Viable Eggs (Viability Series Book 1)

Viable Eggs

(Viability Series Book 1)

By V.G. Harrison

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2016 by V.G. Harrison

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database retrieval system, without permission from the author.

Find V.G Harrison at http://www.vgharrison.com/

Discover other titles by V.G. Harrison:

Viable Eggs

Viable Fetuses

Viable Babies

Section 51

Department 51

Unit 51

Space 51

For those who have had to endure the pain and heartbreak of infertility.

Chapter 1

Why the hell was I still sitting here? Legs crossed and fingers tapping on my knee, I looked around Dr. Reeves’s office, noticing her degrees mounted on the wall in glass frames. It was sort of old-fashioned, considering this was the year 2061 and most people had flash-image frames. Many of the prestigious universities and colleges thought having that piece of paper meant something. They didn't stand for anything unless they could figure out how to keep humans from becoming extinct.

I was pregnant. More than three decades ago, that would’ve been a good thing had it not been a horrible reminder that the mutant growing inside me symbolized the end of mankind. It was part of the reason our science and technology hadn't evolved as much as it should've in the last forty-two years that I’ve been alive. Everything— every waking moment, media outlet, new drug discovery— had hinged on mankind's coming extinction.

I glanced at the clock embedded in the wall. Nervousness made me want to jump out of this chair and scream, throw something, or simply dive out of the window, which wasn't usual for this day and age. Last week, a church with a congregation of more than four hundred people locked themselves inside and set the building on fire. If they were going to die, then they wanted it on their terms and not those created by man's interference with God's Plan. I guess they never heard of the word hypocritical.

Casual sex was the norm these days, no thanks to government mandated reproductive therapies. It didn't matter how many partners you tumbled with between the sheets or what age you were as long as you were, at least, fourteen. The more debauchery, the better in the feds’ eyes. The only thing that still held a stiff penalty— no pun intended— was rape. Thank goodness, the government hadn't lost their heads with that one.

My friend-with-benefits, Gavin Tillis, and I been on-again-off-again for about a year and it was time to make the off part permanent. It had nothing to do with my breeding a mutant-like 99.9% of the other females on the planet. I didn’t want to be with Gavin anymore because he proved to be a controlling, overprotective psycho.

I pulled out my flex phone and checked the time. I told my boss that I needed to get a pregnancy test, so according to law, he excused me to handle that. I also told him I'd return in an hour because I was expecting to get an abortion pill. Every woman was checked once a month for pregnancy at one of the numerous fertilization clinics set up around Raleigh. They had plenty of pills on hand to give out like candy, so after my dose, I'd report back the following day to make sure the embryo was gone. Thankfully, this was only my seventh mutant egg fertilized by mutant sperm since I'd been sexually active. Three of those pregnancies resulted in miscarriages that automatically came with a mandatory two days off for postpartum depression. Sadly, miscarriages had been become commonplace for the last couple of decades, too.

The fertility clinic I went to had sent me to a gynecologist. That meant one thing. Either the embryo was extremely abnormal or I had something wrong with my reproductive organs, which fouled up the tests. Either way, I was screwed. So much for hoping to get another chopper flight in today.

The door slid open, thrusting me out of my thoughts. Dr. Reeves sauntered in with such a large smile on her brown face that it had me at a loss. Her tight, black curls bounced about her shoulders. Nobody could be that happy about a T-Rex baby unless it were cause for a surgical abortion. Somehow, she didn’t strike me as the type to chase after a stacked health insurance claim. She struck me as a professional.

I’m thrilled you’re here, Lilia. She sat down behind her desk, clasped her hands together, and took in a deep breath. You’re pregnant.

I sort of knew that before I got here.

No, you don’t understand. She got up and went to a glass screen on the wall to the left of her desk. One tap and it brought up a bunch of information specific to me, including a picture of the tiny embryo inside that looked distorted. She tapped her finger on the image, which zoomed in. Your embryos are perfect. If all goes well, they’ll grow up to be beautiful little girls.

