She looked a little worried.She looked a little worried. If her species had fingernails, I think she'd have been biting them. "It means I might." "If implantation occurs, and if we take no action." "Do we know what sex it'll be?" I asked. She bent over the keyboard and typed, after the "Action?" prompt, "Determine sex." The reply shot back instantly: "Not possible at this time. -blast formation still in process. Action?" "Oh, well," I said. I turned to her and said, "What do you want?" "I don't know. I certainly want a child, but twins? I've never had twins before." She looked a little lost to me. "You've also never had a boy before. What if it's another boy?" She looked up in panic, saying "Do you think that's possible?" "Fifty-fifty chance, and you know it." She nodded. She leaned over the keyboard and typed, "Estimate time until sex determination possible." "Sex determination possible in 6.25 +- 0.50 hours. Action?" "If it's a girl, do you want to go ahead with her and not the boy?" I turned back to her and said, "I've always been better with the girls than boys during 'sittings. I don't know. Personally, I think twins is a perfect challenge." She smiled. "Let's wait until seven. We'll know then. The party starts at 1 Lome'." Needless to say, by the time seven rolled around I was a basketcase, ready for the men in white coats. Nyss came in five minutes early and typed on the living room terminal the startup code for telemetry access to the obstetrics-nanos in her womb. They responded quickly, replying "Sex determination: female. Implantation: positive. Identified as '2.'" "That's it, then," I said. "We're going to have twins, and it's going to be boy-girl." "Is that it?" she asked. "Or would you rather we undo the first one?" I though about it for a long time, in terms of the problems with twins and the joys of boys and girls and all that. "It's not my decision to make, sweetheart, but I think having two is great." "Then we'll have two," she said with a big smile. |