Pick the puppy

Dr. Riderpoop bent over the child, dangling his gold pocket watch from his steady fingers. The little boy peered up at him from beneath bright red hair and a dusty speckle of freckles. His hospital gown gathered clumpily along his knees and he swayed slightly, eyes glazed over, with a blank face.

"Do you want him to be more shy or more outgoing?" Dr. Riderpoop asked.
Mr. and Mrs. Stephenson huddled together. His arm was around his shoulder. She was shaking slightly.
"Are you sure this is safe?" Mrs. Stephenson asked.
"Very. We've been psychologically engineering children for years now," the scientist said.
"And it's just like... hypnosis?" Mr. Stephenson said.
"Yeah but I don't make them pull down their pants and act weird."
"Oh."
"Unless you want that."
"What?"
"Can you do anything about his red hair?" asked Mrs. Stephenson. "I heard it's a weaker gene."
"No," said Dr. Riderpoop. "Hair color is not a mental trait."
"Can we come back for tune ups to his personality?" Mr. Stephenson said.
"Certainly, it's like a hairstyle, you gotta cut it off before it gets atrociously ugly."

Dr. Riderpoop ran his calloused hand through the kid's red hair. The hypnotist looked around his office and felt the same hesitation he felt at every adoption engineering. The room was clean and organized, smelling of science, despite the fact that most of the science conducted was in their minds. He couldn't let the parents see his hesitation. The parents were scared and nervous and mildly hysterical. Maybe they had lost a child or were unable to conceive. They were unsure of what they wanted but they knew it had to be perfect. The doctor couldn't let them know that he wasn't sure what the kids would turn out like. He wasn't sure what would happen to their souls, or even what the soul was. He just had to take a deep breath and lie to the parents while he dove in and fucked around with fingerpaint in their future children's heads.

And when Dr. Riderpoop went home to take care of his own elderly father, Dr. Riderpoop senior, he put his head in his hands while his father gave him a cup of hot cocoa and a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

"You're a good son," the father would say. And the young scientist would shrug, not knowing that the biological implication was flimsier than supposed, as his father fingered his own gold pocket watch beneath the table.