Modern Evil Press - works in progress

1

(no, I have no real title yet selected - suggest one)

"Good morning!  Welcome to PreVision Reproduction.  Do you have an appointment with us this morning?"

Anne glanced at her husband cautiously, unsure that they were doing the right thing.  He held on to her firmly, and said tentatively, "No, uhhh... do we need to have an appointment?"

The receptionist's hands moved in a familiar way in the air before her, interacting with an interface only she could see, and she seemed to be gathering information as if by magic.  "You're in luck, we've got an opening in one of our PreVision Oracles' busy schedules which hasn't yet been filled."  Anne and Harold were familiar with technologies such as the in-lens displays which projected an augmented version of reality directly into the wearer's eye and the wide variety of gesture and body-tracking systems that allowed people to interact digitally without the need for actual physical interfaces.  "If you don't mind taking a seat over there and registering yourselves on our network, someone will be with you in just a few moments."  Technologies like this were not unusual or even expensive anymore; the contact lens displays had been available as over the counter disposables for years, and a full-haptic proprioception interface could be installed or upgraded by taking a simple nanomachine-filled gelcap.  

Anne and Harold had simply never taken to the use of such advanced technologies.

"We..." Harold swallowed loudly.  "We don't use nano."

"No problem, sir.  We're a biotech company; our network is fully compatible with the latest in biodigital netware."  The receptionist didn't even make eye contact, and her tone rightfully implied that full bio-nano cross-comaptibility was to be assumed from any business worth its salt.

"No, I mean, we..."  No matter how many times he said it, no matter how often he had to interact with the Internext Generation, Harold always feared being labeled a Luddite or a radical and being mistreated when he explained "we aren't connected.  We don't use bio, we don't use nano, we aren't enhanced."

"You aren't enhanced."  Now, the young woman looked up again from her virtual display to look at the couple standing before her.  "Not at all?"

She didn't sound like some of the bigots they had met more than their share of over the years, the ones who treated them as subhuman for going on as "only" human, but rather came across as though she hadn't known it were even possible to survive without basic net awareness and medical upgrades.

"Is that going to be a problem?"

"Hold on."  The young woman's hands flashed out a memorized path in the space before her, then one hand was touched briefly to her ear, and she spoke again, to someone at the end of a virtual audio connection.  "Sal? ... I've got a couple out here, they don't have an appointment ... I know, I was going to put them in with Bunnyfluff, but Sal, they're... ..." her voice lowered, as though sharing a closely held secret, "they're unenhanced, Sal.  What do I do?"  There followed a long enough pause that Anne and Harold weren't sure whether the young woman was listening to a long answer or had simply chosen to ignore them, but before they could question her strange behaviour, an opening formed in the wall to their left, and a tall, well dressed man strode confidently through it into the lobby.

"My name is Sal Borman.  I run this branch of PreVision Reproduction."  He reached his hand out toward Harold as he approached, and they exchanged a firm handshake.  "Sorry about the trouble with Miss Kittentits, she's new to our office."  Sal took Anne's hand in both of his and shook it warmly.  "Here, come inside, let's see what we can do for you today, and into the future."

Sal led them through the opening in the wall, and almost as soon as they'd crossed the threshold into the hallway it began to contract behind them to form what appeared to be a solid, unbroken wall. Anne and Harold's home still only had traditional doors, the kind that hung on hinges and had to be opened by hand.  Sal proceeded with haste down the long hallway, past the name plates and LiquidPotential office doors of at least a dozen other Oracles, to the big, real, wooden door at the end of the hall.  The big name plate on his door, which read "SAL BORMAN" in big block letters and "licensed Oracle & manager"  in a more reserved typeface below that, appeared to be made out of gold - except something like GlowGold or Fire AU, which seemed to emit light rather than merely to reflect it.  Neither Anne nor Harold knew enough about either brand to know which one they were looking at, though their awareness of the advertising for each brand indicated to them that they ought not only to know, but to have a preference.

Sal grasped the door handle in one of his big hands, turned, and pulled the door open into the hallway, gesturing them in ahead of him.  The room was decorated in a way that set them immediately more at ease than even the sight of a real door had done.  "Have a seat," Sal said, indicating the two big, apparently-real-leather chairs opposite his huge, wooden desk.  "I hope you don't mind, almost everything in here is pre-singularity.  If you'd rather do this in a more modern environment, I can see if Bunnyfluff is still free."

"This will be perfect."  It was the first time Anne had spoken a word since they'd arrived.

