Short Story #8 - Do You Like Babies?

10 Short Stories Challenge from a friend: She picks the topic/genre, I write it in one day.

--- Dystopia ---

Charlotte was due for fertilization. She was so lucky. Most women these days weren’t allowed in the birthing program. Charlotte had passed through a rigorous testing period as a preteen in order to be chosen. But, it was so worth it. Hatchers got the best of everything during the nine months of pregnancy and Charlotte loved being pampered. She would get to go to the gestation chambers where any strenuous endeavors were off-limits and food was plentiful. There were all sorts of games and activities set up for her and the other expectants. Also, only hatchers were allowed to use floaters which supported your full weight as you wandered around the gestations chamber. So, she wouldn’t even have to stand on her own feet for nine whole months. There could be no physical exertion of any kind. How was that for easy living? Charlotte especially loved being bathed and massaged each day, something she couldn’t get on a regular basis normally.


This was her sixth stint. Charlotte wasn’t sure how many more times she’d be allowed fertilization. Her friend Jeanie had been told to stop after her eighth. She would make sure she kept at it until they forced her to stop as well. There was an urban myth about a woman who had gone through the procedure twenty times, but Charlotte wasn’t sure she believed that.

Of course there was the other legend that told of how at one time, long ago fertilization was performed by two people alone without any doctors in a process known as ‘copulation’. She wasn’t one hundred percent on the mechanics of it all, but it didn’t seem possible since there were no impregnator machines back then. How could the fertilizer possibly get inside a woman’s body whether there was a single hatcher and a single technician or many doctors? But then, there were all sorts of crazy stories associated with pre-cataclysmic times. They ranged from people actually living on the surface to the belief that mythological creatures such as cats and dogs really existed.

Charlotte paid most of that nonsense no mind. Cats and dogs, really? The only animals in this world were humans. Even the pictures she’d seen in those ancient books didn’t look authentic. They couldn’t be, could they? Charlotte couldn’t even conceive of a world like the bible described.

It had been nearly two thousand years since people had begun living underground according to the gospel. But, Charlotte wasn’t particularly religious. Most people she knew weren’t. It was simply too difficult to believe the crazy fairy tales in the bible. Massive wars between different groups of people? There were no different groups of people. Everyone got along and loved each other. Why would anyone be at war? And weapons? Charlotte remembered the day old Miss Adderly had tried to describe what weapons were: Little machines that folks used to hurt each other with. Very strange. Charlotte and the others didn’t believe her. They asked for proof. If there had really been things called guns, and bombs, and tanks, where were they now? Maybe if she saw one in person Charlotte would have an easier time swallowing it. As usual, all those religious folk used the same excuse: Those objects were on the surface. Of course. How convenient. And since it’s impossible to go to the surface… Blah. Blah. Blah. It was like that with all the ridiculous yarns in the bible. How did they expect anyone to believe? You gotta have faith, so they say. Not Charlotte. She was a free thinker!

And why have faith anyway? There was no need for faith, or religion, or god. Charlotte and everyone else had everything they needed. The machines took care of it all. People were free to do whatever they wanted with their time. Charlotte enjoyed painting and the machines made sure that paints and canvas were plentiful. Just as they did with anything else anyone desired. She had no use for books, especially that old bible thing. Though if truth be told there were times she wished she could read just so that she could go through the ‘good book’ and show everyone that the stories attributed to it weren’t true. No one could actually read these days anyway. All the myths that the zealots taught had been passed down from generation to generation through oral tradition. Charlotte had an idea that if she read the bible she would find out that it was nothing more then children’s stories like the three little piggies, or Snow White or something just as trivial.

Besides the religionists, or “Realists”, as they chose to be known (psychos was more like it as far as Charlotte was concerned), life was practically utopian. The machines took care of everything. There were mechanical servants everywhere designed to follow orders no matter how trifling or complex. They even acted as a policing system of a sort in that they would not allow any person or group of people to hurt another. Though why anyone would want to mistreat another was beyond Charlotte. A far more important job was protecting people from harm due to nature or accidents. Like the time there had been that terrible rockslide and all those people had been injured and killed. The robots were in charge of the rescue operations that helped the survivors and dealt with the dead. Charlotte and the other women merely gawked at the horror. What more could they do? Still, death was a part of life and if it wasn’t for all the blood it produced sometimes, those ordeals were never too bad to handle.