My thoughts skidded to a stop. I paused as my mouth tried to form words. "Did you said they and normal in the same sentence? As in twins?"

She nodded.

I gulped as everything around me turned to nothingness. Couldn’t feel, couldn’t think, couldn’t talk, couldn’t breathe. I closed my eyes and tried to jumpstart my brain again in spite of the palpitations ping-ponging inside my chest. Mouth opened, but no words came out. In fact, our swamped-in-advertisement world seemed to stop around me.

Dr. Reeves grinned like she was about to hurl herself across the room, land in my lap, and hug me like I was her long-lost sister. I thought your four-week-old embryo was one baby with an irregular heartbeat. That’s usually the first sign of a metamorphosed birth. But as you know, I have to confirm via blood tests before an abortion can be granted. Your tests came back normal, which is probably why the med techs were stumped at the fertility clinic. Everything about you is normal, but in a way we hadn't seen in well over twenty-five years. So, we filtered out everything we could and produced this 3-D image of the two embryos. Right now, they’re on top of each other, so it looks a little dense in some spots. She tapped something on her computer screen on her desk before turning it around to face me.

There they were, up close and personal as though I were looking inside myself from my right hip. Two little dots sharing a field of black space.

I closed my eyes and shook my head. I slapped my hand down on the armrests and stood so fast that a wave of dizziness nearly brought me to my knees. When Dr. Reeves started for me, I held up a hand to stop her. Someone touching me was what got me in this in the first place. Never had I felt more nauseous in my life than now. I took deep breaths to tap down the sickness reaching for the back of my throat.

How is that possible? I asked. I’m forty-two years old, for heaven’s sake. I’m not supposed to be pregnant. Let alone have twins. I don't take any fertility drugs or anything like that. Not at these prices anyway. The last thing I want is one mutant, let alone two.

It’s very possible. Extremely rare these days, but possible. Like you said, I've seen multiples before, though only with metamorphosed babies. I’ve also confirmed this with three of my colleagues, including the Chief of Gynecology at NC State Research University. Reeves went around to the other side of her desk and tapped the screen to show another image of the questionnaire I had filled out. You said you don’t grow your own food or anything? That you eat out from time to time and shop at regular grocery stores, correct?

Yeah.

The reason I ask is because preclivic batrimonium or precliv is in everything. The food; the water. For unknown reasons, a few women around your age were able to somehow build up an immunity to it ever since it was taken off the market. Even that’s not a guarantee because it also means you’re on the verge of a prolonged menopause.

Menopause?

Yes.

Precliv was meant to slow aging and rejuvenate; scientists later discovered that it had decreased the viable fertility years in both men and women down to a couple of days at best. Women hardly menstruated anymore, which made it more difficult to determine when a female had an ideal ovulation. It didn't help that she was having sex with a guy who had a few sperms cells with tails strong enough to swim up through the birth channel rather than swim in circles as though they were trying to fertilize themselves.

You and your significant other hit the mark, so to speak, she said.

Some mark. I wanted to slump into my seat, had I been sure of where it was. With my luck, I’d hit the floor and suffer a miscarriage.

Okay. She came around her desk again and put her hands on my shoulders as if to calm me down, but looked me dead in the eye. I’ve been relegated to practicing GYN because the OB part is pretty much a niche field for the handful around the world who get the chance to practice it. But what I do know, and have confirmed, is that your babies don't show any signs of gestational mutations, which is the first step.

I wish I could say that was comforting. I’m scared as hell right now. My mind was still laying on the side of the road after having been struck by the news of twin girls. I was single, had kicked my ex to the curb, and barely enough money to afford the small, one-bedroom tiny home where I lived on a helicopter pilot's salary.

Yeah. I know. Dr. Reeves looked about as nervous and excited as a child about to perform their first-ever solo in front of a million people. In a way, she needed to wrap her brain around this as much as I did.

