Quality DNA

by Beth Martin

  “I’m fine,” Clara said. Annette knew it would be polite to get up and give her brother and sister-in-law a welcome hug, but she was too tired to bother. She had been overly fatigued the last couple of months. Just staying awake for a full day of work at the office was a chore.

  “I don’t want you to strain yourself,” he said. He held out his hand and led her to the chair like she was incapable of sitting down by herself. There was that stupid grin again as she complied to his request.

  With the strict progeny laws, siblings were incredibly rare. Annette and Ray were twins. Multiples got a pass in the one child restriction, but medications which encouraged multiple births were prohibited. Women who sought fertility treatments were often disappointed at how little doctors could do to help.

  “You all can come take a seat at the table. Dinner’s almost ready,” Gerry called from the kitchen. Tom and Ray set the table as Clara and Annette took their usual seats.

  “It smells delicious, Mom,” Annette said as Gerry set down the platter with her usual cooked-to-death roast and soggy vegetables.

  “Thank you, sweetie.”

  Everyone helped themselves, and Ray filled Clara’s plate before putting some on his own.

  Clara lifted her fork, but didn’t take a bite. “This meat is fully cooked, right? I can’t eat any rare meat.”

  “Gerry always pulls her roast out of the oven a second before it turns into a charcoal biscuit,” Tom said with a laugh.

  Gerry frowned. Annette looked a lot like her mother and knew one day she would age just like her, with generous amounts of gray in her hair and droopy features.

  “Maybe we should just tell them,” Clara said to Ray, rubbing her palms together.

  “Are you sure?” He reached over to give her hand a squeeze.

  “Tell us what?” Annette asked, her mouth full of food.

  Clara nodded at Ray before saying excitedly, “We’re pregnant!”

  Annette did her best not to choke on the roast.

  “Oh Clara, that’s wonderful,” Gerry said as she jumped up from her chair and smothered Clara with a hug. Tom gave his son a knowing smile before shaking his hand and slapping him on the back.

  “I’m sorry, I just couldn’t wait,” Clara said. “I only found out a couple days ago. My first OB appointment isn’t for a month.”

  “And you’re already telling everyone?” Annette asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “No,” Clara said. “But you guys are family. I’m so excited I could burst. I had to share with someone.” Ray gave his wife another goofy grin.

  “Oh, you two made my day,” Tom said. “When is the baby due?”

  “December,” Ray answered. Tears came to the corners of Clara’s eyes as Ray turned to give her a hug.

  “I can’t believe it, my first grand-baby,” Gerry said. “This is the best gift you could ever get me.”

  “Actually,” Annette said, putting down her fork, “your first grandchild is due in October. I’m pregnant. I’m already three months along.”

  Annette’s announcement was met with shocked faces and stunned silence.

  “How could you do this to me?” Clara asked.

  “I’m sorry, I’m not doing anything to you.”

  Her astonishment quickly changed to red faced rage. “You knew we were trying to have a baby. You just had to take this away from me.”

  “Take this away from you?” Annette spat. “You were there with me at the club the night my baby was conceived.”

  “I didn’t think it would actually work,” Clara yelled. Ray started rubbing his wife’s back trying to get her to calm down.

  “Wait. You’re pregnant from a one night stand?” Tom asked.

  Annette’s silence answered the question for them.

  “Oh, sweetie, you’re ruined,” Gerry said. “No man is going to want you if your oven’s already closed.”

  Annette pulled her napkin from her lap and threw it onto the table. “Why can’t you guys be happy for me? You were all so thrilled when Clara said she’s all of two days pregnant.” Ray held his arms around his wife as she sobbed at the dinner table.

  “Their situation is different,” Tom said. “They’re married and ready to bring a child into this world.”

  “I want this baby,” Annette said. “I planned on getting pregnant. I have a great job and more than enough money to support a kid. I’m not getting any younger, so I figured, why keep waiting.”

