“Well aren’t they lovely?” Vinnie remarked as he and his husband Daniel walked past the classroom. “We can go for a closer look if you like” said Janet Perth, Director of Operations at Lexcorp Family Planning.   

They quietly stepped inside. Most of the children were sitting in neat little rows at their desks, drawing. Daniel walked among them as Vinnie wandered to the other children, who were painting.  Studying them, his brow furrowed. “What’s this, some type of language?” he flipped through drawings showing the same picture over and over: thick black lines making a strange crisscross shape.

“It seems to be something unlocked from their genetic memory. They all do it, we don’t really know what it means yet, but we think it’s an archaic religious symbol” Janet replied.  Daniel noticed some of the children had Anglo features, while others had African, Asian, or Indian traits, yet all had the same hair color and light pigmentation. “Remarkable!” he exclaimed as he joined back with Janet. “How do you get their coloring to match?” “It’s actually the same latent genetics at work” she replied. “As you know, after the “Collapse of 2022” we didn’t have much left over from the Old world. But what you, and most of the general public, didn’t know is that during the “Great Rebuild of 2060”, preserved human remains were found in a collapsed bomb shelter.” Daniel stared at her, mouth agape as Vinnie joined them.

“You mean…” Daniel stammered. “Yes, actual genetic material from the past! And Lexcorp, as leaders in the field of genetic Family Planning, of course bought the rights immediately.” Janet beamed proudly. “As you can see, we were able to reconstruct children with features to match their soon-to-be parents; the only exception being the resurgence of certain recessive genes from the original host…ie: complexion and hair color.”

“So our child, if we accept, she’ll have Daniel’s nose or my curls?”  Vinnie asked hopefully. Daniel smiled inwardly that Vinnie had already decided they were having a baby girl.  “Of course! She’ll have features of you both…she’ll be your child after all! And, by using the Old world genes as a foundation, not only were we able to completely eradicate the Spinex virus, but all of our stock are completely fertile.” Vinnie and Daniel gasped and squeezed each others hand. Janet knew this selling point always cinched the deal, which is why she saved it for last.

“And if you sign up today, she can be grown in the very next batch!’’ Janet continued as she led them back out into the hallway plastered with the children’s paintings; thousands of the same symbol rendered in brilliant multicolors. “So who were the remains?” Daniel asked. “We don’t exactly know” Janet explained, “Since so much was lost in the Collapse, historical data is mostly nonexistent. He must have been very important at the time to have access to the bomb shelter though, perhaps a president? All we have is a name: “Hatler. Adolph Hatler”.