He laughed. “That was definitely momentous in its own peculiar way, but, no, that’s not what I meant. I just wish you—I mean, she, my Mara—had shared with me what she was doing. I suppose she didn’t want to get our hopes up.”
“My brain still must be scrambled by this so-called condition because I can’t follow a word you’re saying. It all sounds like nonsense,” she said.
“Condition?”
“Ping said something about my condition, then got all weird and ran from here without explaining. What’s going on, and why are you looking at me so goofy? You look like I invented penicillin or something.”
“Oh. He’s referring to your pregnancy.”
Mara froze. After a beat, she busted out laughing.
Her father smiled and said, “It’s true. I’m not sure how she accomplished it, but it appears to be true. I examined you while you were sleeping, and you are pregnant. My guess is you’re nearing the end of your first trimester.”
“That’s impos—” Mara slid her hand over her stomach, and she gasped. “Where did that come from?”
“I think maybe—”
Mara held up a hand. “Wait a minute. What did you mean, you’re not sure how she accomplished it? Don’t you people make babies like everyone else? What do you do? Incubate your young in other people’s bodies, like some kind of parasite or something? Because I haven’t done what needs to be done to make a baby where I come from.”
“If you would just let me explain.”
Mara slapped the mattress with her fist and yelled, “Ping!”
He opened the door and stuck his head inside, using the door as a shield.
“Not you! I want my Ping!” she screamed past him, projecting her voice into the hall. “Ping! Get in here!”
The other Ping closed the door, and she could hear his footsteps recede down the hall.
Red-faced, she turned on her father. “What the hell is going on? I can’t be pregnant.”
“If you can calm down for a moment, I’ll explain what I understand. I don’t know the details about how the pregnancy came about, but I believe Bruce has some information.”
“I bet he does,” Mara said. “How can he and your Mara hook up, but I end up carrying the baby? Is that what’s happening?”
“Not exactly.”
“What exactly?”
Ping rushed into the room, followed by his counterpart. “Are you okay? Mr. Ping says you are upset.”
“Why are you guys addressing each other as mister? Can’t you get on a first-name basis with yourself? You’re the one always lecturing me that we are our counterparts and they are us. Right?”
Ping stopped in the middle of the room before reaching the bed. “That’s what you are upset about?”
Mara rolled her eyes and fell back onto her pillows. “No. I’m pregnant, and I want someone to explain why.”
“May I make a suggestion?” Ping asked.
Mara glared at him. “Let me guess. Just shut my mouth and listen to the whole story before asking questions.”
“How did you know?”
“It’s what you always say when things get complicated.” She rolled her head to the side on the pillow, now looking at her father. “Go ahead. The tantrum has been suspended until I hear the rest of the story. After that, I’m not making any promises.”
Dr. Lantern nodded toward two chairs against the far wall and said, “Why don’t you gentlemen have a seat, and I’ll see if I can explain.”
Ping’s counterpart said, “Actually I think it might be a good idea if I go downstairs and keep Sam company. I’ll let Bruce know that Mara’s awake as well.” He left the room, relieved that no one protested his departure.
“He seems eager not to be here,” Mara said. “Bruce has been waiting for me to wake up?”
“Yes. He wants to explain how this happened and to make sure you’re all right,” her father said. “Before he visits, let me give you some context so you don’t hurt the poor boy.”
Mara sighed but nodded.
“You commented a few minutes ago about how people here make babies. It probably hasn’t occurred to you, but there are no babies here. Those of us who come here do so at the age of ten, crossing over after being placed in the receptacles.”
Mara scooted up. “You’re right. That never occurred to me. No babies anywhere.” She rubbed her tummy. “So your Mara wanted to have a baby?”
“It’s more than a maternal need,” he said. “You see, this realm only exists because the progenitor created it, and she had always suspected that it would cease to exist when she did—when her body in the receptacle died. That suspicion was confirmed when she disappeared and the chasms appeared. Our world was coming apart because she was no longer here. Understand?”
“Yes. She’s trying to continue this world after she’s gone.”
“Exactly. It’s a concept we call perpetuity, the continued existence of this realm beyond the life of the progenitor.”
Mara’s eyes widened. “I’ve heard that word before. Perpetuity. The chief mentioned it, but I didn’t know what he meant. Her gaze drifted as she considered the concept. “To save this realm, she needed to have a baby here, not just another person crossing over from a receptacle.”
“We’d always thought that procreation would be the means to establish perpetuity, but it had never worked before,” he said. “People here do have sex, but it doesn’t produce offspring.”
“I’m confused,” Mara said. “If my counterpart is your daughter, then how was she created if you and her mother entered receptacles when you were ten?”
“In the physical realm, when an adult couple—meaning a couple who has already transitioned to synthetic bodies—wishes to procreate, DNA is extracted from their biological bodies and the child gestates in a birthing facility.”
“Romantic. That question never came up while we ran around with the synthetic folks,” she said. “So, you and Mom had a baby in the physical realm, and, when she was ten, she showed up here.”
