CREATIVITY

PREGNANCY IS bypassed by a baby-in-a-bottle production line. But unfortunately... A new War of the Roses looms as twin heirs to the throne are unbottled simultaneously. As neither is the first-born, who succeeds? The constitutional crisis is fudged by abolishing the monarchy - but fanatical royalists restore it and cleave Britain in twain by planting high explosives down the Pennine Chain (Clair Hubble) [8].

Saboteurs mix up the sleep-teaching tapes and mixed-up Alpha Plus intellectuals want to do Epsilon Minus work, and vice versa. Following the nuclear war, with bottling plants destroyed and survival of the species at stake, nobody knows how to have sex, so humanity, like the Tasmanian aborigines, dies out (Di Wilson) [6]. Producing 87 Bokanovskified identical twins makes picking up the kids from school complicated. Teachers prefer it, though, as with the children having identical IQs, they only need mark one paper in 87. But when one dies, the other 86, disconsolate, all jump off cliffs, like lemmings, in a mass suicide pact (Kate Hardy) [5].

There's a regrettable occurrence when the Queen smashes what should have been champagne against a new liner's bow. Richard Branson's latest venture, Virgin Births, is stormed by an ecclesiastical rent-a-mob who smash all the equipment, burn the laboratory to the ground and manage to out-Herod King Herod (Ivor Gleek) [4]. The wrong ingredients are used, and clones of Dolly the Sheep overrun the UK. Children are born acutely claustrophobic, burn down all buildings and mankind reverts to an outdoor nomadic existence. The 2005 UK Cider Festival is ruined as mislabelled babies are delivered instead of scrumpy (Stuart Cooper) [4].

Careless lab technicians double the dose, leading to a generation of conjoined twins. Desperate parents wanting Alpha offspring pay for black market lab specimens who are fatally flawed, not outliving their mid-teens (Mike Gifford) [3]. Clear glass gives a womb with a view and the occupants decide they don't want to leave. Using Guinness bottles produces stout babies (Paul Holland) [2]. Drop-by-drop feeding of measured nutrients replaces breast-feeding, and grown men get sexually aroused by pipettes (Ruth Abbott) [2]. Single children are no more - every baby is part of a six-pack (Mike Richards) [1].

Week 9: Geneticists recreate Stone Age man in a Jurassic Park-type experiment. What could go wrong? Ideas to CreativityColumn@hotmail.co.uk or Creativity, Features, The Independent, 191 Marsh Wall, London E14 9RS by Monday 21 February. Results: 1 Mar. 15 Feb: Small States. 22 Feb: Bottled brains. Leaders: Mike G & Clair 31, Di 30, Stuart & Kate 27, Ruth 24, Ivor 16