by Richard Gohl
“The point is that I don’t have any rights as a woman.”
“You have plenty of rights as a woman and… you never know it might come in handy one day.”
“For what!”
“Like when we get out of here—then we can have as many children as we like,” said Shane.
“Oh yeah, and I have a little kid that looks just like the little kid next door and every other kid in the street? I run out to the park and yell, ‘Come in for dinner, little Tommy!’ and a dozen little clones all laugh and say, ‘But we wanna keep playing, Mummy!’”
“You know it won’t be like that. You’ve still got your own... what are they? Gametes. You still have your own DNA—your body’s just been fooled into thinking you’re someone else,” explained Shane, positively.
“Yeah, well, that’s exactly what I mean. Do I have my own DNA? How does anyone know what they’ve done to my body? To your body? We just go on day after day, playing these pointless games, believing that we’re all going to revert back to some ancient human way. You don’t even remember what a doughnut is.” She sniffed.
“Hey, come ‘ere. Don’t get so upset. You’re acting like it’s some kind of evil conspiracy...”
“You said it...”
“It is going to be okay. Everything else they said would happen has happened. We have a great life. We can do, experience, anything we want...”
“I want a baby,” said Mia.
Shane covered his face. “Oh, not this again.” He looked up and said to her quietly, “You have one. He adores you. Why won’t you let him in?”
“You know that’s not what I am talking about!”
Mia had heard about a hormone-blocking agent available through a Sub dealer. It was originally manufactured for the Subs by Napeans to control their rabid population problem. Napean women had used it to mask their hormonal activity, to protect themselves from nightly digital analysis—and hide pregnancy.
“Even if you did get pregnant and by some freak accident it escaped Service detection... what are you going to do? Keep it in the cupboard?”
Mia was silent. Shane continued with his argument: “Everything that Robbie sees, the Service can see… if they can be bothered looking.”
“I’ll keep Robbie in the cupboard for the next two years. See what he sees in there.” Mia did have a ruthless quality.
“You can’t abuse him.”
“He might have a little accident.”
“By the way, where is Robbie?” said Shane, trying to move off the topic of murdering their robotic son.
“He’s cleaning his room,” said Mia flatly. “Like we told him to about two hours ago. He’s so obedient it drives me insane!”
Chapter 9
Robbie
TO MIA, IT seemed like the greatest scam in history that Napean women had to endure the painful charade of the reproductive cycle without any of the benefits. It was relentless; every month, the same cramps and feelings of doom; followed by the bleeding. She didn’t understand why The Service couldn’t simply just work out a way to stop it.
“I can’t have a child!” She yelled from the bathroom to her husband, “Why do I still have to go through this!”
Shane rushed in with arms outstretched. “Darling! Keep it down! We’ve been through it before!” Then in a hushed tone: “Yes he’s a machine but he has feelings.”
Mia sighed, “I know, sorry.”
“There’s nothing worse than a depressed robot—just be careful—his ears are incredible.”
“I get it!” she snapped.
“Sorry I’m irritable!” she snapped again. “It’s just this bloody period! It’s pointless!”
“I guess it’s your right as a woman,” said Shane.
“To what?”
“To, you know, menstruate...”
“That is like being able to catch trains but not being allowed to get off at your stop.”
“Mmmm… I’m not sure if it is like that...” Shane knew what she meant but couldn’t see what was so bad about being on a train.
“The point is that I don’t have any rights as a woman.”
“You have plenty of rights as a woman and… you never know it might come in handy one day.”
“For what!”
“Like when we get out of here—then we can have as many children as we like.” Said Shane.
“Oh yeah and I have a little kid that looks just like the little kid next door and every other kid in the street! I run out to the park and yell “come in for dinner little Tommy!” and a dozen little clones all laugh and say: “but we wanna keep playing mummy!”
“You know it won’t be like that. You’ve still got your own... what are they? Gametes. You still have your own DNA—your body’s just been fooled into thinking you’re someone else.” Explained Shane, positively.
