[Begin voice data transmittal TRI-19773]
[Recipient: Milliny Simms]
Hello, Milliny! ‘Snews? Are you surprised to hear from me? Well, guess what? We finally got our VRAT fixed! You can tell that, of course, as you’re listening to this transmittal.
I’m still giddy with excitement over using the VRAT again. I thought we’d never get it fixed. Fatherling couldn’t schedule a repair sooner than a week. He couldn’t induce any officials to get us higher on the list for anything. I guess you can’t get everything through inducements. I thought I was just going to die if I had to wait a whole week. But in the end, I survived. I convinced Motherling to pay for the Reparation Upgrade, so we won’t have to go more than one day without the VRAT if it ever breaks again. May the Gods of the Sahara forever bless the inventor of the Voice Relay Arc Transmitter, but could she have made it indestructible? Is that too much to ask? I just can’t take another week without it.
Ugh! I said that in front of Motherling the other day, and she rebuked me for an entire hour. I swear it, an entire LUNAR hour! She kept asking me if I realize how lucky I am to live in this time. How do you ask your Motherling why she’s asking such a ridiculous question? Of course I know how lucky I am!
The advances in technology have reached such a height that tools and toys our parents couldn’t have imagined are now commonly used. Just a few years ago, when we were in middle school, we had to read our books. Remember that? Gods of the Kalahari, how tedious it was to sit still and track letters across a page! Do you ever miss it? I know I don’t. Now our textbooks read themselves aloud to us. And now we can become part of a movie, instead of just sitting there. My parentals still watch their old 3D movies sometimes. Why just sit there when you can jump in and do something? Maybe they are just too old to understand. I hope I never get that old.
Motherling does like the autopilot feature on the Ultra VAN, though. If she’s been up all night watching her 3Ds, she just let’s the Vehicle Auto Navigation drive while she imbibes her coffee. She won’t let Sylvanna and me take it on our own though. She hasn’t said it, but she must know we can re-program the VAN to go where ever we want. Hello, Zoomies!
Speaking of Zoomies, when are we going back? I really need another afternoon at the Vega Melioration Spa. My pupil dye is 3 months old already, and it shows! Plus, I want to be in the new Clayton Minks movie. I know exactly how to get his attention. That girl with the flaming hair had the right idea but the wrongest execution ever. I hope her hair implants aren’t the cheap kind so she can blend back in with everybody and be forgotten. But if her hair doesn’t turn out right, she can become a riot cop. They’re always wearing those ridiculous square helmets! That would cover up her burnt scalp very nicely. After a while, people wouldn’t even recognize her as the flaming head girl. Poor thing. Well, I have an exponential idea! But I’m not going to say what it is so you can’t steal it. Let me just say that I wouldn’t be an extra for long after my performance! Just accept my description; it’s great! Maybe I got some of my grandmother’s pzazz after all.
Oh, Grandma Sue! That woman will astroglide anywhere! I want to inherit her 10Gs glide. Well, unless she dies in a crash with it. You know, when my parentals did their nuptials twenty years ago and started procreating, they didn’t foresee that people would be able to choose which of their genes to pass on to their children. Sure, some people still take their chances with biology, but they are a dwindling minority. People are learning the benefits of customizing a child before the very first cell splits. If only my parents could have done that. Maybe Sylvanna would have Motherling’s thick hair instead of Fatherling’s thin locks. And I would have Fatherling’s good eyesight instead of Motherling’s myopia. And we both could have had Uncle Franklin’s natural artistic endowment. What that man can do with nuclear paint!
Oh, well. No amount of golden dreams will get us those things; not without some mega mountains of credits and serious physical fortitude. I don’t even want to know the process to change something on me now. Something permanent I mean, at the molecular level. Blessed Gods of the Great Sandy Desert, the pain! And how long it all takes. I couldn’t have done like Caitlana: two grafting surgeries of height DNA from her Fatherling and then a year of growing pains. A year! She was hurting all over all the time for a whole year. No, thank you, Great Gods of the Atacama! Though, I do know why she did it. Now she’s 7 inches taller, and the star of the volleyball and basketball teams, and she’s dating college boys. You couldn’t detach the smile she wears with a laser! And she earned it.
Anyway, I just wanted to scream at Motherling. Like, “Yes, I love the times I’m living in! People can pre-order their offspring and program their cars, and my best friend grew half a foot last year, and my neighbor has a bionic left eye. I get it, Motherling! Technology is advancing by light years all around us. I know!”
But let me tell you Milliny, even with all this technology we have now, I was still stunned when Milo showed me his heart. We had been lounging and kissing and copulating out on the floating deck. We drifted right by DeTonia’s window! It was so amusing. She got a physiology lesson that afternoon. I think she had only known a thing or two in some of our parentals’ 3Ds. She hadn’t ever seen the real thing before; not even walked in on the parentals when we were kids. Only I did that. And I know she hasn’t copulated! Well, now she’ll be ready, poor thing. She couldn’t look me in the eye for the rest of the day.
Anyway, Milo and I were finished, and I had re-programmed the floating deck to stay by the pool, and we were just laying there warming up under the sunlamps–it was another dense smog day—and the next thing I know, Milo starts talking about his feelings and his love and his conviction that we will maintain forever and some other stuff I can’t remember. The music was still booming out of the phonosystem so I could barely hear him anyway, and mostly I was just getting the gist of what he was saying. So the music was playing, and he turned to me and displays his heart for me to see.
Milliny, I almost fell off the floating deck! And we were leagues above the pool. I would have died falling off from there! But when I caught myself and caught my breath, Milo was there with his chest open and his heart beating and ticking for all the world to see. Good thing we weren’t by DeTonia’s window then!
Milo was kneeling on the foam pallet and holding the skin flaps apart with the tips of his fingers. His heart was double thumping and whirring ceaselessly. It was slick and some droplets sprayed out at me. It all made my heart thump and race, and I felt faint. Well, I really didn’t know what he was talking about anymore because I couldn’t hear him. I mean, I couldn’t listen while I was watching his heart move like that. And when I finally looked up into his face, you won’t believe it Milliny, but he was weeping. His eyes were already turning red. He looked pathetic and pitiful. But at the same time I felt this love swell up in me so strong it knocked my breath away.
After some interminable amount of time with Milo’s heart exposed and his eyes running, I managed to get my breath. “Milo, sweetheart,” I said, “Honey, I love you too, and all that. But dearest, please, close that up now. You don’t want this nasty smog to affect you.”
Well, maybe the smog had already affected his head, from the way he was acting. I had to say it a couple times before he reacted. “Milo, close it up now,” I said. “Yes, I love you so much, too.” But Milliny, I couldn’t think what else to say! I didn’t know Milo had a modified heart! He could live to be 150 with that thing! I just can’t have that. I plan to be on to my third partner long before I’m that age. How was I going to tell him that, what with all the weeping and thumping and whirring? I just couldn’t say what I was really thinking at that moment.
Oh, flux and flatulence! There goes Motherling complaining about the long transmission. As if the length matters with our Level: Inexhaustible transmissions plan. Well, I’m sure you don’t want to listen to her haranguing in the background.
Greetings to your Motherling and Fatherling. May you dwell in pleasure.
Now get yourself a VRAT so you can send me an audio message in return.
[Terminate voice data transmittal TRI-19773]
[Sender: LaBecca Trion]