“Sam!” he said with a hand outstretched. “HT Owens. It’s so good to meet you.”
Sam stood and shook HT’s hand, thinking his voice sounded familiar. It took him a moment to realize that it sounded familiar because it was the voice of the narrator in the video he’d just watched.
HT sat down and immediately rocked back and forth in his chair, making the most of its engineering. Then he drummed the top of the table with his open hands. Sam suspected that if HT had been born a generation later than he was, he would have been raised on Ritalin.
“Did you have any trouble finding us?”
“Not at all.”
“Great.”
He pointed at the logo on the screen. “And you got a chance to watch the video?”
“I did.”
“Great. Let me start by saying how much fun we’ve had getting to know Annie. You’re a lucky man!”
“Thanks,” replied Sam, though it had always seemed to him that the observation of a man’s luck in regard to his wife was a bit of a slight.
HT shifted gears. “I don’t have to explain to you why you’re here, Sam. You know why you’re here. And you’ve been a utilities analyst for, what? Almost twenty years? So I think we can skip the dog and pony show. Instead, let me give you a quick overview of our work, then we can talk about what’s going to happen today. Sound good?”
“Sounds good.”
“Great,” said HT for the third time. “Now, we all understand that child development is a combination of nature and nurture, and for hundreds of years, parents have sought to influence both of these factors for the benefit of their offspring. From the genetic standpoint, we have carefully selected our mate with his or her attributes firmly in mind. While from the nurture standpoint, once we’ve had children, we have tried to provide them with a healthy environment, a strong education, and a system of values. Why do we do this? So that our offspring can lead happy and productive lives. Well, Vitek was launched in recognition of the fact that, given recent advances in various fields of science, parents can now pursue this goal with an unprecedented level of intentionality.”
“Through genetic engineering,” Sam said.
HT put up both hands in soft protest. “We don’t really think of our work here as genetic engineering, Sam. We’re not brewing things up in a lab. We’re not going to introduce any new elements into your DNA, nor are we going to take any existing elements out. Rather, having taken a peek into the traits that your child will naturally receive, with your and Annie’s guidance, we’re going to push a few into the forefront and a few into the background. We like to think of it as genetic nudging.”
“Okay,” said Sam.
“But that’s only half the picture. You see, what we’ve done here—what’s so unusual about our approach—is that we’ve combined the genetic component with predictive modeling founded on large pools of demographic data.”
HT paused.
“Do you know what a credit score is?”
Sam was a little surprised by the question.
“It’s a tool the banks use,” he said after a moment, “to determine creditworthiness.”
“Exactly,” said HT. “But do you know how it works?”
Sam had to admit he didn’t, so HT obliged.
“The credit score was invented in the late 1980s by a mathematician and an engineer who realized that by analyzing historical patterns of consumer debt repayment, they could design algorithms that could predict an individual’s reliability as a mortgagee. For simplicity’s sake, let’s say you examine the credit histories of ten thousand Americans with similar incomes, expenses, and credit card balances who, twenty years ago, all took out fifteen-year mortgages. In looking at this cohort, what you discover is that virtually everyone who borrowed two hundred thousand dollars to buy a house ended up repaying the loan in full, while only half of those who borrowed three hundred thousand dollars to buy a bigger house succeeded in doing so. And those who borrowed four hundred thousand dollars to buy an even bigger house? Nearly every one of them defaulted. Practically speaking, what this means is that if I identify someone today with a similar profile to that cohort (making some adjustments for inflation and what have you), without even having to talk to him I know that if I loan him two hundred grand to buy a home, he’ll repay me; if I loan him three hundred grand, he might; and if I loan him four hundred grand, he won’t. The pattern becomes predictive.”
HT held out his upturned hands as if to say: Voilà.
“We are doing the same thing here, Sam, but instead of looking at aggregated financial histories to anticipate individual financial outcomes, we are looking at aggregated biographic histories to predict individual biographic outcomes. Drawing from a wide array of sources, we’ve assembled a database on three generations of Americans that includes not only their gender and ethnicity but information on the environments in which they were raised—like their parents’ religions, educations, professions, and political identifications. Then we have traced how the lives of the subjects actually unfolded. By mapping the foundational information of this large population alongside their eventual experiences, we can start to identify meaningful patterns that help us clarify how nature and nurture have combined to shape the lives they’ve led.”
The door opened, and Sybilla came in with a small ceramic cup and a thick green file, both of which she set on the table in front of HT.
“Were you offered something to drink? Do you want an espresso?”
“I’m good, thanks.”
Sybilla exited.
“Where was I?”
“The lives they’ve led…”
“Right! So let’s turn our attention to you and Annie. What we do here is we take the science I’ve just described, and we apply it to an individual case like yours. We use our analysis of your and Annie’s genomes, along with a little nudging, to refine the traits your child is going to be born with. We use the detailed profiles you’ve given us on yourselves to understand the environment in which your child will be raised. Then, by using those elements as a filter, we can identify within our proprietary database a significant cohort of people with a similar genetic makeup who were brought up in a similar environment and, based on their actual experiences, begin to anticipate—within a margin of acceptable error—the shape of the life that your child will lead.”
Having slowly leaned closer and closer to the table as he delivered this speech, HT now sat back in his chair and smiled.
“Crazy, right?”
Sam found himself sitting back in his chair too.
In retrospect, he’d had no idea what to expect from this meeting. When Annie had first suggested (in a rather emotional conversation) that maybe it was time to try IVF, it was Sam who had suggested they turn to Vitek—having heard about it from a colleague in the life science area, and then from a wealthy client who was a happy customer. But Sam hadn’t talked to either of them about the company in much detail. Once he and Annie had decided to go forward, he had filled out all of Vitek’s questionnaires to the best of his ability and dutifully generated a specimen at its lab in the city. But up until this afternoon, he had assumed that he and Annie would be able to pick their child’s sex, eliminate the risk of birth defects, and maybe get a marginal boost in IQ. A leg up in a competitive world, as it were. Not unlike sending your kid to a private school or securing him a well-placed internship. But what HT was talking about seemed like a far more elaborate value proposition…
“Pretty crazy,” Sam agreed after a moment.
“Crazy amazing!” HT said with a smile. Then he shifted gears again. “I know you’ve been on the road for the last few weeks. So, while we’ve gathered all your background materials, we haven’t had a chance to talk about options. The good news is that Annie has done a lot of the legwork for you. She’s spent hours here, meeting with me and a few of the other counselors, going through our catalog of profiles, and she has narrowed the opportunity set down to three choices for you to consider.”