“Yeah well that’s exactly what I mean... Do I have my own DNA? How does anyone know what they’ve done to my body, to your body? We just go on day after day, playing these pointless games, believing that we’re all going to revert back to some ancient human way. You don’t even remember what a doughnut is.” She sniffed.
“Hey come ‘ere. Don’t get so upset. You’re acting like it’s some kind of evil conspiracy...”
“You said it...”
“It is going to be OK. Everything else they said would happen has happened. We have a great life; can do... experience anything we want...”
“I want a baby.” Said Mia.
Shane covered his face. “Oh not this again.” He looked up and said to her quietly, “You have one. He adores you. Why won’t you let him in?”
“You know that’s not what I am talking about!”
Mia had heard about a hormone blocking agent available through a Sub dealer. It was originally manufactured for the Subs by Napeans to control their rabid population problem. Napean women had used it to mask their hormonal activity, to protect themselves from nightly digital analysis—and hide pregnancy.
“Even if you did get pregnant and by some freak accident it escaped Service detection... what are you going to do? Keep it in the cupboard?”
Mia was silent. Shane continued with his argument: “Everything Robbie sees, the Service can see, if they can be bothered looking.”
“I’ll keep Robbie in the cupboard for the next 2 years. See what he sees in there.” Mia did have a ruthless quality.
“You can’t abuse him.”
“He might have a little accident.”
“By the way where is Robbie?” said Shane trying to move off the topic of murdering their robotic son.
“He’s cleaning his room...” Said Mia flatly. “like we told him to…about two hours ago. He’s so obedient it drives me insane!”
Chapter 10
The Renewal Paradigm
NAPEANS DECIDED EARLY on that without a mortality rate, there could be no birth rate. Life was “extended” indefinitely. People were not dying; resources were limited, so International Napean law criminalized reproduction; children were banned and euthanized if discovered.
The Service kept an eye on female fertility during telepathic exchange and upload periods. Napean women could become pregnant, but were unable to produce a placenta. Changes in female hormone levels were monitored automatically; if pregnancy hormones were detected, a foetal termination would occur via a renewal paradigm during Telesync. This was a digital signal that triggered nano cells into delivering an electrical impulse to the ovaries, which then released hormones to fool her body that she was not pregnant and the embryo was lost. This kept women strong, healthy, and focused on the moral imperative of saving humanity.
Many women were not even aware that this was happening. Some, well attuned to their bodies, sensed their pregnancy and the hormonal changes occurring within them. Mia was like this; she had been pregnant seventeen times. The last time this happened, she had been taking the illegal blocking agents, to mask her pregnancy and protect her from the renewal paradigm. But the pills hadn’
t worked. She had woken one morning, feeling more than usually exhausted, thinking that she’d wet the bed. She had, only it was blood—white and oily with large fleck of red through it.
Mia became bedridden, falling into a depression. After a fortnight of barely any communication, as Shane was getting up one morning she murmured, “I’ve made a decision. I’m going in on the first.” That was three weeks away.
“You don’t want to do this, Mia. It will pass. There’s so much we haven’t done. We have another life in front of us! They say we’re close to leaving. We could see the universe together...” Shane pleaded, but Mia had heard it all before.
“How can you be so gullible? We’re never getting off this planet. I’m sick of living in this petri dish.”
Chapter 11
The Black Market
IT TOOK SHANE two weeks to find the Sub worker who had sold Mia the two-month supply of hormone-blocking agent. Workers were only allowed to work in Napea for several days at a time; it could be weeks or months before the same person came in again. It was an involved process, but finally Shane was able to get the man alone. He had come in through the Crafers Gate to work in the Americana precinct. Just as the workers were packing up for the day, Shane quickly and quietly maneuvered the suspect into the alcove of a building, his bolt gun a silent third party.