“Correct.”
“I’ll stop interrupting soon. I promise. Back to the procreating part. Why didn’t the sex produce any babies in this realm?”
Ping stood up and approached the opposite side of the bed. “I think I might be able to answer that,” he said.
“Why don’t you move your chair over here so she won’t feel like she’s watching a tennis match?” Dr. Lantern asked. “The last thing we want to do is set off another wave of nausea.”
After getting his chair situated, Ping sat down and continued, “This is a realm of thought. It was created by the mind of the progenitor, and the Reality experienced here derives from impulses in the brains of each individual. Everything is made of thought. However, without Consciousness—one of the four elements of Reality—there can be no procreation. A new individual cannot come into being without that basic element of Reality.”
“And yet I’m pregnant. Here, in a realm of thought. And still no one has explained how. Why am I the one toting around the impossible fetus?”
“From what I can get from Bruce, it has something to do with the clothing,” her father said, his eyes scanning the leatherlike pants and vest that Mara still wore.
Mara plucked at a button on her vest. “This clothing?” She remembered the wisps that wrapped around her legs and backside after she had donned the pants in the closet. Her eyes widened. “You’re saying this outfit made me pregnant?”
He looked like he doubted it himself, but her father nodded, just without conviction. “That’s what I’m given to believe. Though, like I said before, I don’t know how it works. Mara swore Bruce to secrecy, and he seems reticent to reveal too much, at least to me.”
“Wait a minute. Did the other Ping know this would happen? No wonder he wanted to leave the room so bad. He fashion-shamed me into putting on this getup in the first place.”
Her father shook his head. “He didn’t know, wouldn’t have done that. I promise you.”
Mara wasn’t so
sure, but let it go.
“Regarding Bruce,” Ping said, running interference for his counterpart, “I image a young man might not want to get caught between the progenitor and her father, especially on a subject of this sensitivity. Perhaps he would be more forthcoming if alone with Mara.”
“That’s what I was hoping,” her father said. “And why I wanted you to understand perpetuity and what it means to us. It’s a matter of our long-term survival. We can be more than simple impulses in the brains of other people. We want to live full lives in control of our own destinies.”
She glared at Ping. “See? This happens when I let people tell their stories without interrupting. It turns into a saga about the survival of their world instead of how I ended up pregnant.”
Ping cocked his head and smiled, “To be fair, you interrupted plenty of times.”
“Yet I still don’t know how this happened. Other than the whole impregnated-by-couture thing,” she said. “Where’s Bruce?”
CHAPTER 30
Ping and Mara’s father had already left her bedroom when a light knock came at her door. She wasn’t sure what to expect in terms of an explanation, but she wanted to get it over with. “Come in,” she said.
Bruce opened the door and peeked inside before entering. As he crossed the room, his pace picked up, and he smiled, angling for the side of the bed. Mara raised her hand and said, “Slow down, cowboy. The bed is off limits to you.” She pointed to Ping’s abandoned chair still nearby and said, “You will sit there. Them’s the rules. Got it?”
He looked disappointed but took the seat. “I’m glad you feel better. You look great, not sick at all.”
“That’s very nice of you, even if it isn’t true. My hair feels matted to my head, and I’ve got mud under my fingernails. And I have a bun in the oven, and it’s not agreeing with me.”
He smiled with too much adoration for Mara’s taste, causing her to squirm. She made a show of adjusting her pillows, punching them, shifting them against the headboard, just to buy time to decide how to deal with this guy. He must see her as something other than his pregnant fiancée. “You need to understand one thing before we talk,” she said.
He gazed at her, looking too solicitous.
“Within a week or two, I will go back to the place where I belong, and the girl you are engaged to will return here. And you know the first thing she’ll ask when she returns?”
He shrugged and shook his head. “No. What?”
“She will ask you about me. Oh, she might be subtle about it at first, but she’ll ask you questions like, What was the other Mara like? What did you guys talk about? Did she look different than me? What was it like to be around her? What did you guys do when you were together? But you know what she’s really trying to find out?”
“Whether I liked you more than her probably.”
“Not probably. So when those questions come, you better be able to answer them honestly—how you told me what the hell is happening here so you could get your Mara back as soon as possible. Understand?”
All affection seemed to melt from his face. He sat up a straighter and said, “I think so.”
“Great, now explain why there’s another person growing inside me,” she said. She shook her head. “No, that’s not right. I think I know why. Dad explained all the perpetuity stuff, so I get the motivation for wanting to have a child. What I want to know is how the child ended up inside me.”
“It’s the clothes, mostly the pants, but I think the vest is part of it too since its made of the same material,” he said.
“The pants and vest made me pregnant?”
He shook his head. “That’s not exactly right. The child is growing within the clothing itself. Think of it as a womb that you can slip on.”
Mara looked down at the leatherlike pieces on her body, aghast. “That’s even stranger than I expected, although I can’t recall what I expected. Why on earth would Mara make a removable womb? Not that it wouldn’t be appealing to a weary pregnant woman.”
