The Year's Top Short SF Novels 6 by Allan Kaster

Author:Allan Kaster [Kaster, Allan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AudioText
Published: 2016-12-19T06:00:00+00:00

LYNETTE

Candace’s attorney says she is categorically uninterested in talking to the media. Since everything about her life is either locked up in court records or behind the fence at Kamp Kendall, I’m changing the plan for the final section. We can keep the rest the same though; open with Montross family, then general principles, and return to case studies. Just different case studies. Houston is home to plenty of Hock’s grand narcissists. Here are a few I know I could get:

Sophie Bryant—landscaper, caught GDS from her husband who caught it from another sexual partner. (They’re swingers.) Raising their three GDS daughters together, with the son and daughter they already had. She has topiaries of all the kids in the front yard, and lets them do seasonal decorations of themselves.

Kelli Fernandez—lawyer, caught GDS during a kidney transplant. Single, no children (she had a hormonal IUD), but does family law. A lot of custody work. Focuses on GDS cases now, and can speak very knowledgeably about them.

Christina Rickards—teenager who caught GDS from her boyfriend. Her dad beat her up and threw her out of the house after her second pregnancy. She’s on number three now, says she plans to have them all. Moved in with an aunt and graduated high school a year early, now in a pharmacy tech program.

Dorothea Velazquez—comatose after a scooter accident in San Antonio, now in long-term care in Houston. She got GDS from a blood transfusion, has had two babies that she’s never seen. Her family considers them miracles, a way for Dorothea to return to them. Devout Catholics. They are committed to raising the children as long as she keeps having them. Her older brother is a very caring, enthusiastic, and quotable kind of slightly insane.

Chloe Pitt—piano teacher at a conservatory and keyboard player in a succession of post-rock bands. She and her partner Steph, a CPA, decided to contract GDS intentionally. First couple I know who did that. They each had one kid, then opted for surgical birth control.

Intessar Mendoza—Me. I don’t have it probably. But I’m pregnant from an unknown sperm donor. I’ll be having a baby in about five months, and I don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl. But I do know that the whole generations-long history of social baggage, the whole framework for how we understand what having a boy means or having a girl means—that’s all irrelevant now. Everyone thought it was settled, but GDS has put what having a kid means up for renegotiation. There’ve always been precious few constants for the world to offer a new person, and now there are even fewer. The non-GDS perspective on parenthood in a GDS world has got to be of general interest. I’m willing to talk about it.

I could go on. That’s just in Houston. You want a humanizing face for GDS, take your pick. It’s the new human condition. We’re spoiled for choice.

—Tess

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