Jamila woke suddenly. Flat on her back. Drool on her face. And realized that she was late.
Ordinarily she’d jump out of bed, hit the shower and be out the door in fifteen, but not...not this morning. Something felt wrong.
She took an inventory: feet, legs, arms, eyes, ears, mouth. She slapped her tongue several times against the roof of her mouth trying to suck up a little moisture, but her mouth had been hanging open for too long, so there was none. Easing herself up, feet on the floor and then out of the bed. Oh. Oh. There it was. The nausea.
Her hand pinned to her belly, she flew to the bathroom and leaned over the sink heaving. Oh, dear God, when would it stop?
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Jamila sat up on the exam table and pulled her top back into place.
“Well, good news, then! Nausea is an excellent sign that the implantation has been successful and that you are now incubating. Excellent. I’ll make a note in your chart now that you should be allowed extra rest time, but you must also keep up your physical activity in order to grow a healthy fetus. Food as tolerated, but please let us know if you are not eating. We can help you with that.”
The doctor tapped away on his notebook without bothering to look up. He didn’t need to. He had the lab results, the PA’s physical assessment; this wasn’t his patient. The fetus was his patient. She was an incubator whose only value lay in how well she did her job.
As a little girl she’d learned that anyone could have whatever kind of job they wanted regardless of orientation or abilities with the exception of one. Incubator. And becoming one was the like becoming a Marine fifty years ago. The Few, The Proud, The Incubators. But more than the slogan, the requirements were similar. Only those in top physical condition were allowed into the program. Height, weight, reliability of menstrual cycles, physical stamina, psychological evaluations, all were taken into account before a young woman could become an incubator.
At fourteen, a young woman could petition to join the Target Population program where she’d spend six months to a year being evaluated as an egg donor. If she passed, she then entered into a 15 month long harvesting cycle during which she was repeatedly dosed and harvested of her eggs. After that came a resting period of six months. She could return home for a few weeks if that were an option, or she could take advantage of the study/travel program.
Jamila had traveled. She had no family to visit anyway, and besides looking great on her resume, traveling as an incubator-to-be was a dream. She and the girls she lived with traveled together. They went through Europe, Great Britain and Southern China, always in good hotels, always with excellent food. Spending money had been generous, but mostly she’d bought food and drinks. There didn’t seem to be much point to accumulating much. Her suite only gave her one walk-in closet for storage. So her treasures were small bits of lace from Switzerland, a teapot from Britain and another from China. Small things with big memories that she could hold and prove to herself that she’d really been to those places.
Today that time seemed to have never happened. Today she was green with morning sickness, and even though she expected it and hoped for it, she was not prepared for it.
Jamila walked gingerly through the hall to her suite, hoping that slow movement would keep the bile at bay. The agenda posted at her door showed her to be on light duty for two weeks.
“Jamila!” Jennie flew across the room in spite of her obvious pregnancy. “You’ve done it! I knew you could. Here, let me help you.” Wrapping her arms around her friend, Jennie walked her slowly over to the petite armchair and wrapped a beautiful floral comforter around her.
“You sit right here. Here, here’s an ottoman, put your feet up. You wanna a water? With some lemon. I always thought lemon helped.”
“Thanks, Jennie. Sure, water would be good. I can’t keep anything down.”
A knock at the door brought the perpetually perky Millie. Millie was the lady with the treat trolley. Another added bonus of incubating.
“I just heard the good news, dear, so I came to see what might tempt you. I know you don’t feel like eating, but you must keep your fuel level steady, so let’s see what you might tolerate today.” Millie brought in her refrigerated cart and wheeled it around so that Jamila could see the choices.
“Something light would be best to start with, usually heavy foods are difficult to take in the morning. Here’s some fresh, organic strawberry tart, yogurt with berries, a green shake--you know, chlorophyll might be just what you need this morning. Let’s start with that, mostly cucumbers and celery, a dash of parsley and a tad bell pepper?”
She thought the sound of food would send her running to the bathroom again, but actually the green shake sounded appealing. Maybe something green would stop her from feeling green. Hmm.
