A Christmas Miracle

“All the best miracles come on Christmas morning,” said Gal to Doctor Afnani. “That they do, and I believe we can make that happen for you,” the doctor said with a smile, “In fact it’s not very uncommon for us to select birthdays around your schedule—perhaps you’re planning a trip, or don’t wish for a birthday to overlap.”

“And how much will all this cost us doctor?” questioned Wally. “No no nothing, this the hospital does free of charge… though there are other enhancements that you may wish to gift your child, and those… well, those may cost you,” the doctor added. “That’s fine, we’ll do the Christmas birthday, that’s all doctor,” said Wally.

Gal raised her hand and butted in before Wally attempted to steamroll the conversation and put his foot down on the matter. “I’d like to hear what he has in mind, before we dismiss it,” Gal said as if she were a thoughtful consumer weighing all her opinions. Wally had to smile to cover his irritated grimace, but did a very poor job at recreating both gestures. “For a small fee we could change your baby’s gender, eye color, strength, intellect, even make them capable of extraordinary feats like…” Wally cut the doctor off, “No thank you doctor,” Wally interjected almost rudely.

The doctor smiled and nodded leaving it at that. “Well I’ve always wanted my child to have blue eyes, bright blue eyes, and a luminous glow, sort of like our lord and savior Jesus Christ,” said Gal. “It is serendipitous that you should mention that because science has recently found a way to enhance the brightness of the skin, even giving a child a bioluminescent glow about…” “I’m sorry doctor but we really must be leaving,” Wally insisted while gently pulling Gal by the elbow to guide her up.

Gal didn’t want to keep fighting her husband on this issue so she followed him out. As they left doctor Afnani said, “You’re only a few weeks in, we can make the alterations to your fetus up to 2 months in; the longer we wait the more dangerous it becomes for the fetus…. And the mother.” “We’ll be in touch doctor,” Wally said as he passed through the hallway door aperture.

All the way to the car Wally stewed with rage. The young couple waited in a palpable tension for their car to pick them up. As soon as Gal was about to speak, Wally angrily cut in. “You knew exactly what you wanted. Those weren’t off-the-cuff questions.” “No… but…” “Gal, I told you I’m a gen 1 baby, and as much as they want to tell you it’s safe, it’s not.” “I don’t care about your feet honey, you know that,” Gal started to protest. “It’s not about my condition, not now,” said Wally in a huff.

The car pulled up to the curb and the automatic doors opened. They both slid into the back seat. “Home,” said Wally to the automated companion. The light on the dash blinked green to acknowledge a command was accepted. “What is it then? So I did a little research. If you did too you’d know that the chance of any birth defect happening is .0001 ,” said Gal.

“I know you want to make the baby special; I know you want it to stand out- but let God decide that,” said Wally watching the scenery go by. Wally’s voice softened as if he realized, he was taking this to a level of anger he didn’t want to go, “Look, I’m fine with a Christmas birth, but aside from that, we do not need to tinker with the formula that God has made… OK?”, he said putting his hand on top of hers to show compassion, or perhaps gently manipulate the situation.

Gal didn’t bring it up anymore, but at the end of the day, it was her womb, and it was her that was going to have to carry it. If he couldn’t love a child that shone bright with the light of the lord, that was his problem, his cross to bear.

In the next few weeks before it became too late to manipulate the fetus Gal and Wally had quite a few heated conversations on if the child should be altered in the womb. Gal was very confident that she could win him over. They even brought the pastor into the conversation and Wally did not get the answer he was hoping for.

While the church was not for genetic manipulation, it didn’t explicitly decry it. In the past 20 years the practice had become so normalized that the church had to have an opinion on it, and their opinion, as was father Matthew’s opinion- that God gave man the power to create.

Wally didn’t want to be on the wrong side of history on this matter, he didn’t want to be the one that raged against the coming tide as if science would turn itself back around just from his say so. Wally had no illusions, science was a force of nature and he was a man yelling into the hurricane.

At a time when Gal’s pregnancy was in full bloom Wally woke to use the bathroom. Gal slept peacefully, her swollen belly rising the covers up slightly. In the dark of the room he noticed a slow persistent light that pulsed with the steady rhythm of a heartbeat.