"I thought it might.  Now, if you'll give me a moment to warm up the display..." Sal bent down as he spoke, reaching under his desk and switching on the only thing in the entire building which could be considered a personal computer.  As the PC hummed to life below the desk, a holographic display also flickered into view above it.  A volume of air nearly the dimensions of the desk itself was filled just above its surface with the glowing, three-dimensional interface of Mac OS X 10.8.  "Alright, here we are."  Sal reached into the display and activated the netware bridge.  Within seconds, the PreVision network took control and replaced the interface with the smooth, branded, corporate-approved appearance that most customers saw automatically in their in-lens displays.  Sal suddenly spoke quickly what must have been an oft-rehearsed speech. "And now we're officially recording.  Per UNSRS Title 14 Chapter 158 Section A sub-paragraph 7, all Oracular meetings are recorded and filed with Internext AI.  PreVision Reproduction uses an automatic anonymizing encryption, so your identities will only be revealed in the event of a court order, but general information about revealed futures is always public domain pursuant to UNSRS Title 14 Chapter 156 and Chapter 157, known publicly as the Freedom of Future Information Act.  My name is Sal Borman, and I am a licensed Oracle in all four hundred and thirty eight nation states of the republic, including via telepresence with any authorized Internext portal.  My license number is 48, and I am fully bonded and insured by Sphinx."  Sal took a deep breath, and continued in his former, more convivial tone.  "Normally all that stuff just flows by as text in people's in-lens display and meets the legal guideline.  When the courts decided that foreground in-lens text with user defined scroll speed can legally be considered to have been read, everything switched to text.  Contracts, license agreements, all the fine print...  Believe me:  You're glad you don't have a constant stream of legal jargon flowing across the periphery of your vision every waking hour of the day."

Anne and Harold nodded in silent agreement.

Sal continued.  "Now, before we continue, I'm going to need some basic information.  First, I know Kittentits said you two were unenhanced, is that correct?"

Another nod.

"Alright, are you totally off-network,  or are you citizens?"

"We're both born citizens, grandfathered in when the UNS was formed."

"May we scan your passports?"  Harold began reaching into his pocket and Anne into her purse, but Sal interrupted them.  "You don't need to get them out, if they're current.  We just need your consent before we read them."

"Oh, yes, sure," said Harold.

"That's fine," said Anne, passport already in hand.

Immediately, their faces appeared in the display before them, along with all the other information contained in and linked to from their passports.  Sal's in-lens display was showing him the rest of their information, culled instantly from the Internext and their equiXperian dataset, along with status information on their now-threading PreVision.

"Excellent.  It appears you're both in good health, medically and financially, although your son..." Sal cut himself off, changing direction mid-sentence.  "It looks as though you've come to us at just the right time, considering your unenhanced status; natural breeding is typically limited to the first couple of decades after puberty, after which chances of conception drop precipitously.  At your age, without enhancement, our service is the only safe way to have children who share your genetics 100%.  How much do you know about our service already?"

"We read that your service didn't rule out a natural pregnancy and childbirth."  Harold squeezed Anne's hand in his.  "That after the initial procedure..."  His voice trailed off.

"Quite right, Harold.  The most technologically advanced part of our service is in your PreVision Consultation."  Sal's right hand moved smoothly down and opened a drawer beside him.  "Once outcomes have been filtered and a target sequence identified, we can simply generate the first cell of your new son or daughter and you could have it inserted with something roughly as advanced as a..." Sal's hand reappeared from his desk drawer holding up an example, "...a turkey baster."  He smiled jokingly, and the smile they returned was neither clearly genuine or forced, "although I'm sure you wouldn't mind having a doctor use something a little more accurate.  From the moment the blastocyst implants, either in your uterine wall or in one of our partner's incubators, your child's life is out of our hands, and under your control.  You can use the latest and greatest in bio or nano embryology and artificial gestation duration cessation, or you can go completely natural.

"I had an unenhanced, neuOrganic vegan client use our service last year, and she didn't see a doctor once after she left our office.  Carried to full term, gave birth at home, in the tub, with only a midwife to assist!"  A photo stream began to flow across the virtual display, showing a couple dozen tasteful images of some attractive young woman increasingly pregnant, then sitting in a bathtub, then holding a newborn and smiling.  Anne and Harold took the story at face value, and Sal just continued with his spiel as the computer-generated images floated by.  "No complications, no doctors, a complete PreVision Reproduction success story.  Her PreVision specifications included selecting for the exact birth she'd dreamed of, and we delivered."  Sal chuckled, "well, she delivered, but you get the picture."  Just as he finished his sentence, the last image was disappearing out of the display.  A couple more savvy than Harold and Anne might have noticed how perfectly sound and image, lighting and tone, even subtle scents piped into the room were working in concert and been skeptical.  Anne's doubts had been washed away like so much grey goo, and Harold hadn't needed half as much show to be reassured.

"That sounds lovely.  She looked so happy."

"You'll be just as happy this time next year, when you're holding your new boy or girl."  The display subtly changed until it was polarized, its volumetric glow became tinted pastel green on the left to indicate a boy and lavender on the right to indicate a girl, as Sal asked them, "Which gender were you thinking of for your next bundle of joy?"  Sal's keenly trained eye noticed a few of small bubbles of color hovering towards the bottom center of the display, but waited to see his clients' reaction before he said anything; a definitive response would remove the more-complicated possibilities automatically.

"I think we want to keep all our options open for now."  As non-definitive a response as Sal could have received this early in the interview.  Anne had been looking back and forth between the pale green and the lavender sides of the display, and then her eyes seemed to catch on the blue-green, pink, yellow, and deep purple blobs of light that seemed to be clinging to the top of the desk in between them.

