Chapter 10
“I thought we might talk about something a little different today,” Mrs. Lawrence said quietly, sitting at her desk while the students were still settling in. One group of boys was standing off to one side, giving each other affectionate punches on the arm. Another group of girls was busy trading gossip in hushed voices. Some smaller groups and pairs were just talking or showing each other videos on their tablets. “I think you are old enough that we can talk about where babies come from.” Her voice was not louder than before, but somehow the students shushed themselves down quickly, and with a shuffling of chairs, class began in tense quiet.
“You’ve all probably heard rumors and saw movies from back in the old days, when people used to have children internally. Meaning, inside the body of the mother.” She paused to let the general sentiment, disgust and disbelief, fizzle out.
“But of course, since the industrial revolution, the vast majority of people are born in artificial wombs. This is clearly much safer and had, among other things, helped reduce infant mortality from around one-in-four that was the pervasive statistic during medieval times, to nearly zero, as it remains ever since the early twenty-second century.
“Now, the basic ‘birds and bees’ of human reproduction haven’t changed with the invention of the artificial womb. There’s still need for genetic material from both a male and a female to be mixed in order to produce viable embryos. The male sperm cell is injected into the female egg, and a new life begins. In some cases, the fertilized egg splits into two or more embryos, which gives us pairs of twins and even triplets, like we have in our class.” The three girls, who were identical in every sense, except for the way each tied their hair, and their completely different personalities, giggled in embarrassment.
“But, I am going to assume that, with your tablets and gossip and natural curiosity, you’ve already known most of what I told you up to now. What’s most interesting to you, I suppose, is where the genetic material came from, in the first place.” With this, the giggling and whispering once again died down.
“You’ve all learned the story of the Arvad, and of the citizens that lived and died aboard the generation ship, so that we will be able to reach Adalia, where the human-kind can once again flourish.” This resulted in some skeptical looks from some in the class, but she persevered.
“We seldom talk about the people of old Earth, back in the days when the great ships were built and sent out into the galaxy.
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“The people of Earth did not just sacrifice their hard-earned riches and raw materials to build the great ships. They also made the ultimate sacrifice for all humanity.
“When it was clear that Earth, with its finite resources and changing climate would no longer be able to support the growing population, the ancient people of Earth knew they had to leave. They knew, that they could never take up the entire human race, even on a hundred great ships. But the embryos could be frozen in limitless supply, if needed.
“So they chose to give their progeny a chance at a better life. Surely they didn’t expect hundreds of years of travel in the cold darkness of space to lead their unborn children to a harsh and airless land as Adalia. But they gave them, us, a chance to survive.
“A chosen few were allowed to climb up to the launch pads and shepherd the great ships over parsecs and generations. They had been the lucky ones, to live and to be able to see their own biological children be born. But none of them would ever see the end of the journey. Neither did their children, nor their children’s children.
“For generations the Arvad flew through endless voids. The last generation of shepherds have finally arrived, and were tasked with raising us, the children of old Earth, on this new land, where we might live.” She stopped to assess if her words were properly understood.
“Yes, I was born here, on Adalia, from biological parents that have died centuries ago on ancient Earth. Just like all of you.” This part always made her truly sad. “They never got to see their children succeed, and reclaim this splintered world as a new home for humanity.
“Each year, a new batch of Adalians is born, raised by the previous cohorts, us, who are your pod-parents and teachers from the time you leave the fertility labs, until you go out and find your own way on the belt. Soon it will be your time, not just to teach the next cohort, not just to build up the food and resources for your pod-brothers-and-sisters, but to fulfil the promise of all humanity. That the sacrifice of our ancestors, our very own parents, comes to fruition, by the fact of our living and flourishing, by carrying on the flame of the human race.”
As they were leaving the class, she waited to see if any of her students will come asking more questions. Occasionally they ask about being parents to their own cohort, and she’d explain how that is possible, even today, but the price of fertility lab space is so high that only the richest Adalians can even consider it, and few ever do. That the Prime Council has vowed to subsidize this service once there were enough resources and living space, and even just breathable air, to allow Adalian-sired children to join the countless unborn children of ancient Earth. Sometimes, some students, mostly girls, would stick around to ask about how babies used to be conceived in ancient times. And they seldom liked the answers.
But this time, they seemed to be too shy, or too preoccupied to stay and ask. She didn’t tell them how their progenitors probably didn’t imagine the harsh realities their far-flung children would have to face. How many of them would see nothing more than the mining fields of some dark and arid rock at the edge of the belt. How many of them will not survive the vacuum clawing in, or the explosion of chemicals, or the failure of heavy machinery, as so many of her past students found their untimely ends. Her past students, that she had raised from infancy and sent out into the voids between the asteroids, hoping to one day find out that they still lived, and flourished. Children of ancient Earth, they were, but they were her children, too. And soon, she would have to send them all away.