His first thought was to look to Carl in his charging station. Sometimes the automated house companion blinked when it was in recharge, or receiving an update. When he looked at Carl’s alcove, he was inert and lifeless.

He crept to his side of the bed and he saw under the covers the eerie red glow pulsing out. Wally pulled back the covers and saw Gal’s pregnant stomach glowing crimson. It emitted a bright light so strong that it illuminated the insides of her body. Organs pulsed. He saw her blood flow like a biological stream. He could see the gentle silhouette of the fetus slowly churning like a tiny traveler resting in the center of the universe. He could see the unfinished features in the glow of what would one day be called his child.

“Wake up,” Wally yelled with urgency. Gal hopped to attention when Wally’s sharp panicked voice rose. Carl, the house companion, woke as well and asked if everything was okay once he heard a voice raise in distress, but it only added to the mania of the unusual incident.

Gal looked at her stomach in horror and saw her baby floating peacefully in her womb blinking to the timing of her heartbeat. Gal screamed. Wally walked her to the car propping her up so that the sight of her body’s betrayal wouldn’t drop her to the floor. Carl trailed them on his uniball wheel asking if they needed medical assistance.

Wally rushed Gal to the hospital in the middle of the night. In the end the doctors claimed that it was just a side effect of her baby’s genetic modification. This of course, sparked a huge argument between Gal and Wally, because she had went and did the procedure behind his back. Wally did not forgive her completely right away but he did let it go for the time being. It wasn’t a good idea to put stress on a pregnant woman, so he had to repress his anger until he believed she was strong enough to take it.

They went to their OB- GYN the next day. Doctor Afnani put both of their minds at ease. “It’s not uncommon for a fetus with that particular modification to glow with bioluminesece,” said the doctor. “It didn’t just glow it lit up the room doctor,”Wally explained. “Is this what it’s skin is going to do. I was thinking that the babies eyes might be brighter, and it’s skin might have a brighter sheen,” said Gal. “Do not despair, your child will be fine, there has never been a case in which the decibels of light in the skin had such an extreme effect. It needs to acclimate to it’s own body before it settles on what is the healthy amount,” said the doctor.

Wally asked probing questions he hadn’t before, because he never thought it would apply to his child. Doctor Afnani’s demeanor shifted slightly. What was once warm, confident and welcoming became guarded and careful. He went from sure and congratulatory to unsure and guilty all on account of Wally’s questioning.

The doctor went into a drawer of his desk and pulled thin booklets and materials addressing how the genetic modifications were made. Wally got the distinct impression that they made these things overly complex to obfuscate the truth of it all.

The doctor himself did his best to dance around it, using carefully researched and sanctioned explanations to make what he and his colleagues did sound better. Wally felt the deception and knew that the truth was buried somewhere in the mountains of text that was issued to him, more than likely through court order to disclose it.

When Wally got home and did his due-diligence he found out the horrifying truth. He being a gen 1, knew that his parents attempted to enhance his strength in the womb, which they did, because his father always wanted an athlete. The gene therapy spliced elements of bull DNA into him, and he was virtually 3 times stronger than most men, but in the process, it gave his feet syndactyly, fusing them together like hooves.

Nowadays things like that didn’t happen anymore, but this was not always so in the case of those that asked for different more complicated genetic enhancements. In traversing the rabbit hole that was biotech forums, he found that the key to unlock bioluminescence did not have one solution but several. The science was too technical for him to fully comprehend, but what was clear is it pulled from the DNA of insects and creatures that lived deep under the ocean that were capable of creating such an effect.

Even after he identified a few creatures it was unclear which one’s Gal got specifically. It was something she opted into, signed for, and just trusted that god would see through. Now that the fetus was already altered that had to be his philosophy on the matter as well.

It was the night before Christmas and as far as they could tell nothing out of the ordinary was happening. Aside from Gal’s bizarre cravings everything felt as if it was going just fine. They sat at the breakfast table. Wally watched news vids to ignore Gal’s new craving of pickles and waffles, with extra syrup.

“The whole worlds gone crazy, and this is what we’re bringing our child into,” said Wally eating cereal monitoring a conflict of A.I. rights activist. “If more people just looked to Jesus, there would be far less problems in the world,” said Gal who was eating spoonfuls of syrup so liberally one might wonder why she didn’t just drink it from the bottle. They both were so excited for tomorrow that they danced around the subject.

