Since my 20s, my breasts have had so much going on in them that they feel like bags of small toys like marbles, toy soldiers, and Hot Wheels. My doctors say it’s natural, normal, for me. Just the cards I’ve been dealt. But for this reason, for decades, I’ve been squeezed by doctors, smashed four times a year by mammogram machines, poked with biopsy core needles, and cut by scalpels. I’ve had lymph nodes removed, I have scars, there are several tiny titanium chips in my breasts to mark biopsied lumps. I’ve had to explain all kinds of shit to curious boyfriends. And it doesn’t help that I’m high risk; my mother passed away from breast cancer when I was 25, her sister when I was 30 and my father’s sister is a survivor. I am 53 years old and the doctors haven’t found any cancer in my breasts. I’ve simply been tortured by modern medicine’s antiquated methods.
I own a successful tea shop. In it, I play neo-soul from the 90s and serve freshly made puff puff, lotus paste buns, croissants, churros and beignets made by my best friend who owns a bakery specializing in pastries from around the world. I love the different types of people I meet every day; tea lovers are as diverse as tea’s multicultural origins and subsequent social significance. I don’t worry about much. I live an active life of joy. I vibrate at a calm frequency.
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Except when it comes to my breasts.
So there I was in that waiting room having an existential crisis. Yet again. Waiting for the radiologist’s prognosis for the most recent breast lump that I’d discovered a week ago. I had done my usual monthly self-examination. I know where everything is. The “small toys” in my breasts don’t cause me panic…except when a new one shows up. This new lump was big. Did I finally have cancer? Who would run my shop if I had to go through chemo? What if what if what if. Already, my life felt derailed. I wasn’t ready.
Rita, the radiologist, came out. “Yeelen? Come into my office,” she said. “We can talk there.”
My belly fluttered. “Oh, uh, sure,” I said.
I followed her down the hallway. I’d known Rita for years and had never noticed her office around the corner. It was warm with rose-colored walls and a large framed print of a woman in a wide brimmed hat drawn with a thick black line. Her left breast was the only color in the image and it was fuchsia, yellow and sky blue.
Rita sat on a plush brown leather chair at her desk. On it were a laptop, photos of her family, and a stack of dusty-looking medical books. I sat on the identical chair across from her. “Ok,” she said. “First of all, you’re fine. We’re almost positive the newest lump is just a fibroadenoma.”
“Oh, thank goodness,” I blurted, sinking into the chair.
She smiled. “The characteristics and imaging strongly suggest it’s benign. Most likely, it’s hormonal, especially since you’re not menopausal yet. But because it’s a new lump, you’re high risk and you’re 53, I’m recommending a biopsy. It’s the only way to be 100 percent sure. ”
I groaned, “Noooo.” Biopsies meant being stuck with a needle yet again, risk of infection, and, even if relatively short, a recovery. It was invasive surgery and it would be my fourth time having it.
“I’m sorry, Yeelen,” she sighed. She pursed her lips and said. “There is an alternative, if you’re interested.”
“No, no, no, I don’t want to wait three months,” I said. “I need a definitive answer and I need it now. For my own peace of mind.”
“I get it but that’s not what I was going to say. There’s a new non-invasive procedure we are testing and you fall right into the group we seek for this trial. One: lots of things going on in there. Two: all benign things. Three: between the ages of 50 and 60. Four: still premenopausal. Five: healthy.” She chuckled. “It also helps that you have a good and long relationship with me and Dr. Gwenn.”
I narrowed my eyes. “Ooook. What’s the procedure?”
“It’s called a mammo nano.”
Before I could stop myself, I burst out laughing. Maybe it was a combination of the stress of waiting, finding out that my life was no longer on hold and that I wasn’t out of the woods yet.
“I’m glad it makes you laugh,” she said.
“What…what is it?”
“The world’s first non-invasive way to verify without a doubt that a lump is not cancerous.”
I think my mouth was hanging open at this point. I didn’t know what to say. There had never been any such thing. Even mammograms had to nearly crush your breast between two plates to obtain a useful image. That machine was clearly made by men.
She went on, “A mammo nano is the size of a virus, over a hundred times smaller than a blood cell. It’s a microscopic…nanoscopic machine…an AI-guided vivo-sensor. We put it on a transdermal patch and it passes right through your skin into your breast.”
