Mama had thrived in the unregulated early days of home genetic engineering. Anyone with the skills and the equipment could design and print gene-altering pills or more traditional pharmaceuticals. The advantages these gave people over intelligent machines meant that they pressured governments not to regulate the industry. But one of those home-brewed pills had led to her mother’s death. The world had gone legislation-happy after too many cases like that, but Laila had loved the jungle nature of the early years. The thought that her beloved cottage industry might become illegal had broken her spirit. She refused to make the situation worse by suing for health, even if it meant dying in poverty.

The riots and protests worldwide to regulate the drug and pill industry had arrived in the midseventies, far too late to save her mother, but they’d also enabled funders to consolidate their efforts. One person with enough money could pay millions to design and test new products. No more need to invest in massive laboratories, manufacturing, and distribution. And with designers—like Laila—desperate for work, finding people with the right equipment and skills was trivial. The system had stabilized in the two decades since.

Would the Machinehood affect that balance? Based on their initial demands, they meant to try, but other than a sentient AI, who else might benefit? The suicide bomber put her in mind of the al-Muwahhidun. They didn’t believe in using bot or WAI technology, though they had no problem with taking pills or modifying their bodies. If the Machinehood operatives had ties to the caliph, they should have demanded an end to bot production, to shut down the banks of processors that ran the world’s WAIs.

Backing by bioticist groups made more ideological sense—they believed in maintaining the purity of the human body, no chemicals, no implants—but those people had little in the way of funding. The bulk of humanity had embraced the minimally invasive enhancements offered by pills, and the economy thrived on that consumption. A truly emergent, self-aware artificial intelligence might not care about destabilizing the world’s way of life. Did it want to enslave humanity? That popular theory explained a lot—with the bonus of scaring people shitless—but the evidence she’d seen didn’t support it. Besides, why bother when humanity had effectively done it to themselves?

“Luis, you’re being an idiot,” Welga said. She blinked away tears as she chopped an onion. “Sign the permission. Your wife should be able to do what she wants with her body. The dumb shit she puts up with from you—I can’t believe it.”

Her brother had called to check in on her, and Welga’s innocent “How are things?” had turned into an angry confessional about Nithya. As usual, her little brother was being an idiot.