Like the Woman of Willendorf, a world-famous female fertility idol unearthed in Willendorf, Austria, Claus was missing his feet and lacked a face, but his external reproductive organs were intact and their size highly exaggerated.
Trying to hide my excitement for the chance to hold such an ancient and rare artifact, I feigned a scowl, especially when he laughed with satisfaction before he handed it to me.
It was heavier and smoother than I imagined, and I ran my index finger across the top of the idol’s head and tried to estimate its weight.
“So, what do you think of Claus?” He grinned.
“I think he’s an archaeological treasure. Where’d you get him?” Dr. Little didn’t deserve to own Claus.
“He was handed down through one of the original forefathers.”
I lifted an eyebrow.
“Yes, Miss Dannacher, my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, great-grandfather was one of the original forefathers. He saved it from a museum in Region Two before the museum was abandoned and eventually destroyed. I like Claus. He reminds me a lot of me,” he sneered as he reached out to retrieve his precious idol and restore him to the safety of his case. Poor Claus and how pathetic—bragging about having a famous ancestor, when he was merely related by chance and not by genes.
“Some cultures believed the mere handling of a fertility idol would increase a woman’s chances of conceiving and bearing healthy children.” His cheeky smile was enough to make me puke.
“Now can I go?” I said.
“Oh, you’re not getting off that easy, Miss Dannacher. The tier four techs aren’t the only ones being punished. You’re being punished, too. For the next four weeks, you’ll be staying in one of our, let’s just say, less accommodating hospital rooms, and your only visitors will be bots.”
Punished? Was a month of isolation worth twenty minutes of fresh air and a real peek at this world? And what was this punishment designed to do—turn me into a complacent captive ready to beg my captors for mercy and willingly submit to their plan?
“Whatever,” I said in my nastiest tone. “It was worth being away from you and this hospital. Can I go now?”
He stood, smiling like he had a secret he was ready to tell. “Not quite. Before you’re taken to your holding cell, there’s something I want you to see first.”
I wasn’t in the mood for show-and-tell, let alone spending any more time with the man than I had to. Just take me to my cell, you jerk, so I can get my punishment over with.
As if he could pass for a gentleman, he stood behind me, waiting for me to exit his office first and directing me to make a right turn by holding out his arm. A pair of guards accompanied us as we passed through the halls of GenH1, and I tried to make a mental note of each turn in case I found another opportunity for an escape in the future.
The muscles in my thighs burned, but I readjusted my pace every time Dr. Little synched with mine. From the corner of my eye, I could see he was slightly out of breath, his face red, and hear a small grunt when his arms swung heavily to increase his momentum as he tried to keep up with me.
“Where are we going?” I asked as my eyes darted left and right. I was half ready to sprint down the corridor with all of my might to enjoy a few last minutes of freedom before I was locked away from anything human.
“You’ll see,” he said between breaths. “We’re almost there.” He put out his hand to stop me in front of an A.G.-lift when we reached the end of the hall. We entered and then exited seconds later on a floor with white walls and a white floor, with a surface so shiny it reflected our images. His soft-soled shoes squeaked eerily.
“The prenatal ward,” he announced as he pointed to a door labeled PNW One—a different door from the one he brought me to before. This wasn’t the same floor.
“I don’t need to see another one. Nothing you can do will make me cooperate.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be so sure about that.” He smirked.
The door slid open noiselessly, courtesy of his L-Band, and the two of us entered, the guards remaining outside.
The smell of chemicals, an artificial yet organic pungent odor, made me want to pinch my noise, and even after my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I had trouble believing what I was seeing.
The long tables containing babies in artificial uteruses were identical to those in the first prenatal ward, with the exception of the letter “X,” followed by a series of numbers on a label affixed to each jar’s base.
“X,” I said under my breath, though Dr. Little could still hear me.
“The X chromosome. It contains over two thousand genes,” he said. “Male or female, we all have one.”
