Conscience

Midge stepped into the medical scanner and let the glass tube tighten around her. Before the doctor could tell her to, she spread out her arms. Goosebumps rippled across the bare flesh not covered by her thin hospital gown. The clinic’s air was cool and sterilized, and Midge had always run cold. When she was in her quarters, she cranked up her thermometer as high up as she could make it, but the warmth of the SS Conscience’s public areas was up to the Council, not her. 

“You ready?” Doctor Hughes asked. He stood at the scanner’s controls, waiting to press the big green button. “Remember, breathe like normal, and try not to tense up. This should be over in a moment.”

“Go ahead,” said Midge, trying to control her trembling. Not all of it was from the cold air.

Doctor Hughes gave her a thumbs-up and activated the scanner. A lightbulb whirred into place above her head, the only warning Midge got before her world became encased in green. The scanner ran down the length of her body and effectively turned her inside out. She could feel her blood pump through her body, tracing an endless circuit from the heart and back again. Her lungs wheezed open and shut. Her brain exploded with activity, billions of neurons sparking at once. Her capillaries danced beneath her closed eyes. 

Then, just as quickly as it started, it was over. The green light disappeared, and Midge’s body folded back into its proper position. She opened her eyes and shook out the pins and needles in her arms. Scans were the most effective way to scrutinize her body for malfunctions, diseases, or deficiencies, but she always felt like an old staticky Earth television when they were done.

Doctor Hughes pressed his palm against a panel. The pressure of the tube around Midge’s torso eased. “Good job. How are you feeling?”

Midge stepped out of the tube. A new shock of cold swept over her when her bare feet met the metallic floor. “Fine.” She crossed to the rack where she’d stored her shoes. “How am I doing, doc?” 

Doctor Hughes pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose and scrutinized Midge’s holographic results. “Blood pressure is looking good. Heart rate is a little faster than normal, but we’ve been addressing that. Have you been taking your medication?”

“Yes.”

“Keep at it. Hm, let’s see. Cholesterol is good, sodium is good, Vitamin D levels are good. You’ve been taking your supplements?”

“Every day.”

“Good, good. Oh, here we go. No signs of ovarian cysts or any other uterine anomalies. You’re clear of sexually transmitted or yeast infections. Good levels of FSH. Honestly, Midge, other than the heart rate issue, you seem to be in top shape.”

Midge paused halfway into putting on her shoe. “Are you sure?” 

“I mean, yes.” He gave her a kind smile, one that was obviously meant to put her at ease. For anyone else, it might have. “I know having your first can be scary, but there’s nothing to worry about. You’re perfectly healthy. You’ve been taking your supplements, and your medication. The whole process should be quick and easy.”

“Even with the thing with my heart?” 

Tell me you’re wrong. Tell me I have some kind of genetic heart condition that would be passed down to all my offspring. Tell me I’m going to die in ten years. Just give me something, doc. 

“Even with the thing with your heart,” said Doctor Hughes. “I promise you, Midge, your child will be just fine.”

Midge smiled back at him and tried not to scream.

*

Midge used to eat in the cafeteria. She would stand in line with her crewmates, waiting for a tray of whatever slop was on today’s menu—dehydrated bean stew, cabbage-noodle soup, lab-grown hamburgers. After she’d gotten her food, she would sit down at one of the cafeteria’s long metal tables, usually with a friend or two. Company always made the meals a little easier to swallow.

Nowadays, she requested a to-go bowl and brought her food back to her quarters. She’d found that the best place to eat in solitude was at her desk, which faced her window. Outside, the abyss spread out before her. Stars, millions of them—billions of them—forming unique constellations she could trace with her eyes closed. The sun and the moon, a ball of fire and a hunk of rock. At the center of it all, a brownish orb speckled with patches of green and blue: Earth.

Midge tucked into today’s lunch—a hash made of mushrooms, eggs, and brown rice—and gazed out at the planet that had once been humanity’s home. She’d never been, of course. Nor had her mother, or even her mother’s mother. But her ancestors had, once. They’d breathed in oxygen that wasn’t filtered, drank water from native streams, and killed animals for food. As a teenager, her schoolteachers had played old recordings of what Earth had been like, but there was no way that was anywhere near the real thing. Even as it was now, with an atmosphere choked by centuries of pollution, uncultivatable land, and entire cities lost to the sea, Midge imagined life was far more beautiful on the ground. 

