July 11, 2025
FICTION by Walter Martin
Winter Bloom
I was only a month from my 70th birthday when my wife came up behind me while I brushed my teeth and she stroked my belly. "What have we here?" I had been trying to ignore it for weeks and had even been sucking it up when Ava was near. "Just the inevitable old man pot belly," I remarked dismissively. But Ava was not convinced. "You're not the type, and you know it."
It was true. Not to brag, but I was a broad-shouldered plank of a geezer with a surplus of nervous energy. What with my iron man training, a potbelly brought on by overindulgence was inconceivable. I stared back at her staring at me in the mirror, my mouth still full of toothpaste and shook my head. But my eyes told a different story. I knew what she was thinking: bun in the oven.
She rubbed my belly again but this time with a quizzical smile. When our eyes met, hers were bright and glistening. A tear welled up. "Michael," she reddened and embraced me from behind. "I…I think you might be pregnant." I shook my head and tried to laugh it off. "Don’t be silly. Do you mind if I finish here?" As I spoke, toothpaste slop dripped onto the slopping shelf of my distended belly. I brushed Ava away, annoyed, and spit into the sink. "I guess we'll see, won't we," she said with her arms crossed as she leaned against the pink-tiled wall behind me. "It wouldn't be the end of the world, would it?" Not for you, I thought as I stared back at her. She blushed with chagrin. "You know I didn't mean it like that, sweetheart."
Ava was 12 years younger than me and still working as a high school art teacher, but we struggled. I hadn't had a real job in 10 years. With 70 right around the corner, I had given up all hope of ever getting another job, and every day it weighed on me. As our savings diminished, the number of things we could afford to do kept shrinking. That's partly why I spent so much time exercising. Manic exercise was my only cost-efficient strategy for staving off depression.
When I exited the bathroom, Ava motioned me over to the kitchen countertop display where she was bent over reading something. The cold glow of the countertop lit up her face like a winter moon. “How can you stand it so bright?” I complained squinting as I dimmed the display. She was too concentrated to respond. Looking over her shoulder at the headline of the Bloomberg article she had pulled up, I felt a knot twisting in my stomach: Geriatric Ectopic Gestation - Mankind's Last Hope?
The article examined the bevy of circumstances that brought on the population collapse that began in the twenties and thirties: a sharp decline in fertility among women combined with a significant drop in viable sperm among young men. These trends were largely linked to three destructive pandemics that, unlike the first COVID outbreaks, were more contagious among young people. The final and most devastating of these pandemics hit in 2038. Although it caused relatively few deaths, it had serious long-term effects on survivors' reproductive health. In young men, it was swollen testicles blocking the sperm ducts and erectile dysfunction. In women, it was a swelling of the fallopian tubes, which left them scarred and nonfunctional.
Men had other issues unrelated to the COVID outbreaks. Going back to the millennium, studies showed the progressive decline of testosterone levels and correspondingly lower sperm counts. Starting around that time, young males, compared to previous generations, developed smaller genitalia, less body hair, and often complained of swollen breasts (gynecomastia).
The article speculated that the species was evolving in accelerated lock step with the global biosphere. In a mere 30 years, whole swaths of the earth had either disappeared underwater or been roasted into moonscapes. It made sense that Darwinian evolution would promote the radical adaptive adjustments that best facilitated a diminution of the population to match the diminished resources. By 2048 the world’s population’s negative growth accelerated its vertical plunge.
But underlying all the data was a tectonic shift of societal attitudes. Books like Children Make Me Sick, by the pediatric endocrinologist, Dr. Zoltan Berry, and other studies of new disease-specific risk factors related to infants and toddlers as efficient viral vectors of deadly pathogens, gave even the most diehard birthers pause.
"And just when it seemed that the human race would peter out"…. I couldn't read on. I had to turn away. "Where are you going," Ava called over her shoulder at my back. "Out for a walk." I slipped into my hazmat suit, grabbed my mask, and headed out the back door and into the woods.
