“Back away from the gate and the road,” came a female voice from one of the Dragonflies’ loudspeakers. “Protestors must maintain at least fifty feet from the guard shack and entering vehicles. I repeat: back away from the road and the gate.”
Several of the protesters turned to look at the Dragonflies, but then they resumed their chanting, a mix of two slogans: “Health for families! Health for women!” from the left side, and “Keep your legislation off of my body!” from the right. Jessica was amused to see people on both sides carrying signs that demanded the government tell the truth about Genovirus-1—the so-called “Samford Virus.” It was a favorite conspiracy theory among both pro- and anti-SRP activists to blame the other side for purposefully releasing the virus on humanity some fifty years ago.
The Genovirus-1 pandemic was directly responsible for the implementation of Safe Reproductive Practices in the United States and around the globe. The virus had emerged in Brazil and Argentina and spread all over the world within months, causing horrific birth defects and stillbirths. Jessica still remembered being in grade school and seeing images of some of the deformities for the first time: children born without eyes; portions of the skull missing so the brain was exposed; lungs missing. The only foolproof way to ensure an embryo remained unexposed to the virus was to use an artificial uterus—a relatively new invention at the time, affordable only to the most affluent of parents who were willing to drop three million dollars or more for the privilege. With the virus running rampant, the 30th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution effectively nationalized the science behind artificial uteri and made them free—and mandatory—for all births. China was next, followed by India, Australia, and most of South America. When the European Union finally accepted the necessity five years later, the U.N. began imposing bans on travel and trade with nations that still allowed natural child births. A safe and healthy birth was declared the first of all human rights—chronologically, at least—and military interventions were authorized in places—primarily the religious oligarchies in the Middle East and severely underdeveloped nations in Africa—that refused to ensure it.
“Anyone who refuses to back away from the road,” warned the female voice again, “will be subdued and arrested.”
The drones formed circles around the crowds and made mechanical noises as small compartments on their bellies opened and lowered what looked like guns. Sedative darts. Jessica had seen them used at a riot in Washington last month. The tranquilizer was slow-acting so that victims didn’t drop immediately and injure themselves. At the riot, people shot would try to run away only to find they could barely walk. After a few minutes, they’d sit down or drop to their hands and knees, and then finally lie down and sleep.
The gate opened, a car drove through, and the line moved up. The road inclined downward slightly, so Jessica put her bike into neutral and let it roll forward.
The crowds on either side began to shift backwards, the drones circling around them like herd dogs. The Dragonflies settled to the ground. Their long, narrow black wings folded upwards as they landed.
When the last car ahead of her passed through the gate, Jessica started her motor and pulled up to the guard shack window.
“I'll need to see your Reproduction Permit or the receipt for your application,” the old attendant said, looking not at her but at the crowd to Jessica’s right.
After she parked, Jessica followed a family of four through the huge main entrance, glass and steel towering over them and reflecting the morning sun. Two moms and a dad accompanied a pretty girl sporting a shaved head. The group chattered in animated voices.
“I can’t believe they used to carry around babies in their bellies,” said the girl. “Like animals!”
Automatic double doors opened for them to enter, and a wave of cool, sterile-smelling air exhaled from inside.
“That’s nature’s way,” said one of the women.
The girl murmured something that sounded like disgust.
Jessica followed the family into the vestibule, which had walls of polished granite. Halfway to the ceiling, two glass-covered walkways bridged the gap from one side of the room to the other. As Jessica watched, several people wearing lab-coats walked across the bridges in small groups. None of them looked down to the floor below.
Jessica followed the family to the reception desk, where a young man with black tattoos in a tribal pattern on his face and neck smiled to greet them.
“Hello,” he said. “You have an appointment with Dr. Whitlock?”
Jessica backed away from the desk and the family and looked for a place to sit. But there was no waiting area. No chairs or couches, either. Nothing to interrupt the expanse of the vestibule other than a few potted trees and an island of holograph terminals. A genderless, computer-generated face hovered in one of the holograms.
