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Embryo Fatality Syndrome
EFS usually occurred at the end of the first trimester or beginning of the second. Rarely much after. It was generally not painful, except in later occurrences when the hurt could be significant.
Developing embryos eroded into a viscous state of gelatinous globs without any semblance of form. Lifeless spit. Jell-O.
Said less graphically, the embryo dissolved. And it was this symptom which made EFS so different from all other kinds of miscarriage, and also what made the syndrome so very hard to understand. Without legitimate fetal tissue, there was little to study. The cell matter dissipated inside the mother, which she then purged via menstruation. Save for the most rudimentary structure cells, the reddish-gray material was void living matter. No free radicals or foreign bodies could be detected in the residue. Again, like Jell-O.
Of course, unprecedented efforts had been made in search of a cure but all proved futile. As stated, EFS happened quite rapidly, perhaps in seconds. Up until its occurrence, the unborn child was healthy. Then, in an instant, gone. Doctors were baffled. The fact that they knew so little about EFS was maddening, but the strange realization that they might not ever know was terrifying.
No one was giving up. Still, the symposiums and think tanks, so rigorously attended at first, were beginning to show signs of petering out. Lacking new information, there was nothing to discuss. No real point. As one beleaguered physician said, “There were a million other ways to ruin a week and only so many more weeks left to ruin.”
Doctors needed a culprit. Something evil to slay. A virus. A contagion. As of yet, they had no takers. Not a goddamn clue.
“Like trying to save snowflakes as they fall,” is how a renowned biologist from Pakistan put it. “Watching. That’s all we do,” said another, as one developing human being after another… died.
Obviously, in vitro fertilization had been attempted. Year after year, it remained the most common medical procedure. But the same thing happened to new human life, whether it started outside a womb or in: Embryo Fatality Syndrome. An egg could be fertilized without difficulty. They’d been doing that forever. Bringing it to term just didn’t happen. Cells divided in the usual manner, forming a discernible embryo with a minuscule heart intact and palpitating. Then gill slits. The slight bending of a tailbone. The blunt protrusions that three hundred million times before had become arm and leg.
But no more than that.
Death came swiftly, the epidermal membranes collapsing into the liquid around it. The effect was not unlike that of a paper towel absorbing water, then breaking down. As documented so thoroughly, the embryo dissolved, becoming vague, disappearing, all in a matter of seconds. The life inside these women had been a mirage. There, then wavy, then gone. Not real anymore.
EFS had been filmed and analyzed in microscopic detail, every cell observed, from start to bloody finish. There was nothing gleaned except for the obvious–obliteration quiet and quick.
EFS happened in the host wombs of chimpanzees. Gorillas. Orangutans. Even cows.
Below the sea. High above the atmosphere.
In different temperature extremes, under varying pressures.
Even in cyberspace.
Their embryos went in a heartbeat, existing humanity had become like the rented palm plants ubiquitous to office buildings: unable to reproduce, biding time, in a corner by the elevator.
Waiting to die.
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