Ch.132Cradle of Life. Scofield Baby Factory (2)

Clack! Clack!

Whirrrrr!

Swoooosh…

“How should I put this… It’s remarkable.”

Painted entirely white, various mechanical devices filled the factory, diligently working on something.

“Is there a reason why all the machines are white?”

“Ah, people often ask that. With white, we can detect contamination more quickly.”

“I see.”

In essence, it was similar to wearing a white shirt while eating a heavily seasoned dish—the stains would stand out conspicuously.

Among the countless machines, some were larger than decent-sized buildings, while others were so minute they couldn’t be seen with the naked eye. Just as I began wondering about the purpose of these mechanical devices, the staff member’s explanation began right on cue.

“What you’re seeing now is where preliminary preparations for making babies take place. We thaw provided eggs and sperm from rapid freezing to make them viable for fertilization, then use ultra-micro processing to inject sperm into eggs, artificially creating fertilized eggs.”

“Oh, I see…”

A fertilized egg is what’s created when a man and woman spend a night together.

Though the process of adults making children is that simple, these intricate and massive machines—clearly older than I am—took on such inefficient sizes and forms solely for the singular purpose of “creating life.”

To think that what these machines do happens automatically inside our bodies—if this isn’t the mystery of life, then what is?

I watched wide-eyed as the machines diligently created fertilized eggs and carefully placed them on the adjacent rail.

“Now we’ll move on to the next process.”

Whirrr….

The repulsor lift slowly moved, taking us to the next stage.

The next process involved an area filled with some kind of liquid. The fertilized eggs transported from the previous stage were making tiny plop-plop sounds as they fell into facilities resembling enormous bathtubs.

Beside them, mechanical arms were gathering fertilized eggs that had grown much plumper, almost like bouncy balls, and staff members were checking their condition before loading them onto forklifts.

“This is where we inject nutrient solution to artificially hatch the fertilized eggs. Using osmotic pressure, the nutrient solution naturally flows into the fertilized eggs, and during this process, the solution also serves as a protective coating for the fertilized eggs.”

“I’m wondering… what about defects? How do you handle defective fertilized eggs?”

“Ah. There’s a separate procedure to salvage them in specially designed sterile rooms. We won’t be visiting those, so that’s all you need to know. Now, let’s move to where the fertilized eggs hatch.”

After saying that, the repulsor lift moved sideways again.

Next to it were glass bottles filled with culture medium, each custom-made to fit a baby’s size perfectly.

Staff members carefully picked up fertilized eggs that had passed quality inspection and placed them into bottles filled with culture medium. The bottles containing fertilized eggs were then transferred to rails where they began receiving laser beams.

“That light is a stimulation laser for artificial growth. We’ll soon see babies emerging.”

“Ohhh…”

As the staff member explained, the fertilized eggs hit by lasers transformed into primitive fetal forms, as if eggs were hatching. Soon after, we rode the repulsor lift to the next process.

“The next process is where we reinforce the fetus with mechanical assistance to develop it into a self-sustaining baby. Each of those needles contains growth accelerators, joint reinforcements, bone development agents, and so on… An enormous amount of supplements are mixed according to the fetus’s condition and injected, allowing it to take human form in just a few minutes.”

“Those needles…”

The needles attached to the mechanical arms were incredibly threatening.

I couldn’t imagine how thousands, tens of thousands of thin needles densely packed—looking more like they were designed to eliminate people rather than create them—could be inserted into the unstable flesh of a fetus.

Whirrr…

Clank! Clank!

As if to validate my concerns, this process was thoroughly pressurized, with staff working in sealed suits. Signs reading “Absolute Sterilization” were everywhere, suggesting extreme efforts to prevent fetuses from being exposed to the outside.

Beeeep!

[Fetus delivery. Fetus delivery]

With the buzzer, fetuses that looked like they belonged in textbooks—closer to fish than humans—began to be placed on sterilized rails. Massive mechanical arms connected to the ceiling lit up with red lenses and began inserting needles into the fetuses at incredible speeds, like sewing machines.

Cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-cha-chak!

One might wonder how a fetus, not even a baby yet, could withstand such treatment, but amazingly, they did.

Even more surprisingly, with each needle insertion, they grew flesh and their skeletons lengthened. By the time they reached the end of the rail, they had fully taken on the appearance of babies.

Like newborns wrinkled from amniotic fluid, these babies were covered in wrinkles, with beads of blood forming on their tiny bodies where the needles had entered.

“Now we’ll move to the final process. The actual baby-making finishes here, and the process you’re about to see is more like classification work.”

Whirrr…

And so, we began moving to the final process.

As we approached the final stage, a familiar yet previously unheard sound in this factory began to emerge—the crying of babies.

Clatter! Clatter!

“Waah! Waah!”

“Bwaaaah!!”

The babies placed on the clattering rails, perhaps stressed from the accumulating impacts, scrunched their already wrinkled faces even more and began crying loudly.

Even breathing must be an unfamiliar and painful sensation for these babies. Staff members wiped the blood and culture medium from the babies’ bodies with dry towels, then wrapped them in sterilized cloths.

“As they pass through the rails, the babies experience shock and pain, and as their rapidly developed brains begin to function properly, they become indistinguishable from naturally born babies. The babies are given random names and call each other by these names without surnames until adoptive families are determined.”

“Without surnames…”

“Well, some couples who can’t conceive or give birth commission us to make babies for them, so a small number of children do receive surnames.”

“I see.”

I nodded slightly as I looked down at the newly… no, manufactured babies wrapped in white swaddling clothes.

White, yellow, black, blue, red, brown, gray, green, purple…

Babies with various skin colors were being transported on huge trays to orphanages.

Perhaps I was once one of them.

A factory-made baby waiting to be chosen by parents.

Of course, no one knows why I began my life in Parsifal, but I never tried to discover the secret of my birth.

The reason I had no family was simply because I had no family, and there was no room for excuses.

Whether it was a financial issue, a political issue, a bloodline issue, whether it was mother, father, brother, or sister—ultimately, I was abandoned alone.

“Those children are lucky.”

“Pardon?”

“At least they won’t be rolling around on the streets.”

“…”

When I said that, my wife silently embraced me tightly.

Why does my heart ache so much while looking at those innocently smiling children?

Perhaps deep in my heart, I too am yearning for a family.

Maybe I wanted to know, more intensely than anyone, why warriors call out their mothers’ names when they die.

“The world is given equally, but not fairly.”

“…”

“Some people raise babies who aren’t even their own flesh and blood, yet why did I first open my eyes in a harbor sewer, without even forming a bond of brotherhood?”

“There must be a reason.”

“Yes, there must be a reason.”

Being alive means choosing to live.

At least that’s what I believe.

On the steep cliffs of Parsifal, I chose life, and as a result, I was able to come this far.

But no matter how much I struggled, there were things I could never obtain—for me, that would be parents.

People I could trust and depend on.

I had people I could trust, but not depend on; people I could depend on, but not trust.

Now I am a Knight of the Sun and the husband of a woman named Raisha Walker.

But at the foundation of all that, my past remains.

The orphan of Parsifal who trembled alone in fear.