Mr. and Mrs. Locke sat petrified on their sofa and watched their daughter Genny with frozen stares. The toddler is not yet two years old, but she is swearing at the contestants on Jeopardy! with undisguised contempt.
“Moron! How the hell could you possibly mistake Newton’s Laws for Einsteinian theory?!” she yelled.
Mrs. Locke looked exhausted as she related the fantasic details of the past few years of their lives. Little Genny had begun talking the day she was born. “She said to the doctor, ‘Just give me a towel and get the hell out of here. I’ll cut the damn thing myself,'” she recalled.
Mr. Locke seems troubled. “We’ve been under a lot of stress, with the way she runs the house,” he tells me. “She demands meals and baths be on time by the second, rations our usage of the family computer, won’t allow anything colored with Yellow no. 5 in the house…”
Soon afterwards, little Genny turned around and looked at her mother, whose eyes widened slightly. Mrs. Locke looked set to run away in terror. “I need a change,” little Genny said, as her golden curls bounced innocently.
“Why don’t you change it yourself, sweety?” Mr. Locke asked softly.
“Why the hell should I?” Genny retorted, and walked down the hall to the nursery.
“We really don’t know what to do. I’m at my wit’s e–“
“NOW!” Genny then shouted from the changing table, and Mrs. Lock sprang into action like a prodded cow.
I took the opportunity to ask about plans for the future. “We’ve got a summer home in the Keyes she doesn’t know about,” Mr. Locke said in hushed tones. “Once she’s in college next year, she’s insisted on moving into a dorm — that will give us time to change our identities and get the hell out of here. Then she’ll just forget all about us when she takes over the world and forces humanity to bend to her will. We hope.”
Mrs. Locke padded lightly through the living room on her way to the kitchen. “I’m going to take a pill,” she informed us in a tired voice, and vanished.
“One thing is for sure,” Mr. Locke told me. “We’re never having another child. Ever.”
