Under Sun, Under Stars
She read in a book on babies that it sometimes makes them poop. She is terrified. Still the baby is screaming. Sweat is pooling in the mother's bra. The baby screams and thumps against her chest. How is it helpless when it so strong? The mother is afraid of holding it too tightly, but the baby twists in her arms. The mother is afraid of dropping it. She thinks about putting it down, but can't. She can't walk away from her crying child. She begins to wonder, does this baby hate me? Is this baby evil? Why won't it shut-up? Why won't it shut-up? Why the fuck won't it shut up? ADAPTATION With no other choice they've become cannibals. The placentas are long gone, and in their twentieth year enutero the grown human fetuses in the metal womb are adapting. Rather than kill and eat one another they've begun to breed and feed off their young. They deal the babies out limb by limb, and when the mothers die of hemorrhage or pleural fever they feast, and the next infant born is spared. Civilizations are built, gods are created on such foundations. FEAR BASED RESPONSES For a time the scientists believe the womb was stolen. The government has various organizations on the look-out, waiting for the children who were growing inside to appear on the black market, or be offered up as bargaining chips in some sort of sinister alien deal. There are sightings. Denial is maintained as long as is possible. The scientists are given a tape-allegedly of the womb-wading in the mild waters off Prince Edward Island. For weeks they try to prove it fake, but a battery of test call the tape genuine. Some scientist weep, others get drunk, one goes out to her car, takes the gun from her glove box and shoots herself in the head. Fueled by nightmarish visions of a bionic uprising the project is terminated. With the exception of the renegade-still missing- all the metal wombs are recycled. Children are reunited with their surrogate mothers as they flip pennies or buy a six-pack of Diet Coke. Human are forced to return to the standard method of birth, but of course, evolution cannot be reversed. There are no records. The results from that first year-the return to natural birth- were, they say, too horrifying to document. USS NARWHAL, 1967 The hunt continues for the metal womb. There is sti ll hope that it will be found, that they may determine its defects, restart the project, and save humanity. But if they found the womb, saw what grew inside it, they would gladly give up. They would embrace the fate of the blue bottle fly. Deathextinction-better than survival and the risk of becoming. Winter- Spring 2007
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