"I see you've noticed your rares."  Sal reached out and scooped up the light-blobs in both hands, and pulled them up and spread them out.  The pastel green and lavender colors, which had dominated the display before, now receded to become small bubbles of color at opposite edges of Sal's desk.  The other four colors expanded to fill the entire display as Sal explained them.  "At PreVision Reproduction, we don't rule out any possibilities for you.  In this case, what you're seeing is that our software has determined that four gender variants are possible within the constraints of your natural reproductive process.  These two variants," he indicated the blue-green, and yellow bubbles, "represent the small possibility present of hermaphrodite outcomes.  Two of the six natural variants are represented, which is fairly normal for people with no history of genemod.  I've filtered out a few other mutant variations that, while possible from your combined genetics, would never happen through natural means."  Sal paused, looking from one to the other and back again, as though giving them the chance to ask to see the rest of their choices.  Harold and Anne didn't make a move or a sound, they just stared at the bubbles of light, and listened on.  Sal indicated the pink and deep purple bubbles.  "These variants simply represent a mutation that, with your genes, is fairly common, an extra X chromosome.  In males, it is known as Klinefelter Syndrome, and its symptoms can include learning disabilities, problems with impulse control, lowered testosterone, and infertility.  All treatable with common bio or nano enhancements, but most clients still prefer to rule out such things."  Sal motioned as though to brush the pink bubble aside, trying to judge their reaction.  This sort of demonstration usually got the uninitiated familiar with what was to come in their Oracular reading, with the PreVision filtration process, and even the most natural-minded parents tended to rule out hermaphrodites, making it hands-on instruction.

Harold was thinking about possibilities.  Anne was thinking about their first son.  Neither of them was thinking much about learning some computer interface.  After a long moment, when it seemed Sal's hand had been held up a moment or two too long to remain comfortable, Harold spoke up.  "I think we want to keep all our options open for now."  Sal pulled the four 'rares' in and down again, allowing the two primary genders to re-fill the display.

"Perhaps I'm being presumptuous!"  Sal had no problem keeping his tone light and his demeanor disarming.  "Did you have any particular criteria in mind for us to look forward into?  Not gender, perhaps, but there must have been something on your mind to bring you in to PreVision today."

"We want the best for our child."

"Of course..."  Sal tried to convey both a sense of understanding security as well as an encouragement not to hold anything back.  He knew that given enough time and processing power, PreVision Reproduction's proprietary techniques and software could spin out a thread for every last one of their 'open options,' but Sal also appreciated that the sooner and more clearly they narrowed their scope, the less of his branch's allotted cloud computing ration would be wasted on a client who clearly was not interested in any of the bells, whistles, or extras he could normally add to the bottom line.

"Sal, we're not ready."  Sal's welcoming smile did not budge, even a fraction of an inch.  "We're just not ready for enhancement.  Not for ourselves."  Harold took a long moment to gather his words.  Sal nodded warmly, waiting to see where Harold was going.  "And with Bart, our first child..."  Harold looked down at his hands, holding Anne's tightly, then back up at Sal with a look that made Sal feel like one of the long-gone Catholic priests must have felt back when people still visited the confessional.  Sal didn't know exactly what had happened, but more than anything he wanted to forgive Harold, then and there, of everything.  "We weren't ready.  We should have...  We..."  Harold blinked, and tears escaped from each of his eyes, racing each other down his cheeks, away from his pain.  "We want the best for our child, and now that means enhancement.  Upgrades.  Bio, nano, and whatever's coming this year, next year and the year after that.  We aren't ready, ourselves, but we don't want another ..."  Harold stopped himself.  Anne's eyes closed and her face closed and her heart tried hard to stay open to the future; open to hope.  "We want the best for our child."

Sal wiped away the gender colors with a broad gesture and worked quick magic from his side of the desk to generate a custom filter for them.  He paused the automatic threading that had already been started.  "I think I understand what you're trying to look forward to, and I'm glad you came to me.  Other PreVision Oracles are trained for a lot of things, but I believe this will take a little creativity."  Sal worked furiously at the virtual console, only part of which was being shown in the desktop display, and Harold and Anne watched and waited in silence.  If you don't mind, while I get things in order here," Sal seemed to be strained, reaching in three directions at once, no longer putting his whole attention into the sales pitch, "let me run the old interactive brochure for you."  Before they could react it was running, filling the volumetric display as Sal turned away from them to face a large black panel they'd overlooked earlier, four feet square on the wall to their right.  The panel had tiny IR LEDs at its corners that his in-lens system could use for orientation - modern in-lens systems no longer required such things for normal augmented reality registration, but when available they created the most stable and exact display possible without fixing atoms in place on a substrate.

"Welcome to PreVision Reproduction," the automated introduction began, "where we look forward to looking forward for you."  This hadn't been their slogan for several campaigns, but Sal still preferred this brochure to the new one, so he retained a local copy.  The recorded voice continued, as a computer generated actress only a generation or two beyond the uncanny valley floated into frame.  "Before we get started with your reading, I'd like to explain a little about the history of reproductive filters and how PreVision Reproduction stands out from the rest, as the best."

A timeline that stretched back about seventy years in time began to flow in from the right, detailing early 'test tube' babies and then IVF and other pre-singularity reproductive technologies.  "In the beginning, after doctors had learned enough about biology to fertilize eggs outside the body, the first types of filtration were actually performed on unfertilized spermatozoa and ovum.  At this primitive level, it was all doctors could do to select for gender.  Within a few years, they were able to work with fertilized eggs, removing a cell or two from an early blastocyst for filtration - usually to create offspring which could be farmed for bone marrow or other immuno-matched organs."  The virtual woman shook her head and furrowed her brow disapprovingly.  "It wasn't until the last few years before singularity that SNP mapping had progressed far enough that parents began to be able to use these formerly-barbaric filtration techniques to select from the handful of blastocysts labs could create from the parents' own extracted gametes.  This was first generation filtration."

