Okay, I'm cheating a bit. But I do get an earwig in at the end. I do like the two titles even though they don't really match the piece (pick one). And it is a lot of telling instead of showing. I would apreciate an comments on what to do with this piece and how to make it an actual story. Do I tell Demtri's story of the discovery or make it a flashback in Anne's story? More ideas?

 

 

Never Sunny in Dystopia

Against the Rage of Night

 

Anne sat in the waiting room and opened her laptop. She pulled up the bio of Dr. Demtri Manatumbo and tried to figure it out. He had started in the same field as her, in vitro gestation but after a few years had changed to studying parasites. Strange decision. Almost all parasitic problems in humans had been solved years ago. What the world needed now was babies. For some unknown reason human fertility was dropping, being able to create babies was the pressing need.

The admin moved his hand to his ear and looked up. Dr. Manatumbo will see you now," he said. He stood up and opened the door to the inner office.

Anne closed her computer and walked to the door. About time she thought, what's the point of setting an appointment if you don't have the time.

Dr. Manatumbo was standing behind his desk. "So sorry to keep you waiting. A conference call went long. Unfortunately it was my superior so I couldn't leave the call early."

"No problem, let me tell you about my project," Anne started, "Earth's population has started to decline and..."

I've read your proposal, Dr. Farnsworth. It's not like in vitro gestation hasn't been tried before.

"Yes, but I've all previous attempts have used biological containment systems. The problems with rejection and the drugs and chemicals need to control the rejections have always caused spontaneous abortions. I'm proposing using a complete non-biological womb. It's never been done..."

Demtri raised his hand. Anne stopped and took a few deep breaths. "It has been done before."

"When? I've searched all the literature, no one has ever tried a complete non-bio gestation system before."

"You're not dependent on a pacemaker or other such support device are you?" Anne shook her head no. Demtri opened a drawer and pulled out a jammer. It would disable any eavesdropping or recording device. Then he pulled out a paper. An actual printed on paper, paper. "Look over this as I explain."

Anne looked at the paper. The abstract described it as a completely inorganic womb. It's design was similar to Anne's own but based on materials available decades ago.

"Twenty-seven years ago a few of us saw the coming problem. Like everyone else we started with biological systems but the rejection problems were even more severe then. So we switched to inorganic systems. All went well and we progressed from mice, to dogs, to pigs and finally primates. After quite a few successful attempts we were ready to try humans."

"I never heard of this," Anne said.

"Course not. It was too politically sensitive. Some governments wanted to produce girls to offset their bias for boys. Others wanted people to make up for declining fertility. Others wanted to make babies but without the inconvenience of pregnancy or to have children in their forties and fifties. So it was kept secret. We figured if we could produce a bouncing baby, a normal bouncing baby, all would be forgiven.

"At first it seemed we succeeded. The three children we created appeared normal but soon after birth they faltered. Testing showed their neurological development was lagging. As they aged they slowly fell behind normal development. By the time they were three it was apparent that there was a problem."

"Did you just give up?"

"Course not. We ran every test we could think of. Scanned them with every device we could find. We couldn't find a problem so we created three more. We made sure that there was nothing wrong with the equipment. These we watched form the start. It was the same.

"Meanwhile the older ones matured more than twice as fast as normal. The male became aggressive and would challenge any man not larger than himselve and attempt to mate with any woman. We had to restrain him but he got loose and died attacking a woman police officer."

"Horrible."

"Horrible but lucky for us. We got to autopsy his brain. It seemed normal enough. A lower density of neurons than typical but the breakthrough came when we sent samples to outside researchers. One came back with the comment, 'We work on humans not monkeys.' That group had analyzed the fluids."

"You got some primate DNA mixed in?"

"Opposite problem in fact. The DNA was too purely human."

Anne stared at Demtri silently.

"Actually not the DNA. Something else. Some think it is a prion like infection. Sort of an inverse mad cow or Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. Without it the human brain develops too much like a chimpanzee. Not enough control or language development."

"So give the baby or fetus the prion, as a vaccine."

"We can't find it."

"What? Prions have been well studied for years.

We don't know what the vector is. We've looked for prions, we've looked for chemicals, bacteria, viruses. We can't find a cause. "

"So you've given up? Just like that? The future of the human race may be at stake."

"How many monkey boys do we make?" Anne sat down. The implications of the experiments dawned on her. "There is no animal or computer analog on which to experiment. When you fail you'll have brought a human into this world. A human with little control and little language." Anne slumped in her chair.

"Can't we use chimps?"

"Chimps seem to be immune to whatever it that gives us humans our abilities. So you see why we can't fund your proposal. We already know that it will succeed only partially. But if you're interested?"

"Interested? In what?"

"The bigger problem. What is the cause of human intelligence? Our current investigation is insects. We've found a tiny relative of earwig. It seems to infest all humans but we haven't found an agent yet."