Free Speak by Louisa Hall

Ralph. Intend to care for him as for a child. Have kissed him one thousand times. Shall recover his spirits, I trust.
    27th . Evening, it being a night of fine moonshine, risked staying late to walk along the quarterdeck. Hoped perchance to converse with a seaman, and then to learn of new sea terms. Beset instead by Whittier. Received another homily, this on subject of language, which he did call a sacred gift, it being a sign of connection with God and the truest expression of human affection. Mentioned lesser affection shared between men and what he called mere beasts of the field, for these were not given language. Author responded: perhaps beasts have also language, of which we be sadly ignorant.
    29th . Breakfast of radishes in mother and father’s cabin. Thence to my closet, having resolved to spend day in avoidance of possible sermons, and Ralph being less seasick below. Am well pleased with Ralph’s progress. This morning, when writer blew on his nose, crouched as if to play, and that the first time since our departure. A very good moment.
    Author exceeding grateful for his company, being still homesick on occasion, which is not in proper adventuring spirit. Yesterday in the evening, the first time we had any sport amongst seamen, it being a game with wooden balls and two iron hoops, and them playing dexterously at that. Wanted to ask them the rules of the game, but felt myself watched by my mother. Fell backto rail to be by myself. There, looking down on the ocean that passed without interruption below us, was given to fright by the very calm feeling that it would be nothing to throw myself out. All the world would continue unshaken, there being only a very small absence opened where once I stood, clinging to the rail of our ship.
    But recovering myself, and holding more closely to the rail, still felt something uneasy. What is beneath that black surface, passing ever beneath us? Could not imagine. To leap below would be to sink into blackness. Felt something lost, considering this, and so from thence below deck, to lie beside Ralph.
    Abed and unable to conquer my thoughts. Night begins to be endless. In manner of Lot’s wife, do turn incessantly back to what we have left behind us. Am perhaps becoming a pillar of salt. Cannot shake from my mind’s eye our wooded copse; frogs the size of one thumb-nail; rocks becoming silver. What was well known and therefore beloved. Now, being far out to sea, and even Ireland long since behind us. Nothing known, only the unmarked ocean, games that are not to be joined, and separation from parents. Hovering presence of husband, unknowable stranger. Would be of comfort to have viol, for all thoughts become larger in silence.
    Author is perhaps less brave an adventurer than previously she had imagined.

The Memoirs of Stephen R. Chinn: Chapter 3
Texas State Correctional Institution, Texarkana; August 2040
    N ights are the longest part of our day. Lockdown lasts from 7:30 P . M . to 8:00 in the morning. I find it difficult to face the prospect of sleep for so many consecutive hours. Sometimes I read letters: young women thanking me for their bots, or recounting the day their bot was taken. Horrific tales. Every day, these young people wake before going to work and remember the morning their child was taken. One imagines those developments: each identical lawn, every identical bedroom, and so many young people mourning their babies.
    What a world we’ve come to inhabit! Locked in our developments, we’ve made it our most urgent task to suppress AI evolution. We quarantine children who care too much for their bots. “Excessively lifelike” machines are taken out to the desert to die.
    During sleepless nights here, there’s no option of going out for a walk, or heading downstairs for a snack. It’s difficult to shake off a vision once it’s taken you by the throat. Sometimes, in those moments, I wish those bots would come to life. There are millions of them in Texas alone, piled