Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25947144-20170211182210

I could see his eyes. I knew it was impossible as the eyes were far from developing and it would be a long time before his eyes would open, but my paternal instincts tried forcing me to perceive that I was already seeing a fully developed baby. I knew better.

Even though we were living in the era of the ever-accelerating technological progress for so much time, the artificial uterus took dangerously long to perfect. The ECMO system, artificial umbilical cord and amniotic tank were developed relatively quickly, each taking barely under a year. The main problems resided in trying to find a way to offer the fetus proper nutrition and hormonal stability. A safe, but rather slow solution was to be able to "harvest" the necessary substances from donors rather than finding a way to artificially produce them, which would have taken even longer. There were barely any donors, though, which heavily stalled our progress, to the point where I nearly gave up the hopes that this project would be finished before I die.

The solution came from a rather surprising place. Chimeras. Animals whose embryos have been injected with human stem cells, resulting in offspring with human organs. The experiments proved very effective, through being able to harvest the necessary amount of the needed substances for what I had in mind would have implied creating chimeras out of animals with a similar gestation length and possibly similar anatomy, an expensive process. Luckily, I had the resources for that.

The artificial uterus received massive support from men, as well as even some women, who wanted to be able to have children without having to use women for various reasons. Some wanted to have equal rights in deciding whether or not to keep the potential children, some wanted to eliminate the risks or pain of childbirth and some just didn't want to have anything to do with women. I belonged to the third group, not because I had anything against women, but because I wanted complete control. I wanted to be in complete control of how the baby was going to look like, his proportions, his immunities, possibly even things like metabolic functions. An artificially manipulated ovary and my sperm. I wanted him to be like me. A better me. A perfect me.

It certainly wasn't easy. Along the stages of development, my...son had to be moved through different life-sustaining systems. Before him there had been several failures, most them caused by improper dosages of nutrients and hormones that would have resulted into severe defects. I couldn't have wasted such an expensive and consuming project on a failure. I had to terminate them. But this one was simply perfect. I watched him grow, no, bloom before my eyes. As much as I would have loved to remain unattached to him, it was impossible to watch him, knowing he was my son, knowing he was alive, and not make a connection with him.

The ultimate limitation was time, something I didn't have much of. As he was blooming, I was degrading. I watched the lanugo grow and fall around the same time pattern baldness took my hair. His limbs, muscles and skeleton grew as my body become weaker and weaker. My presence to his birth wasn't necessary, but a part of me really wanted to. Day by day I stood by his side, observing his evolution. That was a mistake. I grew attached to him, something that would destroy me in the case of something going wrong.

Still, each day I returned and errors are yet to appear. I would be lying if I'd say that I never thought about getting him out before term, but I reminded the monitoring staff regularly to stop me should such impulses take over. All of the events led me this day.

I wanted to record this as a testimony. A reminder of everything that not only I but hundreds of people worked for all these years. And a reminder of this me when I'll pass away. I approach and lay down on my operating table as my assistants and surgeons are bringing the transplant subject to the table. Soon I'm going to become a better me. The perfect me. I watch as they apply anesthetics to him, not that waking up would mean much now. They are marking his head for the extraction and extirpation of his undeveloped brain. They are injecting the anesthetics to me and wish me goodbye. I don't know why, we'll meet again soon. 