It was a typical mustard-colored day. Haze smudged the mid-morning sun. Like a flashlight with a low charge, it cast feeble shadows of the tree trunks and their bare branches across the trail. Stumbling over a dead branch, I turned back cursing and tried punting it with all I had into the bush but missed. I kicked at it again this time just grazing it enough to recenter it on the trail.
I had to laugh at the irony of my situation. Never having wanted a kid myself, I had dodged the whole father/ family thing thirty years back. But there was a time, during Ava’s mid-thirties, when my procrastination strategies weren't enough. My instincts told me I was not father material, but still, with Ava seemingly possessed with the notion, I couldn't say no.
Often, in those days, if she looked into my eyes with unbound affection, it was because she was dreaming. "Imagine what beautiful children we could make," she would start, "with your amazing blue eyes and my high cheekbones. You would make such a great Dad.” If I left her hanging there, she would continue undaunted. "A kid would be so lucky to have us as parents."
Of course, I feigned enthusiasm even though I knew it was a terrible idea. When we met, I was 39 and Ava was 27. Those first years she took the pill. But then in her early thirties she stopped and left me to pull out, knowing full well that pulling out was not my strong suit. Still, during all those years together, nothing happened.
As the clock ticked on, the more insistent she became that we try in earnest, the more I dragged my feet. It wasn’t until I was in my late forties that we began following the book and her fertility cycles, but with the same result: nothing happened. I went to a fertility clinic to have my sperm count checked. I was given a short, wide-mouthed bottle and shown into a tiny closet with a couple of clothes hooks on the wall and a built-in corner bench. Hanging from the opposite wall were three dog-eared girlie mags strung together on a single cord. It was a tough get.
When the results returned a few weeks later, my count was low. Ava wasn’t disappointed, she was devastated. The finality of the thing hit her hard. She knew we didn't have the money to take the project to the next step, so reluctantly, she let it go.
I thought I would be relieved, and I guess I was secretly, but that only made my sense of guilt more profound. Ava was in a kind of low-key mourning for months. For her, it was like being on a train pulling out of a station, and waving goodbye to the beautiful kids whose attributes she had imagined in such loving detail. There they were, our adorable little boy and girl with bright wet eyes and infinite potential left behind on the station platform crying inconsolably. I felt bad. My procrastination and dishonesty in the early days of our relationship, pretending I too wanted kids, had planted a seed that gestated and finally sabotaged the future she had postulated. I could blame it on my sperm count though I knew better. But wasn't it enough, just the two of us? We were barely getting by as it was. Where was the income to support her fantasy family?
As I strode up the hill to the overlook, I tried to ignore the din of incessant tapping. In our climate-morphed forest, the only winners were the woodpeckers. There were thousands of them pounding away like demons possessed. The trees were all pitted with holes. The woodpeckers' fevered excavations left piles of yellow heartwood debris around the tree trunks. Many of the holes had little woodpecker heads popping out, shrieking for food. I dug into my pocket and fished out two foam earplugs, twisting their ends; I jammed them deep into my ear holes.
It was hard to believe how much the forest had changed since we bought our place 20 years back. We had a moment back then. We worked together on some gallery shows and had a string of hits. We made enough money to buy a condo in Williamsburg as well as a country house /studio. For a while, it was sweet. Success! Feature pieces in the Arts and Leisure section of the Times, Art News, Art Forum, sold-out shows, inclusion in museum shows, and public projects, but then, like a summer storm full of wind, thunder and pyrotechnical wonders, it moved on and left us behind to sober up in the dark.
So what? We loved our house in the forest; plus, back then it had some real value. Even though we had lost our place in the city we didn't feel like total losers. How many people can say they live adjacent to a national park with a private trail leading from their back door to 30 miles of pristine trails with waterfalls and breathtaking views? Practically nobody.
Used to be, we'd run into gaggles of hikers, bikers, hunters, and joggers. It was crazy. Now it is just me and Ava, well, mostly just me - the nut job in a hazmat suit storming up and down the trails kicking dead branches and screaming at the birds.
