Leona Cash

She whisks me out of the spotless subway station and down a typically hectic Seoul thoroughfare. Behind us, a young couple point at things on market stalls and argue furiously. The only Korean word they use that I can make out is the one for 'cradle'.
   "It's so nice to meet you," says Tae-su. "You look great, so healthy."
   I have to laugh.
   "Just wait until the smog clears, darling," I say. "You're in for a nasty surprise."
   Tae-su is one of those women who are so beautiful that any compliment from them sounds like sympathy. Her face seems as round and smooth as a pond, with not the tiniest ripple of a worry line to disturb the surface. Over a sober charcoal grey suit, she wears the thin red sash that identifies her as a company director of Hallyu Promotions.
   "I think pregnancy agrees with you," she says. "It makes women bloom, does it not?"
   "Maybe, but I don't agree with it," I say. "I find it interferes with my nicotine and alcohol consumption rather too much."
   She cocks her head at me like a bird, but the corporate smile stays in place.
   "How did you know I'm pregnant?" I say. "I'm hardly at the elasticated pants stage yet."
   "You mentioned it in your last column, I believe."
   "'Course I did. That's crack, for you. Rots the brain."
   Her eyes widen.
   "Joking," I say. "Just joking."

The entrance lobby of the Goguryeo Corporation looks as if it could welcome you into any upmarket new-media company or modernist 5-star hotel on the planet. Steel, glass and light do their usual tasteful things as our heels make pleasing clicking sounds on the marble floor.
   I stop at a fountain that erupts out of a stone dolphin's blowhole and trickles into a pool lined with blue-grey slate. The water looks odd. Too bubbly. I scoop up a handful.
   "Is this fountain carbonated?" I ask.
   "It is," says Tae-su. "That is not so uncommon here."
   "Ha!" I say. "Sparkling water is my hangover cure. You don't know how close I am to diving in there with a slice of lemon and downing it in one. That'd be a rock'n'roll story, all right. Beats the time I drank Pimm's out of David Gilmour's jacuzzi."
   "I take it you are temperamentally suited to the life of a music journalist, then?" she asks with a grin.
   "Jeez, Tae-su. I practically invented it."
   "One moment, please," she says. "I will ask reception to let Baby Bae know you are here."

You may not have heard of Baby Bae yet. But believe me, you will. Remember that freaky dancing baby thing that was doing the rounds on the Internet a few years ago? It turned up on Ally McBeal too? Well, now it's real.
   Kind of.
   The Goguryeo Corporation are South Korea's leading animatronics company. They built the real-life bionic leg that Japanese sprinter Haruki Takahashi won gold with at the Paralympics. For years, they've been working on a realistic animatronic baby to act as a company mascot in TV commercials. But in Baby Bae they ended up creating more than a mascot.
   They created a celebrity.
   Baby Bae is not just the nearest thing to a science fiction android you'll ever see.    He's also the biggest celebrity to emerge from the Far East in the last fifty years. His cherubic face beams out from countless billboards across every city in the country. He endorses products from nappies to whiskey and is in constant demand to open malls, nurseries and other public buildings. He's even published an autobiography (ghostwritten, one can only assume). But his primary focus is, well, boogying. The tiny megastar has carved out a pop career that even Madonna would envy simply by singing and dancing along to souped-up versions of traditional Korean folk songs. And people love him.

Tae-su and me ascend in a huge silent elevator to a high floor. We emerge into a white tiled hallway that looks more like the interior of a hospital than an electronics company.
   "We used to have to keep the environment sterile," she explains. "The tiniest particle of dust could clog his innards and make him malfunction. He's hardier now, though. A little dirt can do him no harm."
   "You sound like a parent."
   She smiles. "I suppose I must," she says. "But a creation like Baby Bae has many parents."
   She ushers me into a comfortably furnished but rather small room. There is a sofa, a coffee table with a jug of water and magazines. Posters of Baby Bae line the walls.
   "Please wait a moment," she says and shuts the door behind her.
   I pour myself a glass of water and swallow it rapidly. Then another. A few hours ago I was drinking schnapps in the hotel bar and letting myself be chatted up by a Canadian opthalmist. Now I'm sitting in a waiting room halfway up a skyscraper wondering what I'm going to say to an artificial baby pop star.
   The door opens and oh my God there he is! Baby Bae himself walks into the room, holding onto Tae-su's hand.
   I nearly choke on the water.