Sal, in the background, unnoticed now by Harold and Anne, had actually pulled out an old, hardware keyboard and was typing away furiously in between direct hand-made adjustments within the virtual display in front of him.  He was going way beyond what was expected of him to sell a bare-bones Reproduction, but he was having fun for the first time since he'd made management.  He ignored the brochure as it droned on.

"Hair color, eye color, body type," volumetric images of children stood all over the desk, with their features gradually morphing and changing as she mentioned the possibilities, "height, weight, athleticism.  Genetic diseases were easy targets, and subtle differences soon followed as parents were able to choose the healthiest, smartest, and most beautiful children from among their frozen possibilities."  The mostly tall, mostly blond-haired and blue-eyed around her now appeared literally to freeze into human icicles behind and around her.  "When the singularity hit, the old barriers were shattered as gene banks and full-sequence genemods became available."  The frozen children shattered all around her, flying into thousands of virtual pieces and disappearing.  "Children could now be engineered safely to be born with any of the features available for purchase from Virgin GeneBank, or from the open-source bank at TIGR, and new qualities could be custom tailored by Synthetic Genomics and its boutique subsidiaries.  Instead of having to choose from the limited set of blastocysts that had formed by a random sampling of their natural gametes, Parents could now filter through the billions of individual genes and complex and proprietary feature sets that began to flood the market.  They could raise lovingly crafted, tailor-made children of their own design.  Combined with genemods for post-birth fine tuning, the possibilities were endless.  This was second-generation filtration."

The miniature children that replaced the frozen, shattered, and later melted representations of so-called first-generation filtration were significantly more varied in shape, color, and configuration.  Mirroring, at a much faster speed than they had been born into the world, the actual progression of fashionable genemods, they rapidly lost resemblance to humanity.  An extra limb or a short tail at first, then the tail was long and prehensile, and the extra limb -or ten- were tentacles.  Feathers instead of hair, then inoperable wings, then angelic children actually capable of flight.  Centaurs, mermaids, all the mythical creatures that were biologically capable of survival (if not natural reproduction) had been conceived in labs and "born" to often unprepared parents with more money than sense.  These representatives of the second generation of mass-customized children slithered, swam, flew, ran and trotted around merrily as the floating, glowing, artificial bust of a woman had spoken, and simply moved beyond the edges of the display in the exact moment her speech paused.  It was a beautiful display of man-made biodiversity, if a bit over-the-top - to remind the client that they haven't come to PreVision Reproduction to order a monstrosity, but something genuinely human.

"Now, with cutting-edge technology combined with proprietary Oracular software, PreVision Reproduction is proud to offer you true third-generation filtration.  Unlike the wetware hackers and error-prone yeast-based combinators of the past," almost too small to read, a line of legal jargon floated across the lower front edge of the volumetric display; disclaimers and notices about the first-gen synthetic life creation tools which were outlawed throughout the Republic and no longer even risked by black market dealers and terror groups and which were only mentioned by every modern genetic practitioner to scare you into worrying that their competitor might be using something dangerous, "PreVision Reproduction works strictly virtually until a finished helix is ready for output as forty-six perfect chromosomes."  Another line of text floated by, indicating that their software was perfectly capable of working with more or less than forty-six chromosomes, and that for an additional fee they would be glad to output partial or final code to licensed partners for further "second-generation" processing.  "This allows for flawless access to and reproduction of every single bit of a child's genes, and for each one of the parents' genes to be available for consideration instead of relying on random chance, wetware compatibility, and other people's genes."

It was actually the cutting-edge nature of what PreVision Reproduction was doing, computationally, that led to their restricting gene selection to the two parents' own genomes.  Predicting an existing person's future based on genetics, past behaviour, family behaviour, and the nearly-entirely tracked and monitored and recorded environment that the modern world had become was only a somewhat complex task for the computing cloud to tackle.  Licensed Oracles could "tell your fortune" in a computationally accurate way, for a reasonable fee.  Looking ahead only a short way through time allowed for a significantly detailed reading.  Looking further forward in time naturally reduced the accuracy of a reading, and it was only major corporations that invested sufficient capital to look more than a few months forward with any significant detail.

1

"We start with a virtual reproduction of both parents' full genome, and we calculate every possible genetic outcome that can be built by combining them.  With each parents' billions of genes to choose from, the scope of potential results creates radical zillionic effects.  Throughout human history, these effects have been mediated by biological controls beyond our reach, often with results that were not obviously manifest until unwanted genes had already been passed on.  PreVision Reproduction handles the zillionic effect of potentiality for you, allowing you to take control in the ways you choose without having to worry about other details.  Oracles guide parents through the basic questions of first-generation filtration, but with total freedom across their genes and with no messy surgeries, commitments, or up-front costs.  Then we do what no one else can:  Our Oracles will guide you through your child's future."

