Through the Vortex
Banes Desire
Chapter 13 -Transition

Warnings: Read the warnings on the first page. If you didn't get the reference to the movie Junior, it means male pregnancy. I figure, what the heck, as long as I'm dreaming up a world, I might as well have fun with it, right? Balance the scales, so to speak.

"Chosen?" A female voice seemed to be speaking to me from a great distance and it was the only sound I could pick up from the void I'd been floating in. I became aware of my cheek being persistently, irritatingly patted. "Chosen Duwan, do you comprehend my meaning? You need to awaken," the woman insisted. "Your caretaker is preparing to see you to your abode."

More than the soft spoken voice addressing me and the tapping on my face, it was the pressure from my full bladder that drew me out of my dreamless slumber and forced my eyelids open. I blinked rapidly, trying to focus my blurred eyes in order to take a look at my surroundings. As my vision cleared, I realized with a start that I wasn't in the room I'd first been taken to. I looked up to the woman leaning over me, wearing a pleased grin on her face. I recognized her as the one who'd taken my "donation". My face began to burn as I remembered the whole humiliating episode. Damn, talk about embarrassing. That memory was quickly followed by another one, of having seen Treize Kushrenada's face. Was my memory real or just some convoluted dream, I wondered? Those vague, blurred moments before I succumbed to the drug they'd given me came back slowly. Then I recalled the last fragmented words Kushrenada's double said to me, and I worked to string them together, trying to make sense of them. And suddenly, it hit me, and I almost swallowed my tongue in realizing what he meant.

Reacting immediately, my hands moved frantically to push down the blankets and pull up the loose purple shirt I had no memory of putting on. My eyes searched my pale torso, looking for evidence of some kind of tampering to my body. I can't even begin to describe how relieved I felt at not seeing a healing incision on my abdomen. It had just been a bad dream, I told myself, and I chuckle out loud at the ridiculousness of it. Me, pregnant? What a laugh! I covered myself again and looked up to see Tish regarding me with some humor herself.

"Sorry," I muttered. "Just looking for a scar or something."

"A scar!" she said, looking horrified. "We would never leave such a mark on a Chosen. There is a slight red indentation, however, just below your center cavity where the doctor inserted the now seed-implanted A.U. Have no fear, Chosen, the redness will fade in a few cycles."

I was afraid to ask but I did anyway. "A.U.?"

She looked at me, clearly puzzled. "The Artificial Uterus. Are you feeling unwell, Chosen?"

"Oh, God," I gasped, horrified by what had been done to me. "Bring Mueller here," I demanded in a strangled voice, panicking and having a hard time catching my breath. "I need to... speak with my... caretaker right... now. Please," As an act of preservation, I'd added the word please to my demand, hoping that by trying to be polite I wouldn't earn a mark on my collar by displaying my obvious upset. I was definitely on the verge of becoming hysterical and I'm pretty sure it showed because Tish high-tailed it out of there. Her absence gave me a few moments to try and gather my panicked wits and catch my breath. This is impossible, I kept telling myself. Men can't have babies. It wasn't natural. It can't be done. But something within me told me it was true, and that even though very little in this world made sense to me, it didn't mean it wasn't real.

Knowing I couldn't throw a fit like I had at the Correction Center, I tried to keep my turbulent emotions in check and to think about how to handle this new... situation, whether I would wring Mueller's neck to get all the information I could out of him, or kill him outright for not telling me the truth. I was still undecided when the blond man, my caretaker and focus of my ire, rushed into the room looking anxious.

Clutching the blanket in my fists and holding it up to my chest, I restrained myself from verbally lashing out until the door closed behind him and my deceitful, apprehensive-looking caretaker was standing next to my bed. "Why didn't you tell me the truth of what was going to happen today?" I snarled, my voice shaking as much as my body. "Pregnant? You let them put something inside of me to make me pregnant? Men aren't supposed to have uteruses, artificial or real inside of them. We aren't made for it, we don't work that way, and I had no idea that this was going to happen. This is wrong, wrong, wrong on so many levels, Mueller, that I can't even think straight. What the hell kind of a world is this where men have babies?"

