Baby X, Kira Peikoff, author
This book kept me on the edge of my seat from page one. It was almost too close to reality, though it is in the realm of science fiction. As I was reading the book, an announcement was made about Elon Musk. He had implanted a chip inside a brain. It was being tested to see if it could control behavior through mind control. How far off are those experiments from the smart glasses that the characters in Baby X use to access their dashboard? Not that far into the future, technology has moved us into a world without much privacy, but it is a world with all of our basic needs attended to, and all of our choices optimized. Our transportation is automated, smart lenses connect us to our computers so we no longer have to lug around much paraphernalia, we just have to blink to activate a screen or make a phone call with a holographic image, the keyboard is virtual, most genetic diseases can be corrected or eliminated prior to birth, babies are created in laboratories and are then selected, transferred and celebrated by those new parents after they are birthed, still in the old way, by women. Hair color, eye color, personality, even illness, deafness, etc., are possible choices for parents to make during the selection. They are advised of all drawbacks, as well, like predilections to certain diseases or behaviors. Some children are now rebelling and demanding to know why they were chosen to live with fatal flaws. They are against the system that denied them the choice of life or death, but may have doomed them to a living death, like carrying cystic fibrosis or being a victim of it. Every fact about the selected’s background and existence is kept private, however, and is protected unless permission to share is specifically granted or a law is passed to make the details available to the public. The ability to see why they were chosen and whether or not that choice was selfish or with the best possible outcome for the child is controversial, and lawsuits are being considered.
This novel focuses on the lives of several female characters. Lily believes that she is what is called an “unforeseen”, not a child that is the product of selection, the process that often affords advantages to the child chosen. She is, instead, the old-fashioned product of a spontaneous act of love. Most people frown upon this method of conception in which the embryo’s viability and future is a crap shoot.
Lily is an intern for Vanguard Magazine and is competing for a permanent position with Radia, a “selected” young woman with great talents. Can Lily surpass such a person? Lily wants to write a story for the magazine that is about her mother’s past. For ten years of Lily’s life, she visited her mother in prison. She has never been told the entire story and wants to know why her mom was arrested and locked up for so long. Her Godmother, Winnie, won’t tell her anything; the records are sealed and so are her parents’ lips. When Radia and Lily’s investigations fail, because of unwilling sources and sealed records, Radia suggests that they work together on another project. To do this they must find out why they have been selected. Lily doesn’t want to admit that she was not part of that elite group. Still, she goes with Radia, unwillingly, when the law is changed permitting them to uncover their backgrounds. They are going to investigate the selection process and the controversy brewing between the selected and their parents. Some children feel injured by the choices their parents have made without regard for their long-term well-being. Will Lily’s deception about her birth be discovered?
Ember was selected by her parents for her outstanding intelligence. Her scientific genius brought her to a lab where she worked with Mason, another brilliant scientist. Together, they hoped to develop a vaccine to make all future pandemics harmless. Then a pandemic occurred, unexpectedly, and ironically, everything they were trying to do, to prevent such a catastrophe, was shut down along with life in the rest of the world. Though near their goal, they lost their experimental mice, and their promising research became useless. Two years down the drain with no prospects, they decided to create a business to steal the DNA of people, they and others, deemed unworthy, evil, criminal, politically negligent, etc. They could manipulate their DNA in the lab to create sperm and ova and then embryos to create chaos for them as they suddenly discovered the existence of a child that they had no knowledge of and did not create. Soon people were begging them to steal the DNA of particular people, and were willing to pay big bucks for the product. When Mason decided to expand their business and steal the DNA of celebrities, which was the opposite of their original effort to punish wrongdoers, Ember refused, and severed their ties. Their romantic relationship ended too, and he was enraged. Ember decided to go into a security business to protect the world from the likes of Mason. She operated a business that protected the ownership of one’s DNA. She soon became the security agent for the prominent entertainer, Trace Thorne. She would protect his environment so that no one could steal his DNA and chemically alter it in the lab.
Quinn is also an “unforeseen”. She has no particular talent and was most recently employed as a surrogate. She is enamored with the entertainer Trace Thorne and while attending a concert, she meets Robert Roy. When he tells her is mourning the death of his partner, Evan, she agrees to be his surrogate and to carry a child with the DNA they had planned to use before Evan was killed. When she discovers he has lied to her, and as his past becomes more mysterious, she grows concerned about whose baby she is carrying, and she wonders if she or the baby will be in danger. In California it is against the law to kidnap a fetus. In Arizona, you cannot be prosecuted for keeping a baby in your own womb. What will she do?
As so many varied themes are introduced, the story does get a bit entangled, but as secrets are revealed, the dots are connected. The author has handled this mystery so deftly, that the reader is not aware of all the facts until the very end when there is a sudden aha moment. I cannot reveal more without giving away the best part of the story. It twists and turns often. Actually, the pages turn themselves as a world in the not-too-distant future runs amok with science and technology. Sometimes, can too much of a good thing possibly be the opposite. Can it be a really bad thing?
How are all of these characters related? Who are they, really? The reader will be surprised by the timeline and the backgrounds of the characters when the truth is revealed. The surprise ending is worth waiting for, so don’t look ahead. The missing threads of the story will all knit together in the final pages.