The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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So I’ve been thinking this morning maybe I ought to consider designing a kid. After all, I’m an artist, so-called, and now that this Chinese Dr. Moreau has violated all pretenses of genetic restraint and introduced altered genes into a human embryo that was born a week ago, we might as well accept the future Right Now. The lid is off, the genie is out, all wishes are granted. Designer babies are here and why not embrace the future instead of fearing it?

I’m thinking a boy, big fella with quarterback physical talents and an IQ to match Einstein. Blond hair, blue eyes, Aryan. No, maybe not, too Nazi. Make it brown hair, hazel eyes, maybe a bit Eurasian, nothing you could definitively say was ethnic this or ethnic that. The New Man. Or Boy. Although, maybe that’s too overtly sexist, almost 3rd world to want a male child. Kill the opportunity for the girls to come into existence. Okay, make mine a female. Tall, not too sexy, not too smart. Smart women do fine but some feel the societal curse too greatly to be happy. And sexy, I don’t want a cheerleader daughter. Prom queen. Stuck up and all too aware of her powers over men. End up some Aryan asshole’s trophy wife.

Course, I want her to be highly intelligent, curse be damned. Then again, everybody will design kids to be highly intelligent and breathtakingly good looking. Sure don’t want my kid to be just like everyone else. Maybe I’ll add some attractive flaws, you know, something to set my daughter apart from the Ken and Barbie crowd. Design in a nose that crooks oh so slightly off center, maybe add a sarcastic sense of humor, give the kid a hitch in its stride. If everybody’s child is a superb athlete, make mine disdainful of sports. Wait, that’s me. Maybe go for some niche quality, the perfect proportion for rollerblading or ping pong, shoot for a gymnast’s balance.

Tough call. Maybe I’ll focus on the intellect. A creative gene combined with an engineer’s focus. A sensible but imaginative kid. Although … I don’t have an engineer’s bone in my body, much less a bunch of genes. I probably wouldn’t like her. Better skip that trait or tone it way down. And if I make her artistic, aren’t I just dooming her to a life of poverty and probably depression? The New World won’t need artists, it’ll have Artificial Intelligence for that. So business acumen, that might be what we go for. But geez, does the world need another MBA? And would making a pile of pesos make my progeny happy? Course, how would I know unless I get a GoFundMe so I could find out.

I suppose all those folks working on Artificial Intelligence have the same problem as me. What traits do you want your Replicant to have? Too human, too mechanical, too this, too that? Too complicated, that’s for sure. I see I’m going to have to give this way more thought, maybe just let nature shake the dice. So many variables, too little time. To paraphrase the President, Who’d have thought this gene stuff would be so hard?

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