>>7632692because that child can never actually be "human" because it will never develop any of the brain matter required for characteristically human thought. it's basically just a brainstem and a bag of organs.
and the parents have the most grievous case of cognitive dissonance because of it. their child is little more than a husk of a person, and will never be "alive" in any other sense than strictly biological, and will probably die soon, but yet there it is, breathing, responding to stimuli, so it must make it impossible to accept the inevitable truth that their child was dead on arrival.
as they're playing with it, they're conveying the fact that they silently cling onto the false hope that their child is normal and alive, feeling like they would be a soulless monster for accepting the obvious truth that this poor deformed thing will never be aware of either of their existences.
they were probably so excited when they found out they were pregnant. they bought all these clothes, all these toys. they had a plan for how they were going to approach the big talks, instill the right values on them. the imagined the day when they stood on the stage and accepted their diploma. probably thought it was all going to happen like they imagined, it was only a matter of time.
and they ended up getting this.
