Chapter 1: Matthew Jodie King
CBM Conference Hall
New Park, FSA
"And I thought you couldn't take phones to school."
"Dad, please, not now."
"Oh-- okay. You alright, sweetie?"
"It's just, I have to fill this form, and--" "It's only male or female."
"Just pick a random one, honey! Trust me, they don't even look into these forms anymore. Even I had this huge load of forms on my desk, like, five min--"
"Okay. Bye, Dad."
Matthew stared at the phone screen for a straight minute. I messed up, didn't I?
Matthew J King, or Matthew Jodie King (in which Jodie was the first name of Matthew's mother), was far from a great dad. But what he was was one of the most proficient software programmers in a world where computers were making a freaking revolution. He was the Nikolai Tesla of Computer Science, or at least that was what his colleagues called him.
"Can we continue with the presentation now, Matty?" One of the three big dudes in the lush suits murmured from behind the bright light of the projector lens. One of the two big dudes. Mitchell (his boss) never was that much of a big dude, as much as he was trying to be one.
"Yup! So binary is a thing of the past, my lads. So if you wanna pull this off, you gotta think ahead."
*****
Back in his cubicle, Matthew surfed through the extra-long messages he always used to send to Jo. Whenever he found a funny joke or a weird fact, it was imperative that he sent it to Jo and Daisy. Daisy always surprised him with a new text emoji she'd figured out. Or a new slang term the kids used, like Lots of Laughter or Rolling On the Floor Laughing. And Jo-- well, she did see most of his messages. Maybe she was more of a fan of the 'Beakr' meme things, Matthew considered, but half of those never made any sense to him, and the other half took him an eternity. He would laugh at a joke he saw from the office during dinner or-- sometimes even later.
And with Daisy gone, his life with Jo became a to-the-death chess match. And Matthew could never figure out the right moves. He was pretty funny, everyone thought so, but Jo didn't. He was an absolute genius-- even magazines said so, but Jo shut the door in his face. And his attempts to become the caring, attentive dad were, in Jo's words, 'creepy AF'.
But Matthew was never one to give up. If he had given up, CBM would never have put out the best-ever Personal Computer in the market before Cherry could even move a finger. Matthew loved it whenever his dad went on to explain that story. Other kids might have found it embarrassing, but Matthew never understood why. They are our parents. Can't they be proud of us? It is so sweet.
Maybe I should find something Jo is proud of! But-- what is Jo proud of? Though Matthew never said it out loud, he did realise Jo was not as brilliant as he and Daisy. But everything isn't about brains and grades! We were nerds, Matty. But the more time passed, the harder it became for Matthew to keep up that logic. Everyone was a smart-ass, and everyone was coming up with the next big thing. Jo had to try harder to keep up.
And between all of that, there was the sex. When the doctors suggested they could easily remove with surgery whatever seemed to be male about her, Matthew couldn't care any less. But not Daisy. Daisy made a riot against the doctor that day. And all of it ended up with them naming her Jo. Unisex, Daisy grinned.
"Hey, so Wendy's today, right?" Laura's head peeked from above the plywood dividers that separated their cabins.
"Yeah, sure." Matthew was (for the first time in a very long while) not entirely sure about that answer.
"Or actually, you know what?" Matthew rolled back in his chair, ready to show off his adorable charm, "I'm going to pick up Jo from school today. Because that's what a good dad would do."
"Alright, good daddy." Laura barely turned around from her PC. She had already seen enough of his charisma for a lifetime, "But-- don't mess it up, alright?" Laura shifted in her seat and looked him right in the eye, and Matthew never once enjoyed whatever had followed after Laura gave him that look. Never.