“I want back every single traded item, you scumbag.” Shane stood close, barely whispering.
“Really?” replied the worker, forcing a nonchalant smile. “It’s against the law to request or obtain anything from a Sub worker.” Shane’s attitude radar was finely tuned. Turning his weapon sideways, he pushed forward, forcing it upwards under the man’s chin.
“Guess what? I am the law, dickhead! I can have you killed like that!” Shane clicked his fingers.
The man knew that it was true. There was even an ETP game, “Death to Subs,” that Napeans did for fun. The Sub had a rethink: “I can get you the real thing.”
“What?”
“I can get you a child.”
“From where?”
“They’re born sometimes... parent can’t look after it… unwanted... single—life’s not easy down there. You gotta pay, though. Bolt pistols.”
“You’re a funny little man! I’m not paying you anything. Like I said, all I have to do is give the word, and you and your little job up here are over!”
“All right. One bolt gun—but I’m not bringin’ in a child.”
Shane allowed a long pause. Gee, I’m good at this! he thought. Then he said, “I can let you have a phaser rifle if you bring it to me.”
“How am I gonna get it in here, though?” said the man desperately.
“Not my problem.” Shane stepped back and allowed him some air. “Do it, and you get paid. Don’t do it and see what happens. Know where I work?”
The Sub was a grey-white color, and just rubbed his forehead. Shane showed his little badge.
“Oh, great! You work for them... brilliant… arse’oles…” The final word, he said under his breath. Shane ignored it and said, “If you’d like to get to know me and my colleagues a little better... otherwise, I shall see you here in forty-eight hours...”
“Forty-eight hours are you...?”
“I know your name, Mark. Mark Luhrman. Don’t let me down.” This was the final straw. As Shane released his hold, Mark ran. He had about ten minutes to make it to the city sponsored, out-road, which lead down to the underground city of Belair. If he got locked in the city he could expect a night in a cell with no food or drink. If he got out but didn’t make it to the tunnel, he’d be frozen stiff as night fell, brutal and hard straight from the cold depths of outer space.
Shane, on the other hand, had a pleasant, brief, high-speed magna-rail journey back to the inner-western side of the spiral precinct.
Architecture in the city was limited only by plumbing—and the imagination. Generally, Napea was arranged in architectural precincts. Popular designs for precinct areas ranged from the human body, the most famous being a naked woman leaning back with hands on hips, to extinct animals: dolphins, snakes, rhinos, and the famous forty-eight-metre eagle house. Other areas favored more classical forms of architecture, notably the Egyptian sector and the ancient Orient featuring beautiful Chinese pagodas. One cooperative had built a huge V; twin towers angled backwards at a forty-five-degree angle—looking straight into each others’ lounge rooms.
Shane decided to wait and surprise her with the baby—if Mark Luhrman did not come through with the goods, there would be no added disappointment. But, thought Shane, She needs good news and she needs it now!
The next day a fertilizer bomb went off just inside one of the entry points, rupturing a section of the Blackwood Gate at the base, upward about twenty meters—providing Mark Luhrman with the necessary diversion to pass into Napea with one large backpack and a bag.
Chapter 12
A Present
“HELLO?” SHANE CALLED out from the huge circular atrium to the bedroom above. “I’m back!” There was no reply.
Shane put the backpack down and walked through to the bedroom, holding his other bag. Smiling, Shane said jokingly, “Honey, I’m home.”
Mia didn’t lift her head from the pillow and made no answer. He tried again. “Guess what I’ve got?”
A groan came from the bed.
“Drop the clown show.” Mia’s dry, wooden voice croaked, “I’m going, Shane. There’s nothing for me here.”
“Okay, well, let me put it this way… when you find out what I’m holding and you still wanna kill yourself in three days, I’ll top myself as well.”
Mia’s head lay between two pillows. From under a tangle of yellow hair, a hazel eye squinted. “Okay, I give up.”
“At least sit up,” he said.
