The child they could not have in flesh is wombed in the computer, derived from a merging of the parents' DNA, developing faster than any unimproved, metabolic fetus could. In nine days' time, it recapitulates evolution on the monitor, fingers sprouting before them like shoots springing up in time lapse photography, growing gills and tail and discarding both like someone picking out the proper apparel in a basement sale. It crawls at one month, stands at two, speaks fluently at three; before a year has passed, it's read every CD they place in the ROM reader, the whole home library, and is able to converse with them in every sort of computer language, young and old. Soon, it has outstripped home schooling; the time comes for the university. It enters the great Internet of the world, journeying from LAN to LAN, bulletin board to bulletin board. A good child, it often modems home. At ten, its beard long and gray, its eyes heavy with knowledge, it returns. Perhaps it would wave goodbye if it could see them; perhaps they would wave, too, if they didn't know it was wholly their creation, that perfect child, with no real life of its own. They logoff, close that file.
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