moonbird
06-13-2012, 04:16 PM
Today is Ani's 100th birthday. There is to be a fantastic celebration.
Being a fairly quiet women, Ani does not have many friends, but this is no matter, for her family alone is plenty to fill the sprawling mansion with chattering guests. Hundreds of invitations have been sent out around the world, and on the day of the party her children arrive from all corners of the world. Ani is a proud mother of seventy-two, with another on the way. With the dilemma of a grueling and unattractive internal pregnancy long overcome by the great scientists of the world, and replaced by the far more efficient method of simply ordering for the correct genes to be assembled and incubated in a laboratory, there are scarcely any wealthy women of Ani's age who have under fifty children.
Turning one-hundred is considered a major milestone in Ani's society, and a total of sixty-five of her offspring have made it to the enormous jubilee. Most of them tote along an attractive spouse and one or two of their favorite children, the prettiest girl or the strongest boy. Many of the offspring have married a brother or sister, but this is no longer considered a deadly taboo, for with modern technology it is easy to arrange the genes of their children into the correct order to ensure that the closeness of their parents' genetics won't be a problem.
Most of Ani's own siblings haven't bothered to turn up, but they had never been very close anyway. She'd only truly cared for her brother Jermyn, born a month after her. They were married when they were fourteen and shortly afterward had their first child, Chione, a beautiful little girl whose lovely golden hair Jermyn had picked out himself. Though they had many more children, Chione always remained the only one to whom Jermyn would award his love, and by the time the girl was ten Jermyn had left Ani to marry his beautiful young daughter.
This was not an uncommon occurrence in society, and Ani seemed to carry on just fine without her husband. His genetic codes were still stored in the laboratory's computers, so she was able to continue having children without the need to find a second mate. She gave all her children Jermyn's fiery red hair and her own deep green eyes. Each would stay at Ani's home and be raised by her automatic nursery system until reaching the age of sixteen, by which point most had married and moved out anyway.
At the party, the sixty-five of Ani's children in attendance all greet her cheerfully, shaking her hand and saying how nice it is to finally meet her in person and wishing her a very happy one-hundredth birthday. Then they exchange a final polite nod with their mother before wandering off to mill thoughtlessly about the huge melting pot of brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. The enormous ballroom shimmers with all the red-haired youth.
When the music starts, Ani is the first to the dance floor. She wears a short green dress to show off her lovely young legs, kept beautiful by her team of wonderful surgeons, and her false blonde hair reaches nearly to her waist. When she dances she smiles out at the crowd surrounding her, her face as youthful as it was her twentieth birthday, and soon the others have joined in. In each guest's hand is a glass of the finest champagne,, and as the empty bottles pile up in the garbage the dancing grows faster and stranger.
No one can feel the passage of time; the party rages on for days, terminated only when Ani's supply of Immunity Pills, which prevent alcohol induced-blackouts, finally runs dry. The guests begin to drop like flies, slumping into chairs or collapsing gracelessly onto the dance floor. The automatic mechanisms built into the mansion carefully scoop up each guest and prop them up outside the front gate be returned home like neatly-wrapped packages.
Ani watches through a window as her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all leave, a glass containing the last of the champagne held delicately between her supple young fingers. She takes a sip and swallows it without tasting the elegant flavor. Then she pours the rest down the gutter. It drips down in fat golden drops.
Down below in the streets, a crowd of the starving masses battles ferociously to catch and drink each beautiful drop, clawing at each other's dirty faces with desperate fingernails. Animal-like wails of pain and sorrow echo up toward the beautiful woman in the golden window.
Ani watches them without smiling. She turns away.
Being a fairly quiet women, Ani does not have many friends, but this is no matter, for her family alone is plenty to fill the sprawling mansion with chattering guests. Hundreds of invitations have been sent out around the world, and on the day of the party her children arrive from all corners of the world. Ani is a proud mother of seventy-two, with another on the way. With the dilemma of a grueling and unattractive internal pregnancy long overcome by the great scientists of the world, and replaced by the far more efficient method of simply ordering for the correct genes to be assembled and incubated in a laboratory, there are scarcely any wealthy women of Ani's age who have under fifty children.
Turning one-hundred is considered a major milestone in Ani's society, and a total of sixty-five of her offspring have made it to the enormous jubilee. Most of them tote along an attractive spouse and one or two of their favorite children, the prettiest girl or the strongest boy. Many of the offspring have married a brother or sister, but this is no longer considered a deadly taboo, for with modern technology it is easy to arrange the genes of their children into the correct order to ensure that the closeness of their parents' genetics won't be a problem.
Most of Ani's own siblings haven't bothered to turn up, but they had never been very close anyway. She'd only truly cared for her brother Jermyn, born a month after her. They were married when they were fourteen and shortly afterward had their first child, Chione, a beautiful little girl whose lovely golden hair Jermyn had picked out himself. Though they had many more children, Chione always remained the only one to whom Jermyn would award his love, and by the time the girl was ten Jermyn had left Ani to marry his beautiful young daughter.
This was not an uncommon occurrence in society, and Ani seemed to carry on just fine without her husband. His genetic codes were still stored in the laboratory's computers, so she was able to continue having children without the need to find a second mate. She gave all her children Jermyn's fiery red hair and her own deep green eyes. Each would stay at Ani's home and be raised by her automatic nursery system until reaching the age of sixteen, by which point most had married and moved out anyway.
At the party, the sixty-five of Ani's children in attendance all greet her cheerfully, shaking her hand and saying how nice it is to finally meet her in person and wishing her a very happy one-hundredth birthday. Then they exchange a final polite nod with their mother before wandering off to mill thoughtlessly about the huge melting pot of brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews. The enormous ballroom shimmers with all the red-haired youth.
When the music starts, Ani is the first to the dance floor. She wears a short green dress to show off her lovely young legs, kept beautiful by her team of wonderful surgeons, and her false blonde hair reaches nearly to her waist. When she dances she smiles out at the crowd surrounding her, her face as youthful as it was her twentieth birthday, and soon the others have joined in. In each guest's hand is a glass of the finest champagne,, and as the empty bottles pile up in the garbage the dancing grows faster and stranger.
No one can feel the passage of time; the party rages on for days, terminated only when Ani's supply of Immunity Pills, which prevent alcohol induced-blackouts, finally runs dry. The guests begin to drop like flies, slumping into chairs or collapsing gracelessly onto the dance floor. The automatic mechanisms built into the mansion carefully scoop up each guest and prop them up outside the front gate be returned home like neatly-wrapped packages.
Ani watches through a window as her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren all leave, a glass containing the last of the champagne held delicately between her supple young fingers. She takes a sip and swallows it without tasting the elegant flavor. Then she pours the rest down the gutter. It drips down in fat golden drops.
Down below in the streets, a crowd of the starving masses battles ferociously to catch and drink each beautiful drop, clawing at each other's dirty faces with desperate fingernails. Animal-like wails of pain and sorrow echo up toward the beautiful woman in the golden window.
Ani watches them without smiling. She turns away.