“Green shake it is, then. Shall I leave a yogurt cup in your fridge for later?”
“Thanks, Millie. That sounds good.” Jamila sipped her shake carefully. Jennie asked for the strawberry tart.
“Let me see,” Millie said as she looked at the chart on her screen. “No, Jennie, no tart for you, your weight gain is two pounds over target. Get back on the treadmill and maybe tomorrow.”
Somehow Millie sounded much more pleasant the first three months of pregnancy, then she became all business about diets and weight gain. An incubator had to be able to return to fighting weight within three months after delivery in order to begin the process again. Gaining too much weight put that at risk and cost the company money and time.
Jennie grimaced and got back on, jogging then running at a steady pace. “I’m glad you’re here. Now I don’t have to practice French by myself.”
“I don’t know if I feel like parsing verbs just now.” Jamila leaned back in her chair. “I think I just want to parse out.”
“Ooooh. That hurt.” Jennie was in her paces now. “Just sit there then while I workout.”
Quiet nature sounds and soft orchestral music played in the background as Jamila rested to the rhythmic drumming of Jennie’s feet against the drone of the machine. And in spite of having been awake such a short time, she drifted away to sleep.
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“Okay, princess! Time to rise and shine! Up and at ‘em. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
“Noooooo, Roger, please.” Jamila whined. “ I don’t want to get up. Go away.”
“Yeeesss,” said the strapping young man in the white shorts and tshirt jerked the covers back and pulled her up by the arms. “Got to get you on your feet and out the door and down the steps...” He pulled off her night clothes and threw a sports bra, a shirt and shorts at her. “Today is the first day of your physical training. You’ve had four weeks off. Enough vomiting. Get up. Let’s go!”
Jamila knew the dreamy interlude had been too good. She knew this day was coming. But why did it have to get here so fast? Two months into incubating and now the training. No more strawberry shortcake at 3AM. No more sleeping late. Just run, run, run.
“Let’s go. First we walk, tomorrow we run. Three miles this morning, three miles this evening. Aerobics at 10. Then you have classes until 12, lunch until 1:30 (you’ll want to squeeze in a nap then), then classes until 4. Walkies again at 4 before supper. It’s just light activity for the next month. Months 4, 5, 6, and 7 we train pretty hard, then you get a slow down as the fetus gets heavier. Come on, you knew what you signed up for. Hit it!”
She tied the last lace and stood up, stretching the kinks out. Grabbing her ipods, she caught up with the group at the stairs. They all looked about as happy to be there as she did. Geez, somebody bring a comb. Their hair was pulled back by bands, tied up with scrunchies, or tied into knots. A few still looked queasy. She'd been lucky to have gotten over the morning sickness fairly quickly, but she kept that to herself. No need to give up the pampering before she had to. Some of the girls looked like they were going to be sick right now.
Outside the group straggled together in front of the building. It looked like the college dormitory it had been for 100 years. Four story brick building, keystones, dormers, a black roof. The rooms were suites with four girls, a single bathroom and a sitting room in the center, quite a nice set up to spend a five year tour incubating one fetus after another.
The food was good and plentiful, the living arrangements were pleasant and the college education was free. That combined with the stipend the girls were paid made this a lucrative, highly sought after career choice. And the best part was that after she had exhausted her uterus, she’d be imminently qualified for a job as a nanny or private tutor. Some girls managed to find work as private surrogates, but those working conditions did not compare to the public accommodations.
“Quick-walk, ladies. Pump those elbows.” Roger led the way, wobbling his rear back and forth as he headed down the lane around the commons. Four times around was a mile. She had sixteen circles to go. Plugging in her ear buds, she adjusted the volume and found some 90s music to listen to as she worked her stride into the rhythm.
Not exactly a lullaby, but she was not exactly a mother, not a mother at all. They were all under strict admonition not to think of the fetus as a baby. It did not become a baby until hours after the surgical delivery. It would not be a baby until it had been thoroughly examined for health and chromosomal fulfillment. Any defects would eliminate it from the program and it would be destroyed. A born fetus did not actually become a baby until it was approved and placed into it was delivered to the client sometimes days after its birth. Even then, the clients had 28 days to determine if the newborn was satisfactory.