Several workers were present, three men and one woman, but they were missing the colorful smocks and instead wore fitted white uniforms, the expressions on their faces as indifferent as the bland, undecorated room. Without giving us so much as a nod, one of the men lifted a long, metal rod with a hooked end from its place on a rack, removed the lid from container X-36782, and proceeded to fish a foot-long fetus from its artificial uterus.
“Why is he doing it that way?” I gasped in a whisper as my heartbeat quickened and the muscles in my chest tightened.
“Why not? It does the job, doesn’t it?” answered Dr. Little, drawing his hands behind his back.
“But it’s–it’s insensitive and disrespectful.”
The head of the dead fetus lolled forward as it was raised from the cylindrical tank. Eyes, like black marbles covered by a veil of translucent gray skin remained closed, but its jaw, unhinged and tiny, and stick legs unlocked from its fetal position.
I shivered as the worker let the baby drop into a sack that bulged with what must have been at least a dozen or more dead baby clones. “I still don’t understand why the success rate is so low. It shouldn’t be—not with the technology of this century,” I said, trying to hide my emotions by raising my voice from a whisper.
“Like we said before. It’s the fault of the synthetic uterus. For an umbilical cord to form, the embryo needs to implant in the placenta, a difficult task considering these are made from engineered human tissue that’s maintained through an artificial blood supply.” He brought his arms around to his gut, interlinking his fingers and resting his hands below his chest.
As he spoke, I focused my attention on the slow rise and fall of his abdomen, choosing to ignore the fact that another gray fetus, X-87209, with paper-thin skin was being pulled from a tank in front of me.
“During the natural gestation process, one vein in the umbilical cord carries oxygen-rich blood and nutrients to the fetus, and two arteries return waste and deoxygenated blood from the fetus to the placenta. We mimic this procedure, but maintaining a working placenta is a feat in itself.”
I eyed the red, throbbing placentas affixed to the inside of each tank. A blood-red tube ran from the top of these slug-like objects, leading to the machinery below, while an umbilical cord of flesh at its center coiled and connected to each baby.
In the tank to my left, an embryo the size of my thumb was afloat, and from its blue color and the fact that its tiny umbilical cord was half detached from the blob of man-made placenta, it was obvious the fetus was dead. Within minutes, another worker scooped the tiny fish of a baby from its watery grave and flung it into a smaller sack that bulged with weight.
“Where are the tiny coffins?” I asked, looking past Dr. Little to the stark wall behind him.
“Come,” he said. With a nod, he led me to the far corner of the room, and though my stomach twisted and each breath made the center of my forehead ache, I followed, stunned, and not wanting to believe the scene before me was a reality.
The stench increased as we walked, a sweet, chemical smell, mingling with something reminiscent of raw meat, like a coyote’s fresh kill, something I’d smelled millions of times before in the desert on a dig.
One of the workers met us at a metal drawer flush with the wall. When he opened the drawer, the smell of flesh ro
se with a puff of smoke. I swallowed to keep from vomiting as the man emptied his sack, shaking the bag to rid it of the last tiny baby, it’s long, spindly limbs crossing as it dropped into the drawer.
“The incinerator. There are too many to give them a proper burial. Such a shame. If only they had real uteruses in which to thrive.” His tone was so sincere I almost forgot the man standing next to me, his brow dotted with perspiration, was Dr. Little.
“But I don’t understand. Why is this room different from the other one you showed me?”
“All prenatal wards are like this,” he answered, extending his arms. “It was my hope we could convince you to join the program willingly with the use of a mock PNW, but that little nudge of guilt obviously wasn’t enough.”
More guilt. That’s what I felt, and that’s why he was showing me the truth. Yes, I did wish they all had a real uterus, and why couldn’t that be possible? What stopped them from using the clone women to fulfill this role?
To my right, an almond-shaped window similar to the one in my hospital room glowed with a soft blue light around its perimeter. The room on the other side was much brighter than the room we were in, and as I took a step toward it to peer inside, I was momentarily forced to squint.
