You Have Arrived at Your Destination by Amor Towles
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This
story is part of Amazon's Forward Collection which according to its
curator was devise as a collection of stories about pivotal
technological moments. In this story Amor Towles as chosen the subject
of designer babies.
***SPOILER ALERT ***Sam is a successfull,
moneyed, mortgage free 45 year old who is visiting Vitek a fertility
clinic with a difference, not only can you pick boy/girl, blue/brown
eyes etc but you can influence the intelligence and temperament of you
future child. His wife Annie has done a lot of the legwork and when he
gets to the clinic he is presented with her three options. These are
presented as three short video montages of what each child's live would
be like.
The first projection, Daniel One has " from the day he
was born, Daniel had a smile on his face"; Daniel Two "marches to the
beat of his own drum" and for Daniel Three "everything came easy". These
are shown to Sam in a 15 seat movie theatre by MT Owens of Vitek, who
sees these as mini movies and talks about each life as if it were a
three act play. Seeing these potential lives acted out makes Sam reflect
on his own life and his marriage. He takes exception to MTs talk about
classic "second-act setbacks" during which people come face to face with
their own limitations and there being "no point in pushing our
personalities uphill". This is made all the more personal and cutting
when MT remarks that Annie is still in her second-act, but Sam is
already in his third and has been there for 15 years already. This
prompts Sam to leave the building.
He ends up in a down at heels
bar on a bypassed side road off the highway, where things get a little
tense as Sam gets very drunk in conversation with Beezer and the barkeep
Nick. More about Sam's upbringing is revealed and about the history of
Vitek which Beezer reckons is an offshot of the previous occupants of
that building the defense contractor Raytheon "because genetics is the
fuure of defense". Sam goes back to Vitek to retrieve his DNA "sample"
and returns to his new friends in the bar.
This story flows
along really well, Towles paints three different characters as the
potential children, and wonderfully interspaces their screening with
Sam's own reflections, his concerns about his own life, about Annie's,
about his father's impact on his childhood. The character of MT is
perfectly OTT salesman, and the seed of a conspiracy theory which is
dropp in towards the end by Beezer leaves a bitter taste not just with
Sam but leaves the reader with a sense of dread.
It is very well
structured, well ended and well written. It is just the type of short
story which makes a great movie. I loved it and couldn't fault it, hence
the 5*
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