  Tom leaned forward, pointing an accusatory finger at her. “That impulsive attitude is exactly why you’re not ready to be a mother.”

  “Well it’s too late now. It’s done. You’re getting your first grandchild from me in October. So, you all can suck it.” Annette got up from her chair and stormed out of the dining room and into the living room. This was not how she had imagined breaking the wonderful news of her upcoming baby with her family. She grabbed her jacket from the hook next to the door and pulled it on before leaving the apartment.

  three

  “You got another one,” Angel said as he dropped a new file on Irene’s desk. Today, he wore a white t-shirt and faded jeans.

  In the past few months, Irene had seen an increased frequency in cases of excessive progeny, where men were somehow fathering a second child. All excessive progeny cases got assigned to her. They had become so common, they eclipsed all of her other work in the department. Over the summer, she went from seeing one case like this every few months, to getting two a week. Now, in mid September, she was getting a new one almost every day, necessitating the aid of another social worker.

  “Another?” she asked, flipping open the file. Inside was a picture of a handsome older man in a suit. George Clark, the CEO of Certain Media, the company Annette worked for. According to his file, he already had a son with his first wife. Now his second wife had just given birth to a baby girl who would undoubtedly inherit his sparkling blue eyes and cleft chin.

  “He had the sterilization procedure after his son was born. He insisted that he didn’t have anyone perform a reversal and already gave up a sample which came back clean.”

  “But it’s his baby,” Irene said. “DNA doesn’t lie.”

  “So here's the kicker,” Angel said, leaning against her desk. “His wife was in LA filming a movie when the baby was conceived. He stayed in Seattle. They were both too busy to visit each other during that time frame.”

  She looked up from the file to Angel’s face. “You think he froze his sperm?” Freezing genetic material was illegal. Some men tried to on their own, but storing and thawing it was difficult enough that most people botched the process.

  “He had the procedure done fifteen years ago. That’s a long time to keep a wad sitting in the ice-cube tray.”

  “He has the money and the means to get a blackmarket bank to do it for him.”

  “Well, it’s all yours,” Angel said. “If it were me, I’d close the case and forget about it. Clark already submitted a clean sample.”

  She ignored his suggestion, still reading through the file. “Interesting.”

  Procedures meant to decrease the birth rate had become required by law in the past thirty years. Originally, women had been the only ones sterilized, and the procedure took place at the hospital right after giving birth. Feminists vehemently protested. Women were being discriminated against while men could have as many children as they wanted. Congress listened and responded by requiring men get sterilized as well. Most countries had similar policies, and not all of them used particularly humane practices to keep their populations in check.

  Irene continued flipping through the file. George’s current wife was named Rose. She pulled her device out of her pocket and set it on her desk. “Look up Rose Clark.”

  “There are several listings in Seattle for Rose Clark. Did you mean Rose Clark, actress?”

  “Yes.”

  “Rose Clark, actress, is known for her role as Diane Scooter in the movie The Z-Files. Rose plays Elizabeth Thatcher in the curren
t blockbuster, The Woman The Cyborg. Would you like to purchase tickets for the seven o’clock showing of The Woman The Cyborg at Royal Cinemas this evening?”

  “No,” Irene said. Her device was always trying to sell her stuff. She should have gotten a better model with built in ad-block. “Call Rose Clark, actress.”

  “Rose Clark only accepts calls from a select list of numbers. Would you like to schedule an appointment for her assistant to call you back?”

  “Yes.”

  “Appointment scheduled for Thursday, September eighteenth, twenty-two twenty-eight, at eight fifteen pm.”

  “Great. Add it to my calendar.”

  “Event added. Would you like to add a notification?”

  “No,” Irene said. She shoved the device back in her pocket. She didn’t need a reminder for an incoming phone call.

  When she looked up from the file, Angel was already gone. There was nothing more she could do at the moment, but she still couldn’t put the case file away.