An hour later when I opened the back door, the smell of oatmeal cookies fresh out of the oven greeted me. My favorites, and it wasn't even my birthday. "Michael, sweetheart, how was your walk? Come and have some tea and a nice warm cookie." I could see she had set the countertop AI up for a pregnancy test. Next to the plate with two cookies, a blinking blue light prompted my thumbprint. I made a face like WTF. Without saying a word, I turned and went downstairs to the basement. I turned off the solar battery and disconnected the ether "smart house" cellular feed. Ava followed me to the basement garage, and I motioned her to get into the old Honda CRV.
"Can we talk?" I was on edge. "Not that it matters. You've already sent notice." I rolled my eyes up kitchen ward and shook my head in something like despair. Ava tried to hold my hand. I pulled it away.
"Ok." Her eyes were wet and pleading, but she was ready to talk business. "Look, you are almost certainly pregnant. You think the house doesn’t already know it? Your bio data is everywhere." She went for my hand. This time I let her have it.
"Ok, but up until I take the test, technically, they can't do anything. How about giving me some room here. What's the rush?" She started to say something, but I cut her off. “There may be some options we could consider before total capitulation.”
"Really, like what?" She sandwiched my hand and pressed it. Maybe she was right about the inevitability of it all, but I couldn’t give up just like that.
"We could just pack and head out the door. It's only three hours to Montreal. Toby and Irene would let us stay at their place for a while. There at least we have choices."
"Don't be silly. You can't cross the border without a bio-scan." She bit her lip as a tear pushed out of the inside corner of her left eye. “We won’t get past the first bridge.” I nodded reluctantly. What could I say? "Maybe it's just gas," she laughed. I smirked and shook my head. "You know how special you are, right?" Ava continued. "One in a thousand, maybe ten thousand. Who knows, it's still so new."
"Yeah, what a stroke of luck. I have an ectopic embryo nestled in my stomach wall gestating. In short three years, after sucking what's left of my admittedly pointless life out of me, a fetus comes to term, and a team of Doc Bots slice me open and out pops our little darling, mankind's last hope. If I don't die on the cutting table, I'll be a slobbering idiot in a wheelchair. Nice retirement plan."
"That's just not true. If anybody can come back from this, you can.” My heart sank to see her so bullish. "I don't see how we can dodge this. So, let's just look at the theoretical upside for a moment." Here we go, I thought, the enumeration of the plus column. "No more money stress. We get that huge bonus up front, not to mention a fat pension. There's the endowment too. But look, Michael." Her face brightened in a way I hadn't seen in years. "A baby! Your baby! Oh my god Michael!" Her sniffles turned to sobs. I had to hug her. She wiped her eyes and smiled. "Don't forget! I read all about this this morning. They have a three-bedroom with our name on it overlooking the East River on Roosevelt Island." She was trying to tamp down her excitement, but it wasn't working. "We'll be back in the city, sweetheart."
"We'll be in a dorm in the Cornell Medical compound under their watchful eye," I said flatly. We went back upstairs. No sooner had I put my thumb on the blinking light than a perky Congratulations! Lit up on the countertop. The house bot spoke up: "Excellent news indeed! We'll miss you both terribly but are so happy for you. Please pack lightly. Transportation to your new quarters will arrive in 43 minutes."
I must admit the trip to town was interesting. It had been almost 15 years since we had last been in. The EZ pass bill for that last trip was $400. With parking and all the whole day had cost us almost $2000. God help us if we had stayed overnight. Not long after that last trip, the city closed to all but residents and necessary workers.
All through Jersey, the views were blocked by the sound walls. But when we came around the Weehawken ramp to the Lincoln Tunnel, what a sight. Manhattan from midtown down to Wall Street and going north to the GWB looked like an uninterrupted giant pincushion brimming with shiny needle towers. The reflective glare made me wince.