"Calm yourself, Duwan," Mueller said in an low, controlled voice that further fueled my anger. He gave a nervous glance at the door behind him before continuing. "Your loud voice risks a mark and your agitation endangers the life within you while in this transition stage."

"And tell me why I should care?" I hissed. "You did this to me without my knowledge or consent."

"I take issue with you over that statement," the blond stated, as cool and calm as could be. "Duwan's agreement for this procedure is on a binding contract stating his consent to carry the seed-implanted A.U. He undertook this task in order to be compensated with a prosperous and good life before, during and after he fulfilled his contract. You spoke to Mistra Sallah and declared yourself that you comprehended the procedure, and so it was done."

"But I didn't understand it, did I?" I heeded Mueller's warning and lowered my voice a bit so that no one would report me to Hildah and earn me that dreaded mark. I've always prided myself in learning my life lessons the first time around. "You know that I'm not Duwan, I'm Duo Maxwell. I didn't agree to this procedure and you intentionally withheld the truth from me, didn't you?"

"It is my contracted duty to Mistra Hildah to see that Duwan fulfills his contract to her, that he complies to the letter of the contract in every way and, in Duwan's place, that responsibility has become yours. My present duty is to make certain that the life contained in the A.U. within your body is well cared for, and so I will serve you unwaveringly. I acknowledge that I sensed you might not want this honor, as observed from your reaction at the Correction Center, and so I withheld the truth even when I ascertained your ignorance. I have performed the duties of my contract thus far, and as of this cycle, you have begun to fulfill Duwan's contract with Mistra Hildah as well."

I ran a trembling hand through the hair hanging over my forehead. "I can't believe this is happening to me," I whispered to myself, horrified by the reality of my situation. "How is this even possible?"

"Your body has been prepared since Sallah administered the heramones after we returned from the Correction Center. Heramones assist the male body to accept the A.U. You will continue to receive the infusions until the last day of your gestation. You must and will take care of yourself, Duwan, for the life within you is just as much your progeny as it is our Mistra's."

Mueller's last sentence finally brought home the one thing that I'd managed to ignore. I set aside my justified indignation and shock to make room for the sudden realization that I was going to be a father. Somehow, I'd rapidly moved from being shocked and outraged to a state of awe as my trembling hand moved under the blanket and nightshirt to rub my flat stomach. "I never thought I'd have a child of my own," I said more to myself than my caregiver, still a bit overwhelmed by everything that had happened. "Funny, but I don't feel anything, not a bump, not sore..." I was, however, feeling mentally numb and definitely a bit calmer.

"And you will not feel anything for a while yet," Mueller responded, his face and voice softening with my change of mood. "You will most likely experience some illness as the weiks pass, which is standard, but we have medicinals to help ease some of the discomfort. The A.U. has been designed to successfully accelerate the rate of gestation from ine to sev turns. You should start to expand and feel the life within you by sesto weiks "

I'd figured out some of their words for numbers and figured he was saying I was going to deliver this baby in seven months instead of nine, and in six weeks my stomach would be getting bigger and I'd feel the life growing within me. I knew nothing about gestation periods, but that seemed pretty damn quick. I looked at Mueller for a moment, feeling conflicted, torn between the desire to either laugh hysterically or bawl my head off. This, I figured, had to be the most horrific and utterly fantastic thing that had ever happened to me.

As I slowly began to take the tiny steps towards accepting what had been done to me, the more curious part of my mind began to function once again and I wanted some answers. "Why do you do it this way? Why not have babies the natural way with the women conceiving and bearing them naturally?"

"Let me clothe you, and while doing so I will relate to you why our lives have taken a course that differs from the natural method of bearing our progeny," Mueller said, turning to grab the folded clothing on the stool hidden near the head of the bed. He helped me to sit up and removed the blanket and nightshirt from off of me. Once more, I explored my abdomen and found the faint red line Tish told mentioned earlier. Curious, I traced my finger over it, surprised to feel no pain. Meanwhile, Mueller opened the leg of my thong and paused, waiting for me to step into the support garment.

