The Last Egg

    Kira squats behind the bins in the alley, she pulls her head back as a cloud of flies rise up from the surrounding garbage. The smell penetrates her conciseness.  She’s never been in the Dead Zone, until a month ago, she didn’t even know it existed.  
In the Clean Zone where she lives its always  sterile, like a science lab, surprising herself, she realises the decay is welcoming, enfolding, in keeping with her mission, reminding her of the lies everyone in AI are living under.

She taps her wrist, turning the underside to her face, the LCD implant lights up her pixie features, 1:20 am, ‘where was he’ she pulls the back pack closer to her, ‘bloody humans, unreliable, Gram, used to say, that’s why they were phased out.’

But Kira, now knows they weren’t phased out, that was a lie to keep the AI population happily ignorant, content with the reproductive changes, the very changes, that Gram, helped bring about, and she in her ignorance, helps to sustain. She never knew humans, real biological humans lived somewhere on the other side of the Dead Zone, across that waste land starting at the end of this alley.

The Dead Zone inhabitants were experimental blunders. Kira knows this is true, it was all in the old dos files. 

Destroying files was not her job she’d told her overseer, she was a scientist, and
Gram, pointedly said, 'a female scientist,' and would do as she was told. While Kira, had fumed at the time, she thinks, Gram, has really done her a favour, she has a direction now, and a purpose beyond her job description. 

She understands Grams', concern about the lack of eggs left. Kira knows their process of fertilisation is not the normal way of reproduction. All children in the Clean Zone are born from test tubes, as was Kira’s own birth. 

There are no longer family attachments where she comes from. DNA and genetic coding have been regulated into a fine art.

 As she adjusts her crouching posture she notices small white pulsating maggots dropping from the bins onto her joggers, their squiggling little bodies repulse her, jumping backwards she falls against the bins, the clatter and noise makes her winch, lying amongst the spilt rubbish, and looking around for her back pack, she sees the bag being dragged by a large grey rat, with red eyes, a twitching snout, and sharp vicious teeth, it starts jerking the bag behind the bins. 

Kirra, screams and wrenches the bag from it grasp, flinging the rat somewhere further down the alley, she hears it land with a soft thud. 

Breathing heavily, she unzips the bag to check that the package isn’t damaged. She carefully opens the freezer pack, and gently removes the petri dish, the liquid’s still frozen, as is the small white 0.1 mm specks in its middle. Kira smiles as she puts the last eggs back into her bag. 

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