Her daughter- short story
The year was 3025. It was a hot day in August. London was one of the futuristic hubs of technology and AI advancements. Life was good.
Eliza was two hundred years old, which was equivalent to being two-thirds of the way through human life at this time. The average healthy human lived a little beyond three hundred years.
Eliza looked at the iPhone. The modern version told her with clarity that today was the day. Her two hundredth birthday. The day she promised herself she would retire from finance and settle down and have a child.
As she came to the warm realisation that this was the promise she made with herself when she was eighteen. When she had set the reminder, that if after all those years, she was still single. Still childless, she would have a baby through the artificial womb service.
Her eggs would still be healthy. A new life ready to emerge from science. The wombs were considered healthier than a human womb. The perfect blend of science and modern thinking.
Eliza was a little too thin for her liking. She had medium-length brown hair and slender lips. Her eyes were her prettiest feature, which were big, warm, expressive orbs. She had the kindness of her soul written in her face. In the faint lines of stress from years of working in high-powered finance.
From years of dating, but never finding Mr Right. Not in either of her two marriages, which seemed to wither away in pre-nuptial divorce settlements. She never found the man, who wanted to be the dad to her kid. Never.
She believed she had what it took to be a good mum. In her finance job, she earned 750,000 pounds a year. She had been working in finance, she graduated aged twenty-two, fresh from the university of Westminster with a 2.1 in her Finance bachelor’s degree.
At the age of two hundred, she had millions saved. Her flying house, which was parked in a dock at the outskirts of the east-end of London, held four luxury bedrooms.
She felt she had the means to create a good life for a baby. If she didn’t do this now, maybe she never would.
By the time the day fell to night, Eliza had emailed to hand in her notice at her job. She could comfortably live off the interest of her savings. She also planned to work in finances once more when the child was a teenager. But for now, she would have a time to be unemployed and a mother.
A day later, she had her notice. In four weeks, she was to finish work at the London fiancé office that had been her place of work since she was in her early twenties. She had been promoted once in her career. She had never advanced her education with a masters to get further promotions.
In the year 3025, wages skyrocketed. Yet commodities such as housing had frozen thousands of years. By world government policy to make the quality of life like a utopia all around the world.
As Eliza finished up her last month at work, she contacted the hospital where her eggs were. She was booked in for the artificial womb process to have a child of her own. That was from her egg’s DNA. She had picked out a sperm donor. About half the donors had pictures. They were men from other countries. She picked out a donor from Sweden. The young man had written a statement on his profile about how he wanted to help people have families of their own. He was very good-looking and studying aerospace engineering. He would be the biological dad to Eliza’s child, but have no part in raising the boy or girl.
Eliza had booked the meeting with the doctors at the hospital for the week after she finished work. She was free to enjoy her time how she wanted now. It was a giddy sense of elation that she felt in every step as she walked to the hospital to meet the doctor who would be facilitating the artificial womb for her baby.
By now it was September, and the weather was less warm. Yet it was still sunny.
Dr Frank Peters welcomed her to the clinic. He explained to her that once she signed these forms, in nine months time she would have a baby.
She expressed how she didn’t want modification of any sort, that she didn’t want to choose whether you have a boy or a girl. But she did want the doctors to screen out for major physical disabilities.
‘This service is all provided on the NHS,’ beamed Dr Frank Peter’s who looked in his forties, but he could have been older. As human life was three times as long as it once was, due to science.
‘I am looking forward to becoming a mother,’ Eliza said.
The doctor talked her through how, on a special app, she could watch her baby grow in the artificial womb. After a certain point in pregnancy, terminations were outlawed; this was the same time it was for naturally pregnant women.
Eliza knew she wouldn’t change her mind. She was ready to be a single mum. Excited to dedicate her life to her new baby, whom she would hold in nine months.
When she returned home, the app the doctor had told her about, notified her that tomorrow the insemination of the sperm and egg would take place. Then, artificial pregnancy would be confirmed, and she would begin receiving more updates. They were able to scan the sex of the baby after one month, due to advancements in science.
Eliza looked around her expensive flying house. She thought she might like to move to Buckinghamshire. She would fly the house to the outskirts of one of the towns in the home county, perhaps a year after the baby was born. As the hospital had already recommended local baby classes in East London, she was encouraged to attend. Her mum would often stay in the smallest of the spare rooms. Her mother had encouraged her to go for motherhood. Knowing she had made moves to freeze her eggs before university, having this plan all these years.
Her father had died two years ago. Eliza wished she could share this new chapter in her life with him. He would have made a truly amazing grandfather. He was the most wonderful dad one could comprehend.
******* . Eliza had attended a baby class, one especially for mothers who had grown their children in the artificial womb. Around 40% of all babies in the year 3025 were grown this way. Often to older parents.
Eliza had made local friends in the group with other mothers-to-be. She had also picked a name for her daughter; she would name her Meredith.
When Meredith was born, she was a pretty little baby with bright eyes and curly blond hair. Eliza felt a wealth of love as she picked her up from the hospital.
When the doctors signed the papers for Eliza to take her child home, she felt so proud. In her driverless car, she drove back to Beckton in East London, where she lived.
On the outskirts of her town, all the flying houses were located. Hers was one of the most fancy in the hundreds of properties. It’s grand black architecture made it stand out.
As she placed baby Meredith in her own bedroom, where a cot for the child sat by her bed, Eliza felt complete.
She had two failed marriages and didn’t know if new love would ever find her again. Yet in her daughter, she had parental love.
**********
By the time Meredith was three, Eliza finally moved her flying house to Buckinghamshire. She moved it to the sleepy town of Princess Risborough. It was such a pretty town. It was a fresh start in a property that had been a loving home for her toddler, Meredith. Eliza was proud to be a mum. She had even joined a dating app for single parents. She had started talking to a teacher who was divorced with a son.
By the time Meredith was eighteen, so much had changed. For one, Eliza had married that teacher. She’d had another baby naturally with him, who was Meredith’s half-sister.
In the flying house on the outskirts of Princess Risbourough, she and Keith lived happily together. She was a loving mother to Meredith and her daughter, Cheryl. She was a devoted step-mother to Elliot, who was Keith’s son from his first marriage.
When Meredith set off for university, Eliza told her how the world was her oyster. The pretty blond teenager was studying dance at the University of the Arts in Birmingham. Eliza was planning to buy her a house in the city, so she could move in with friends in her second year. For the first year, Meredith was staying in the halls of residence. Life was beautiful. Life was complete and good. Her other daughter, Cheryl, wasn’t much into dance and aspired to study Spanish at university. But she was only in year ten of high school, so university wasn’t for a while.
As Eliza packed Meredith’s belongings to send her away to uni, she felt like life had come full circle. She had two biological children and one stepchild. A wonderful husband. A good family. She worked part-time from home in finance. She had everything she needed. She was complete in these moments and thankful for the modern world she lived in.
