“Monica … oh … Don’t tell me our number’s come up!”
“Yes, my darling, yes, we’ve won this week’s parenthood lottery! We can go ahead and conceive a child at once!”
He let out a yell of joy. They danced round the room. Pressure of population was such that reproduction had to be strict, controlled. Childbirth required government permission. For this moment, they had waited four years. Incoherently they cried their delight.
They paused at last, gasping, and stood in the middle of the room to laugh at each other’s happiness. When she had come down from the nursery, Monica had de-opaqued the windows, so that they now revealed the vista of garden beyond. Artificial sunlight was growing long and golden across the lawn — and David and Teddy were staring through the window at them.
Seeing their faces, Henry and his wife grew serious.
“What do we do about them?” Henry asked.
“Teddy’s no trouble. He works well.”
“Is David malfunctioning?”
“His verbal communication-center is still giving trouble. I think he’ll have to go back to the factory again.”
“Okay. We’ll see how he does before the baby’s born. Which reminds me — I have a surprise for you: help just when help is needed! Come into the hall and see what I’ve got.”
As the two adults disappeared from the room, boy and bear sat down beneath the standard roses.
“Teddy — I suppose Mummy and Daddy are real, aren’t they?”
Teddy said, “You ask such silly questions, David. Nobody knows what ‘real’ really means. Let’s go indoors.”
“First I’m going to have another rose!” Plucking a bright pink flower, he carried it with him into the house. It could lie on the pillow as he went to sleep. Its beauty and softness reminded him of Mummy.
© 1993—99 The Condé Nast Publications Inc. All rights reserved.
© 1994—99 Wired Digital, Inc. All rights reserved.
FB2 document info
Document ID: hd-hd-2005-11-20t15:24:00z
Document version: 1
Document creation date: 2005-11-20 15:24:00
Created using: doc2fb software
Document authors :
DmB
Source URLs :
http://www.mysteriesofai.com/resources/supertoyslastallsummerlong.htm
Document history:
This is full text of “Supertoys Last All Summer Long”. However, I strongly urge you to go out and buy Aldiss' book, Supertoys Last all Summer Long: And Other Short Stories of Future Time. Not only do you get the original “Supertoys”, you get it's two sequels and literally tons of other short science fiction stories. And hey, you also get a pretty cool forward.
www.mysteriesofai.com
v1.1 by DmB — transcoded to FB2.
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Super-Toys Last All Summer Long Page 2