No gestational mutations, I repeated. I guess that was more politically correct than T-rex babies. Abortions had become as commonplace as bathing. Those who dared to go to full-term were rarely ready for the horror, assuming their baby survived to take a breath. For those who did, the longest one lived to be seven months and looked like a cross between a dinosaur and a hippo with three short arms and a rat-like tailbone. Some people had gone so far as to have hysterectomies and vasectomies not to risk the chance of giving birth to something like that. Of course, that was an extreme few, and it took an act of Congress to make it happen. Those who performed the surgeries or had them done illegally, usually ended up with life in prison.

This was the brave, new world we lived in, no thanks to precliv, the so-called miracle additive that did more harm and absolutely no good. To this day, nobody wanted to take the blame for it, seeing as it was a drug created by four international scientists. The Netherlands had most of the blamed, of course, since they were the first to distribute it to their people and swore to the rest of the world that it was safe. Like diseases that came into existence in other countries and made their way around the world, the food additive found its way from plate to plate due to the import-export business. Since it took a few years before people caught on to how deadly precliv was, it had reached the most unassuming plant life and some of the most remote villages on the planet. Since then, entire fields had been burned and crops destroyed. Famine took hold for a short while until enough organic crops that hadn't been touched by precliv could feed the world again.

But… I didn’t know what to say or ask since none of this was still sinking in. "I’m not the only one who’s having a normal birth. There are others. Heck, the entire planet has seen them everywhere. On flat screens, advertisements, on computers. Their faces plastered across dynamic billboards throughout the world. We can't escape them. Corporations spend hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, using them to endorse their products twenty-four-seven. Everything from seaweed to dildos."

You won't be the last to give birth either. She slid her finger along the screen to bring up a website that monitored human births, normal pregnancies, and children in various age ranges. The viable baby number read fifty and a new category called multiple births had been added. The first ticked up by two and the second ticked from zero to one. According to the Birth Calculator, as of this year, you have the fifty-first and second viable pregnancies in the world; thus, the first multiple births. Do you realize how much of honor that is?

Not really. These are my first kids, and I'm still sucking up a heavy dose of shock.

She chuckled. Well, it means that your life is going to change forever. For the better, of course. Your babies will go to school with the other children born next year, which means, they’ll have friends and know that they’re special. Maybe it means the world will double their annual average of viable births from about fifty to a hundred.

And maybe my babies will be taken away by the government who’ll decide when they eat, sleep, and who they play with, assuming playtime is even allowed.

Like many, I had heard the stories, and they weren't that far-fetched. Not when the international governments had QR-coded every egg and sperm sample on the planet. Everyone already had their retinas scanned into databases throughout the world, so there was no need to carry cash. No need to carry your medical records or credit scores either. The feds knew so much about us that they could probably predict our next ice cream craving.

More of the stories I had seen on the flat screen and read in articles began to play with my nerves. I crossed my knees, clutching my thighs as if to hide my panic. How do I know I won't be forced into a modified fertility program right after I give birth? I’ll be subjected to hormone shots that will send my ovulation cycle into overdrive. Especially, now that I’ve proven twins are still possible? Plus, you're assuming whatever eggs that are taken from me after the fact are even sustainable. Those who can afford it have gone through viable IVF procedures and still ended up with either a T-rex or miscarriage.

All of this is for the good of humanity. The way she said it sounded like she didn’t even buy that rehearsed lie. Someone must have coached her before she returned to her office to discuss my results.

I glared. Yeah. Right. I’ll believe it when I see it. The one thing the government seems to be good at is selling us on sex rather than finding a cure.

I believe in more than that because you’re here. Because you’ll be the first woman in twenty-five years to birth twins into the world. A handful of the other children will never experience what it’s like to have a sibling because few parents were blessed to have a second child. Yours will be different because they will know what it feels like to have a mirror of the other. More important, single mom or not, you won't be raising them on your own.

"Oh, yeah. That's right. I'll have the American Mortality Agency watching over my shoulder and telling me everything I'm doing wrong so they