Lackluster

Golden skin, golden eyes, and golden hair; she was the picture of beauty and perfection. Every man who had ever seen her was immediately smitten. She would have none of them. She was beautiful, intelligent, and wise the only things they were attracted to. It was her outer beauty. All she ever wanted was a man that could look past all of her beauty and bother to see the person within; none had even tried.

So, she decided that she would not have a man, or at least not until her beauty withered like the old. And even then, if she felt it necessary, she didn’t mind being alone. Her parents had the audacity to name her Luster in the year 2080. They were so obsessed with beauty that people genetically modified their children to suit their own standards of beauty. Luster had been no different; her parents had chosen her features from the latest fashion magazine in the office lobby.

Luster was a melding of several models; she had one's tiny nose, and another’s large eyes. The new standards made her sick and she felt like some experiment from a horror novel, something that should have been kept away from the world in a lab, not walking around like a normal human being. She had seen, in books once, what the natural human of the past had looked like. They were beautiful in her eyes. They had a natural dissymmetry that she found comforting. Some of them had large noses or eyes, and even some of them had big ears. She found the ones with big ears fascinating. She wished she had some oddity to call her own, but no such thing had been written into her genetic code.

In 2080 no one was odd or malformed…no one had large noses, ears, or funny-looking fingers. Those defects had been entirely eliminated by genetic enhancements. Luster’s golden hair had been the most expensive investment her parents had made toward her future. Her parents had gold, lots of gold…everyone had money.

Bills were one of the most abundant items with the invention of the MoneyTree (A tree that grew bills.) People were trading goods and services for nearly nothing now. Money was worth nothing; they had gone back to the tried and true method of the bartering system. It worked against everyone’s belief; gold had become the most valuable and tradable substance on the planet. The genetic enhancements on a single unborn child cost no more than the gold that could be found in small necklace chains.

Over the last two years, Luster’s depression had gotten worse. She had depression all her life. Even with all the genetic enhancements and tampering they still could not figure out how to root out depression. As a young girl, she had tried many times to figure out what she would have looked like if she hadn’t been forced to undergo treatments when she was too young to decide for herself. She had looked at both her parents and tried to draw what a combination of them might have looked like, but it was to no avail. Her parents had gone through surgeries as well to correct their imperfections.

Luster was a ballet dancer of great renown, but people only came for her beauty, not her grace as a dancer. Ballet was the only thing she could do to lose herself anymore if she could ignore the crowd. Ballet was the only source of her joy, the only thing she ever decided to do for herself. The arrogant men who wanted her to marry them didn’t see the rigorous training she had to put herself through to keep fit. They never saw the grace of her limbs and the quickness of her twirls…no, all they saw was her pretty face. The theaters would be full of men and women who would whistle and cat-call at her day and night. She couldn’t stand it.

Luster went home that night after her last recital, miffed at the people who had come to watch her perform. She put her gold leotard and ballet shoes into their proper places and went to the bathroom to get a shower. She looked in the mirror at herself as she did every day. Her flawless hair, skin, and eyes always unnerved her. What would she give to have a day when her hair reflected the pieced-together monster she was and stood on end? The whole evening, she had been thinking about her perfections; as she examined herself in the mirror, she had an epiphany. Maybe she would choose a man to marry; after all, she would marry a man and begin a family… but her children would not be modified. They would be genuine and beautiful and imperfect.

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