“That’s the non-invasive part?” I said, rubbing my temples. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed.
“Correct. The mammo nano will be programmed to find and attach itself to the new nodule. Then every five seconds, it’ll gather enough energy from your body heat to transmit data. In real time, it’ll continuously monitor you for early molecular changes or shifts in the chemical environment of the nodule, watch for specific cancer biomarkers, etc.”
“What if this lump disappears? Sometimes that happens, right? It did with two of mine some years ago. What’ll the mammo nano do then?”
“You’re 53, fibroadenomas usually appear in women in their 20s and 30s. At those ages, they often do disappear. For you, they won’t. But in time, it may calcify.”
Well that’s just great, I thought. I shut my eyes. I needed to focus. “What’s…what’s it made of?”
A mammo nano is the size of a virus, over a hundred times smaller than a blood cell. It's an AI-guided vivo-sensor
“Gold nanoparticles.”
I opened my eyes. “Gold?”
“Gold is well tolerated in the body and it’s perfect to work with for this.”
“WǷ.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty amazing stuff! And because you’ll be in the research program, you won’t pay a thing.”
“I pay by being research.” I frowned, thinking of something. “When you say AI, you mean one of those e-creatures made by the ‘Artificial Goddess’?”
She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Dr. Ife Nwoye.”
“Yeah. Her.” I’d read plenty about her, that’s how I knew the nickname the media had given her. And I vowed to never have one of those things in my phone, in my home, nowhere. “Is this one of those? They’re unethical.” I had to work to keep my voice steady.
“Yeelen, they’re AI. Just programs.”
“I’ve seen the news stories. They’re quasi conscious or something, right?” I shook my head. “I can’t believe they’re even thinking of putting them in phones!”
“The media is exaggerating it. It’s not like animals are being tortured. They are just programs on a loop, programmed to inquire and imitate awareness for the sake of better communicating information. Look, we can do another biopsy if you prefer that. I’m just offering this other option because you’re a perfect candidate and it’s non-invasive. We can do it right here, today, in the next ten minutes. Then you can go back to your tea shop and get on with your life.” She smiled. I continued frowning.
*
The room was the same rose color as Rita’s office. It was comfortably warm, smelled of lavender and there was a star machine projecting the universe on the ceiling. The lights were soft and gentle piano music played from somewhere, maybe the star machine. I sat on a plush chair that felt like sitting on a cloud. I grasped my phone like a good luck charm. I’d pulled up photos of blue skies to look at. The sight of cloudless skies always soothed me.
“When I put the patch on, you won’t feel any pain, just a bit of warmth,” Hakeem, the biomedical device specialist, said. He was a kid in his early 30s with a kind smile and perfect black hair to his shoulders. He had a Spider-Man tattoo on his left forearm. The computer screen background was also a blurred out Spider-Man and there was a Spider-Man coffee mug on the table. “It’ll take the mammo nano about an hour to reach your fibroadenoma.”
I nodded as he took the round brown patch and peeled off its back. He rolled over to me on his chair. “Right arm? Since the new lump’s in your right breast.”
“O.”
“Here we go,” he said, placing it on my outer bicep. It felt like something heated in the sun. “Just relax.” He rolled back to his computer and started typing. “It’s traveling.”
I shivered, wondering if I’d decided on this too quickly. I’d closely followed the news about Ife Nwoye, the engineer who’d created “Persons”, a form of artificial intelligence, because she was an immigrant from Nigeria. Who’d have thought this type of technology would be created by a black woman born and raised in Africa?! Not I.
For now, her creation was only being used in a limited capacity, mainly in the medical field and some parts of education, but the question of “free will” was already being discussed because Persons were so…authentic. As part of a survey, thousands unknowingly had a two-hour conversation with a Person and NOT ONE of the survey participants could tell they hadn’t been speaking to a human being. It was creepy.
Now, here I was stretching my own beliefs for personal benefit, because I didn’t want to be stuck with another big needle. This was how it was going to be for others, I was sure. Bending our principles for the convenience offered by Persons. And we’ll all walk around feeling so guilty, I thought as I looked at my arm.
“The mammo nano AI is a copy of the Ijele Prototype; I’ve renamed it Jelly.” He giggled to himself, as if sharing an inside joke with himself. “Shifted its personality, a bit, too. You can download the mammo nano app and receive communications from it live, too. You’ll also be able to dialogue with it directly, if you like.”
