Sneak Preview: Frozen Generation

I WATCHED THE MECHANICAL arm remove a post-gestational fetus from the purple semi-transparent encasement. The Kevlar and steel womb could have slept a half-dozen grown men, easy.

Based on the Product of Conception’s development, under other circumstances, the male child would’ve been transferred to the nursery a year ago. By law, fifteen minutes separated a POC from a non-person—the more dignified slave designation—so breeders gave living spare parts no freedom.

The doomed POC sure screamed like any free child, though. It screamed as the mechanical arm whisked it through the air. It screamed as the arm dropped it in the separator. It screamed until the droning silver cylinder silenced the screams, extracting the beating heart needed to save the baby the parents had wanted.

I lowered my head. My eyes remained as dry as the Sahara, which my ancestors had called home before that POC’s ancestors reduced mine to chattel. Maybe the soldier who executed my husband fathered the child. Maybe his mother made the report about my husband’s preaching against my current employer, against the breeders turning the descendants of slave and master alike into chattel.

I whispered, “The sins of the fathers.”

Read the rest of the "Frozen Generation" preview here.