MEDs with smooth silhouettes and telescope eyes bent over lab tables with needle-like left hands, poking into test tubes and petri dishes in an orchestrated robot dance for what I could only assume was the betterment of mankind—replicating the DNA of an ancient ancestor.
“But I’m not the only female on the planet with a uterus.”
As the incinerator drawer slammed closed, I turned from the lab window and watched a spark shoot upward, bringing a smell like a lit cigarette to my nose. Flooded with nausea, I imagined the babies in various stages of growth catching fire as they hit the flames, babies who never had a chance, fetuses who didn’t choose to be born under odds that were against their fate.
A worker in a gray uniform entered the prenatal ward from a door on the opposite side of the room. Screams escaped through the door’s opening before it resealed, human-like screeches, yet there was something primal about them, something animalistic and filled with fear and pain. I winced as the door pinched closed, cutting off a curdled yelp that brought chills to the back of my neck, and Dr. Little stiffened, diverting his eyes to the floor.
“What’s in that room?” I asked, knowing that its close proximity meant it must have something to do with the prenatal ward and its lab.
“What’s in that room doesn’t concern you at the moment.”
“Doesn’t concern me?” I crossed my sore arms and balanced my weight between both of my legs, ignoring the ache in my thighs. “At this point, I think just about everything concerns me. You brought me this far. Take me to the end.” The incinerator door opened for a third time, and the smell of burning flesh made me gulp and hold my breath.
“Very well.” He held up his banded wrist, and when the door reopened, the cries resumed as if they had never stopped.
As we entered, I plugged my ears in a weak attempt to muffle the screeches of suffering, but it wasn’t enough. My hands trembled against my head.
Cubicles as far as the eye could see lined the expansive room, each square of bright white harboring a creature that stood with a bent back, sat on its haunches, or paced in its enclosure, walking on all fours. Chimpanzees.
The screams increased as we approached, crackles, howls, and grunts coming from the throats of animals with pink lips pulled taunt across yellow teeth. I slowed my pace, letting Dr. Little take the lead.
“They won’t attack. That would be impossible.”
A chimp in the closest cell beat its chest wildly and shook its head, sending its ears into a flap and legs into a pump like it was ready to make a leap. It rapped the air with its knuckles when it was done and with a final knock hit the transparent, electrified door to its cubicle. A sizzle came, followed by the smell of burnt fur, and the chimp’s cries, its call like an alarm that sent the other primates into a series of wails and vocalizations so loud they vibrated in my chest.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“You mean her. They’re all females.”
There was a buzz almost as irritating as the chimps’ screams. A black nozzle lowered from the ceiling of each cubicle, and seconds later, a steamy spray of hot water filled each cell, making each occupant howl and scurry in circles.
I took a step backward as the smell of feces and urine billowed through the room, followed by something that burned the inside of my nose.
“It’s cruel,” I shouted.
“Cruel?” he asked, surprised. “They’re given the best of care. Their diets are carefully selected, and their cubicles cleaned and sterilized daily. Maintaining their health is our top priority.”
“But why are they here in the first place? What are you using them for?” And then I knew. I didn’t need his answer. A theory in my century was a reality one thousand and three years later. “These chimps are supplying the eggs. And once the monkey DNA is extracted and replaced with harvested human DNA, the egg is implanted in an artificial uterus.”
“You are correct, Miss Dannacher. There’s a 95 percent similarity between the DNA of humans and apes, but that remaining five percent prevents the embryo from living in utero for more than ten hours after implantation in the uterus of a female clone, making this our only option.” He pointed to the closest chimp.
The cries of the animals rose as he spoke, and he adjusted his tone to shout above the caged creatures. “Our success rate with synthetic uteruses is only slightly better.” He shook his head.
“What about the women who survived the plague?”
“Unfortunately, the plague left the internal organs scarred, resulting in underdeveloped ovaries.”
