She walked into her daughter's bedroom.
The life history of a child stared back at her as if it had a life of its own.
Had much changed in three thousand years?
When were parents first required to keep their children at home until age 100? Her grandmother was a grandmother by that age. By accident, of course, but that can still happen.
Now that perpetual living is affordable for most average citizens, some experts predict that a typical childhood may last a few hundred years.
For the wealthy who've supported perpetual living methodology refinement for a couple of thousand years, reproduction is put off until adults have experienced their fourth or fifth childhood.
After reaching 100, her daughter insisted on stopping birthday parties in her honour. Instead, she held memorial services for ancestors who didn't have access to natural life-extending health benefits.
Today might be the day to push her daughter into a housing unit of her own.
But what would she do with the room?
How do you preserve childhood memories that are represented by inanimate objects?
The animated ones had already left to create memories for themselves, some living in species-neutral dormitory housing to learn alongside college students not privileged to give "birth" to new lifeforms in their childhood, like her daughter had, to get over the mothering instinct that crops up even in today's enlightened society.
Her daughter would have to adjust to a life without having a mother to run the household. At 500, it's time to find a companion with whom you'll select the genetic material to carry on your combined best learning/socialising methods.
Somewhere back on Earth her great-great-great-great-great grandfather was still alive and running a business empire he'd inherited a thousand years ago. Would he take in her daughter and teach her how to adjust to a life of her own?
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