“Welcome to Artemis, the most advanced reproduction facility in the eastern United States,” the face said. “Here, aspiring parents of all kinds can seek help with every possible form of parenthood—from natural fertilization and gestation in one of our next-generation artificial wombs to cloning and genetic enhancement.”
The holograph showed a time-lapse video of a baby developing inside an artificial uterus. Then the image shifted to show a man eating at an outdoor cafe with a boy who looked identical to him except for his skin, which was the same color blue as the midday sky.
The face reappeared. “We also offer artificial lactation treatments for all biological sexes so that everyone can participate fully in the experience of parenthood.”
“Ms. Brantley?” said a voice from somewhere behind her.
Jessica turned and faced a younger man than she had expected.
“Taylor Hayden,” he said, offering his hand. It felt smooth and cool, but not feminine at all. He had a strong grip. His brown eyes caught the light of the morning sun outside.
“Jessica,” she said, shaking his hand. “Thanks for meeting me, Dr. Hayden.”
“Please, call me Taylor,” he said. “And it’s no problem. I have a few minutes before my first client today. My nephew was excited to hear that you were interviewing me. He has to read the news for homework, and he loves your pieces. He’s very interested in the politics of cloning.”
Oh, great. Here it comes.
Hayden smiled. “I think he has a little crush, too.”
Jessica laughed. Not what she’d expected. “How old is your nephew?”
“He’s twelve. One of the first cloned children in North America.”
“Oh, wow,” said Jessica, bracing herself for a remark about the clone pedophilia article. But again, no accusations of bias. His brown eyes remained empty of any kind of judgment, good or bad.
Why am I so damned touchy today?
Her own mind supplied the answer in the form of a disemboweled pig.
“Do you have children yourself?” she asked.
Hayden laughed uncomfortably, and Jessica’s heart sank. Had she crossed a line? But then he seemed to recover and gave her a genuine smile.
“No,” he said. “I’m excluded from child permits because there’s an elevated risk of genetic disorders in my family history.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” said Jessica. She could kick herself.
“It’s not a problem. And I comfort myself in the knowledge that I’ve used my talents to help a lot of people who otherwise might not be allowed to have children. You know how the government is.” He smiled. “Besides, in my line of work, there isn’t a lot of time for kids, anyway.”
“I understand that,” said Jessica, wondering what he meant by that remark about the government. But the lobby wasn’t the right place to catch him off guard with personal questions. She’d need to get him comfortably engaged in private conversation first. “Should we—?”
“Actually,” he said. “Before we discuss the issue that you want to talk about, I thought I’d show you something. Come on.”
He led her past
the reception desk to an expanse of blank wall. Then he pressed his open palm against a small, black glass square on one of the granite panels. A blue light flickered through the square, and the panel popped free of the wall with a pneumatic hiss.
“Fancy,” said Jessica.
Dr. Hayden grinned. “Top secret stuff in here.”
The panel opened to a brightly lit hallway lined with doors. Jessica stepped through first, and Dr. Hayden pulled the panel shut behind them. A mechanism in the wall hissed again as the door latched shut.
“This way,” Dr. Hayden said, stepping past her and down the hall. He turned left at a junction and led her down another identical hall. Each door had a black handprint reader like the panel in the lobby. No doorknobs. “Just a little farther.”
At the end of the hall waited a desk with three nurses. Hayden waved, and one nurse came down the hall to meet them, smiling.
“You get to see mine,” she said, her smile widening into a grin as she reached out to shake Jessica’s hand. “I’m counting down the weeks until I get to take him home.”
Jessica looked at Hayden, who shrugged.
“I thought before we discuss the case you’re following, you’d like to see a fetus the same age as the one in question,” he said.
“A fetus,” said the nurse, rolling her eyes at Dr. Hayden. “His name is Antonio.”
Hayden ignored her. “Mel has kindly agreed to let you come and see hers. But no pictures.”
