That was excellent. Well done! What a deft narrative touch...
Way to cover everything in on breath Internalogic. You've pretty much relegated the rest of us to some form of 'me too' (welcome to the forums, BTW), but it'll do it long form anyway:
Terrific story! Very entertaining and though provoking. This is probably going to end up one of my all-time favorites, right next to Cinderella Suicide, and will get several repeat listens.
In his outro Steve pondered what prompted the creation of such specialized 'children'. Although it wasn't explicitly stated in the story I didn't envision a world on the brink (or past the edges) of destruction so much as a faulty 'utopia' created through genetic engineering. A world populated largely by "just planes", and where elective genetic engineering had resulted in several sub-cultures of modified super-children. Ma and Pa Justplane wanted a child who would be very, very artistic/smart/strong/graceful/etc and would stand out from the crowd, but got more than they bargained for. The hope was to grow the next Michelangelo, but they got
Lee Quinones instead.
I equated the genetic engineering as being equivalent to specialized schooling; You can send a musically gifted child to Juilliard, but they may still join a rock band.
The point Steve and that Heinlein guy raised about specialization got me thinking. I've always been what Steve referred to as a 'generalist' and I've never been very happy about it. I know a little bit about a lot of things, but not a lot about any one thing. This is frustrating socially in that I can converse about many things, but when any particular topic start going in depth my well runs dry. My options are to change topics or give up on the exchange of information, acknowledge that I'm out of my depth, and start asking questions. This was hard on my ego as a youth because I though admitting ignorance was admitting weakness. I'm coming to understand that A)I'm not alone, and B) there's no crime in it.
Most people, when questioned directly, often run out of information quickly on a lot of topics, but are willing to share what they have. And if they do know more about a few specialized topics, they are often eager to talk about it.
I hope that through intensive schooling I can become specialized in a problem solving field, thus bridging the gap between my general nature and specialized interest.
To contrast with Hineline's quote:
"All things will be produced in superior quantity and quality, and with greater ease, when each man works at a single occupation, in accordance with his natural gifts, and at the right moment, without meddling with anything else." -Plato