A knock on the door startled her out of her thoughts. At first, she didn’t move. The only person who’d visited her lately had been her mother, but it had been a year since she’d passed away from the Flu. Whoever was standing outside her quarters had probably gotten the wrong address.

She was just bringing another bite of hash to her mouth when the knock sounded again. Midge frowned, set down her compostable fork, and went to answer it. 

“Listen,” she said, sliding open the door, “you’ve got the wrong room number. And I’m busy right now, so I don’t appreciate—”

The door opened in its entirety, and Midge’s words stuck in her throat.

Laura smiled at her, apparently not minding the rudeness. “Hey, Midge.”

Laura had always been beautiful, with her dark brown skin and intricate braids that fell halfway down her back. She had ridiculously long lashes that seemed to tangle together every time she blinked, and strong, broad shoulders. While Midge always seemed to be swimming in her ship-issued uniform, Laura’s fit hers in all the right places.

Once, Midge had considered the idea that she was in love with Laura. It made sense. Sometimes they held hands in the cafeteria. When they were younger, they’d slept over in each other’s quarters all the time. And, all right, they’d kissed once, but they’d been drunk and surrounded by their equally tipsy, giggling friends. It was a fine kiss, as kisses went. There had definitely been some tongue in there. Still, Midge hadn’t come out of the encounter with any desire to repeat it. She’d told Laura as much the day after, when they’d been recovering from their hangovers, and Laura had laughed and told her that was fine.

“What are you doing here?” Midge blurted. 

“I got something for you.” Laura’s hands were behind her back, concealing something big. The gesture seemed to emphasize the swell of her belly. She was probably seven or eight months along now; Midge hadn’t kept track. She did know that this was Laura’s second child. She’d probably end up having three or four. Laura was good like that.

“My birthday isn’t for another month.”

“I know when your birthday is.”

Of course she did. Midge never remembered anyone’s birthdays.

Midge had always found Laura to be the most tolerable of her old friends. Sure, she’d liked Sahil, Lori, and Winnie well enough, but they were distant with her in a way Laura never was. Laura always made a point to ask Midge about her day. Laura spent half her monthly trade on extravagant birthday gifts every year. When Midge had gotten sick and spent a week in the hospital, Laura had skipped half of her job training to keep her company. 

Of course, they weren’t really friends anymore. The most Laura did now was say hello to her when they passed each other in the hallways. She did still give birthday presents, but they were always something impersonal, like trade cards, and always sent to her quarters rather than personally delivered.

“Then what’s…?” 

Midge trailed off as Laura held out the gift basket she’d been concealing. Within it brimmed a variety of goodies—cloth-wrapped cookies, fluffy socks, bags of tea, and a small diffuser. It must have cost a fortune in trade. Everyone on the Conscience was guaranteed food and water and their own living space, of course, but cookies and fluffy socks were luxuries Midge usually only got on holidays.

“Surprise!” Laura beamed. 

Midge blinked. “What’s all this for?”

“I heard you went to the doctor today. Word says you’ve got a clean bill of health. Is it true you’re finally going to take the plunge?”

Midge took in the gift basket with fresh eyes. There was something she hadn’t noticed in the back—a tiny bundle of pale-blue fabric. A baby’s onesie.

A little shudder ran down the length of her spine. She took a step away from Laura and the basket, eyeing its contents like they carried a contagious disease. Which, in a way, they did. 

“Oh,” she said. “Um, that’s not—I wasn’t planning on—”

“Oh, come on. You’re twenty-four. You’re healthy. Your fertility is at its peak. You’ve been checking in at the doctor—which I completely understand. I was terrified when I learned I was pregnant with Nora. I was sure I had some unknown illness inside me I would pass onto her. It took me two trips to Doctor Hughes to realize I was fine.” She tilted her head. “So, has it happened yet, or are you just getting prepared?”

“I’m not getting pregnant.” Each word left Midge’s mouth like the cleave of a knife. Laura didn’t seem to notice.