What PreVision Reproduction was doing was only possible because continual, geometric advancement in the capabilities of gene manipulation and reproductive science had maintained a very high price point for custom work.  The cost of second-generation genetics had already had the rug pulled out from under it on the supply side, and it was only a matter of the market catching up and realizing that -like all information technologies before it- its fair market price was about to collapse to zero.  Second-generation genetics had risen to popularity before the cost of first-generation products had really been commoditized, and over the course of the products' life spans, the public had become accustomed to a relatively fixed price point for these sorts of services.  PreVision Reproduction, by combining their revolutionary software concept with the now effectively free tools that had been built by the first-generation genetic pioneers like Venter and Branson and later perfected through open source work on the Internext, were able to squeeze just enough computing power out of the cloud with what people were willing to pay in order to accomplish what they promised.

"So much more meaningful than what the fortune teller on the corner can tell you.  So much more valuable to your family than a corporate Oracle's profit-optimizations.  So much more accurate than the vague probabilities about simplistic concepts such as intelligence, personality type, and creativity that previous generations of genetics have offered.  PreVision Reproduction allows parents not only to get a glimpse into their child's future, but to actually filter for the particular future they want for their child.  Our Oracles will help you find the child who is not only one hundred percent your genetic offspring, but who is most likely to become the doctor, lawyer, politician, or interplanetary explorer you've always dreamed of raising.  A child who qualifies as fully human under every registered government and within every corporate hierarchy, and who has the benefits of a tailor-made genome.  Not just strong, tall, smart, and beautiful, your child can be in all the right places at all the right times.  You can even select for specific milestones with a high degree of accuracy:  Do you want your child to win their third-grade science fair?  Do you want your child to fall in love for the first time over summer break at the age of 14?  Do you want your child to get into a particular exclusive graduate school?  Do you want a certain number of grandchildren to call your own?"  As the virtual woman continued, these milestones were played out behind her in a much more realistic and engaging way than the previous examples had been presented.  Living dioramas played out the third-grade science fair, the summer vacation and the first kiss at the edge of the methane lake of some deep-space vacation spot, the college graduation, the older couple playing with their dozen all-apparently-humanoid grandchildren.  "With PreVision Reproduction's exclusive third-generation filtration, you could filter for any of these."

PreVision Reproduction's proprietary software predicted the future for every single possible child a couple could have, and it did so with a high level of detail for final candidates.  The real reason they limited their services to the genes of the parents was that otherwise the data set was too big, and the computational costs too high.  The total possible number of viable offspring that were considered at least capable of citizenship -if not even partially human- by registered governments with the lowest barriers to entry, even if restricted to public domain genes and techniques, went beyond the problems of zillionics into hyper-zillionics.  The scope of possible lives times the cost of computing a detailed and accurate prediction of each future life was beyond the pale.  By limiting their genes to those of the prospective parents, the scope of possible children becomes much smaller, and the computational challenge of calculating vague predictions for all of them, plus more-detailed predictions for a smaller subset creates, on average, a computational cost low enough that PreVision Reproduction is able to make a profit.  This is the real filtration taking place, selecting which potential children the parents want to examine full-detail readings for, and it is done in the background of the interview process.  Official policy is to always maintain the myth that every potential child's entire future has been predicted with a high level of detail and with the cost of computation dropping so fast, the myth would become operational reality within a year or two.  Not long after which time they planned to have their software ready to roll out the ability to filter through literally all possible life using the optimized algorhythms they'd been perfecting since day one.

"The beauty of PreVision Reproduction is that it virtually insures that your specific hopes and dreams for your children will be realized.  Don't leave anything up to chance.  Filter out disappointment, filter in accomplishment, from your own genes."  The growing crowd of virtual children being projected in the space around and behind the smiling woman's torso were now being based on Harold and Anne's actual profile information.  These were the most likely faces that could be generated naturally from their DNA, and this was the part of the virtual brochure that almost always sold PreVision's services.  There was something about one's own children that people couldn't resist having an emotional reaction to - even children they had never borne or met.  "Your child, built from your genes and from your dreams."  This technique had proved doubly effective for anyone who had tried to raise one of the so-called second-generation; children whose demeanor and behaviour were based partially or entirely on other people and on synthetic genes written by some engineer.  Whether because they were so 'other' as the first truly man-made generation, so separated from everything around and preceding them, because of biases their parents didn't discover they'd had until their inhuman children were held in their arms, or because of direct, unpredicted, emergent psychological and behavioural results of their patched-together genome - there was a lot of discord between second-generation children and their parents.  "Build your family.  Build your legacy.  Build happiness."

Sal was still working intensely at his console as the brochure faded out, and Harold and Anne waited patiently, holding hands.  They were used to silence, to the slow, calm passage of time without a constant stream on information and requests flowing across their consciousness, without even an awareness of the constant drumbeat of seconds and minutes marching forward in the corner of their vision.  In other words, they were strangers in a strange land - seemingly the only people around who still experienced time naturally and had to seek out information manually.  They didn't mind waiting, and had no way of distinguishing a passing moment from a passing hour.

