If they had just stopped with choosing my sex and a few tasteful modifications, perhaps they would have gotten the child they wanted. I didn't mind being beautiful, but my parents went too far. They said they wanted the best for me (and all their friends were "pro choice"). In truth, I was to be the best their money and science could provide. By the time I started fifth grade, I averaged two additional modifications a year. Most were not genetic but alterations such as braces, lifelong personal training, professional golf and polo lessons starting at five, the list is long.

My obsessed parents bought every new modification that came along (Who gets their kid's baby teeth whitened and capped?) I am truly custom. I got DNA that makes a particular enzyme so my teeth do not decay. I got a musculoskeletal enhancement package that would have allowed me to turn pro in almost any sport had I taken practice seriously. I got genius I.Q. and special brain enhancements for math, language, and music. And when I threw a crying fit at my sixth birthday party because I couldn't keep a mongrel puppy that wandered on to the family estate, I got a brain implant that kept (and keeps) me behaving in a socially acceptable way.

By the time I finished high school I was at the top of my class with letters in football, baseball, basketball, swimming, tennis, band, and singing (did I mention my 4th grade voice enhancement?) I placed out of the first two years of college. I missed being valedictorian by a technicality (I didn't go to classes that bored me). Mom and Dad lapped it up and displayed me like the china, the prize winning bichons, and the antique cars.

For what little it was worth, I was also, if not the most hated student at my expensive private school, near the top. I didn't care what others thought of me. Why should I? I was practically perfect and living a practically perfect life.

There was one cloud blotting my parent's fine weather. Though I excelled at everything I was interested in, I ignored what I did not like (and dropped anything when it started to bore). It is true I lettered in several sports, but I never had to work at anything. As soon as I won regularly, I quit and played at something else. Of greatest parental concern was my disinterest in females. Of course I behaved in a socially acceptable manner when I dressed for and attended the important dances and parties. I smiled and made small talk with hostess and guests and danced gracefully with every female. If asked, I played the piano and sang. But behind my exquisite manners and beautiful smile was total indifference. The beautiful girls were rarely talented and usually self serving, if they managed to think at all. The interesting ones rarely met my other requirements. But none of that concerned me. I was beautiful enough and talented enough and that was enough.

Naturally Pater and Mater rushed me off (again) to a psych. They were convinced I was queer. But guys didn't stir me. Nor did cross dressing or pedophilia or s. and m. or anything else (I sampled them all). One psychologist called me a narcissist. What was not to love? (Maybe if they had let me keep that ragged little mutt. Maybe not.) I was tested for autism, given hormone injections, and doused with antidepressants. One of my bodyguards regularly took me to joyhouses and helped me get drunk,… I hated the hangovers and after that never drank more than a glass or two of wine. At one shrink's request I sampled several drugs but they did not amuse, either.

As years went by I became more and more of a loner. On the occasion when I needed sex or a companion for the evening, it was easy and simple to order and pay.

Though I was still young, my parents were aging badly. Their lovely expensive experiment was flawed. Then the program implant requiring me to honor my father and mother began to disturb the tranquility of my solitary existence. Just before my thirtieth birthday, I decided to give them what they wanted most. I planned that in so doing I was canceling all claim.

After examining the options, I judged the uncertainties inherent in genetic input from another unacceptable. I certainly didn't plan to live with or even meet my child's womb mother. So I paid for cloning, hired a reputable surrogate, and circumvented those annoyances. That took five more years and many dollars, but Bill is almost six months old and thriving.

To momentarily regress, my parents, acknowledging the great cost incurred in getting their "perfect" child, named me Price. So I passed it down and named my clone Bill. Bill has all the genetic modifications that I had incorporated (but not the non genetic ones like the brain implants). I made one small change: I threw in a transposon.

For those of you that don't know what that is, a transposon is a gene that jumps around your DNA and makes random alterations and changes. I hope it won't do little Bill harm. I just want him to be less than perfect. Maybe he will be able to feel something. Maybe he will be a real boy.

When he is six, I am going to get him a puppy, a little mutt puppy, of his own.