Author: Melissa Kobrin

“What do you mean, you want our child to be human?”
Olivia looked guiltily into the purple eyes of the man she loved and tried to figure out how to tell him she didn’t want their baby to be like him.
“Knox, I just… there’s so few humans left, and of course there’s nothing wrong with being humanx, you know I don’t think that, but every year there’s fewer humans, and…,” she trailed off weakly, not knowing how to continue.
“I thought we agreed we wanted to give our kids every advantage we could, Livie. Why do you want to limit them to just human genes now?”
“There’s nothing wrong with being human!”
“But humanx could give them so much more! We could splice their genes so they have the eyesight of a cat, the strength of a gorilla, regeneration-,”
“You know we could never afford the regeneration mod,” she interrupted without thinking, then wished she hadn’t.
Knox gripped the edge of the kitchen island with white knuckled hands. The wood crackled, and he immediately let go and crossed his arms over his chest. Olivia’s lips twitched. Even when he was mad, he was so careful with his strength. She hated that they were arguing.
“Only eight percent of people have completely human DNA, and a lot of them are elderly,” she said, striving to sound calm. “I want the future to have humans in it. I want to pass that on.”
“And this has nothing to do with your lunch with your parents yesterday, does it?”
“Knox!”
“Livie, they’re purists, and they hate me-,”
“I know. I know that, and I love you, and I need you to believe that this is coming from me and not from them.”
Knox looked at her and sighed. “I love you too. I believe you, but… but this feels like you’re asking me to hurt our kids. To take away their potential. I know there’s not a lot of humans left, but humans, humanx, we’re all people, what does it matter?”
Olivia paused and considered. “What if we had one of each?”
“We can’t have his and hers kids. That wouldn’t be fair to them. They’ll be jealous of each other, think that we love one of them more, that we wanted them to be different than how they are.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” Olivia acknowledged. “I don’t know what to do.”
“We have time to figure it out,” Knox said, pulling her into his arms. “We haven’t even made our genetic consultation appointment yet. What if we talk to a counselor first?”
“We’ll figure it out,” Olivia echoed. She wrapped her arms around his waist and they held each other.