Amity, of course, followed right after me. Eventually she had a place of her own in my computer lab and used it almost as much as I did. All of her schooling was done at home, conducted by our mother and myself. If she missed being around other children, she never mentioned it. That isn’t to say we didn’t give her the opportunity to explore her social potential, as it were, but she simply didn’t seem interested. All she wanted to do was explore the digital age that she’d been born into. On the few occasions when she’d interact with children her own age, she found them to be ploddingly stupid and mundane. They’d talk about some band or movie that just came out; she’d talk about the new Pentium processor. Clearly, our daughter spoke a different language from her peers. So, rather than beat her head against the wall with the communication barriers, she made it clear that she wanted nothing to do with “idiots.” Online, through the use of UseNet and online communities, she found a wide variety of human interaction- all of which she could choose from at will instead of having to make do with what Life threw at her.
She never made light of the fact that her mother knew just as little, perhaps less, as her peers did about technology. And that was absolutely true. But our mother was far from an idiot. She knew about history, science, law, practical home matters, finance… for whatever she might have lacked in regards to technical knowledge, our mother was a walking Encyclopedia about everything else. And, yes, she did learn SOME things about computers. She certainly showed a surprising aptitude for using them, if not completely understanding how they worked.
So it was just us three. We were our world, our own microcosm of Humanity. Amity, whose name meant “peace,” enjoyed a blissful upbringing filled with limitless knowledge and encouragement. She loved to learn and she had a mind perfectly geared for it. By the time she was 12, our daughter was easily smarter than your average third-year college student. And, miraculously, she was every bit as emotionally stable as any full-grown adult, too. Possibly more so, if I’m going to be honest. When her hormones started to hit, she realized it and took it in stride. She was fully and completely self-aware to the point of it being almost spooky. The lack of contact with her peers didn’t seem to affect her adversely in the slightest. As part of her home-schooling agreement with the state, she had to undergo regular checkups with a state-approved psychologist. The general consensus from the shrink was that Amity was easily the most well-adjusted, grounded, insightful, intelligent young woman she’d ever met and could find no fault with her mental faculties whatsoever. Believe me, she looked.
As the technology of the world grew, so did The System change, also as my mother had predicted. Everything eventually went online for us. In some ways, it became easier and more fluid. There was still a learning curve, however, and it took some adjusting for both mother and myself, but Amity accepted it with barely a second thought. To her it was a boon and a blessing and she knew how to use it better than we did. By the time she was 13, she was almost independently running everything for the house. For her it wasn’t a chore; it was something that she actively wanted to do. Who am I kidding? Once she learned about the existence of The System, she flat-out demanded that she be able to use it.
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