   Baby Bae extends a tiny hand towards me.
   "Hello Leona," he says in heavily-accented English. His skin is flawless and the colour of milky tea. He wears a nappy.
   Dumbly, I shake his hand. It is soft and warm but the grip is too strong for a baby. It’s like a businessman's handshake.
   "Christ almighty, Tae-su," I say, giggling nervously. "He's amazing."
   "You can speak directly to him," says Tae-su, enjoying my reaction. "He'll respond."
   All questions evaporate from my mind as I stare at the infant with his tiny perfect ears and bright red lips, his big marble-blue eyes and the wisps of black hair clinging to the tiny dome of his head.
   "Shall I dance for you, Leona?" he says with a giggle.
   All I can do is nod.
   The infant begins to dance, hopping from one foot to the other and clapping. As he dances, he sings a song, a simple repetitive thing. I try to imagine the staggering feat of electronic engineering that it must have taken to create the being in front of me, the teams of scientists who must have laboured for years, but all I can think is Shit! I'm in the same room as a dancing baby!    "What's his skin made of?" I whisper.
   "Plastic," says Tae-su. "That's one of the least remarkable things about him, actually. Artificial skin has been around for years. It’s his sense of balance and his awareness of his surroundings that is really unique."
   "How do you achieve that?"
   "I'll show you very soon."
   Baby Bae collapses in a heap on the floor. I gasp. He sits up and looks at me.
   "I fell over, Leona!" he says and bursts into giggles.
   Suddenly I need a cigarette very badly.

An hour later, my MP3 recorder filled with the most bizarre interview I've ever recorded ("How did you learn to speak?" "I open my mouth and the words fly out like bees!" "What's it like being so famous?" "I like seeing everyone's face!" "Do you sleep?" "Never!"), Tae-su leads Baby Bae away and hands him over to a slim young man she introduces to me as Ahn Jae Pak.
   "Ahn Jae is the nearest thing Baby Bae has to a father," she tells me. "He was the supervisor of the team that put him together."
   Ahn Jae Pak gives me a shy wave and picks up Baby Bae in his arms. It seems the little megastar is tired out after his interview. As he walks away down the white tiled corridor, Tae-su leans towards me and whispers, "Come with me, Leona. I'll show you what you need to see."

   We enter a large room filled with computers and electronic components, a laboratory. This is more the kind of thing I had been expecting.
   "Do you want to know how we did it?" she asks, the smile replaced by a serious look.
   "Of course," I say. "If it's not a trade secret?"
   She smiles again. "There is no secret."
   She picks up a microprocessor from the desk and lays it in the palm of my hand.
   "Do you know what this is?" she says.
   "A microchip?"
   "Correct, Leona. But can you guess what this one contains that makes it, and that makes Baby Bae, so special?"
   "Pixie dust? A mother's love?"
   "No. Stem cells."
   "Stem cells? From - ?"
   "From foetuses."
   A cold thrill of adrenaline surges through me. Tae-su picks up the microprocessor and points with a long pink-polished nail at the tiny chip inlaid at its centre.
   "Only stem cells from human foetuses have the ability to form the complex networks needed to operate Baby Bae's brain, far finer than anything we can manufacture. But the cells die every few months and need replacing, otherwise the web of connections is lost."
   "So that baby can only function if he gets a regular supply of stem cells?"
   "Correct," says Tae-su.
   "But where do you get them?"
   "As you may know, abortion is illegal here in South Korea. However, we do find a continual supply of local women willing to donate their foetal tissue to help Baby Bae."
   "But surely that's the same thing? The foetuses have to be aborted to have their stem cells harvested?"
   "Yes - but not quite," Tae-su's corporate smile has returned. "You see, as the stem cells removed from the foetus continue to live while they are implanted in Baby Bae's brain, that is sufficient legal grounds to say the foetus itself is still alive. Hence, no actual abortion can be said to have taken place and the law cannot hinder us."
   Now I really want a cigarette. I want the biggest, most nicotine-laden cigarette ever rolled by man or machine.

   "You find women," I say slowly, trying to grasp what she's saying, "who want abortions and take their babies' stem cells and use them to make Baby Bae work?"
   "Precisely," says Tae-su. "And they are thrilled to be helping a celebrity. When they see Baby Bae on television, they are seeing part of their own child. And this, perhaps, is where we can help you?"
   "Me?"
   Tae-su fixes me with a look.
   "Leona, I have read every column you have written for three years. I feel I know you. And I know that you do not want the baby you are carrying."
   I sink into a chair heavily. My mouth flops open.
   "You drink," she says "You smoke. You travel the world. Have one night stands. This is not the behaviour of a responsible mother-to-be. I can tell you do not want to give up that lifestyle. And we would like to use some stem cells from a Western baby. Ahn Jae Pak thinks it might help Baby Bae break into the Western market. Will you help us?"
   My hand scrabbles uselessly, patting my chest and shoulder. Eventually I regain control of it and retrieve a biro from my inside pocket.
   "Where do I sign?"
   "Come," she says. "I'll take you to the legal department. You won't regret it. I didn't."