In the event a purchaser decided that a harvest wasn’t what they expected, crematoriums were available at fire stations, churches and hospitals. Originally these were called “safe-houses,” but the burden of retrieving and caring for infants left there was too costly, so they were converted to small crematoriums. They input a 12 digit code they received on their final payment receipt, pushed the red button, and walked away free to try again if they wished or not. Sometimes they decided that parenthood wasn’t for them after all.
The girls were anesthetized during the fetal harvest which further guaranteed there would be no emotional attachment. In the early years of the incubator system, less attention was paid to the deliberate mental compartmentalization of the young women which led to numerous difficulties. If they were allowed to think of the fetus as human, they would attach themselves to it and would be reluctant to give it up, especially if they knew it didn’t satisfy the requirements in some way and was scheduled for deletion. An emotional incubator was useless in the program.
“Jamila. Jamila,” Becky huffed alongside her. “Jamila, take the things out of your ears for a minute, k?”
She jerked on the line that held the earbuds. Sweat was forming in the most inconvenient places and the spandex in her outfit had stopped breathing after the first time around the track.
“What do you want?”
Becky was further into her incubation period than Jamila and had a plumpness to her that wasn’t unpleasing. Her tight blond pigtails bounced alongside of her head in time to her footsteps.
“I can feel it move!” she kept her voice low, almost a whisper. “I can feel it turn over!”
The girls weren’t supposed to talk about the fetuses they carried. Jamila kept her eyes ahead.
“Beck, we learned about this in anatomy. The fetus must stretch and move in order to develop its musculature. It's just exercising. It doesn’t mean anything.”
Becky looked crushed. At 16 she was the youngest incubator in this group and hadn’t developed the nonchalant attitude of the others. She was excited about every little change in her body, every new movement the fetus made. She wanted to share what was happening and wanted someone to enjoy it with her.
“You have to follow protocol. Maybe you should make an appointment with the psych.” Jamila panted. She was walking too fast. She slowed her pace to stay even with Becky and lowered her voice. “I know you’re excited, but keep it to yourself or you’ll find yourself out of the program before you know it. It happened last spring. Girl was in her second trimester and started talking about “the baby” and the next thing we knew, she was gone.”
They’d rounded the corner and were headed back. Becky slowed again, her weight tiring her out a little sooner. As she walked, swinging her hips back and forth, she began to think about this creature she was growing. She knew it was a fetus; she knew it wasn’t hers, but she couldn’t help lying in bed at night with her hand on her belly feeling the movements of the tiny being inside. What an amazing thing this was. She’d studied the development of the embryo, watched films on the development of the tiny brain and rudimentary fingers. She knew each stage scientifically, but knowing it personally was exciting. She couldn’t imagine ever thinking this was just a job. She was growing a human being! She was making a baby for someone. What was more exciting than that?
Becky grew up in a gender odd family with a mother and a father and even more unusual, cousins. Only people with multiple children prior to 2028 had extended families. They had been “grandparented in” under the Compassionate Marriage Protection Act which allowed multiple children born before the R+R to remain with their families. This helped to quell the dissatisfaction during the Relocation and Replacement, and it meant that a few people like Becky had aunts and uncles and cousins. Few Tier One girls made it to HATCHR, absolutely no transgirls even if they'd had uterine implants. They were a risk. When Becky'd arrived she’d been carefully screened and her chart flagged for constant scrutiny. Her perfect health and her amazing aptitude scores were what kept her in the program in spite of her adverse upbringing.
Their trainer came jogging up.
“Let’s go, Becky. Keep moving. No getting tired yet. You’ve still got 10 more laps to go.” Every girl walking wanted to pinch off his head. Head trainer for their unit, Roger was a disgusting example of perfect health. Every muscle fiber he had was fine tuned. He wore every perfect hair, every shining tooth like a badge of honor and as an example of what he expected from them. It wasn’t unusual for the girls to harbor secret fantasies of torture they’d like to inflict on him. He was too perfect. And he was never pregnant.