Storage baby

We received the authorisation for our storage baby yesterday, and Jack and I were over the moon. We'd been in the application stage for three months at that point, and I was starting to think that we were going to be turned down, so I was laughing and crying at the same time on the phone to Jack to let him know the good news.

It's a lot easier for straight couples and lesbians -- well, for any family grouping that involves a woman -- as they can simply have a baby and then have it converted into a storage baby, but Jack and I had to go through the whole adoption procedure first, and then apply to have it converted into a storage baby. Some local authorities can be a bit funny about that, because they say that there are plenty of people who want to adopt a child for more than just storage. Recent government guidelines however say that a couple with an adoptive child have the right to convert that child to storage if they wish, and our adoption approval came through before the guidelines came out, so we've got our wish.

Storage babies are becoming a lot more popular these days. You take an ordinary child, and flash its brain clean a couple of weeks after birth. They use a viral infection that erases most of the higher brain functions but leaves the autonomous systems intact, so the child is alive, but essentially a vegetable. And then you can use it for storage purposes. A little fibre-optic cable-jack is surgically implanted in the back of its neck, a small wi-fi receiver is embedded in its brain, and you're good to go. The child records everything it sees and hears, and you can upload your own data to it either via the wi-fi link, or via the neck-port. The storage available is fantastically huge, and it grows as the child grows! It's the first storage medium that doesn't need to be regularly erased and consolidated, and so long as you're not using it 24/7, it'll automatically sort and index data for you while it's asleep.

You hear stories of course: things like the dark cults that have women kept as brood mares who just turn out one storage baby after another, or the urban legend of people waking up in alley ways with their newborn child kidnapped to be sold into storage somewhere. Most of them just aren't true though, and the babies themselves are getting ever more tamper-proof. Because they record everything they see and hear, any kind of storage-baby-abuse is automatically recorded and social services have powers to come round and inspect your storage baby at any time. People do pick their storage babies so they'll be attractive, because once the baby's turned 18 it's legally an adult if it's not property, and otherwise it's property so you can do with it as you please. But I think most people who've lived with a storage baby for 18 years aren't going to be that interested in it by that point anyway.

The really cool thing is that when it's time to replace the baby, all of its organs are available for harvest. A good storage baby is really an investment when you look at it that way. I pointed that out to Jack, but he accused me of being callous.

I'm really looking forward to getting the storage baby and transferring our DVD collection onto it. They have superior video playback to all other media forms.