Icthian Eggs

An entry to a Flash Fiction contest

My prompt was:

Fantasy / Factory / a dozen eggs

Icthian  Eggs

Synopsis:  With only one chance every 10 years to reproduce, the Icthian race struggles to continue.

They took away her first egg when she was but 10 years old and too young to understand. 

At twenty, she had knowledge but no power.

By thirty, her reproductive rights had been legislated again; her ovulation cycle pre-empted and her egg harvested before it had manifested itself on her hip. This proved to be a mistake.

At forty and sick with a curable disease, her egg was deformed and discarded.

Fifty arrived as she was desperately in love and determined to have a natural outcome.  It made no difference.

Her sixth egg, it was later determined, was the most healthy and promising.  She was permitted to watch this attempt’s failure to continue the Icthian race.

Half of her eggs gone and only six more chances to correct the errors of her forbears.

Each egg arrived at the factory.  Each egg manipulated by the machines, dissected, molecules rearranged and forced into separate chambers of hope. But the mechanics that worked for millennia and millions of her people before her had ceased to bring forth a new generation.  She had been the last female born and the Icthians were at a race against time. 

By her seventieth year, she was living and working in the factory along with the few other females left. She maintained every machine and learned from the remaining elders, all of the history behind their race’s method of furthering the line.  With the over population, the Icthians could not afford for so many to be removed from the business of providing food, to retire for their birthing year.  So the factory was built, the eggs removed quickly with little disruption to the food chain.  But ironically now, food was plentiful as there were fewer and older mouths to feed.

Her 7^th egg, protected, coddled and carefully prepared, benefited from all that came before.  And yet, still, no offspring could be coaxed from it.

Twenty years of dedicated work, 18 hour days studying, investigating, experimenting with fewer minds and bodies to contribute to the knowledge pool and her 80th birthday brought the much anticipated hope for the future.  Certainly with the improvements in the factory that the team had put in place, surely this time, this time, with the egg placed in position, this time, there would be life.

But there was not.

Despair had set in. Fewer than two dozen Icthians were left and most of them had seen a century or more.  Memories had faded and physical infirmaries abounded. But her 90 year old body still continued to follow its evolutionary track and upon her hip, another egg appeared on schedule.  Only a mere eight females left could still ovulate. She was the youngest and their brightest hope.   

The precious package was delivered to the factory floor and the machines, now disused but always at the ready, were turned on.  The reproductive material was examined and immediately rejected.  The egg was not viable. 

There were no celebrations, no notes from government officials, no cake nor candles for her 100^th birthday.  There was just expectation and diminished hope.  But this was not her year to rejoice.  She would have just two more opportunities.

And she would go on to mark the occasion ten years following with just one other Icthian.  There were no longer enough people to run the factory.  And yet, there upon her hip, a bright translucent orb that had once meant another mouth to feed and so much toil. After a lifetime of working towards this one goal, she simply allowed the egg to detach and lay on the factory floor like so much debris as she walked away. She had felt betrayed by her body, her elders and her race. 

But the other Icthian was not yet ready to give up.  He picked up the egg with his bare hands, ignoring the sterilization warning signs, allowing his DNA, his molecules to mingle with that of the egg. He placed it on the conveyer belt and began the machines.  And for the first time in a century, a glow began to emanate and division could be seen to be starting within.  And the information that had eluded them, the knowledge that had passed out of existence with the building of the factory was rediscovered.  For in the beginning, males alone were in charge of retrieving the eggs and bringing them to the factory. And all of the machinery and functions therein merely helped to allow the new life to grow, but did nothing to fertilize and begin the process.  He and she watched with joy as the newly formed embryo continued on its journey only to be destroyed minutes later due to a machine malfunction.  

If only they could stay alive for 10 more years and try again with that final egg.