Taking the hint, I stepped off the bed and put my right foot into the opening just Mueller began to explain. "After our females came into power there was a great shortfall of men due to the Great War. That, in itself, would not have ceased the proliferation of the next generation, but the women in the upper casts became immersed in governing a broken Erith and in the restructuring of our society. They were driven to spend the majority of their lives working to save Erith and its people. While the lower levels of society continued to produce progeny aplenty, many of them lacked the leadership skills and higher intelligence to do the critical thinking needed to reform our society. Seeing that this was so, the leaders directed that the lower casts be given the more industrial tasks, a necessity for all in our society. Three color levels were established at that time: Blue, the rulers of our society, Red, their supporters, and Green, the workers."

He paused for a moment to reach for my pants, snapped them open with a sharp flick of his wrists, and began to put them on me as he continued. "The Matriarchal Counsel charged the greatest minds of those who remained after the conflicts, to help those females in the upper ranks to reproduce progeny without taking the ine months needed to carry a child in their body and then to find them the aid they required for the yars of progeny training that followed.

"Several yars later, the first A.U. was tested and proved successful. There were several mishaps, with losses of both progenitor and progeny. Then heramones were developed as well as rejection arresting medicinals that decreased the symptoms that had caused the previous failures. After a deca yar process, the A.U. was deemed completely successful.

During that period of time, it was discovered that males could successfully carry the offspring using the A.U. and young males, progeny of Blue and Red were asked to volunteer for the important societal task and were guaranteed a lucrative compensation. It was then that the Purple rank was formed and contracts were first drawn. Seedlings from Blue and Red were made viable when introduced to the Chosen's donation, producing progeny that ensures life on Erith will be maintained in an orderly, peaceful manner. The Chosens' service ensures the Red and Blue's lifelines do not vanish completely."

In a strange sort of way, Mueller's explanation made sense, but I still had more questions. "After your society flourished and established itself, why didn't you abolish this practice and go back to a more natural way of having offspring?" I asked as the shirt Mueller had slipped on me was being fastened.

"Because it functioned successfully," he replied simply. "As long as Blues and Reds require this service, there will always be Purples to contract with them so that they may continue to focus their attention on governing Erith."

Xxxxxxxxx

The journey back to the abode was made in relative silence as I considered all that had been said and done in the Life Center. I was still trying to come to terms with the fact that I was pregnant. I mean, how does a man come to accept such an unnatural thing? It had been hard enough for me to come to terms with the whole experience of being dropped into another world, but how was I to accept the fact that in this matriarchal society young men were contracted to carry babies that grew within an artificial uterus that was placed inside their bodies? Could I really accept that I was carrying a baby inside of me? I felt as if I were acting out a scene from of some sort of sci-fi movie. Unfortunately or not, I had just learned that what I once thought to be impossible was all too real.

Even though I've always had a good imagination, I don't think even I could have imagined the many new and unusual things that I'd encountered in Sangor. I decided that if I had somehow been asleep this whole time and that this was merely a long, protracted dream, the shock of being told I was pregnant should have wakened me. Given that this wasn't a dream, there was also the chance I was insane and living in a fabricated world conjured up in my own mind. If that were so, this place called Erith sure beat the hell out of my regular nightmares of living once again the dark and frightening existence I'd known on the streets of L-2 or caught in the middle of an unbeatable battle in space in Deathscythe having all the systems shut down and no communications to call for help. I hated those dreams the most.

Whatever my current reality was, a dimensional switch or the fabrication of a warped mind, I decided then and there to make the best of the situation. After all, there was now a child, or at least it would eventually be a child, growing inside of me.

A child. My child.

Each time that thought came to me my heart quickened. Though I was still feeling dazed and having a hard time wrapping my mind around the whole idea of being pregnant, I was definitely past feeling outraged and on the road to acceptance.

Something in my manner must have attracted Mueller's attention, for he studied me a moment before asking with concern, "Are you well, Duwan?"

With so many emotions swirling in my head, I could only look at him in wide-eyed wonder and whisper, "I really have a baby growing inside of me, don't I?" My caretaker responded with a smile and a nod of his head.

