After several world wars the fate of mankind was in jeopardy. The dead were so numerous that governments on all sides brought in measures to increase the population. In Nation City the capital of the New Americas genetic reagents were added to the water supply to increased female fertility. The experiments were so successful that the birth rates went up 3000 percent in the first year. For almost a decade this continued and the war had a fresh supply of young patriots to give their lives for the cause.
The first signs that resistances to the drugs were appearing was covered up by the government. Slowly though even the media with its tight leash could not avoid reporting the downturn in birth-rates. The next decade saw increasing doses of new more aggressive drugs introduced, until finally extreme measures were inevitable. The Birthing farms were created.
Giant hospital complexes deep underground containing carefully selected patriotic females who were conscripted for breeding purposes. The women saw it as their moral duty to preserve the nations way of life and were held in high esteem despite the taboo nature of their role. The males were selected amongst the elite super-soldiers given a brief stay of leave to spend time at "The Farm".
They were multi level apartment blocks deep within the mountain ranges of the old Canadian American border. The Farm contained special clean rooms turned into living habitats where every aspect of the environment was controlled. They relied on a pure unpolluted supply of the genetic modification drugs to create the perfect environment for conception. The females once pregnant would conceive very quickly and delivery of the child was handled with robotic drones to ensure perfectly sterile removal.
It was hard parting with a child and were it not for the horrors of the war and fear for their families many of the women would have fallen apart. As it was they performed their patriotic sacrifice and dealt with it as best they could. Counselling films were provided for their emotional state and the perks were somewhat of an incentive. The pods used anti ageing drugs and metabolic adjusters which kept the women fit and young. These drugs and pheromones also made the often plain looking women more physically appealing to the soldiers who visited. Likewise even with their brief exposure to the climate of the pod the men themselves experienced massive surges in virility to ensure impregnation.
The war ended not with a bang or a great victory but slowly winding down as attrition wore each side into economic collapse. As the world outside was destroyed, life continued on inside the mountain. The occupants started to notice their visitors became less numerous but were unable to learn more due to their isolation. The computer systems fed them with cover story after cover story but the walls were thin. If you stayed very quiet at night you could hear the faint shouts from those prone to gossip speculating on the war.
Eventually the visitors stopped coming as the world outside ground to a standstill. The women in the mountain although imprisoned in their individual pods were actually the lucky ones. There was no famine or nuclear winter here. Food, water, power and their every need was provided with inexhaustible supply. The reactors running on automation would work for a thousand years without a problem.
Many of the external systems which were operated by the workers outside shut down as they fled to seek their own shelter. This affected a lot of systems; particularly the communication webs leaving the trapped women with very little human interaction. The birthing facilities now unmonitored by administrators went offline shortly after.
The women who had received the last batch of visitors before the problems were the ones most affected by the shutdown. This time the drones did not deliver the babies into the processing chute. This time after delivery they simply left placing the newborn by its mother's side. Many hundreds of pods were affected by the arrival of these new occupants.
Claire was in her 3rd month at the farm. She was the wife of a small community priest, herself a school teacher. She had signed up after her husband was kidnapped by insurgents who often sought out western religious targets. She'd married young and only briefly had a physical relationship with her husband before he left to do gods work at the front. She did not really think through her current decision especially that of being intimate with another man.
The nations councillors had seen Claire as easy prey in her grief stricken state. They were master manipulators when explaining to the distraught wife how her patriotism in this hour would honour his sacrifice. She wanted desperately to make her husbands ordeal worthwhile. She wanted him to be proud upon his return so it just made sense.
On her arrival at the farm she tried hard to fit in to her new role. Unfortunately despite their best efforts administrators did not find a successful mate for Claire in several months. Each time opportunity arose she backed out at the last moment unsure if she was doing the right thing. Finally times became so desperate they resorted to extreme measures to get her and the other uncertain wives to conceive for the nation.
Now she was a sudden and unexpected parent of a child belonging to a man she knew for only a day. Her hopes that the child would be removed so she could do her patriotic duty without reminder of her infidelity were crushed. She had like many of the women in the facility struggled with being a mother under such bizarre circumstances. Luckily her rooms computer trained her with childcare and parenting videos so she settled into a routine eventually bonding with her son.