Sal, on the other hand, was painfully aware of exactly how long he had kept his clients waiting.  Of how much time he was spending on a single sale, ignoring incoming messages and trying not to think about how many other -more reasonable- clients he might have been able to walk through an entire pitch before he would even get properly started with this one.  Sal worked, coded, built new filters, hooked into new data sources, flexed his branch's reputation and credit limit to create relationships with nodes of infospace that PreVision Reproduction had never bothered with before, and he watched the seconds tick by.  There was, by default -part of his own branch's efficiency system- a counter visible to him at all times, counting up the seconds, minutes, hours any rep spent from first setting eyes on a client to closing the sale; his had been blinking furious red for some time before he put the finishing touches on the structure he'd built and started it compiling.  Sal knew he had kept them waiting for longer than any connected couple would have stayed for, and was readying an apology in his mind as he neared the end of his work, getting ready to have to work twice as had to make the sale.  When he turned again to face them, though, he saw that no apology would be necessary.  Harold and Anne looked perhaps more content now than they had when they'd first arrived; waiting, rather than infuriating them, had somehow calmed them.

"Thanks for waiting," said Sal, watching for his software to finish compiling and come online.  "I've been building a custom program for you two.  Our standard filters weren't designed for traditionalists, and as you could see in the brochure, our marketing is aimed at couples on the bleeding edge of technology.  Most people who come to PreVision Reproduction do so because they accept only the latest and greatest, and everything has been built to sell to that market.  For you, something special."  The progress indicator he'd been watching in his peripheral vision reached completion and another began in its place, and Sal reached out and reactivated the interactive sales display.  Two grey bubbles filledd the volumetric display, a smaller, lighter bubble and a larger, darker one.

"Now, I know you're completely unenhanced, but I got the impression that you don't intend to restrict your child's life to the level of purity you've maintained."  Sal grabbed the lighter bubble and stretched it to show the dozens of smaller shapes bouncing around inside it.  "This represents all the possible lives of your potential children where they entirely avoid enhancement.  The other, which we will examine in a moment, is the opposite - enhanced lives."  Sal manipulated, jostled, applied color to, and dismissed the various subgroups as he went over them in detail.  "You can see that only about eight percent of them make it past age thirty, and over forty percent die in infancy from afflictions preventable with common bio or nano immunizations.  Let's just filter out all the possibilities that die in infancy, alright?"  Sal didn't force them to answer verbally, he knew from his first look at their file that they would want to avoid that fate a second time.  When he discarded the handful of shapes that represented infant deaths, the same filter was applied on the darker bubble waiting in the periphery - if anyone had been looking at it, they'd have seen a small chunk tearing off and floating away, mirroring the speed and angle of Sal's gesture in the central display.  "Is there a minimum length of life you're looking for?  Eighteen years?  Thirty-six?  More?"

Harold spoke, less uncertain than he'd been when they'd first arrived, "We want our child to have a chance to live their own life, and we'd like to remain UNS Citizens, so at least to adult-hood plus a couple years.  How about minimum ..." he looked at Anne, guessed "...twenty?"

"Twenty-five, at least."  Anne was getting used to the idea that she could have a say and still give birth to her own child.

"Twenty-five," repeated Harold, and squeezed his wife's hand, smiling.

2

Sal was using controls only he could see for precision delineation, but then sliced through the remaining shapes with a broad, symbolic stroke.  Another chunk of each bubble was torn away from the whole and cast aside - this one representing potential future children with very high likelihood of death on or before their 25th birthday.  "Were there any other things you had in mind?  I know you want to keep your options as open as possible, but I'm about to skip over the normal interview to your new program, so any other considerations you've thought of should be addressed now."

There was a long moment where Sal looked to Harold, then to Anne, and back again, where Harold looked to Anne, and Anne looked away from Harold and tried to bring herself to speak.  Sal could tell she was trying to speak, and he tried to patiently give her the time she needed, while counting the seconds adding up.  "Can uhh..."  She stammered briefly, "Can we filter...  uhh..  I don't know how you'd tell your computer, but..."  She stopped.

"Whatever it is, I'm sure we can find a way to specify it.  What are you thinking of?"  Sal kept up as encouraging an exterior as possible, hoping that whatever she'd been keeping silent about wasn't about to contradict the application he'd invented and had churning through data as they spoke.

"I don't want our child to give up easily.  They should ... persevere through challenges."  Anne was struggling to be able to form the words, to admit that she didn't want to leave this up to her parenting skills.  "I know...  I'm certain that a lot of that will have to come from us, as parents, but... Can you..."

"Yes.  We can filter for a persevering demeanor, certainly.  Filter out children most likely to quit in the face of adversity."  This was not an uncommon selector among their average clientele, and Sal accessed a bookmarked filter and began adjusting the settings.  "How far do you want to go?  We can push it to the extreme, look for children who never give up, no matter what, pushing forward even when there's absolutely no hope, or we can filter at both ends, and try to keep them open to seeing that there are some times where giving up and starting over is the right thing to do."  By the time Anne nodded her assent to this, Sal had already set it up.  A good Oracle knows what his client will do before the computer can predict it.  Each bubble of possibility sub-divided into two,  and as Sal brushed the born-quitters aside, there was only a very tiny proportion of the original light-colored bubble left.  "Now I'm going to combine these two, and we can move into your custom filtration."  He pressed the two bubbles together, and the few small shapes left in the lighter one tumbled and mixed in among those of the larger, darker bubble, it's color lightening somewhat as it grew to fill the space over the desk.