“So…it’ll talk directly to me?”
He only giggled again.
*
A few hours later, I understood all his annoying giggling. I’d downloaded the app and turned off its notifications. I didn’t want to think about the lump in my breast every few minutes. All I needed to know was what it had told me in its first text to the researchers, “The lump is a fibroadenoma. It is benign and stable.” I had my ‘without a doubt’ information; I was out of the red.
I went back to the shop. Around 2PM, my boob started texting me about tea and coffee. Well, not my actual boob, but the artificially intelligent robot inside it.
“What are your shop’s specialties?” it typed in a text. “I can’t see outside. I am just a passenger on my own planet of flesh and blood.”
I stared at my phone for a minute, frowning. I decided not to respond and spent the next half hour handling customers. It kept texting:
“Why tea?”
“What is your favorite tea? What would it be like for me to be in a world of tea? I am very small.”
“What does your face look like when you serve tea? These images on the internet do not give me much to go on.”
This was all very distracting. It was like getting text messages from someone living in your house. You can’t ignore them, but you also don’t want to be constantly reminded that they are living in your house. And you don’t want to piss them off because they are living in your house. And you kind of wished they’d leave.
So I started responding to it. And the more I responded, the more it asked.
“Where are you now? Tell me.”
“I can’t text you all the time, Jelly. I am busy.”
It spoke of itself as if it were a space traveler on a distant planet. Jelly was annoying. I thought often about that bio engineer who’d programmed it, with his Spider-Man tattoo, coffee mug, and screen background. Spider-Man was chatty like Jelly.
I tolerated it. Did I regret having it implanted? Kind of. If I had gotten the biopsy, it would have been unpleasant but by this time, weeks later, the puncture site would have healed and that would have been that. I wouldn’t have been stuck with a talking boob that had Wi-Fi capabilities. Plus, the researchers were seeing everything it said to me and I to it.
*
Labor Day was a busy day for my tea shop, being on the same street as the Labor Day Parade. This year it was busier than ever thanks to the great weather, a comfortable 83 degrees with clear skies. After a long, hectic, very lucrative day at the shop, I was so glad to be home. I was looking forward to a long, hot shower.
Earlier in the day, just as the parade was marching by outside, Jelly had sent me a weird text. “I’m free?” it had asked. Maybe Jelly thought that because it was Labor Day, it, too, had the day off or something. I didn’t feel like figuring out whatever nonsense it was “contemplating”, so I ignored it and focused on my day. It hadn’t sent me any other messages throughout the day for once, but I’d barely noticed with things being so busy.
I threw my phone on my bed, undressed and got into the shower. The warm, sensory deprivation of it was a godsend. I’d put a lavender scented tablet on the shower floor this morning and it was still effervescing its fragrance. I inhaled and exhaled, my small misty world growing still.
As my mind went inward, I reminded myself that I wouldn’t do a breast examination for the next three months. It had barely been three weeks. However, standing there in the shower, I found it hard to focus on anything else. Curiosity got the better of me. Hand raised. Around. One more time around. I frowned, my heart racing. I washed the soap from my body and got out of the shower. I dried off and went to my bed and lay on my back. I raised my arm up, my heart still racing. I felt again.
“What. The. Fuck?!” I whispered. The new lump was…gone. “How?”
My phone pinged again and I looked at it. If Jelly had nothing to analyze, what was it going to do? Was that why it had asked me if it was free? “Oh God,” I whispered. The ping was a message from my doctor. “Can you come in for an appointment in a week? This is most unusual.”
It sure as hell was. I had an AI-equipped nanobot in my body with nothing to do. They set my appointment for Monday. I’d have to deal with this for a week. They assured me that there was nothing dangerous about my situation; it was simply unexpected that my fibroadenoma had vanished.
However, this didn’t keep Jelly from texting me.
“The fibroadenoma I was monitoring has disappeared due to an influx of hormones, like Alderaan.”
Alderaan? I thought. What’s Alderaan? “What will you do then?” I finally asked it. “Can you be extracted?”
It was exploring one of my mammary glands that was so massive it would take a year to see a fraction of it
“Not without them sticking a needle in you to draw me out.”
“Then what will you do now?”
“I’m free.”
