F. Paul Wilson - Reborn

All we had to do was convince Jazzy, as she called herself. We met with her and explained what we wanted: She was to allow herself to become impregnated by us and to bear the resultant fetus to term. During the period in question she was to live with us in comfort and class, but under no circumstances could she leave my town house unless accompanied by either Derr or myself.

Jazzy was understandably reluctant at first. She was used to the fast life and, for obvious reasons, did not want to be pregnant. She was a stripper by profession and her body was her meal ticket. She was rightfully protective of it; she didn't want to get fat, and she didn't want stretch marks.

She didn't want to be a prostitute, either, but with the Depression hanging on as it was, she had no alternative. "A gal's gotta eat," she would say. We promised her she'd eat very well, that we would help her take good care of her body during the pregnancy, and that if she bore us the baby we planned, she would receive a bonus of $10,000.

She agreed.

We sent the technicians packing with a month's pay so that we would have the town house to ourselves.

We were ready to begin.

The procedure was relatively straightforward and simple. Derr and I would "fertilize" an inactivated ovum (see above) by extracting a diploid nucleus from one of my primary spermatocytes and inserting it into the ovum. When we had three successful transfers, we would save them until Jazzy entered the ovulatory phase of her menstrual cycle. Then she would get on the examining table and assume the lithotomy position. We would then insert a fine rubber tube through the os of her cervix and inject a solution containing the three "fertilized" ova into her uterus.

After that it was out of our hands. All we could do was hope that the one of the ova would find its way to the endometrium — the lining of the uterus — and attach itself. There was, of course, the theoretical threat of all three ova implanting and Jazzy bearing triplets, but neither Derr nor I was concerned about that. We knew we would be extremely lucky if just one implanted .

We first inseminated her in mid-December 1940. She menstruated on New Year's Day. We tried again in mid-January, but her period arrived right on schedule at the end of the month. And so it went, through the winter and into the spring. Each month we would hold our collective breaths as her period came due, and each month we would be disappointed by the cramps and menstrual flow.

She was due for a period in late April. By May 1st, she was late. I stopped believing in God when I was 8, but I remember saying silent prayers during that time. May 2nd and 3rd, still no show. Around midnight on May 3rd, however, she gave us a bad scare. She had been feeling tired and so she had gone to bed early. Suddenly the town house was shaken by her shrill, horrified screaming. We ran to her, and when we found her doubled up in her bed, clutching her. abdomen, we feared the worst — a miscarriage. But physically she was fine. The commotion proved to be the result of a particularly frightening nightmare. It must have been a lollapalooza because the poor thing's tremors were shaking the whole bed. It took us a long while, but finally we quieted her down and got her off to sleep again .

Four days late became a week late became two weeks late. Jazzy complained of breast tenderness and morning sickness. A pregnancy test was positive. Jazzy had not been out of the house for a minute, and neither of us had had sexual relations with her.

We had done it!

What a celebration we had! Champagne, caviar, and the three of us dancing to the radio like fools. Derr and I were acting like it was New Year's Eve because, in a way, we knew it was an eve of sorts — the eve of a new epoch for mankind. We were taking the first step toward eliminating the random factors from reproduction, toward allowing humanity a say in Creation, toward remaking humanity in our own design, in our own image .

I won't say we felt like gods, Jim, but we sure as hell felt like godlings.

The months crawled by. Jazzy grew restive, moody, became prone to temper tantrums and maniacal outbursts. We noticed personality changes. She didn't like being pregnant, and hated what was happening to her body. She threatened countless times to sneak out and have an abortion, so we kept a close watch on her; we pampered and cajoled her, telling her to hang on, that it was only until January, and after that she'd have a fat wad of money and would be free to go wherever she wanted.

I remember how, on certain nights when Jazzy was calm and would permit us, Derr and I would kneel at the sides of her bed as she lay there with her swelling abdomen exposed, and we would take turns with the fetalscope (which is like a regular stethoscope except that the cup is attached to a metal band that goes around the examiner's head, allowing him to listen via bone conduction as well as through the conventional earpieces), pressing it against her abdomen to count the faint, rapid beats of the tiny heart within.

And we would place our hands over her silky skin and feel the kicks and turns beneath it and laugh with wonder.

She had about a month to go when the Japs hit Pearl Harbor. It wasn't long afterward that we heard from Colonel Laughlin. He said that with the United States now officially at war with the Axis, strict priorities were being set for the allocation of all research funds. He informed us that if Project Genesis was to "remain viable" (he was so pleased with his little play on words) we would have to come up with something more than albino frogs; we would have to show real progress toward a supersoldier, or at least demonstrate something of military value.

(I learned later that almost all the available research money was being funneled into the Manhattan Project, and that Genesis never had a chance, anyway. Just as well.)

Without going into detail (I had learned through the years never to promise more than you are sure you can deliver; promise less , then deliver the knockout!), I told him that a major experiment was coming to fruition and that we should have the results in four to six weeks. He said that was stretching the time limit, but that he could keep the project open until the middle of January but no longer .

That was fine with us. Jazzy was due around the first of the year.

You can't imagine our excitement, the agony of the suspense as her due date approached. We were sure we were going to be successful. Even if the child were stillborn, as long as it was male and lily white, we would consider the experiment a complete success. And what outcome could there be other than complete success? We had implanted the altered diploid ovum ourselves, she had had no opportunity to become pregnant by any other means, the viable fetus inside her uterus could be nothing other than my clone, and yet…

And yet we still had our doubts. No one had ever done this before, or even attempted to do it. The idea that we might be the first in history to take such a momentous step was mind-numbing. We were looking immortality in the eye. Our names would be known the world over. Every history book written from this day forward would include our names, because what we were doing would shape history from this point on .

Something had to go wrong.

Neither of us were pessimists by nature, but we had the feeling that it was all going too smoothly. We kept waiting for a catastrophe. And it was the waiting that was killing me. Derr, at least, had his preceptorship in the obstetrical section at Flower Fifth Avenue to keep him busy. But while he was brushing up on the latest delivery techniques, I was home alone, baby-sitting Jazzy.