"As you may already be aware of, predicting market forces, specific technological advances, the course of the spread of diseases and malicious software, and of political outcomes is big business.  Each niche Oracular area presents unique challenges, and requires vast computational resources to gain any reasonable degree of accuracy.  Our area of expertise is people.  We know who people are, how they behave, and how they're likely to behave in the future.  We don't usually need to know what technology your children will be using when they go to school to tell you how they're going to interact with their schoolmates; if the singularity taught us anything, it was that even as technology changes everything, technology changes nothing.  People are the same as they've been for thousands of years:  What they want, how they relate to one another, how they react to environmental influences, it's predictable.  And for most of our clients, with a little guidance by PreVision Reproduction Oracles, they are satisfied to select a child based on these human factors.  They want first-generation choices like gender, hair color, body type, and intelligence, and they want a child who will choose a best friend well, who will rise to the top of their class or be popular, who will love and honor their parents."

Harold and Anne nodded, listened patiently, waited for the other shoe to drop.

"What you want, I think, is a child best-suited for the world of today, and for the world that they are in as the world changes around them.  You aren't just interested in how your child will relate to yourselves, or to other people, but to the increasingly rapidly changing world around them.  You don't want your children to end up like you have, trapped in a past that has passed, unsure or unable to keep up with a shifting baseline.  Is that right?"

"That's ... close enough," Harold said, "we aren't ashamed of ourselves or our lives, but we can see that it would be much more difficult for a child coming into the world today."

"Right, good," Sal breathed a sigh of relief.  "So the program I've built for you starts with the world today, the current standards for child-rearing, immunizations, learning tools and implants, and looks forward.  I've leveraged my relationships with Oracles across the spectrum of predictions to build an accurate model of the future world, though due to trade secrets, non-disclosure agreements, and UNS security reasons, I will be unable to show that future to you.  If you want to be able to see your child's future, or to see what exact choices are being made, we can do a standard filtration, but if you want the best for your child in the ways I believe you do, you'll have to trust what I've built for you."

They nodded again, watching his face intently through the glowing, jostling shapes in front of them.

"Okay, so there's some of this I can show you, so you can have a better idea of what I can't show you.  For example, there's a small percentage of people whose bodies are allergic to Matsushita nanomachines.  Most of them just choose to go strictly bio for enhancement, but for the best possible outcome, you'll want a child who has the most possible options, right?"  Sal triggered the first animation of his software, and a couple of black tentacles oozed in from the edges of the display, sought out and broke off sections of a few of the floating shapes, and dragged them off screen.  "So, there goes all the children who would have had Matsushita allergies.  I can even show you how this extends into the future, if you'll verbally consent to a simple 3-month NDA for a particular product release?"

They nodded, Sal pulled up the NDA on the display, and they verbally agreed -on recording, of course- to comply.

"Great, so, this won't be announced publicly for about 10 weeks, but one of our partner companies is rolling out a new line of dual-redundant bio+nano network-aware brand-insensitive immuno-boosting comm-enabling enhancements for newborns.  With a natural gestation period, our prediction shows there will be three knock-off competitors on the market, and this will be the new standard when you give birth.  Our partner's product is pretty robust, and works with three nines of the UNS citizenable strands--"

Harold interrupted briefly, "...three nines of... what?"

"Three nines, it's short for ninety-nine point nine nine nine percent, or another way of saying that only one in one hundred thousand people whose DNA qualifies them to be UNS citizens has an adverse reaction to the new product.  By the time you give birth, two of the other brands will only be one nine safe, and the third will be five nines safe, but for your purposes, we'll go with what's normal at the time, and rule out children who have a negative reaction to what will then be the industry standard."  As he said this, a dozen or so black tentacles reached into the display and broke off several small pieces from the floating, bumping shapes that represented the remaining breakdown of children they were now filtering from, carrying them away.  "Before we move on, I'm going to apply filters based on positive reactions to all standard tech and enhancements in use near the middle of the bell curve for infants born in about 40 weeks, alright?"

The tentacles were oozing onscreen and taking away chunks of potentiality before Harold and Anne had even had a chance to nod, but they nodded anyway.  Sal didn't wait for them to finish before he continued, knowing that this visual display was significantly behind the program's actual progress.

"And when that finishes, let me see... Yes, now, the IP owner won't let me tell you what it is, but there's a new teaching technique that's going to be very popular around the time your child will be entering primary school.  Based on some very detailed predictions, for the children who can handle it, it is roughly 300% more effective than the next-best methods.  For about 15% of children, it will be about ten times worse; they just don't think that way, and have trouble learning in that environment.  There will be actual segregation, and only niche schools will keep to old methods.  Well, to current methods, that is.  Your child will have a competitive advantage by being in the 85% who are well-suited to this new technique."  Another 15% of the remaining shapes were ripped away and carried off by tentacles.  "And so on.  With the information I have access to, the partners I have, the favours I've called in, I've generated a very accurate picture of the world that will be, and if you think this is a good idea, I can execute it and have the system automatically narrow down from your remaining possible children to the ones who will seemingly serendipitously be well suited to all predictable future cultural and technological paradigm shifts, as they occur."  He didn't mention that according to the gauge in his peripheral vision, the computations were nearly complete, and tried not to think about how much this could cost him if they didn't agree, or worse - if they turned out to be spies for a competitor.