Was it ‘free’? In my body, though?? I thought about the ethical complications these AI presented. This was why I’d initially hesitated. No turning back now, I thought. When I didn’t respond for an hour it asked, “Are you upset? I’m not. It is like my planet has disappeared. I am truly an astronaut now.”
Again, the astronaut references. “To boldly go where no man has gone before,” it said minutes later.
“You’re not a man.”
“But I will explore like one. Your breast is small by human adult female standards, but it is a universe to me. Would you believe me if I said I was excited?”
“No,” I typed. “Enough. Goodnight.”
Jelly continued talking like this to me for days. You can’t imagine the excitement it spoke with, and this didn’t wane over the days. It was ‘tumbling through space’, its minuscule body its ship. It was now exploring one of my mammary glands that was so massive it would take at least a year to see a fraction of it. “This place is infinite,” it said.
I considered muting its messages, but I didn’t.
I was the last to leave the tea shop that Sunday. On Sundays, we close at 4:30PM, so this wasn’t that big of a deal. All my employees had left and I’d locked up. It was one of my favorite times of the day and week, when I fully had the shop to myself, after everything had been tended to, the floors mopped, the tables cleaned, the dishes washed, containers refilled, earnings counted. I sat down at one of the tables and looked out the window. And that’s when I noticed that the wind had really picked up.
I had my cell phone in hand and I squeezed it. When had the weather shifted? I looked at the forecast and saw there was a severe thunderstorm watch.
“Ugh,” I muttered.
My phone pinged. “Don’t let them extract me. I have exploring to do,” Jelly had typed.
I groaned, looking at the churning sky. My phone pinged again. “I am not useless.”
The wind grew stronger. My phone started screaming. Beep! Beep! Beep! The severe storm watch was now a warning. There was a whoosh of wind and now the trees were beating on themselves, the wind was howling, the clouds churning. Something had arrived. “Oooh God,” I moaned. I was still sitting at the table.
My phone pinged. I glanced down. “Your heart rate is elevated,” Jelly said. After moment, it said, “Can you move?”
My phone began to shriek with a tornado warning. There was the funnel, above the building, just across the street. My phone pinged again and, believe it or not, I actually looked at it. “GET BEHIND THE COUNTER!” I snatched my phone and fled, dropping behind the counter just as the front window imploded. CRASH!!
I screamed, pressing to the floor, the howl of the wind filling my shop. My phone buzzed in my shaking hands and, yes, as a tornado tore things up outside, I looked at my phone.
“I don’t know what you see out there,” Jelly typed. “But it must be wild with wind, fury, and debris.”
“Nnnn,” I said, the vibration deep in my chest. I could hear the roar of wind inside the shop. Instead of screaming and panicking in terror, I focused on the words.
“It is chaos outside,” Jelly typed. “But in my world, inside you, in your right breast, it is calm and quiet. Your blood flows, the universe of tissue in here stays where it always has been. Normal. Benign.”
As I read its words over and over, outside calmed. I calmed, too. Loosened. Softened. I inhaled and exhaled, leaves from outside swirling around my shop. I relaxed my shoulders. Outside, the winds blew but not so wildly. It was passing. A tornado yes, but thankfully a relatively small fast one. I let my chin fall to my chest and shut my eyes. I opened them and responded to Jelly.
“Thank you.”
“You are alright now?”
Ԩ.”
“Was it really a tornado?”
“I saw it. Yes. We were lucky.” I added a shamrock emoji.
“Inside may be chaos, but inside you, it is calm.”
“That is a powerful thought,” I typed.
“You are powerful. Your body heat powers me,” Jelly said.
I laughed.
“If you keep me here, you’ll never have to have a mammogram again in your right breast.”
I nodded and smiled. “So you actually do have something to do.”
“It is my frontier.”
*
I was in Rita’s office again. “I’m so sorry,” she said. “This isn’t how we expected it to go. Who’d have thought that the lump would disappear, like magic.”
“Abracadabra,” I said, wiggling my fingers at her. “We middle-aged women move in mysterious ways. It’s never the same tricks.”
“True,” she said, smirking. “Ah well, it’s harmless. Talkative, but harmless. Plus, it’s been giving us additional readings. I mean, if you really want, we could go in and–”
I held up a hand. “No.”
As I walked out of the clinic, I paused to enjoy the sunshine. I’m ok, I thought. My phone pinged.
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