Eeuugggh. So creepy! And I mean that in the best possible way. I felt bad for these people, the story of a couple saddled with crushing debt and wanting to start a family. I felt really bad for her even as I saw both of their choices tear them even further down. Her insistence on doing the work herself and her pride at her own workmanship doesn't see that she looks like a mockery of a human being--if she'd actually finished putting herself together that way then I have no doubt she would've ended up in the uncanny valley. When she looks like a skeleton it's easier to feel for her, but she has all the human parts but they're all kind of askew, it becomes more difficult.
I should've seen the baby coming. There were plenty of hints, with her obsession, with it showing that she has some basic but clearly limited abilities with mancing her own body. I, too, thought it was a gambling problem. When the baby shows up on the scene, that is a great horrific reveal, it crooning to its mother with all of its monstrous bits. For some reason the most horrifying of them was the fingers that moved independently of each other like a ball of worms. Eugggghh.
And like the best speculative stories it works both if you take it strictly literally and if you consider it as a metaphor.
Damn! Well done.
why do they have to sell their body parts? what makes them so valuable?
I gather that for the most part, bodies are just status symbols. I think that the ovaries were the only ones mentioned which mancers did not duplicate (presumably as an incentive to pay off debt)