Her curiosity finally piqued, she raised herself onto one elbow.
“What is it?” She saw something she’d never seen before—a tiny little hand.
Mia hissed through her teeth, “What have you done?” and, wide-eyed, sprang out of bed like an athlete.
“It’s what you always wanted,” he said. Whose is it?”
“Yours, now.”
She saw a button nose, the eyelashes, and her involuntary finger came up to touch a pudgy cheek.
“He’s still asleep,” she said dumbly. “How’d he sleep through all that?”
“He’s drugged.”
“Oh, Shane, no!”
“Just light. A very light sleeping medicine—for babies. Had to.”
“And they feed all the time! What are we going to feed him?”
“Got it.”
“What?”
“In the bag. Enough milk for an army of these little things.” She went across to look in the bag. Six months’ supply of concentrated dried human lactate.
“I don’t want to bring him up in our world—what will he think of us? I mean, look at us! Look at him! Shane, he’s so different to us! He’s real! Oh my God, he’s got blue eyes! We have to take him back!”
“Can’t…”
“We can’t keep a child locked inside forever.”
“We have to. Someone’s gotta look after him now. Whoever brought him in risked his life for us. They won’t take him back. Not now. Not ever. You don’t know how lucky I was to get this up here.” Shane shook his head “I must be the only one in Napea that actually looks at other people,” he said incredulously. “No one batted an eyelid at me on my way up here!”
“He’s going to need real food, Shane! What then?”
“We’ll work out a way of swapping him over to N.E.T. It’s doable. We wouldn’t be the only ones.”
Shane stared at Mia. Mia stared at the child. It was a crime of the highest level. Punishable by death. Mia smiled. A baby, she thought.
Chapter 13
Subterranean Female Blues
IN AUSTRALIA, ALL Napean cities had Subs living underground in satellite ghettos. Most were there because they couldn’t afford the N.E.T. in 211
0 when the solar flare happened. Some had just never believed in the Napean way of life.
In the real world, while a number of different types of coins were in circulation, the barter system was preferred. Each underground settlement had resource delegates—energy and water managers who, together with managers from the other settlements, maintained the grid and water distribution.
The underground cities were powered through the transformation and storage of solar power—now in abundance: twenty-five kilowatts per square metre, which was far greater than in the twenty-first century. The sun’s energy rained down on the planet’s surface, unfiltered by the atmosphere, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. If there had been a cloudy day, no one in the present generation had ever seen one.
Water was still a major concern. A single spring flowed fairly consistently from the depths of the Mountain, and storage tanks helped to maintain the supply. All human waste was effectively recycled into drinking water and all water used in hydroponic production was filtered and recirculated.
But despite all this, the real people couldn’t prevent the loss of their most treasured resource: their children. The childless Napeans from the surface had been stealing Sub babies for years. Although there had been strong resistance in the 2260’s, reprisals for that had devastated the real population and the small rebel groups. Ten years later a group of four women and a man secretly formed to find the weaknesses in the Napean underbelly.
The people of the underground cities around Napea didn’t have time for monogamy, and when children were born they tended to be raised by those who’d given birth to them.
Alia Bokovski was exceptional in many ways. Charismatic, one hundred and eighty-one centimeters tall, and with a quick wit, she looked like something out of a Greek myth. Long black hair, a small, slightly aquiline nose, dimples and dark features that could have been painted with fine brushstrokes. To top it off, she was athletic and voluptuous. Yet despite her wealth of unfair advantages over the rest of the feminine world, no one seemed to resent her for it because she didn’t rely on her looks to get by. Alia had been pregnant when she and her husband had attempted to steal N.E.T. from the Napeans. She escaped. He did not. Someone had tipped off the Napean guards that day; they had known her surname. But there were no ID databases in the real world. She’d never even signed her name—not on anything official. Guards had searched all seven underground cities for a female Bokovski, but being pregnant, Alia was living the quiet life.
