THE BIOLAB

Jordan stood dumbfounded, staring at Aditi, thinking, She wasn’t born naturally. She was created, built out of cell samples, gestated in an artificial womb, a machine. She’s not natural, not real …

Yet she was sitting beside him on the stone bench, her beautiful face looking concerned, worried that his innate fears and prejudices would destroy their loving relationship.

Jordan squeezed his eyes shut momentarily. She is real, he told himself. She’s as real as I am. She’s warm and loving and—alien.

He opened his eyes and Aditi was still there, beside him, close enough to touch, close enough to catch the delicate floral scent she wore, close enough to see that her eyes were troubled.

“Have I shocked you?” she asked, her voice low.

He had to pull in a breath before he could answer, “It’s … a surprise. I never thought…”

“Would you like to see the facility where we were created?”

“I’m not so sure,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

Aditi got to her feet and reached a hand out to Jordan. He rose, took her hand, and numbly followed her as together they walked into the city.

People were strolling along the streets, together with the pony-sized animals they used as beasts of burden. Smaller pets scampered among them, unhampered by leashes. Many of the people smiled and said hello.

He asked her, “All of these people were…?”

“Created in the biolab, yes,” Aditi answered easily. “So were the ponies and all the other animals you have seen here in the city.”

“And the animals in the forest?”

She shook her head. “They procreate among themselves, of course.”

“Of course,” he said weakly.

As she walked purposefully along the street, Aditi said, “Jordan, it’s merely another way for a species to reproduce. We use our technology. We can control every aspect of gestation. It allows us to produce babies that are healthy, intelligent, and empathetic.”

He said nothing, but his mind pictured hordes of identical clones being mass-produced like automobiles or robots. He knew it was nonsense, that Aditi was not a mindless zombie, that every one of Adri’s people was as individual as humans. Yet the picture remained in his mind. Things that looked like human beings being stamped out in a factory assembly line.

Aditi sensed his inner turmoil. “Jordan, dearest, the end product of our way is the same as the end product of your way: a baby. A squalling, gurgling, dribbling baby. Just the same as your babies. Just as human.”

They were at the entrance to a smallish building. Its door opened at Aditi’s touch and they went into the biolab.

Jordan followed Aditi through rows of equipment, all silent and still. She pointed out the microscopes and specimen containers, the glassware for cell cultures, the reactors where egg and sperm cells were united.

Like our biovats for meat, Jordan thought. Smaller, though. Much smaller.

“And here are the gestation chambers,” Aditi said, gesturing to a line of small spheres that looked to Jordan like gourds made of plastic with half a dozen flexible pipes connected to them.

“They enlarge as the fetus grows, of course,” Aditi said.

“I see,” he murmured. Then he realized, “None of the equipment seems to be functioning.”

“Not now. We don’t need any more people for the time being. When the need arises, we can gestate newborns.”

“And where do the eggs and sperm come from?” he asked.

“From us,” she replied. “We donate ova and sperm cells when they are needed.”

Rather cold-blooded, Jordan thought. But he said nothing.

Going down the line of artificial wombs, Aditi stopped at one. “This is where I was gestated,” she said. “Number six.”

The writing on the bench’s top was indecipherable to Jordan, but he looked from it to her face, smiling hopefully.

“It did a good job,” he said, smiling back at her.

Aditi broke into tears. Leaning her head against his chest, she sobbed, “You don’t think I’m a monster?”

“I know you’re not.”

“You can accept me, knowing how I was created? How different I am?”

Folding his arms about her, Jordan said, “I love you, Aditi. I don’t care how you were created; that doesn’t matter.”

He wasn’t being entirely truthful. Jordan felt a slight shiver of apprehension as he looked past her tousled head to the row of artificial wombs standing silently on the bench, waiting to be used again to create new aliens.