[ WP ] Mankind switch to birth by selection . Women can apply to carry out children like a regular job .

There was an oil smudge on the glass surface of the synthetic womb. 
 
 Ronnie grunted, set down his heat-vac where it stood, careful to make a mental note of his sweep across the floor so that he would n't lose his place, and stepped over to the cold, frost steaming surface of unit 1906. He leaned close to the reflective material and let out a long `` haaaaaaah''. The warmth from his breath fogged over the glass, and he took out his rag, and ran it over the smooth, freezing, industrial grade polymer. 
 
 The smudge was gone. 
 
 Ronnie sighed and slowly put his rag back into the left breast pocket of his navy blue janitorial uniform, a one piece jumpsuit that kept his body heat from dropping below freezing. He stood there for a moment. It was late, he thought, and he glanced over to his left, There, about 500 meters away, on the walls of Big Mother, warehouse B42, was a holographic time display, with the large red digital numbers `` 23:23'' on it. 
 
 Almost midnight. He sighed again. 
 
 He always marveled that, however far away from the timepiece he was, it always seemed to be the same distance away from him. Something to do with an optical illusion. 
 
 He sighed a third time, hands on his hips. `` I wish I was smart,'' He muttered, fully aware of the fact that he had n't returned to his cleaning. 
 
 There was something about stopping in the middle of a routine, that made a person reluctant to go back to the same grind. The same way there was something about stopping in the middle of life, stuck in a dead end job, that made him want to just lie down and never get up. But while he was figuratively in his recline, he could at least look around and appreciate the sterile beauty of his surroundings, the superconductor plastigel flooring that carried electric currents into the endless columns of synthetic wombs around him, the solar panels on the ceiling that were just as good if not better than actual sunlight. 
 
 And then he looked up and into unit 1906, seemingly aware for the first time recognizing what was in front of him. The vat was about 5 meters tall, a transparent pillar filled with some viscous fluid greenish in tint. In the fluid floated a girl, respirator hooked up to her mouth, otherwise naked from the neck down. She was beautiful of course. Ronnie had yet to see anyone not beautiful, man or woman, floating inside a vat. She was a perfect genetic specimen, of course, engineered to be immune from virtually every disease and ailment nature had ever invented, the athletic prowess of an olympic gymnast, the endurance of a long distance runner, and the strength of an average ursidae. He could see all this just in the shade of her skin, the lines of her tendons, the lean musculature on top of titanium strengthed bone structure. Her flesh glowed occasionally beneath her skin, a purplish hue laced with occasional thin blue streaks that flashed and died like lightning. 
 
 `` I wish I was rich'', he muttered to himself, as he looked up into her face. 
 
 Behind the respirator, the only significant features he could discern were her cheekbones, her nose, and her eyes. Her eyes were half open, of course, but dead in the sense that her optical nerves were being processed elsewhere, living out a fantastical life in some simulation of childhood, the parents only spending time with them in a fake world, until the cybernetic enhancements were complete. 
 
 She would be about 16, Ronnie guessed. Even with all the advances in bioengineering and nanotech, the full physical transformation would not finish until she was well after 18. The parents, he thought, put a lot of investment into her, to make her nearly indestructible. He did n't blame them of course. Children were precious, he knew, although only rhetorically, because he lacked the education to understand just how much. But he knew enough to know that they were too valuable to risk in the chaos of the real world. Why, just last year, he dropped a floor buffer on his foot, and nearly had to get a replacement, for both of them. 
 
 Of course he would never have children himself. A mandatory operation at birth took away his ability. But he was ok with that. He had everything he could ever need, a decent apartment, a job that he enjoyed, even if it went nowhere. He even had a cat he took care of, someone who'd be waiting for him at home. And then there were the games. Every night he would spend his dreams in the Hub, the virtual world that every person on the planet plugged into when they lay down to bed. It was probably not dissimilar to where the girl was right now. 
 
 Ronnie grew up in a vat like this too, although probably not as expensive, and without the cybernetic enhancements. He woke up when he was 14, much younger than those who had the resources to complete their neural and physical modifications. As a ward of the state, he was bred only to serve as a genetic baseline for the rest of the population. Something about genetic drift and disaster prevention, he remembered from one of his Hub courses. But being a baseline was n't so bad. No one treated him differently in the Hub. Everyone was there to relax, and maybe create a nice story for themselves. 
 
 He was halfway into remembering about his Hub dream last night, skydiving off a cliff eight thousand miles high, when the communicator band around his wrist chirped. It would probably be his supervisor, George Kent. 
 
 `` Hello?'' He said into the thin elastic strap. 
 
 `` Hey Ronnie!'' George's familiar voice greeted him. `` Almost midnight, buddy. How far did you get today?'' 
 
 `` Hey, George.'' Ronnie answered, while walking back to his heat-vac, he pressed a button on it and read the number on it. `` Oh about 40 meters.'' 
 
 `` Ah haha, keep getting caught up in your daydreams, do n't ya?'' George laughed. 
 
 `` Yeah, you know me George, haha.'' Ronnie laughed sheepishly back at him. 
 
 `` Well, no worries, Buddy, we'll let the little tin buggers handle it.'' There was a click on the end of the line, where George pressed a button, and inside the warehouse, the utility closets on the edges of the building slid open, and an entire army of robots, the size of dogs and cats, and even flying ones like mosquitoes droned out, filling the columns of empty space between the synthetic wombs, sucking up dirt, killing microbes, de-ionizing particles, and generally sanitizing the atmosphere. 
 
 Ronnie rolled up his heat-vac and began walking toward his office at the other end of the giant room, 40 meters away. George was still talking to him on his wristband. 
 
 `` Hey Ronnie, might run into you in the Hub tonight. Heard there's a deer hunting game I've been meaning to try out. It's right next to the sky diving station you always waste your time at.'' 
 
 `` Oh yeah? Maybe I'll see you on the way down.'' Ronnie said, wondering if he remembered to fill the cat's food dish this afternoon. She's gon na be angry at him if he did n't. But that was ok. He had the Hub.