“I should have guessed. I know the actual pregnancy thing has always grossed you out. You’re gonna get it tube-grown, then?”

Midge exhaled. Tube-grown babies had been around for forty years now. It was a perfectly safe option for people who wanted to contribute to the Conscience’s population but couldn’t—or simply didn’t want to—carry their baby for nine months. Just get an egg fertilized, pop over to the lab, and get the zygote transferred into a bioreactor. The baby would grow just like a child in a womb, and eventually emerge perfectly healthy and ready to take on the world. 

Laura was right. Pregnancy did gross Midge out. From the very first time she’d learned about the process in her Sex-Ed class, she’d known that wasn’t for her. The thought of a tiny creature living inside of her, human or not, was far too parasitic for her taste. Her body was hers and hers alone.

It would make perfect sense, then, for her to send her fertilized egg over to the bioreactor. She wouldn’t have to deal with the perils of pregnancy, and she’d still be contributing to the needs of the Conscience. Easy-peasy.

She’d thought about that, for a while. Most gender customs aboard the Conscience had dissolved. Having babies didn’t even mean you had to raise them yourself. There were plenty of others—people who couldn’t get pregnant, people who’d tried to and failed, people who wanted more kids than their reproductive systems allowed them—who would take her babies off her hands, if she so desired. All she had to do was get one egg fertilized, and that would be all.

“I didn’t go to the doctor because I want to have a baby,” she said. 

“What? Why?” Laura looked genuinely confused, not angry like her old friends had been when they all started getting pregnant and she didn’t. “You’re past the age for it, Midge.”

Midge closed her eyes. “I know.”

*

When the Conscience had first taken to the skies, fleeing from the ruins of planet Earth, the biggest problem had been figuring out a way to feed a surplus of hungry mouths.

The Conscience didn’t have a destination. There was nowhere it could go to restock; no planetary gas station to refill its water tanks and gather up new livestock for food. Other ships had taken to the stars with the impossible hope of finding somewhere else—a planet with feasible water, food, maybe even life—but the Conscience had never been an escape vessel. Its mission was accountability.

When the Conscience took off, it didn’t flee. It locked in orbit with Earth, circling it like a stray asteroid. Brave volunteers donned enviro-suits, took shuttles back down to Earth’s desiccated lands, and attempted to rebuild. They had machines no other generation had before, and an endless number of resources and money. The rest of the people on the Conscience, meanwhile, would sit back and wait, and when Earth was deemed fully habitable again, they would return to their home planet.

In her childhood history classes, Midge had learned that this process had taken a lot longer than anyone had expected. It had been over a hundred years, and humanity seemed to have made a bigger mess than they could conceivably clean up. Rations quickly began to dwindle, and what little food was scavenged from the planet was deemed inedible. 

It must have been a horrible time. All the simulations at school emphasized the emaciated bodies of the Conscience’s earliest passengers, the anger that roiled within them like a debris field. A few kids were born, but a lot of them ended up dying of malnutrition. It was like living life in a warzone, Midge had learned, even though she didn’t really know what a warzone was like.

Sometimes, though, she would’ve taken the hunger and desperation of the early Conscience rather than the heavy expectations that weighed on her now.

“I don’t understand,” Laura said. “I mean, I guess I’ve never really understood. What’s the problem with getting an egg fertilized? It’s a great time. It’s okay that you’re not in a relationship. There are guys who are literally paid to have sex with you. Trust me,” she added, “they’re experienced.”

The Conscience had the opposite problem now. Earth was almost ready to be rehabilitated again; Midge’s teachers had always told her that the next generation would likely be the first in a century to live full lives back on their native soil. After a technological breakthrough eighty or so years ago, Conscience scientists had found a way to grow food in a laboratory. Starvation and rationing were concepts of the past; now, there was plenty enough to go around. Almost too much. 

So therein lay the crux of the issue: humanity needed more bodies. Without an increased birth rate, there was no way the human species would ever bounce back.

“I know,” Midge said, because she did. 

“So, what?”

Here was something Midge had a hard time explaining. She hadn’t been able to tell her old friends this, years ago, and that had been why they’d shunned her. Everyone shunned her, really, for not performing the one task everyone with a functioning uterus did. If you could get pregnant, you got pregnant. Otherwise, you were inadvertently contributing to the extinction of humanity.