  ··OOO··

  Jamie picked at her food. Even though Irene had gotten off work early enough to go out for a nice dinner instead of relying on takeout, she couldn’t enjoy her meal. She no longer cared if Irene thought her daily nagging was annoying. She had already reached out to all the men she knew and expected Irene to do the same.

  Irene looked at her and let out a sigh. “What is it?”

  “Did you ask him?”

  A look of confusion crossed her face. “Ask who, what?”

  Jamie slumped back in her chair. She already knew the answer would be no. “Your coworker. Did you ask him to be a donor so we can have a baby?”

  “Jamie, I can’t,” she pleaded. “I have to work with him every day. It would be weird to raise my coworker’s baby.”

  Jamie leaned forward and spoke in a dangerously quiet tone. “You promised you’d ask him months ago. No matter who we choose to be the biological father, our baby would still be our baby.”

  “Of course it would be our baby. But it would look like him. It would still be a little weird.”

  “Don’t make me come to your office to ask myself,” Jamie said. She was dead serious and would do it in a heartbeat. She had hoped that Irene would warm up to the idea of raising a child, but ever since their initial conversation on their anniversary, it was like pulling teeth to get Irene to even talk about it.

  “Fine. I’ll ask, I promise. Just give me a week.”

  “You get a day.”

  ··OOO··

  Annette closed the door to the stall and lifted the hem of her shirt. This was her third trip to the bathroom this morning. She needed to pee all the time. While she was here, she might as well check on her baby. She pressed her device against her round belly. Her belly had been round before she became pregnant, and even though she was only a month away from her due date, it still hadn’t achieved the nice round expectant-mom shape. Instead, she just looked fatter. But Annette knew there was a baby in there, and that was all that mattered.

  “Detect fetal heartbeat,” she whispered.

  “Detecting heartbeat.” The display became a swirl of colors before showing a pulsing pink heart shape. It started making a whoosh, whoosh, whoosh noise. “Heart rate is one hundred, twenty-seven.”

  Annette heard the bathroom door open and hurriedly tucked away her device. She needed to take care of her business and get back to work.

  Back in her office, she returned to the storyboards littering her desk. They depicted the opening scene for the movie her team was working on, Spaceship: Moon. The movie was a retelling of the tragic disaster on the first commercial space shuttle to the moon. The earth’s moon wasn’t entirely habitable, but it was still a popular vacation destination for the super wealthy.

  Movies were immersive, with holograms of the actors interacting with the audience members. Properly shooting the three-dimensional scenes was tricky and expensive. Annette’s team would carefully plan out each scene complete with actor blocking, set placements, and camera angles before the scene was even filmed. The film crew avoided multiple takes of the same scene, so the actors had to nail their lines the first time through.

  As creative director, Annette gave the final approval of the scene scripts her team came up with. Most often, she identified how the scene they made wasn’t working and asked them to try again.

  “Hi, Miss Blisburn?” Charlie, one of the artists on her team, came into her office holding another pile of storyboards.

  “Come in,” she said. She helped him set up the boards on the ledges lining one of the walls of her office. The drawings depicted the interior of a space shuttle, with passengers boarding and finding their seats.

  “For the opening scene, we thought we’d start with an overhead view, then pull in so the audience feels like they are sitting on the shuttle.”

  Annette glanced over the boards. “I think the scene would be more poignant if the action starts with the audience sitting in the shuttle, don’t you?”

  “The CGI department has made a really stunning recreation of the shuttle, so we thought we should show it off when the shuttle is first introduced. Let the audience know this is a grandiose shuttle and not just a commercial airliner.”

  “I don’t really care about what the CGI department does,” Annette said, collecting the story boards and handing them back to Charlie. “The goal is to tell an excellent story.”

  Annette went to her desk and sat down. She couldn’t stay on her feet too long before they started to ache. The storyboard on her desk also needed approval. She was getting behind in her work.

  Charlie cleared his throat. “Is there something else?” she asked.

  “The team was wondering,” he cleared his throat again and shifted his weight to the side. “We were wondering when you would be going on leave?”