“I don’t mind if you—” Mel began.
“No pictures.”
Jessica looked first at the doctor and then at Mel. The woman obviously liked the idea of her baby’s picture or a video holograph ending up in the news, but Jessica needed this interview. No sense in antagonizing the good doctor yet. “My editor wouldn’t let me run pictures anyway. It might bias how people read the article.”
“We wouldn’t want any bias to show up in the news, would we?” Dr. Hayden said, but he winked. “Please scrub your hands.”
Jessica put her hand under a sanitizer dispenser on the wall and scrubbed. The other two did the same. Then Hayden put his hand on a palm scanner and opened a door. Warm air flowed out into the hall.
The room inside was dark except for a pale orange glow from the gestation capsule in the middle.
“Go on in,” said Mel.
Jessica had seen pictures of an artificial uterus before, but she'd never seen one in person. Its pedestal, which was made of some kind of white plastic, stood about three feet high with the oval-shaped capsule at the top. The top third of the oval was made of some kind of clear shell. It looked a little like the canopy of a jet.
“Ain’t he beautiful?” said Mel. She stood by the pedestal and clasped her hands together.
Jessica stepped forward, feeling suddenly like she had at altar call in her grandmother’s Pentecostal church, which she hadn’t attended since she was eight years old. The muscles in her thighs trembled a little, threatening to let her fall. Suddenly she was afraid she wouldn’t be able to approach the capsule.
“You okay?” said Dr. Hayden.
She couldn’t tell him about the irrational fear that gripped her heart. The fear that instead of seeing a baby in the capsule, she’d see a pig’s face.
“I’ve always been—”
—nervous around kids, she tried to finish, but then she saw the fetus move and forgot about everything else. She had expected it—him—to be curled into a ball, asleep, but this baby was fully awake. His eyes were open, and he was looking right at Jessica.
“Oh, my God,” she said. “He sees me?”
“No,” said Dr. Hayden. “The viewport is a one-way clear polymer. Transparent from our side, but it’s only barely translucent on the other side. He can see shadows moving. That’s it.”
The baby had his right thumb in his mouth, and the other he held out in front of his face, wiggling the fingers slowly, testing them one at a time. The lower half of his body was in shadow, hidden by the immense darkness of that womb of plastic. Jessica wasn’t sure, but she thought his eyes were brown, maybe dark green.
“We try to make the experience as close to a natural uterus as possible,” said Hayden.
Mel waved Jessica toward the capsule and lowered her head. She pressed her ear against the plastic shell on the back side of the oval. “Listen.”
Jessica hesitated.
“It’s okay,” said Dr. Hayden.
Jessica put her ear against the opposite side of the capsule, and she heard it. A heartbeat. A strong heartbeat. Thumping at about sixty beats a minute.
“I don’t understand,” she said. “Is that the baby?”
“That’s me!” said Mel, stepping back from the capsule.
“We do an internal recording of the mother’s breathing and heartbeat before conception,” said Dr. Hayden. “Voices of both parents, as well—when that’s possible. Antonio has spent his entire gestation hearing Mel’s heartbeat, breathing, voice, laugh, all of it.” He shrugged. “Like I said, we try to replicate nature as much as technologically possible.”
7
After a late breakfast, Val sat down on the front porch steps. She had grown up in a suburb of Atlanta surrounded by noise. Now the things she valued most were quiet and privacy. Here, fifty miles from the city, they might go for days without hearing anything except the sound of birds or squirrels or the occasional gas-burner traveling down Highway 331, which passed about two miles from their front gate.
That bitch. That stupid bitch.
The screen door opened. Kim joined her.
“I talked to him about having to stay inside a while,” he said.
“We’re going to lose this fight,” said Val. “God, why did we do this? What were we thinking?”
Kim sighed and shifted so that his arm pressed against hers. “We knew what we were getting into when I took that implant out of you.”
“I’m not talking about it being hard,” said Val.