Midge tried to picture the process sometimes. She’d walk into the clinic. Get another scan. A holographic image of a fertilized egg would appear before her, and she would put her hand to her belly, feeling her own pulse under her fingers and imagining it was her child kicking out. In some fantasies, she kept the baby, despite her initial disgust. She watched her belly grow and grow, finding beauty in what had previously been repulson, until, eventually, she greeted a new person into the world. In others, she would sit down for the brief procedure to transfer her egg to the bioreactor—it didn’t hurt, she was promised—and occasionally visit to watch her zygote grow into something human.

That part didn’t bother her. She didn’t want to be a mother, but she wouldn’t mind having something from her. After she awoke from her fantasies of holding a little child in her arms—a child that had her eyes and the slope of her cheekbones—she would ask herself, bitterly, what her problem was. Why didn’t she just go ahead and get it over with? She might actually be accepted back into her community then.

Instead of answering Laura, Midge moved further into her quarters, keeping the door open so Laura could follow her inside. She sat down on her sofa and put her head in her hands. The sound of creaking, followed by someone settling into the seat across from her, told her that Laura had made herself comfortable. 

“Midge,” Laura said. “What’s going on with you?”

Midge closed her eyes and imagined herself in bed, her skin bare, the heat of someone else’s breath tickling her neck. Her partner traced a hand along the knobs of her spine. They kissed a path down her shoulder. She smiled and leaned into the gesture.

They moved together, like a dance, two bodies becoming one. Back and forth, a gentle sway—but also an explosion. Pleasure swelled through her, overwhelm her. She arched her back and screamed her ecstasy to the cosmos. 

She opened her eyes. Her too-fast heart pounded in her chest. Not out of excitement, or hormonal response. This wasn’t a meteor shower. This was the quick, stuttering pulse of a protagonist in a horror simulator. It was the dread of the chase.

“I don’t want to do it,” she said, weakly. “I just—I can’t.”

Laura reached out and took her hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t really understand what’s going on, but I didn’t mean to push you into an uncomfortable conversation.”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it matters. You’re not happy.”

“I know,” Midge said. “But it’s not me that’s making me unhappy.”

*

Midge sometimes wondered if the fact that she’d been grown in a test tube made her feel so alienated from her own body. Her mother had wanted to get properly pregnant at first, but sudden health complications in her first trimester had forced her to transmute her growing fetus—by then nothing more than a bundle of tangled, parasitic cells—into a bioreactor. Midge didn’t remember this, of course. No one remembered being a baby, lab experiment or not. 

But perhaps a part of her—something primal within her body, rather than her brain—held onto the taste of amniotic fluid and the sterile whiteness of the lab she was birthed in. Some part of her knew she was an experiment, and maybe that was why she’d never felt quite natural.

“Am I real?” she’d asked her mother once. She must have been six or seven. She’d woken up from a nightmare in which she’d been flushed out of the airlock without a space suit, but instead of dying, she’d just floated endlessly outward into the abyss. 

Her mother reached out to stroke her hair. “Of course you’re real,” she said. “Why do you think you’re not?”

“I wasn’t made like everyone else.”

“Yes, you were. Tube-grown babies are just as natural as live births. You know this. And you know it was too dangerous for me to carry you.”

“I know,” said Midge, but she didn’t really.  

If she’d felt disconnected to her body as a child, it got even worse as she grew older. Sometimes she would strip off her clothes and spend hours staring at herself in the mirror, trying to calibrate the intensity of her mind with the fleshy figure within the glass. There were parts of herself she liked. Her long, lean legs. Her narrow shoulders. Her hair, which she’d dyed herself into a shaggy pink bob at fourteen. 

There were other parts that didn’t quite match up. Her widening hips. Her breasts, which weren’t exactly large, but still caused some boys’ heads to dip down with appreciation. The space between her legs, which bled every month and continued to grow thick, coarse hair. 

