I sat on a bench on Waterloo bridge, trying to imagine how brilliant my life would be in ten years.

Not
because I was particularly successful or talented, but because a very large corporation would be paying for my
education, in return for my first born child. This was an argument I had with my father again, and again and
again. I’d had to ask permission to be ferried down from my hometown of Bristol to catch a train to Waterloo in
the first place. The deal my father had made was that I had to try the GCSEs at least three times before the age
of 18 before I could move to London, regardless of whether I accelerated my courses. The main reason was to
save money on private schooling, but in the area that I’d decided to live in the school system was so good that
the only reason I’d need to break this rule was so that I could try to get into the School of Journalism in the
University of the Arts. It was a compromise I could live with. I’d only agreed to catch the train today because
my first proper job was going to be at the University of the Arts later. My start date was 10th September, which
meant a one way ticket to Clapham Junction was going to cost me £11.40. I had a second account on Instagram,
one that few people knew about. It was a feed I kept private, where I edited the pictures down to their better
looking sides. I looked interesting and in a different context I might have been pretty. But I was hoping that I
could be someone different, even fake it until I made it. I didn’t get why parents were giving birth to ugly kids.
Apparently it was more popular than I’d assumed. There were a bunch of schools where something like 75% of
the students had nanotech installed in them. I always looked at the “before” children, wondering how people
could defile their genes with such obvious genes to ruin. The problem with all this isn’t that children will be so
unattractive most parents consider it to be an attractive solution. If I wanted to get the genetic ability to love life,
I’d have to do the same. I bet it became the norm, like people genetically increasing height or accent rather than
sticking fast to the original. People could get their own version of the recipe they wanted to be born with, even
the perfect combination of genes. It isn’t scary, all these designer babies on Instagram. My phone rang and I
sighed, pushing it back into my pocket.