Karl had always imagined he’d have a large family. Four, five kids at least. He’d been the youngest of seven, the quiet one, always smiling and watching the rest, and always getting tickled too. As his siblings left home one by one he’d missed the laughter, the company, the sense of being surrounded by people – so he wanted to fill his own house with the same boisterous noise. Then he’d met Cris, who made a fair bit of noise on his own. And as things had turned out, Kaz was their only child. He and Cris spoiled him rotten. They couldn’t help themselves.

And now Kaz, their baby Kaz, was having a child. The first of many, he secretly hoped, though far be it from him to interfere. He’d already got all the old toys out of the attic – they’d never been thrown away, of course – and he’d even started playing with some of the Lego. Just to remind himself, so he could help build the houses, the farmyard, the space station … Yes, he’d spent a while playing with the Lego. And he’d introduced himself to Will, his grandson-to-be, through the pouch. It was therapeutic, to whisper to someone through the pouch like that, palm-to-palm. Easier in a way than talking to someone face-to-face. Though Cris liked to call out to him from across the room: Good morning, baby Will, Grandpa’s arrived!

Karl himself had been a natural birth, as had all his brothers and sisters – his parents were traditional, at a time when it was still the old versus the new. He’d been born a month premature; his parents liked to tell the story. It had a happy ending. There were pictures of his tiny black body looking all wrinkled in one of those transparent cots they used for babies in the neonatal ward – just like in the leaflets about the risks of natural birth you got at school. He didn’t think it had affected him, but then how could you ever really know? Perhaps, given that extra month in the womb he’d have grown up to be a six-four prop for Harlequins like Cris, rather than a choreographer. Put like that, he was rather glad to have been born premature.

By the time he was an adult, though, everyone knew the baby pouch was the safest, the best way – it wasn’t just accepted, it was preferred. So he and Cris hadn’t had to fight for their right to have a baby with the pouch. FullLife had frozen eggs available for anyone who needed them. And they knew there’d be no trouble getting milk, since genetically engineered milk was available to all parents, specifically tailored, the healthiest option. They hadn’t had to suffer looks of surprise or, worse, activists telling them they had no right to jointly father a child. Incredible, how far humanity had come in a few generations.