  Annette felt her face grow hot. She hadn’t disclosed her pregnancy to her team.

  “Your assistant blabbed,” he said, anticipating her next question. “He was syncing your calendar and saw the extra appointments.”

  There was no point being coy. The whole office would find out when she left. “I can work up to my due date, which is next month. I plan to wrap up Spaceship: Moon first.” It wasn’t a realistic goal. Spaceship: Moon needed a lot more work than could be done in just a month.

  “I would be willing to step up, act as director while you’re on leave, if you’re looking for someone.”

  “I’ve already offered the position to Pat. But thank you for offering.”

  Charlie looked down at the storyboard panels he held and frowned before turning and walking out of her office. As soon as he was gone, she leaned back in her chair and propped up her feet. Her ankles were getting really swollen. There was really no chance of her seeing Spaceship: Moon to completion, and nothing else really held her at the office. She could probably start her leave early.

  ··OOO··

  “Thank you so much more working me into your busy schedule,” Irene said. After setting up the appointment for a phone interview, Mrs. Rose Clark’s assistant had called Irene to schedule a face-to-face interview with Rose instead. Not ready to leave her house with the new baby, Rose invited Irene to the home, a mansion she shared with her husband. Even under the gray skies and light rain, the glass building on the shore was stunning.

  A slender, pale woman dressed in all black answered the door and asked for Irene’s identification before leading her inside. The interior of the house was furnished with a more industrial aesthetic. The assistant motioned to the tray set on the coffee table as Irene took a seat on the uncomfortable angular sofa. “Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked.

  “Yes thank you,” Irene said, accepting the dainty cup.

  “Mrs. Clark will join you in a moment.”

  Irene waited, sipping at her tea. A minute later, Rose came gliding down the staircase. She looked like an old Hollywood star with her flaming red hair perfectly set in curls and a carefully painted face. She was wearing a silk
y blush robe which billowed behind her as she dramatically made her way down the steps.

  “Thank you for waiting,” Rose said. Her voice was soft and sweet. “I was just helping the nanny get Lily down for a nap.”

  “Thank you so much for making time to meet with me, Mrs. Clark,” Irene said.

  “Please, call me Rose.” She carefully arranged her robe around her as she sat. A cup of tea was waiting for her on the tray, and she lifted it to her lips and took a delicate sip. “Chamomile,” she said. “I’m still avoiding caffeine.”

  “How is your baby?” Irene asked.

  Rose set down her tea. “She’s perfect. But let’s not waste our time on chit chat and bullshit.” She gave Irene a coy smile. “We’re both busy woman, and I’m sure your time is just as valuable as mine.”

  Irene nearly choked on her tea. She hadn’t expected such a sweet-looking person to be so direct, but liked Rose’s attitude. Maybe under different circumstances they could have been friends.

  Rose continued, “You’re here to ask about the suspicious parentage of my Lily.”

  “I am,” Irene admitted.

  Rose leaned back, getting comfortable in her seat. “George knew I wanted a baby when we got married. I actually had it written in our prenup, believe it or not. If he decides to leave me in the future, he’s still financially responsible for supporting my child.”

  Irene nodded. She had heard of stranger arrangements between couples.

  “We decided that during the filming of the Elizabeth Thatcher movie would be the best time for me to conceive. Of course, George would have preferred I just… collected a sample from a willing specimen. But, I have to admit that one of the extras caught my eye and one thing led to another. Nine months later, Lily was born.”

  “When Lily’s DNA was added to the Genome Database, it identified your husband as her biological father. Can you explain that?” Irene asked.

  “I can’t. I just know how I got pregnant. That’s the truth.”

  “What’s the extra’s name?”

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t interested in his name.” Rose gave Irene a knowing smirk. “The production company hired a bunch of people for a scene we were filming that particular day. All the extras were paid in cash. I’m afraid there isn’t going to be any record of him from Certain Media.”