The Pathetic Life Of HyunSeop

By T. Dalton

Hyunseop Gets Canned

Hyunseop’s routine involved dropping used needles in parks and playgrounds. As a medical waste handler, he always reported too few syringes in the medical records so that he’d have some fun. It was a war-game, going to schools and parks at night to leave the landmines. Before nodding off to sleep, he’d fantasize about the kids finding them. All it’d take was a single poke, and an entire spectrum of bacteria and diseases could find their way into those perfect and innocent little bodies.

https://sapiensdirge.wordpress.com/fiction/

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Copyright 2018 By T. Dalton. All Rights Reserved.

This short story is a submission for @calluna’s latest contest. There's still some time left so if you have own story, be sure to submit it!

The prompt was

The Children They Made

" I am looking for a science fiction story set in a world where babies are normally designed in labs, and both parties are no longer needed for reproduction."

I actually have a draft for a novel on this topic. But that's not going on Steemit.

Genetic modification get’s a lot of shit in science fiction. But, there’s something to be said about the liberating potential of science and technology. I wanted to highlight this in the story. The children made in this world are those designed in labs, and still those designed by society. The children they made "like this".

Children birthed in vats, well, that frees women from the role of babymaker. Of course, individual choice, blah blah, some people want that life, want to be a mother. Sure, but that’s not the perspective I wanted to highlight in this story.

Hyunseop has his name taken from this piece of shit. I wanted to practice portraying a character that embodies resentment and ignorance, a man too pathetic to survive in a world without male entitlement. A place where toxic masculinity is contained in a prison island. I wanted to play up male stereotypes of masculinity, hence the chiseled chin and whiskey-drinking-cigarette-smoking ‘man’.

It was a fun little experiment in story telling. Thanks for the prompt @calluna.
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