I closed my eyes to try and absorb the enormity of what was happening within me and the fact that I was going to be a dad! How crazy was that? But as usual, when I pause to think about something in depth, my mind begins to work overtime. I had barely come to terms with the crazy world I'd been dropped into, with its odd societal workings, and now I had something else to accept, something huge and life changing. Even though the reason why certain men on Erith carried the babies had been explained to me, it still felt wrong to my Earth-trained mind. Men having babies? What kind of a looney world could dream that idea up?

Then again, who was I, an interloper, to say they were wrong. Maybe the people Erith really had something here that had been missing in my own world, namely peace. Heaven knows Earth and the colonies have tried to find peace for centuries and somehow they always seem to come back to war as a final solution.

Would life have been better if women had been put in charge of running Earth? If men shared the burden of carrying their unborn children, would they be so anxious to risk their sons and daughters to war? Would Earth's violent past have been modified by those kinds of changes in the natural order? That thought was immediately usurped by the memory of Lady Une during the war, and I couldn't help but shudder. I suppose women, like men, might fall prey to great power, letting it go to their heads, and that they, too, could become ruthless and cruel. I'll never forget how Une's threat to open fire on the colonies if the gundams didn't surrender to them resulted in Heero self-destructing Wing. An involuntary shudder shook me in response to that memory. It had been the source of many nightmares resulting in my clinging to Heero for hours after I'd awakened in a cold sweat. I deliberately put those thoughts and my questions aside for consideration on another day when I wasn't feeling quite so overwhelmed.

Turning my mind back to the baby, I decided that I was going to be the best father I could possibly be, despite my lack of knowing of how to be one. Not having had a father, I didn't have an example to follow. But on second thought, I knew I'd been fortunate to have Howard and some of the sweepers step into that role while I trained under G; and, of course, there had been Father Maxwell. I decided to take the best of those men, their honesty, honor, patience, affection and care and adopt those attributes when I became a father. That meant that I needed to make some changes. I needed to be a better man.

I thought briefly about the life that I'd left behind, wondering what I truly had to offer a child. I'd had a past that had hurt me in so many, many ways. With luck, my street skills and savvy, I managed to survive not only a grim childhood on the streets, but also two wars, and I considered myself the luckiest person alive when I wound up with Heero as my lover. Unfortunately, I've learned that all good things come with a price . I followed Heero into his chosen profession, just to be near him and make him happy, and found myself saddled with a job that I hated and, later, had my heart broken by my lover's suspected infidelity.

There's no doubt about it, I'd come to Erith an unhappy person, and suddenly, unexpectedly, my whole life had drastically changed. Maybe it was that balance in the universe thing again. From the pain and ugliness of my past, I'd come to live in a world of beauty, in a position of being valued and bringing life into the world instead of taking it. Did I even dare to believe that I was worth this... honor? At that very moment, in light of the day's events, it was clear to me that I needed to let go of my hope of ever returning to Heero, of my nightmarish past and the life I'd once known. It was time to relinquish my life on Earth to where it belonged, to the past. I hadn't wanted to accept the fact that from the moment I landed in Erith, my life on Earth, the good and the bad, was forever behind me. But with a new life growing within me and the prospect of being a dad, I knew that was what I needed to do.

Sitting across from Mueller in the transport tube on the way back to the abode, I let it sink into me that I had truly been given a new lease on life, an incredible opportunity to create a life and to accept the important role I had in this society. Although there were aspects of Erith that I frowned on, there was peace here, unlike any I'd ever known before. I made the decision to accept my place in Erith, accept my role as Duwan, a Chosen, and everything that went with that title. Life there wasn't so bad after all, I decided. A smile grew on my face with that final acceptance, and I found that some of the constant ache in my heart had eased. It still hurt when I thought of Heero, believing that I would never see him again. I knew a part of me would always love and want him, that I would miss and mourn the loss of him as well as my friends for many years to come. Even so, I knew I could have a good life on Erith simply because I was in the process of doing something good, something incredible and worthwhile. I had a purpose here; I was going to be a dad. My heart felt lighter and I had the unique feeling of being hopeful for my future. The grin on my face broadened and, without a doubt, I knew I was going to be wearing it for some time to come.

Ignorance is bliss, I've come to realize, for little did I know then, in that moment of acceptance and happiness, that it was going to be short lived when I learned of yet more secrets that Mueller had been keeping from me.

TBC