06 November 2005 | 9:09 AM
Fifty-Word Stories: Day 3
~~~
Day’s Verse:
may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
Ephesians 3:18
~~~
Some more 50-word stories:
Atomic Movement
Choose Your Partner
Dream Children
Growing Up in a Perfect World

-----
Day’s Verse:
may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth,
Ephesians 3:18
~~~
Some more 50-word stories:
Atomic Movement
Trace my trajectory: A starry arc beneath black skies? A fiery comet, here a moment and flown a thousand years? What attraction charges me? What repulsion breaks me away? I dance, an elaborate dance demanding rigorous steps and a thousand partners, breaking away with energy. The submicroscopic universe, my ballroom.
Choose Your Partner
Six scrutinized complete genomes, fine-tooth-combed. “Best of Class” award to one; the prize: implantation. Living dream of perfection, more costly than a car, the embryo grows. Parents have high hopes, because “No parents […] will have a right to burden society with a malformed or a mentally incompetent child.”*
Dream Children
Two sixth-graders pause from dashing around the playground. A leaden sky overhead threatens rain.
Jeremy: “Why’d your parents choose you?”
Kyle: “Best of the bunch.”
“Me, too. I’m smart.”
“I’m fast.”
“No major problems?”
“Just my parents’ expectations.”
The drops begin falling as they obediently heed the recess bell.
Growing Up in a Perfect World
Careful sorting at the blastosphere stage produces exciting athletic games. Students focus hours on end, tirelessly, effortlessly absorbing knowledge. The $30,000 babies, disease free, dull tacks in comparison. Cut above, endowed by their parents the gift of perfection, they travel elite roads.*Bentley Glass, “Science: Endless Horizons or Golden Age,” Science 171:23-29, 1971, pg. 28
Roads built by the children of love. Imperfect.

-----