She preferred not to think about such occurrences and instead concentrated her thoughts on more pleasant things, like her next nine months of joy in the gestation chamber. Playing card games with Patty, Marcy, and Cassandra. Getting fat on all her favorite dishes like chops, ribs, and filet. Hatchers didn’t have to eat nearly as much synth as everyone else. Not that there was anything wrong with the synthetic foodstuffs that the machines provided. According to the robots it was very nutritious and Charlotte definitely knew synth food was way more filling then a plate of ribs. A person could go a few days on one synthetic meal whereas real food left you craving more after only a few hours. The robots taught that despite benefits of synth people had to have real meat every so often or they would become terribly ill and die. If you questioned them about it they would go into great detail about human biology and stuff that bored Charlotte silly. It was enough to know that it was necessary. Who cared why?

The robots knew everything about everything and would answer any question asked of them as fully as desired by the questioner. The only thing they didn’t know about was pre-cataclysm history. Thus, they couldn’t tell once and for all if the crazy stories in the bible were accurate accounts of the world way back when or not. Well, it probably wasn’t that important anyway. Charlotte didn’t particularly care that people had possibly once lived as couples or small units instead of all together as they did now. She didn’t want to hear about people who may have lived on the surface and had to work various jobs to get by because there were no machines to take care of them. They were horror stories to Charlotte and why would she want to know what it was like in a place that she could never go to? The robots said that a scant couple of minutes up there was enough to make a person violently sick and if she stayed any longer a painful death would ensue. What sort of masochist would want to know more?

Becky showed up just then to ask if Charlotte was going to the love in that day. Of course she was. She could only have sex with the other hatchers when in the gestation chamber and she would miss all her regular girlfriends while she was away. Also, since she preferred more slender girls and the other hatchers were in various degrees of fattening, Charlotte wasn’t as interested in them for the most part. If there was one part of birthing that was difficult it was the decreased sexual activity. But, it was only for a while and the benefits more then made up for it.

Becky was a Realist. Unless you were specifically discussing religion with one the only way to tell was that they said God Bless You when you sneezed, which she did at that moment. Charlotte politely thanked her before blowing her nose. And then she couldn’t help herself because the subject always allowed for some good old fashioned teasing, so she asked Becky, “What did you learn in bible class today?”

“Today we learned about men.”

“What the heck are they?”

“Well”, said Becky, “They’re people who are exactly the same as us except that their breasts are completely flat, sort of like Cynthia‘s, and they have no vaginas.”

Charlotte was completely shocked and taken aback, “How horrible! Then they can’t have sex. I’d rather die then not be able to have sex.”

“Yeah, I know”, Becky said sympathetically, “But they have something else instead that’s supposed to be just as good.”

“Something else?” What could a person possibly have where her vagina belonged?

“Yeah. I don’t know what, but they told me it has something to do with making babies.”

Ah. The Realists one great issue. There was a single area that the robots concurred with the Realists: Where babies come from. Ask a machine that question and the only answer you got was, “From God”. There had to be more too it than that, Charlotte was certain, but if there was, no one knew and the robots weren’t talking. So, the religious people played their one huge trump card all the time. Whenever there was a debate about the existence of God they always brought up the baby argument.

It was hard to doubt the robots. Charlotte didn’t know what to believe. All she did know was that there were exactly ten thousand women in their underworld society and that whenever one of them died, a baby girl arrived shortly thereafter in the nursery that was set up for such occasions. If it was one thing she loved almost as much as sex it was visiting the nursery and playing with the children. But where did they come from? Certainly the robots brought them. People had even seen them carrying infants to the nursery. But where did they get them? One theory that Charlotte had heard from a friend was that they were mined from deep in the earth. The Realists believed something similar in that they were made from clay found in the ground and then god breathed life into them and poof, the robots found them and took them to the nursery. It was a mystery that would probably never be solved. It was ok with Charlotte. In the end, it just wasn’t that important to her, especially since she needed to get ready for the love in. Just the thought was making parts of her tingle with pleasure. She would probably stay at the playground until the robots came to get her for fertilization.

She felt a sense of pride in the task she had performed and was about to begin again. She knew she and the other women provided a much needed service to all the other girls in the world. The robots had said as much in no uncertain terms. Supposedly there had once been a way to fertilize the soil and grow edibles from the ground, but now the earth was barren. Fortunately, whatever had destroyed the soil had not damaged a woman’s ability to grow food inside her tummy as they had been doing (as far as Charlotte knew) since the beginning of the human race.

Yes, in nine months time Charlotte and the other hatchers would create multiple meals for some lucky women to eat. She always wondered what the pre-cooked product looked like, since the robots put her to sleep when they removed the food from her belly. Charlotte guessed it didn’t matter too much as long as it looked and tasted like the wonderful filet mignon that was served on her plate.

Yum!


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