11 Comments
User's avatar
K.Lynn Grey's avatar

Your best story, yet...

Expand full comment
Charlotte Henley Babb's avatar

The next forn of exploitation. I can see this happening in a Handmaid's Tale sort of world. But who eventually benefits?

Expand full comment
A.I. Freeman's avatar

The parents... this idea came out of a conversation about UBI. And memories of news stories about "welfare queens" and foster parents who were in it just for the money. You might say it's based more on the past than the future.

Expand full comment
Charlotte Henley Babb's avatar

I heard of a young woman who was told by the mariarch of her family that it was her turn to have a baby. So it does happen. What I wondered was who was paying the parents and why. And why kill or didappear the child when it became an adult? I always have questions

Expand full comment
A.I. Freeman's avatar

Oh, I see, I missed some important backstory... The government, to encourage more children gives out UBI to everyone (including the kids) so kind of UBI and Baby Bond ideas that have been floating around for a while actually happen. The parents get to manage the money until the kids come of age. So lots of kids would give you some extra cash to play with. And if they die before they are old enough then the parents get the extra cash (life insurance style) instead of losing the money they were getting for raising the kid.

Expand full comment
Charlotte Henley Babb's avatar

That tracks.

Expand full comment
Bruce Landay's avatar

Wow! This was really chilling!

It's an interesting take on parenthood that I've never seen before. Bravo! I'd really like to see this story go on for a while. I hope you continue it.

Thanks

Expand full comment
A.I. Freeman's avatar

There are programs to encourage women to have more children (like in Russia...) and all of the sudden folks like Musk and Vance seem to be worried about there not being enough kids here. If we DID have some kind of "baby bonus" (to prevent population collapse) then why wouldn't we get parents who were more interested in money than the kids? Not all of the parents, of course, but the ones in this story...

Expand full comment
Bruce Landay's avatar

Sadly, there are bad examples from foster parents with this type of behavior.

Expand full comment
A.I. Freeman's avatar

True, it’s sad. Seems like they were in the paper a lot, back when we had newspapers.

Expand full comment
Trisha (T.M.) Blanchet's avatar

This was sooo good! It reminded me of the Red Rising trilogy, in the best way. I hope it will be book-length someday :-)

Expand full comment