Adam's Rib

After dressing for work Danny puts two chicken breasts in the refrigerator to thaw for dinner. He texts his teenage son, Matthew, to ask him to pick up a salad on his way home from school.

He arrives at the lab to find men rushing around, some shouting numbers, others making notes. He wades into the center of the chaos. A young man in a trainee lab coat smiles from ear to ear. "She's been alive for twenty minutes, Doctor."

Danny puts his stethoscope in his ears and pushes his way toward the baby. Ten fingers. Ten toes. He listens to her heart and lungs. She doesn't make a sound. She looks at the men making a fuss over her as though she knows she is a miracle.

"Is the room pathogen free?" Danny shouts to no one in particular.

"No, Doctor. It's amazing." The same young doctor stands at Danny's side. "She appears to be immune."

Danny purses his lips. The hopefulness of the young has always given him pause. Even when it had been his own youthful hopefulness.

Very few men still lived who remembered the devastation of the early pathogen. Danny's grandfather created it and Danny spent his entire life trying to breed a female immune to it.

He was ten-years-old when his mother got sick. He was twelve when her body stopped absorbing all nutrients and she died. Then his sisters got sick. Before long the few females who still lived were sent to mountain harvesting centers to preserve their eggs before they too died. It had been sixty years since he had seen a female older than 15 minutes.

The pathogen was meant to suppress the female desire for sex. Instead, it suppressed the survival function of the female body. An international court tried his grandfather for high treason against humanity. God's Last Creations Church disbanded and most of them fled to South America. The few who remained in the United States tried to keep the religion going, but without females to propagate their congregation they died out in a few decades.

Trying to atone for his father's crime, Danny's father perfected the artificial womb to save humanity, but every female child who lived to term died within seconds of contact with the pathogen. Scientists harvested their eggs and tried again and again. Danny slowly increased the survival rate. Ten years ago a female baby survived fifteen minutes. After the first few seconds the room had been abuzz just like this one.

Danny looks into the baby's eyes hoping his son will not be relegated to a life without female companionship. He remembers his mother's soft touch and lilac scent, his sisters' tinkling laughter and smiling faces. He wants his son to know the value women added to the world.

He watches the baby's chest rise and fall. He counts the seconds and then the minutes. He spends the day watching her, not moving, not wanting to break the enchantment that made her possible.