Okay - finally had some time to finish this up... (if you didn't read the first part, its in the post just below this one, read it first!)

The Baby: Conclusion:

Tom was at a loss for words.  It was the day he was supposed to be the first male human giving birth to an actual baby, and before he had even stepped in the shower he had gotten this call.  It didn't seem fair to him, and he thought for a moment she was probably watching from another place, hopefully a better one, and laughing at his failure already.  Tom took a deep breath, began to rub his forhead out of frustration, and said patiently, "Charles, why do I need to come down there?  This sounds like something I need to hear right now.  I haven't even showered."

"Tom....", there was a long quiet pause but Tom could still hear charles breathing through the reciever.  "Tom, look...You were so damn close, you had it all right you know - taking the notes from the way they cloned lambs, looking at the viability of actually implanting a womb into yourself, all those" before Charles could continue Tom cut him off, "I know I was right Charles, thats why I'm sitting here today with a 7 pound child in my belly and a portion of my organs removed or restricted."

"Exactly!" Tom replied sounding pleased as if Tom had made a connection that he clearly had not.  "You had it all right, except one minor detail.  That baby.....that...thing inside of you...it is in fact growing, we did catch a heartbeat, and it certainly appears to be a baby, even on all of our ultrasounds, but....but it isn't Tom.  Its something else.".   

Tom was annoyed now, as he was a Doctor and experimental scientist, he had done many things he wasn't pleased with over his long career, and he was all to familar with trying to deliver bad news to someone gently, and he knew thats exactly what was going on right now.  "Charles, what are you saying?  We've monitored this child for 9 months now, what do you mean its something else?".  Charles didn't hesitate to respond, "Tom.  Its not a child.  What you have in your stomach right now is a growth and malignint.  Its basically an oversized tumor, and if I'm right, removing it today via the c-section we had planned isn't going to help you at all.  I can't explain it Tom, but we decided to do some additional tests outside of the amniocentisis and your biopsy came back positive.  You have a cancerous growth, and its the damn thing we put inside you."

###############

Thats the end for now folks - please forgive my lack of actual medical terms but I was just trying to bust this out.  If I were going to pursue this, my idea is that it would be very twilight zone-ish, set in a world where all the women have been killed off for some reason, via a virus/genocide/or maybe never explained, and Tom is kind of a jerk scientist who unfortunately is the only person who has a shot of figuring out how to save humanity.  As we see in this rough version, he succeds (or thinks he does), but in the end it turns out that he shouldn't have messed with mother nature, and all he has is a gigantic tumor that looks and acts like a baby.  I like the idea of this thing inside him, put there by him, that is something far more sinister than a baby, but not taking it as far as the "It's Alive" movies.

Keeping it going....

A friend of mine recently sent me this IM:  

"come on andrew, lets keep up the posting on voltronx, i have an assignment for you today. Write a 1000 word short story inspired by this picture...http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/freeradicals/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/preganant-man-and-electrotherapeutic-device-006.jpg  "

What a cool friend!  A challenge!  So, without further ado, here it is:

The Baby 

The cheap radio clock that he had won at that stupid fair last year read "5:34 AM" in oversized red letters.  It was almost as if the clock was daring him to try and sleep.  "Come on, you've been watching me since I read 3:00 AM buddy, your 2 hours and 34 minutes in, you can't win" he imagined the clock saying to him.  "Fuck you clock" he said outloud to himself, and part of him hoped the clock was a little put off by the comment.  But he knew he couldn't sleep, not now, not today, not with so much riding on the line.  

He thought for a minute about everything he had done to get to this point and it made him a little weary.  Had he thought of everything?  Were his calculations, and in some cases guesstimations, correct?  This was no ordinary procedure and it was unprecedented to be using himself as a test subject.  But then again, how many guys would nominate themselves to be impregnated and to carry a baby to term?  Not many...even for the $15 dollar a month fee he was willing to pay them with the money he had left over from his first grant.  But none of that really mattered now, he was far beyond that point.  It was his cross to bare, and he had to prove to the world, no, he had to prove to her, that it could be done.

"5:37 AM" the clock read, and he decided it was time to forget sleep.

He put both arms behind him, and begun to push himself up and out of the bed.  He had had to do this type of manuevering for the last 3 months and while it was easier for him to do, it still never felt quite right.  As he stood, his right arm instinctivly went to carass his lower back to ease the aching, he had taken to calling this "morning atrophy", but no one seemed to find that as humorous as he did.  He had made it about 4 steps away from the shower when his cell phone started playing the theme song to the flintsontes cartoon, he loved that ring tone, it reminded him of another time.  He walked back towards the nightstand it was resting on and picked it up.  The phone was "old" by this point, a Nokia he had gotten for free 5 years ago, and even though everyone told him to upgrade he chose not to - it did exactly what he needed it to.  

"This is Tom" he said in an odd voice, trying to make it sound like he had just woken up, even though he'd been awake all night.  "Tom, its Charles, I think something is wrong..." a young and concerned voice squaked back though the Nokia.  "I don't have time for problems Charles, so either your messing with me which is not funny, or your being serious which is catastrophic" Tom said back, now rubbing his belly with great anixety.  "This is it Charles - this is our actual last chance to save humanity.  If this doesn't work, and with no women anymore, we're over Charles.  We're extinct - do you get it?" Tom was agitated now, and the tone of his voice had taken on a much darker tone.  
"Don't talk to me about the stakes Tom, I've been with you for too long to be treated like one of your new assistants.  Just get down here, then you'll understand everything".

#####

The conclusion to come in a blog post tomorrow or tonight, right now its back to real work for me!