Welcome to If Ben, the show about how technology is changing our lives and our future.

I'm Shannon Paulus.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to If Ben. We're coming to you from Slate and Future Tense,

a partnership between Slate, Arizona State University, and New America.

We are recording this on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 27.

On today's show, we'll explore an imaginary future where DNA alteration is not only easy, but trendy,

and high school kids pay top dollar to adjust their appearance.

Guiding me on this journey will be the writer E. Lily You.

Her short story, titled Zero in Babel, was recently published as part of Slate's Future

Tense Fiction Series, a series of short stories from Future Tense and ASU's Center for Science

and the Imagination about how technology and science will change our lives.

We'll start with a short excerpt from the story, and then I'll talk to you about the inspiration behind it.

After that, my colleague Aaron Mack will join me for Don't Close My Tabs,

where we'll talk about the best things we saw on the web this week.

That's all coming up on

if then. And now, the beginning of Zero in Babel by E. Lily You. Since the start of school in

September, everyone who mattered in the social hierarchy of ninth grade at the Babel North High School,

not including the boys, had acquired purple-pedaled

eyes. Everyone blinked their flower eyes at each other in the hallways between classes,

a firefly code that those without the cosmetic could still understand, and the message they

transmitted ran, I am beautiful, you are beautiful. We are beautiful. Imogen was not

beautiful. Imogen had brown skin, a wide and stubby nose, and hair that went arid to oily from

...