If she’d had a choice—if she’d somehow been a scientist preparing the amniotic fluid for her own future self—she would have gotten rid of those bits. She’d smooth out her chest. She’d carve away the ridges of her hips. The bleeding would disappear entirely, and so would the cramping, not just because it was uncomfortable and occasionally painful but because it signalled—

Well. It signalled a lot.

Alongside this discomfort came a fascination with the planet her ship orbited. She could spend hours staring out the plexiglass window at the little brown orb in the distance. As young as six years old, she began to trawl through the archives, and played through as many simulations as she could. Walking along the spongy, tangled ground of a jungle. Swimming in a salty sea. Biking through a big city, watching cars whiz by, the wind catching in her hair. It was all equally beautiful. It was all equally thrilling.

When she was nine, she decided she wanted to be an Earth-side volunteer. She’d imagine going down there and coaxing extinct animals back to life, feeding garbage into machines that transformed them into clean energy. She would have to wear an enviro-suit, but maybe she could take a bike ride. Maybe she could feel the wind in her hair. 

She told her mother this, hands on her hips, swollen with excitement because she finally knew what she was made of. Her mother didn’t say anything, at first. She stared at Midge with a wistful expression, her hands twitching at her side.

“I’m sorry, Midge,” she said. “You’re staying here.”

“What? Why?”

“It’s not safe. You’d live a hard life down there. A short one. It would be nothing but back-breaking labour, day by day. You would become weak. You’d probably get very sick.”

“So?” Midge asked, full of the brazen confidence only a child could muster.

“I can’t let that happen to you.” Her mother kissed her forehead. “Besides, the Conscience needs you up here.”

Midge wasn’t really sure if that was true.

Either way, she stayed on the Conscience. She got top marks in school. She started training to be a researcher. She made friends. 

When her friends turned eighteen, they started trying for kids. Lori got pregnant right away, but transferred her zygote into the bioreactors. Winnie decided to keep her kid but gave it to her mom to adopt when it was born. Sahil’s girlfriend ended up having some fertility issues, so no one blamed her for not providing for her community.

Sometimes they turned to Midge. “When are you planning to take the next step?”

“It’s really easy, you know.”

“It’s exciting.”
“It’s fulfilling.”

“I don’t know,” Midge said. 

“If not now, then when?”

“You’ve only got a limited time, you know.”

Sometimes, Midge would shrug. Her friends, sensing that they were getting nothing more out of her, would exchange judgemental looks and switch subjects. Only once had she been so fed up with their constant questioning that she’d lashed out.

“I’m not staying here! I’m going to Earth!”

Earth, with its rolling hills. Earth, with its cracked volcanoes. Brown seas. Gray skies. Mechanical shells littering tarmac roads, glittering buildings towering far above her head, snow crunching under her boots. Down there, it didn’t matter that she’d never provide another body to the human race. She could help in her own way.

Her friends laughed. 

“Yeah, right,” Sahil said.

“You know Earth-side volunteers die at, like, thirty?” said Winnie.

“There’s no way they would send you down there.”

They wouldn’t. Most of the planet-side volunteers were older and weary. Some were ravaged by illness. Others were nearing the ends of their lives, and wanted to do one last thing to provide for the world. Young, healthy people like Midge were needed aboard the Conscience. 

Midge left her tray and stormed off. She could’ve sworn, as she shoved her way out of the cafeteria, that she heard her friends’ laughter.

*

“I’m sorry,” Laura said, sounding genuinely so as Midge ushered her to the door. “You know we’ll still be friends, okay?”

“Right,” Midge said. 

“You can keep the gift basket.”

“Thanks.”

“Just—take care of yourself, okay?”

“You, too.”

When the door closed behind Laura, Midge’s knees almost buckled right there. She went to her tiny kitchenette and opened a bottle of water. As she took tiny, shaky sips, she sat back down at her desk, where her forgotten lunch lay waiting. Through the window, Earth was as big as the pad of her pointer finger. If she held out her hand and closed one eye, it disappeared entirely.

She opened her eye again. Earth returned, small and dull but there. What would it be like, to run her hands through soft grass? What did an ocean wave feel like when it lapped over her bare toes? Were breezes cold or hot or somewhere in between? What would it look like to see the stars from the ground?

What was a body outside the confines of its expectations?

She wanted to find out.