Ava squeezed my hand as the car bot intoned. "What a view! Imagine Michael and Ava; that's where you'll live from now on. Proud New Yorkers once again. Return of the conquering hero, right Michael?" I kept my mouth shut. These cheeky car bots gave me the willies. Once we exited the tunnel, turned onto 42nd St., and headed east, we were beset on all sides by Augmented Reality ads that animated whole buildings. At street level, everything looked so exciting. Well-dressed young people strode en mass beaming confidence and purpose. The store displays were opulent and animated as well. I wasn't buying it for a second. "Philip, old boy," I queried our bot host in my most courteous manner, "would you mind switching off the AR filter? The light is straining my eyes, something awful." I should have just said, "Turn off the AR, Philip. I want to see what this shit hole really looks like." But I knew too well that you can't win head-to-head with a bot.
"Why Michael, my apologies. How did I miss that light issue in your profile? No matter. Unfortunately, I don't have clearance to shut off AR as per the NYC transit code. Allow me to adjust the light setting. There, how's that?"
"Better, thank you." Ava and I kept quiet for the rest of the trip.
I made it to the third trimester, that is to say, year three of my pregnancy, without too many problems. The fetus's development is prolonged in these rare cases of geriatric gestation. At 72, I had the metabolism of a turtle. But entering the third trimester is like passing under the gates of hell. The fetus, now known as Cindy, grew between the inner and outer layers of my stomach wall like a giant wiggling tumor. She sucked nutrients from my stomach and converted them into amniotic fluid.
They say old age isn't for sissies. I would disagree. Compared to what I had to endure; old age is sissy heaven. They say many things about pregnancy: "If pregnancy were a book, they'd cut out the last two chapters." I would say, "If geriatric ectopic pregnancy were a book, they'd burn it." The first couple of years, the nurses were all smiles. "You’re not fat you're pregnant," they chirped. The smiles remained as I slumped towards the finish line, but they were clearly forced. If I tried to get up to pee, clumps of my hair came loose and stuck to my wet pillow. If I tried to chew, a tooth came loose. I heard Ava whispering to the floor nurses to remove the mirror from my bathroom. They nodded solemnly. The mirror disappeared in the night.
Of course, I couldn't sleep. Instead, I spent the nights sweating and groaning as little Cindy threw non-stop tantrums trying to kick her way out. A doctor explained that Cindy's body had the development features of a late-term fetus, but her brain was more advanced because she had been there for almost 3 years. Consequently, she had the restless temperament of a toddler in her terrible twos. I was in constant pain and bed bound. I dared not laugh, cough, or burp lest I piss off Cindy or pee myself. I couldn't control anything. They were diapering me four or five times a day. It was so embarrassing at first, not being able to see what was going on down there, but after a while, I just stopped caring. I let it be their problem.
To be honest, I began to take sick satisfaction in relieving myself. When I let something go, the bed bot would immediately alert the nurses, and a team would come running. It felt good to be handled, touched, rolled over, changed, washed, padded dry, and dusted with talcum powder. I liked the odd combination of helplessness and power I possessed in that state. I felt like some giant termite queen: a horrific filthy blob but the colony's most precious and vulnerable asset. I was like that disgusting monster that, for the sake of the colony's well-being, must be serviced, pampered, and even humored by the worker termites who, in my case, were a cadre of health professionals.
Ava, well, she wasn't around as much as I had imagined she'd be. Who could blame her? She was like the prospective dad that absents himself and takes refuge at the corner bar when the shit hits the fan, and the shit had been hitting the fan for months.
As I lay there, especially at night, I often thought back to that first day we arrived. Our apartment was even more spectacular than we could have possibly imagined. It was mid-afternoon when we entered the light-flooded living room. We found ourselves on a high floor of a glass pencil tower at the south end of Roosevelt Island. A house bot, you could call it a butler, startled us when the elevator doors opened. "Welcome home Michael and Ava!" We looked around and were relieved it was just a voice, not one of those freaky androids. "We are thrilled to be part of this journey and are here for your every need." No sooner had we crossed the threshold than my olfactory senses caught a warm whiff of ...could it be? "That's right, Michael," Butler bot piped in, "the staff has just delivered a fresh batch of your favorite oatmeal cookies. Right over there on the coffee table with tea and a carafe of fruit-infused mineral water. Enjoy!"
