GoKawiilIt is difficult for us to obtain the necessary supplies to meet the demand. Customer requirements vary so drastically that to satisfy everyone we must offer babies with almost endless combinations of characteristics. Our marketing paints an overly simplistic picture: one knob of the genetic code turned here, one switch turned off there, and suddenly you have your brown-eyed, 75% introvert, anti-flat-footed baby.
Reality doesn’t work like that.
I mention this because it explains why, standing in front of this woman’s tent, I unfold an envelope from my pocket and wave the thick package in the air.
“$10,000 up front,” I promise. “If the combinations pan out, you’ll get another $90,000. Cheque, cash, gold, whatever.”
The figure in the tent shifts. I watch the shadow carefully. A loud cry splices through the quiet, the sound of a hungry infant.
The money we offer will move this woman out of these slums, to a district away from the perpetual smell of rotting eggs and smoke.
According to the files, the woman is an ordinary slum dweller with ordinary features — dark hair, dark eyes, small mouth, stout nose. But, by some miracle, she has given birth to a baby free from lung problems. Even in districts far from the slums, babies enter the world heaving like they’re sucking in a balloon instead of air — a product of centuries of air pollution before the domes were established to protect wealthy districts. The only solutions: lung replacement or buy a baby without lung issues, a feat chromosomal editing cannot accomplish.
Read more science fiction from Nature Futures
“I don’t need the money,” the woman replies roughly.
“Yes, you do.” I say this in her best interest. She can’t raise a happy baby in this tent village, where half the population gets wiped out in their sleep whenever a natural disaster hits. “Else you both will die here. If you take this offer, your baby will go to a family who can provide for him, and you’ll live a prosperous life. A Vessel who can’t take care of herself certainly cannot care for a baby.”
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