SL Huang - Up and Coming - Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

We raised three children and stayed together for sixty-two more years. That sounds like a lot of progeny to spawn in a few decades, but we really wanted to travel, and once we were off Earth, that avenue would be closed. We waited until the kids were grown and settled, or as settled as a person can be with a scant thirty years of experience, and then had nearly two blissful decades of tourism around the Solar System.

Our favorite spot was Ganymede station’s view lounge. We were curled up together on a sofa watching Jupiter’s psychedelic storms.

"It’s utterly mesmerizing," I said. "Have you seen the vids of L2-Vega?"

"That reminds me, while I was at the bar, I overheard someone say that they’ve opened a new portal to Vega."

"Fantastic," I exclaimed, sitting up straight. A second portal meant the system would open to tourists. "We could do it, you know. We have the funds now that kids aren’t drawing on them."

"We could afford it," he said, "but I don’t know about going away for that long. The round trip time penalty is, what, around forty years? We’d miss seeing so much of the kids' lives."

I waved my hand dismissively. "They’re adults. They should learn to be on their own. Besides, it’ll be a while yet before they have the credit for babies. This is the best time to go, and our funds aren’t going to be so high forever. We got lucky with the portal manufacturer we chose."

"It wasn’t luck," he protested.

"Fine, fine, it was your skill and timing, but you haven’t always struck the gold mine. Remember the ion engine flop?"

"How could I forget? You bring it up at least once every five years. Haven’t I more than made up for it since then?"

"Of course," I soothed, not mentioning the influx of credit I had brought in with my patents. "I am so proud of what you’ve done, and I love you, and I think we should take advantage of our situation and see the galaxy."

He shook his head and sent copper braids flying around his face in the low station gravity. "I won’t go," he said, "but I won’t ask you to stay, either."

Nothing I said would change his mind and so I blame him for our second split. I went. He stayed, the stubborn fool.

The third time was a couple of centuries later, and we had changed so much that we didn’t recognize each other. I saw her at a portal in the Gliese system, solar wings shimmering in the starlight, hair shorn, and limbs contracted into travel buds. I was still mostly human in appearance for I’d been traveling too much to keep up with technology, but I had gone neuter-male and had added a lot of radiation protection to my organs. That had been exhilarating in so many ways until I saw her. I felt a flash of envy, but the attraction overcame it, and I struck up a conversation once she was in station.

We talked incessantly for hours, flush with early romance, and then she said, "Let me show you my fourth level descendants back on Earth." She extended a biowire, but I didn’t have a port. It’s easy to blow your money once you leave the Milky Way.

"That’s alright," she said, smiling. She extruded a light cube and placed in my grateful hand. I pushed it into my wrist.

"What beautiful babies," I exclaimed as the images scrolled before my eyes. And they were indeed, all chubby and wide-eyed and adorably homo sapiens . Then I saw the family portrait, four generations arranged artfully in rows—all except for their great grandmother.

"That’s—you—" I stopped, lost for words.

Her brow creased with a delicate furrow of puzzlement. I copied over a few of my own memories and passed the cube back to her. The crease disappeared, and she closed her crystalline eyes for a few eternal minutes. When they opened, they were clear hazel and glistening with tears.

"I thought you’d gone forever," she whispered.

I smiled and leaned in for a kiss. "Forever is a long time."

originally published by Nature in March, 2015

In the corner of the night darkened room, tucked next to the sofa, the Egg rested on its pedestal like a modern sculpture. Its quiet hum was the only sound in the apartment; its green indicator the only light. The screen on the front of the ovoid was dark, not revealing the partially formed creature incubating within.

That wasn’t right. The screen had never once been off, not while she had been here. She was gone now. She had slipped away quietly, without fuss, much as she’d lived.

"Promise," she had demanded, her voice raspy, as the smells of disinfectant and rot permeated his pores. "Promise that you’ll keep it going."

"I promise," he’d lied. "Don’t worry." He clutched the pills in his pocket with one hand.

In the end she had been reduced to skin and bones. Her hand, clutching his, was a papery claw. She had always been scrawny. He called her chicken legs when they first met, and she retorted with "stupid head." Insults had never been her strong point. They were six years old. Love came years later, and the cancer not long after that.

She was cured the first time. A designer molecule flooded her system, keeping the traitorous cells at bay.

"Let’s have a baby," she said when hope was allowed back into their house.

"Let’s have two," he responded, and they both grinned like fools and got started.

They found out not long afterward that the molecule which kept her alive was poison to any fetus. They spent the remainder of his inheritance on the Egg and the hormones and extractions and fertilizations.

"It will be every bit your baby," promised the specialists.

She let them record her heartbeat and intestinal sounds for playback. The two of them used the microphone daily to stimulate budding ear drums. She sang her favorite songs in her off key shower voice. He played his guitar and read cooking magazines aloud. They stared at the screen in fascination, watching it transform from a tadpole to an alien. The sofa seat nearest the Egg turned into a sinkhole.

The second cancer snuck in, quiet and efficient, while they were busy looking the other way. She needed another designer molecule, but she was too far down the queue. The money that would have bought her way higher was gone so the doctors tried the old fashioned poisons. She lost her strength, the contents of her stomach, and every hair on her body, but she didn’t miss a day singing to the Egg.

Watching her reclining against the cylindrical pedestal, forehead resting on the warm ovoid above, he loved her even more.

"You’re beautiful," he said.

She grinned, all teeth in a skeletal face. "You’ve never lied to me before."

"And I’m not lying now."

The second cancer took her swiftly. The apartment looked just as it had when they’d left for the hospital two days ago, but nothing was the same. The faint glow of city lights bled around the curtain edges, painting the room in a monochromatic palette. The Egg glinted, beckoning him. He shuffled toward it slowly like an old man, and tripped on the edge of the rug—the rug which they had chosen together to cushion tender baby feet and dimpled knees.

With a trembling hand he reached out and turned on the screen. It almost looked human now, though the head was too large and the body too skinny, sort of like she had looked in those last days of life. His hand moved of its own accord, navigating the menu screens, delving deep to find that buried option that came with every Egg. His fingers hovered over the number pad.

"I’m sorry, little one," he whispered. "This wasn’t how the road was supposed to go. I wish—if only -." He sighed. "I can’t do this alone, and there’s no one left for you but me, a poor excuse for a Father." He drew his hand back. "Wait. Let’s go together. I can do that much for you."