The boy burst out crying again and ran out of the room.
Mr. Ames shook his head. "Definite neurotic tendencies," he muttered to himself.
"What dear?" his wife said.
"Nothing, Martha," he answered. "Just talking to myself." He sat down heavily on the couch and sighed. What was wrong with Donnie, anyway? Where did he get those archaic ideas from? Surely he had been taught that the whole purpose of the incubator system was to speed up learning and growth processes so children wouldn't have to waste precious years growing up, like they did in the old days. Why their new technological age simply had no time to fool around with infantile desires. There were too many things to do, too many knotty scientific problems to solve. Emotions, Mr. Ames mumbled to himself, you never could trust your damn emotions.
That night, after Donnie was in bed, Mr. Ames went to his study and pulled out the boy's file. It explained what he was fitted for, what abilities he had inherited, and what his primary training included. Mr. Ames noted sadly that the boy's Scientific Quotient was 142, well above normal, and that he would stand six feet tall and weigh close to 195 pounds when fully developed.
Mr. Ames, who was incubator-born himself, was completely sold on the ingenious system the Federation of World Councils had devised. No more hit-and-miss mass reproduction, where morons were gradually out-breeding intelligent beings, but instead, selective artificial insemination through which only the best strains were permitted to reproduce. Each generation, the human race got healthier and smarter. Insanity and inherited diseases were a thing of the past and nature's primitive law—only the fittest shall survive—was now a glittering reality. Why the Federated Incubators even took over the burden of educating the children for the first five years. Parents no longer had to be bothered caring for helpless, bawling brats. By the time Incubates were placed on the available list, they were completely self-sufficient and emotionally conditioned to fit into any family group. Parents simply picked what they wanted. Mr. Ames, of course, had selected a future nuclear-chemist.
It was a beautiful system, Mr. Ames told himself, and even more important, it worked. But somehow, some way, there was something radically wrong with their child.