You Have Arrived at Your Destination

by Amor Towles

[Quirky Cat]

Amor Towels’ You Have Arrived At Your Destination is the fourth novella in the Forward Collection – a project created by six different authors. The entire idea of the project was to showcase a far-flung future, all written with the hopes of getting the reader (or listener) to think.
Sam and his wife have finally decided to have a child. But they’re not willing to leave anything to chance – so they’ve reached out to Vitek. Vitek is a company that believes that they can design a child’s genes so accurately as to determine their future behavior and their path in life itself.
This might sound compelling to some, but things quickly turn disturbing for Sam, as he sees more and more about his potential future child and their life.

“There was no better predictor of an earnings disappointment than a brand-new corporate headquarters.”

In many ways, You Have Arrived At Your Destination feels like the most disturbing novella of the bunch. Perhaps that is because it is simultaneously believable (in the achievable sense) and far too familiar in tone to something we see all the time.
You Have Reached Your Destination is a novella that deals heavily with the concept of nature versus nurture. And it’s willing to force the reader to think about that concept along the way. Sam’s journey is a disturbing one. Not because of anything that happened to him, but because of the presumption he was confronted with.
As mentioned above, You Have Arrived At Your Destination is part of a collection of novellas. I’ve already read the others, so I can safely say that they’re all quite different from one another. But they’re all worth the read – especially if you’re interested in some food for thought.

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