Am I asking for too much? Is what I want akin to the world?
“Don’t bother,” she quipped then added, “Thank you for the news.” Clara moved to disconnect the call.
“Ms. Warren?”
Her finger hovered. “Yes?”
“Please reach out to us if you need anything.”
They disconnected.
Clara picked up her tablet and stared at the screen where she had bookmarked the only option she had left for the future she wanted.
No more men. No more pain. I can have it all.Security, family, and hopefully that morning smile. She brushed her fingers across her stomach, remembering the pain. It had been gone for a long time and she didn’t know what she hated more: that the pain was gone and no longer occupied all her thoughts, or that its absence had burgeoned a new, worse pain in her heart.
Clara sighed and put her vehicle back into self-drive. It lifted into the air, sweeping dust around her windshields, temporarily cloaking her shaken heart from the world.
She was going nowhere fast and vastly off-kilter.
The dirt cleared and the desert re-emerged, along with an unsettling feeling that she was being watched. She kissed her fingertips and tapped the roof of her vehicle, praying that she was making the right choice.
The Cyborg breeding facility—the name made her flinch—was set in her GPS.Bred up, bred once, bred well and good.Her pamphlet relayed no statistics on success or failure; in fact, the information it held was subpar at best. It wasold. The paper edges were worn and frayed but she knew it still existed. She knew that much at least.
She had never heard of a Cyborg fathering children and that was fine with her. She wasn’t going there to get knocked up by test-tube sperm...
Clara fisted her hand into the loose cloth of her shirt.
If she did get pregnant, fine, it would save her a step, but if she didn’t, her next stop would be a fertility center to ply herself with human designer seed.
No more men.She wanted to shout out her window and scream it to the world.
The landscape blurred and her flyer shot forward. The chimes pinned to her dashboard swayed with the continuous blast of air conditioning, their fragmented garnet and crystal stones refracting rainbows over her face.
No one would suspect she was crying. No one would know that she shivered, not from the cold air, but from uncertainty.
I’m running away.
She only hoped that whatever was chasing her would never catch up.
