like a bot that’d had its signal cut. Her head sank blissfully into the balding fabric. She closed her eyes. She listened. Quiet. Beautiful, sweet quiet. Nobody crying, nobody complaining, nobody needing her for anything. Just air filters sighing from above and the distant whoosh of greywater pipes below. She’d go to bed before long, but first, she was going to just sit. She was going to sit and do n— Her scrib pinged. Somebody was making a sib call. If it had been anybody else, she would’ve thrown the thing across the room, but when she saw the name, she relented. With a sigh, she hauled herself up, sat back down at the ansible desk, and answered.