Perfect People

12

Naomi’s Diary

Quite bizarre. We’re surrounded on this ship by millions of dollars of technology. Yet today, poor John had to sit in a cubicle off one of the labs with a plastic jar, a box of Kleenex and an assortment of pornographic videotapes. I hope Luke never gets to see this diary, I’d like him to have some romantic notions about his beginnings. Nice for him to know that he was conceived on a cruise in the Caribbean. Not so nice to discover his father had been sitting with his pants around his ankles watching Busty Babes Meet Big Boy.

Dr D had a cute word for it. Harvesting. He told John, ‘Just need to harvest a little of your semen.’

We’re both committed to this thing. But I keep thinking that maybe we should forget about it, go home, perhaps try to find some other way around our problem. Adopt, or have a surrogate child of some kind, or get pregnant from donor sperm. Or forget about children altogether. Plenty of couples don’t have children.

I think maybe Dr D is angry that we’ve taken so few of his options. No more than a few dozen ticks out of almost three thousand. All we have done is agree to the bad disease genes being taken out, ensure Luke will be six foot tall, and make some improvements to his metabolism, which will help him stay fit and healthy. If we’d let Dettore have his head, we’d have ended up agreeing to create some kind of a superman. No thanks!

But I’ll say one thing for Dr D, he is good at explaining stuff. Although he has a technique even John didn’t understand for separating high-quality sperm.

It was a real harvest today. John’s semen and my eggs. Dr D was delighted with the crop – a total of twelve. He told me it had been worth all the pain of the injections (easy for him – he didn’t have them).

He’s now having the entire genetic code of each embryo analysed. Cells from the strongest one will be selected. As I understand it, some of the disease genes will be removed or disabled. Females have two X chromosomes. Males have one X and one Y. By separating the Y chromosome sperms from the X chromosome sperms, Dr D will ensure the baby is a boy.

Doesn’t sound very romantic, does it?

In a fortnight, if it goes to plan, we’ll be home. And I’ll be pregnant.

I wonder how I’ll feel.