A chimp to my left squawked and spun in its cell before stamping the ground and making a face at me so human, its forehead wrinkling with emotional pain, that I whimpered and stepped backward. “But it’s so cruel. How can you do this to them? Isn’t a happy, stress-free chimp more likely to produce healthier eggs?”
A chimp formed in my mind’s eye, strapped to a table, half drugged, while some kind of MED with a speculum for a hand and a long needle committed the vile act of harvesting eggs from the chimp’s ovaries.
Immediate disgust for the clones and their vile acts of desperation invaded my heart. To propagate at the expense of others, even if they were only animals, made me want to puke. The dead babies in the next room, the MEDs with their micro-injectors, the gravediggers defiling the tombs of my ancestors. Everything about this world made my head spin, and when I tried to obliterate the thoughts by blinking my eyes hard, I half expected to see Dr. Little grinning at me with the yellowed teeth of a primate.
“How can we do it?” he snapped. “It’s easy, because there wasn’t any other choice until now.”
Until now?
He meant until me.
“During our research, we discovered that creating an atmosphere of so-called tension,” he said, wiggling his fingers, “actually increases their reproductive abilities, their state of anxiety triggering an innate need to populate.”
Maybe so, but it was still uncalled for.
We didn’t exit the way we came by winding back through the rows of plastic uteruses. A door in the Primate Housing Unit led us into the hall and to the closest A.G.-lift on that floor. A set of guards walked to our rear, and I tried to focus on the clicking sound the buckles on their boots made instead of thinking about how each one of them was produced using the hollowed-out egg of a chimp.
I hated this place. I hated this world. I repeated this in my mind with each step, and almost said it aloud when Dr. Little left at the end of the next hall while I was marched to my new quarters, maybe something similar to what the chimps were living in.
As the guards led me through the corridors of GenH1, I tried to memorize each twist and turn down the halls, more determined than ever to make a future escape, but
my adrenaline-spent body and mentally spent mind couldn’t keep anything straight. The twisted faces of apes in pain hammered my thoughts.
My new hospital room was more than a brightly lit cube with an electric door. It was more like a twenty-first century prison cell with matte gray walls and exposed bathroom. A vessel and sink sat in one corner of the room, and in another corner, a showerhead protruded over a drain in the floor.
When the guards were gone, I tiptoed to the door and held out my wrist, but Dr. Little was right—my L-Band was properly adjusted and the door didn’t open.
And I thought my old room was boring. Apparently a “less accommodating” hospital room also meant a “less accommodating” L-Band. No matter the command, my L-Band remained dormant, with its ghostly gray screen, and shouting demands at the hidden obscuras in the walls didn’t bring forth any changes either.
On my first night of isolation, I sat on the bed, defeated, listening to the sound of my own breathing, until I recalled the desperate cries of the chimpanzees and their high-pitched yelps. Pressing my palms against the sides of my head only increased the intensity of the resounding grunts, and it wasn’t until I stood and paced the room that the imagined vocalizations subsided.
In the past, my dreams were usually bizarre but benign, scenarios like flying under my own superpowers or discovering the fossil of a new dinosaur species. Babies screaming, their mouths full of teeth with tartar, their canines extended to a point, were the images that invaded my sleep. A few of the babies were pink and robust but most of them were spindly with gray, lucent skin. Sometimes the fetus had the head of an ape and the body of a human, or vice versa, and I’d hold it snug in a blanket, talking to it gently until I lifted its arm from the blanket, a hairy monkey arm with a monkey hand. Every dream ended with one of those ghastly babies, its gurgling and sweet coos rising in volume until they became an evil monkey scream.
The only time I felt at peace was when I thought about Michael and our kiss. Was he thinking about me, too, or had he shaken me from his mind, knowing the two of us could never be? We couldn’t be together, but I yearned for his affection, driven with a desire for him to quit the program and steal me away from here. If only that was possible. The fact that he was derived from a blank ape egg didn’t bother me.
Mirror X Page 10