Even though they handled the pregnancy unconventionally they still had no clue if they were having a girl or a boy, that was one mystery they didn’t leave in the hands of science. It would be Noel if it were a boy and Astrid if it were a girl.

Wally walked through the festive house with the blinking lights of Christmas and smiled when he passed the child's room. Gal ate pickles and waffles like someone would take them away if she didn’t. It was an unusual blissfully feeling, even if she didn’t understand where the urge came from.

She coughed, and a fly buzzed out of her mouth.

She didn’t see where it came from. She must have almost eaten the thing. It completely killed her appetite. She figured she should join Wally in bed before the big day tomorrow at noon, when the baby was coming.

Gal and Wally laid in bed with the flicker of the Christmas lights washing over them from outside. Neither of them could sleep, because they couldn’t stop contemplating the boundless possibilities of what their new child would be like.

Wally did eventually rest, waking when he rolled over and didn’t feel the warmth of Gal next to him. He casually walked barefoot in his pajamas to the bathroom, figuring that was her most likely destination. He saw that the light was on down the hall. “Babe, you couldn’t sleep either?” he said before he even stepped in.

Carl, the house companion, was ripped into two pieces. His top half- the simple black and neon face- lit up when Wally approached. “I seem to have malfunctioned sir,” said the A.I. Wally ignored Carl when he saw his lower half, along with blood splattered in the tub.

He thought the worst, maybe Gal was hurt, maybe there was a complication. “Gallllll!!!,” Wally yelled. He sprinted into the living room with his feet arched higher than normal. His eyes fell over the room and slid over the Christmas tree. His feet dipped in blood and other unidentified grime.

“Gallll!!? Where are you?” he yelled. He turned to the window and when his eyes moved back she was there, she was there the entire time. Her stomach pulsed red next to the tree in a perfect camouflage. “Gal we have to get to the hospital,” said Wally.

Gal looked down at Wally with predatory eyes, but she didn’t speak. The bottom half of her gown was matted in blood. Wally ran over to Gal, but she backed away and emitted an ear piercing screech. Her stomach changed colors to match the ambient light of the festive room.

“We have to get you to the hospital,” Wally insisted. Wally attempted to grab his wife, but she fell over onto the Christmas tree. She skittered backwards on her hands and feet. Wally was given pause, but he had to get her in the car whether she wanted to or not, whatever was happening to her had driven her out of her mind.

He reached to pick her up but an insectoid black limb jutted out of her bottom half and ripped into his bicep with its sudden movement and jagged spines. Wally fell onto the couch, knocked down more from the shock then the force. He steeled himself, he had to for Gal, and his child… or whatever it was.

Gal screamed as she lay flopping on the floor soaking in secretions that had no business coming out of a human body. Gal rocked back and forth howling in unimaginable pain. The writhing tendrils and insectual limbs dug into the hardwood scraping the veneer to pull itself away from Gal.

Wally put both of his hands on his head in confusion. “What do I do?!”, he yelled frantically to no one that could answer him. The colors of Gal’s skin fluctuated rapidly, timing themselves to her heartbeat. Wally could see the chaos happening under the skin with each flicker. Her stomach writhed with life.

Wally did something, anything. He reached into Gal’s womb and began to pull out whatever it was that fought its way out. Limbs clawed at him. Tentacles pulled at him. If he wasn’t usually strong the constriction of the tendrils would have broken his arms.

He pulled the thing from Gal, and it ejected out of her with such extreme force it knocked him over. A glowing thing was in his arms. It was the size of a baby, but not recognizable as anything that could be considered human. Its skull was somewhat human, its arms mantis like, and tentacles whipped from its back surging for Wally’s throat. With teary eyes and the use of his herculean strength, he rolled to his feet, and slammed the thing onto the wood.

He didn’t know if it were dead, but it stopped moving. He cried when the thing’s limbs relaxed. He looked over to Gal, who was only standing through the grace of God. Her stomach was destroyed, her gown caked in gore.

“We should have thought of more names,” said Gal as abominations dropped out of her and onto the hardwood.