“Somewhere in the middle of this century, some scientist cat in Des Moines was having some fun with a CRISPR experiment. Something got out of hand, and within two generations, all the babies born in the U.S. had the cuttlefish gene that caused their skin to change color according to their emotions.”
Mr. Wilson sat on the edge of his desk and surveyed the class, trembling slightly. He had cerebral palsy, but nobody cared about that, even though some students had wondered why he didn’t get gene therapy. They liked his mop of dense black hair, and they thought his heavy rimmed black glasses were sort of cool in a retro way, but the fact that his skin remained a pasty gray color meant they never knew what he was feeling, an unfortunate characteristic many of his students found upsetting enough to give him poor evaluations at the end of the year. For today’s teenagers, not seeing a person’s emotions on their skin was like being deaf and blind.
“Is that why my grandparents are not full color?” asked Misty. Her face, neck, and arms lit up like a neon sign, rippling from pink to yellow to orange and back to pink again. She glanced at Matt, her current wanna-be conquest to make sure he was watching. He was, judging by the blues and browns flowing across his stubbly chin and neck. Boys could not hide their lust, any more than girls could hide their desire for conquest.
“Your grandparents were first-gen color, I’m guessing,” Mr. Wilson said. His head bobbled as he carefully stood up. The students blinked with shades of lavender and gray and held their collective breath to see if he would lose his balance. He looked around the classroom. “All of you have color,” he observed. “So you must be third-gen, at least.”
“Why don’t you, Mr. Wilson?” asked Doug, the high school’s star football player. “I mean, if you don’t mind me asking.” He glanced at Misty. His face was a hopeful mix of green and brown, like a patchy lawn. However, they had had a nasty breakup, and she was done with Doug, judging by the angry cerulean that flushed across her cheeks.
“I applied for gene editing,” Mr. Wilson said. “But because of the cerebral palsy, I was rejected. They said it wouldn’t work.”
“But Mr. Wilson, what if you have a kid with someone colored?” asked Gretchen, blushing bright orange. She hardly ever talked in class. “I mean, would that kid look like you or like your wife?”
Mr. Wilson looked at the class for a long moment, head nodding. “You probably don’t know this, but I am married to a woman with the cuttlefish gene. Our first child is parti-colored. Her skin looks like confetti pretty much all the time. She can’t adjust it. She has to wear makeup and go to a special school. She was the lucky one. Our second child did not receive the gene at all.”
The class gasped in horror. A range of hues strobed across their faces.
“What happened to it . . . ?” someone dared to ask.
“We had to put him in a special home. A place that takes care of kids like him, kids who can’t express themselves with color. He’s ten now. He is learning to communicate his feelings using words, the same way I had to learn.”
“I can’t imagine not being able to see what my friends and family are feeling,” Misty said thoughtfully. “That must be really hard for you.”
Mr. Wilson smiled. “I’ll bring him to class tomorrow. You can meet him yourself. It’s good for you to get used to seeing people who can’t easily express their feelings. I’m not the only person without the cuttlefish gene. You might end up falling in love with someone like me, who knows?”
The entire class shuddered and lit up with a range of colors, mostly alternating shades of puce, chartreuse, and periwinkle, as the horror of that prospect sank in.