“What is this, a cookie conspiracy?” Ava just laughed and served the tea. We sat munching and sipping in a sort of warm hypnotic daze as we stared in awe across the narrow strait of the east river at the glimmering mirrored shafts beyond. The old city we had lived in for 30 years was so far below that only the Empire State Building, and the Chrysler Building peeked above our window horizon.
"Let's go explore," Ava stood up and pulled me up behind her. "I can't wait to get down in the street and bump some shoulders." She looked back at me with wide-eyed excitement. "Off we go," I said, trying to keep up.
"Oh, you're going to the street? Are you sure that's a good idea?" The butler bot sounded incredulous. We ignored him as Ava grabbed her bag and tried to open the elevator door. It wouldn't budge. "You forgot your NYC-mandated AR glasses. Please be sure to wear them as you exit the elevator," the butler bot insisted. There were two pairs in a blinking inset next to the elevator door. The elevator doors opened wide when we pulled them loose from their perch. On the way down, we looked at each other and almost laughed. "Hold it," we winked in agreement. The elevator stopped and opened with a ding at the mezzanine.
Ava punched the ground floor button, but the doors wouldn't close. "Let's go," she said impatiently. We strode out expecting to find an escalator down to the ground floor but instead found ourselves in a vast glass vestibule with several passageways leading in opposing directions. "Hello," I called out, sure some helpful bot monitor would answer. "Hello, Michael. How may I be of assistance?" Instead of reassuring us, the bot’s intimate wispy voice gave us the chills. "Never mind." Ava replied, "We'll figure it out.”
The space was huge, but there was nobody around. Ava put on her AR glasses and gasped. "Unbelievable, Mikey, put them on." Through the glasses, the cavernous space was transformed. Suddenly it was bustling with people. A cacophony of unintelligible announcements blared above the din of the crowds. It was like Grand Central at rush hour from the before times with crazed herds of commuters pushing in all directions. "Switch," Ava exclaimed as she pulled both our glasses off at the same time. The abrupt silence and emptiness that surrounded us was mind-bendingly hilarious. “Switch,” I called out, taking up the game, and the glasses were back on.We kept going back and forth with the glasses on then off again laughing and gasping in irreverent amazement as we advanced towards an illuminated sign over the passageway that flashed West to Sutton Place 57th Street.
When we stepped into the glass corridor, the floor began to move. "Wow! What is this?" The passageway was a sky bridge. The floor was transparent, and as it carried us along, we could see the river below us and Queensborough Bridge. "Oh my god, Michael!" We realized we were looking down at the bridge. "This Mezzanine must be 30 stories high." The people-mover accelerated. As we passed across the river, we could see through the glass passageway that all the needle towers were connected by skyways, just like ours. We sped through the Sutton Place Hall and west towards 5th Av.
Down below, the city looked abandoned. It was a ghost town, that is, until we put our glasses on, then it came alive. With the glasses on, we could see the familiar heavy traffic far below; it was just like it used to be. The sea of yellow cabs, black limos, and vans emptied out of the bridge onto 1st Ave. and snaked south around double-parked delivery trucks and buses. As we sped west through the passageways, we could see into the windows of the old buildings that rose up to our level. Offices were full of people carrying papers, working in cubicles. We passed residential towers with people leaning over their kitchen sinks washing dishes or sitting in their living rooms reading. There were cocktail parties on roof terraces and loners in their bedroom windows, some dressing brazenly for all to see. "It's just like I remember it," I told Ava. "Yeah, me too," she nodded. We were smiling at each other, but I felt like crying. "Just do what they say," Ava said. Now her eyes were welling up too. "Don't take the glasses off, Mikey." I nodded and squeezed her hand.