“It’s kind of complicated.”
“Try me.”
“About a year ago, around the time Mara and I began seeing each other, she got frustrated because she wasn’t making progress on a solution to perpetuity—on how to make this realm continue beyond her life. She tried all kinds of things in the lab with the Chronicle, but nothing worked. She couldn’t find a substance that would bestow the characteristics of life to the stuff that makes up this realm. It looked hopeless until she began to dream.”
“Dream? What kind of dreams?”
“No, you don’t understand. She dreamed. It was miraculous that she dreamed at all. People here don’t dream.”
“Really? I guess that would be like dreaming you had a dream, or something like that,” Mara said. “What was the significance of dreaming? Why is that so important?”
“At first she was blown away by the fact she had experienced dreaming. Later she wrote down details of her dreams in a journal because sometimes she would forget them.” He glanced around the room. “The journal is around here somewhere.”
“I’ll look for it later. Go ahead. Did she tell you what she saw in these dreams?”
“Yes. The physical world. She started out in her receptacle, but she could leave it, walk right through it. After leaving the receptacle, she could see her biological body inside the tube. It was like she was a ghost, haunting the real world. For weeks she had the same dream every night, and each time she’d venture farther from the repository, out into the world. That’s when she realized the world she saw in her dreams wasn’t something created by her subconscious. That world had too many details to be faked. She ran across people she’d never met. Oregon City had buildings that weren’t there before she transitioned. Things looked different but the same—just the changes you would expect after being in a receptacle for seven years. She was crossing over into the physical world. It wasn’t just a dream.”
“All right. She could go from this realm into the physical one. Having moved between realms myself, I can wrap my mind around that,” Mara said. “What happened next?”
“Once she realized she was crossing over, she wondered if she could isolate substances there, substances she could bring here.”
“To make the wearable womb.”
Bruce frowned at her. “You are more sarcastic and skeptical than my Mara.”
“Do you find that appealing?” she asked.
“No, not really.”
“Correct answer. Now she wanted to get stuff from over there to over here. That doesn’t sound doable, but, given the circumstances, I have to suppress my innate skepticism and say she pulled it off.”
“She never doubted it could be done. Have you heard the Inception Tale?”
“Yes. Little Mara had a flower her father gave her, and, when she went into stasis, she infused the undifferentiated steam with life and created this realm. Right?”
“You don’t tell it with the reverence it deserves, but you’ve got the basic facts straight. The important detail is that the flower from the physical world was the catalyst for the genesis of this realm. So it was already proven that things from the physical world could be brought into ours. Follow?”
“That brings up a question. Do the plants and animals in this realm reproduce?” she asked.
“Yes, they do. If they didn’t, they would die out.”
“But the people can’t?”
“Not yet. You would be the first person to give birth here.”
“I’ve got news for you, buddy. I will not be in this outfit when it’s time for delivery—I can promise you that. Continue with your story. What did she do next?”
“Mara realized whatever she carried with her would cross over to the physical realm—be part of the dream, if you will. So she took sample containers with her, wondering if the reverse were true. After all, the flower her father gave her came from the physical world. It took several attempts, but she eventually discovered she could transport
physical material into the container by visualizing it. That sounds crazy. Doesn’t it?”
“Not as crazy as you might think,” she said, “from my perspective.”
“She said something about matter acting differently there, something about it breaking up into tiny cubes, instead of steam like it does here. That make sense?” he asked.
“Actually yes.” She nodded to encourage him to continue. “She found a way to get things from there to here.”
“At first she’d come back with metal or plastic or glass, things she could experiment with in her lab. Over time she wondered if she could do the same with people—samples from people, like tissue samples.”
Mara grimaced.
“Just hair and skin samples, microscopic really. Just scrapings of those tiny cubes.”
“Pixels. She was collecting pixels from the physical realm.”
“What?”
Mara waved her hand, dismissing the observation. “Go ahead.”
“Over time she experimented with the Chronicle, imbuing undifferentiated steams from this realm with the physical samples she took from her own biological body.”
“And what happened?”
“Nothing. It didn’t work. After a few weeks of frustration, I made a joke about this realm not being big enough for another Mara, and she sort of got excited. After more research, she determined that replicating someone already here would not work. But creating a unique person might. So she mixed and matched samples, one from her body, another from mine. Eventually she had a living human embryo growing in one of those microcosms she visits using the Chronicle.”
“How do these clothes fit into the picture? Why didn’t she implant the embryo into her own womb?” Mara asked.
Bruce shook his head. “It wouldn’t work. Earlier she discovered that, whenever she touched the sample from her body in the physical world, there would be a tiny spark, and the sample would disappear.”
“That makes sense.”
“It does? She could never find the cause of the spark.”
“If you come into direct contact with your counterpart—or even your counterpart’s skin cells—the one out of place is blown back to where they belong. At least we think that’s how it works. I’ve never confirmed it,” she said.
Broken Dreams (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 5) Page 17