“I know,” said Kim. “But it won’t do him any good for us to go getting pessimistic. We brought him into this world knowing he’d be illegal. Now we have to believe that we can protect him. If we have to, we’ll take him to Maeko.”
Suddenly Val felt like she’d been sitting still for all of Braden’s life. She stood. “They’re going to be watching us. Every move we make. You really think we could drive him all the way to your sister’s house in Texas?”
“So... what?” Kim said. “We steal a car?”
Val laughed. “I’m being serious.”
“I know you’re being serious. What do you want me to say? A guy from CPS came here, we had a conversation, and now he’s gone. They might spy on us a few days with drones, and then that’ll be it. Hopefully.”
Val clenched her fists to keep herself from screaming at him.
“I just can’t...” she said. She dug her nails into her palms. “I can’t believe we slipped up. And I can’t believe you’re so calm about it.”
“We didn’t slip up,” he said. “And I’m not.”
“What do you mean, ‘We didn’t?’ You think this was my fault?”
“No, no, no,” he said, standing up and putting his arms around her shoulders. “I mean we didn’t do anything wrong. We can’t build a fortress around him. And we can’t stop trespassers who insist on crossing barbwire fences.”
In the late morning sky, a half-moon still hung low. Barely visible over the tops of the trees, it stared down at them like a drowsy eye only half-interested in what happened below.
They had wanted to birth their child naturally because the government had no right to control Val’s body in that way. But why did they think this could work out okay for Braden? Back when he was a baby, they had belonged to an underground group of like-minded families who saw SRP as totalitarian. Called themselves the Friday Foundation. Kim and another doctor named Hayden had helped to remove contraceptive implants. They’d all dreamed about one day fleeing for C
hile, where they could live freer lives than in the U.S.
Braden’s telepathy had ended all that. Once Val and Kim realized he was “gifted,” they had cut off all ties to the Friday Foundation. And over the years, Val had seen through the news that most of its members had been caught and imprisoned, their children sent who knows where.
“We’re going to lose this fight,” Val said.
8
Hayden's office was on the top floor. He led Jessica through a pair of sliding glass doors into a big room with a complicated glass-and-steel skylight that flooded the whole room with sunlight.
“Hey, Linda,” he said to the room at large. “It’s a little bright in here.”
The glass roof darkened to a shade of gray that left the room well lighted, but not so much that Jessica needed her sunglasses.
“How's this?” said an A.I. voice from the walls.
“That's fine,” Hayden said. He turned to Jessica and motioned toward the middle of the room, where four curved couches formed a circle around a mahogany table with a multi-lens protector in the middle. “Have a seat.”
“Thanks.” She sat down at the end of one couch, while Hayden stepped over to a cabinet made of the same mahogany as the table and opened it. Inside were several glass bottles containing liquid of various colors. Hayden grabbed a bottle of something clear, along with two glasses.
“None for me,” Jessica said. “I'm driving—”
“Just strawberry water,” said Dr. Hayden.
While he quietly filled the two glasses, Jessica realized she could just barely hear a droning sound from outside. It was the chanting of the protesters.
Hayden brought one of the glasses to her.
“Thank you,” Jessica said. She took a sip. Too sweet.
He sat down on the end of the couch next to hers and drank from his glass. “Linda?” he said. “Let me know as soon as my next appointment arrives.”
“Of course, sir,” the voice said.
Looking around at the room, which was almost bare except for the couches, the table, and the drink cabinet, Jessica tried to form her opening question. Something about Hayden unsettled her, though. With his thick chest, dark hair, gray temples, and square jaw, he was attractive, sure. But interviews with attractive people had always been easier, not harder. No, maybe it wasn’t Hayden at all. It was the pig that she kept thinking about. Even here in this sterile room, she couldn’t help thinking of the pig and the entrails dangling from its torn belly. The contrast between the ugliness of that image and Hayden’s perfect appearance gave her an empty feeling in her stomach.
The Way Out Page 4