I am Joe’s fetus.

Unprepossessing but potent, this small blob of tissue has been entrusted to Joe in the hope that he can grow it.
Joe lives in a world that has no female humans left in it. It’s the year 2222. There are no women because the hormones in Monsanto’s genetically-engineered-synthetic chicken breasts wiped out the whole gender.
So the men have decided that they must now bear children and Joe volunteered to carry me - one of thousands of embryos frozen during the In Vitro Fertilization craze - in a Monsanto-designed artificial uterus that’s been attached inside his abdomen.

Joe was selected because he is a healthy 25 year old man. As a soldier, he volunteered for the job because he has been promised that this duty will help advance his career in the military.Joe is the first man to carry out this experiment. I am being constantly monitored while Joe goes about his regular job, which has been considerably lightened to accommodate the important project that he bears.

The artificial uterus, in addition to all the normal features that would be found in the womb of a four-month pregnant woman, has links to the outside world through various electronic leads that allow the scientists to watch every step of my development inside Joe’s body. As well, needles are often carefully inserted by the Monsanto biomedical engineers into the walls of their patented FetusCarrier™ to ensure that the levels of their synthetic hormones are maintained.

The fuss that surrounds Joe and his FetusCarrier™ continues like this, day and night. When I first started moving around inside Joe, I could sense how nervous that made him. But his doctor and the scientists quickly reassured and congratulated him about his role in hosting my growth. It’s not very comfortable for me when they make Joe stretch out on a gurney while they prod and poke at him. I much prefer when he’s walking briskly, bouncing me around inside the squishy artificial amniotic fluid.

But I suffer through the examinations the scientists and engineers conduct of their FetusCarrier™, scrutinizing every aspect of its functions captured by all the electronic devices that were inserted into it, at the same time that they stuck me here. Sometimes I wonder if my continued existence is only an adjunct to the important scientific work that they’re doing in testing out the efficacy of their new product.

Originally posted at Birth Pangs.