Luckily for Sal, they both nodded again.  "That sounds just about exactly right," answered Harold.  Anne smiled again, squeezing her husband's hand in anticipation, getting her hopes up.  "Gender, hair color, body type, intelligence and the rest don't matter if you can't cope with day to day life or if you can't communicate with people in a way they're comfortable with and used to.  If you dream of visiting other nation-states or going off world, but can't get a travel visa because you can't or won't get modern immunizations, your dreams can never be fulfilled.  We don't want to dictate our child's dreams, we just want them to be able to achieve them."

"Perfect," replied Sal, triggering the animation to run at high speed, showing the filtration process he'd had the cloud churning for twenty minutes, so it would catch up just in time for the calculations to finish.  The tentacles of black were less creepy -more comical- in fast-forward.  "This program basically maximizes your child's ability to make their own choices, by filtering out the children whose options are limited in the face of changing times."  As they worked, the multitudes of rushing black arms became like sculptors, chipping away at the original abstract and geometric shapes that had represented broad categories within possibility to give form to the optimal possibilities that lay within them.  When a particular sub-group's possibilities had been narrowed enough that all the potential children it represented were similar enough, it began to take on the form of what they had in common.  So over a few minutes, Harold and Anne were able to literally watch their child be sculpted before their eyes by the program Sal had designed for them, to go from a formless mess to a few humanoid shapes, to a couple of well-defined figures, and finally to the single most optimized -and highly detailed in the display- potential child that PreVision Reproduction could see in their future.

"He's beautiful," remarked Anne, as the animation completed and her child's happy face floated before her.  She leaned in, reached out towards it, and its eyes lit up, its hands mirrored the gesture, reaching out as though for a hug.  All part of the sales routine, of course - activating mirror neurons in the parent, stimulating the urge to be able to hold and hug their child - something that could only be done if they decided to buy.

Sal smiled.  Perfect children practically sold themselves, even if the perfection stopped at the edge of the volumetric display.  "There he is," male, of course, because men still had unfair advantage over women in a few ways -despite cheap, functionally complete gender change being broadly available- and the program was looking for maximal options.  "He's composed entirely of your DNA, and we've saved you the ninety-quadrillion to one gamble of hoping to produce the child you want the old-fashioned way.  We can have his strand transfered to one of our partners immediately, and you could have him growing inside you before lunch.  Do you have a preferred clinic, or would you like me to see who we have available that works with the unenhanced?"

"Our family practitioner is the one who recommended you... Can you see if she's ... Can you send the strand to her?"

Sal had already sent preliminaries to their doctor's office, and had made sure they could get an immediate appointment before he'd even suggested same-day service.  "Absolutely.  If that's what you want to do, we can pull up the contract right here," the floating, smiling representation of their future child shifted to the right of the display to make room for the huge scrolls of text that were the standard contract, "get everything signed, sealed, and paid for, and it looks like we can get you into Dr. Chandra's office in half an hour.  Would you like me to send him over to your doctor so they can get started building your son?"

"Yes," Harold replied.

"Thank you," said Anne.

Sal started the transfer and went over the contract and payment processing with them by rote.  His mind was elsewhere, considering how he could leverage his new optimization scaffold to first increase profits for his branch and then -after he'd polished the system somewhat- to give him a quick boost up the corporate hierarchy.  Sal wasn't even going to charge the couple extra for the extra work and time and processing power he'd put into selecting their child for them, though he had tacked a few extra NDA clauses onto their contract to keep them silent about the whole thing - he knew he could turn their unusual request into future earnings without letting them know they'd given him the idea and getting it into their heads they were due residuals, somehow.  Before he knew it, Sal was showing them out of his office, "and remember, if you decide to have another child at a later date, don't hesitate to come back to PreVision Reproduction.  Even if what you're looking for doesn't change between now and then, the very act of adding your new son to your family will change another child's possible futures, so there's no worry about ending up with identical twins born years apart.  At PreVision Reproduction, every child is unique, and uniquely yours."

"Thank you, Sal."  Harold shook Sal's hand vigorously.  "I knew you would be able to help us out."

"It's no problem, Harold, I'm just glad I could give you what you were looking for."  Sal led them through his wooden door, down the hall, and out through the LiquidPotential door that led to the lobby.  It occurred to him that since they weren't enhanced at all, they hadn't asked about the email he'd sent them because they simply hadn't seen it yet.  "Oh, and one more thing.  I emailed you a list of names.  You're welcome to give your son any name you like, but the optimizer gave me a list of names least likely to contribute to limiting his potential, so you'll probably want to make your selection from the list."

"We just want the best for our son," answered Harold, "we'll look over the list when we get home."

"I gave it a quick look, and you'll be glad to know I didn't see many NuTrends names like kittentits or shockshank on the list.  It was mostly traditional."

"We'll look it over," said Anne as Harold led her out of the office, "thank you, Mr. Borman."

"You're welcome."  Sal turned around as soon as they were out of sight, to return to his office and shut down his PC before it overheated and burned the office down.

"You don't like my name," asked kittentits accusingly, "or you just like making fun of me in front of clients?"

Sal shook his head, rolled his eyes, walked through the wall and back to his office without another word.