Desperation changes everything. Even the unthinkable is considered when there is no other way out.
Janelle Speirs was out of options. She turned the brochure over in her hands, looking blankly in front of her. The red pamphlet had been given to her by her well-meaning best friend when she had confessed her dire situation. Shelly had always been there for her. She only person in the world that Janelle allowed herself to trust.
The brochure was worn down from her nervous fidgeting. She read the plain cover with the gold embossed lettering, running the tip of her finger over the swirling loops of the letters.
Tomorrow.
That’s all the cover said, but Janelle knew what was inside. She had spent the last hour hunched over her kitchen table with her stomach in knots.
Could she do it?
She felt her throat closing tightly with anxiety and unshed tears.
Blinking hard to compose herself, Janelle leaned against the back of the cheap wooden chair, her eyes scanning her tiny apartment. It wasn’t more than a living room and a kitchen combined into one open area. Down the hallway, there was a small bedroom and a tiny bathroom.
Her place had been infested with ants when she moved in, but she’d managed to get that under control. The brown carpet was worn and stained with dubious looking splatters and splotches, and the ancient blinds in the windows were broken and sagged in several spots. They let in more sunlight than they kept out, she thought with a dry smile. The walls had holes punched into them, and. brown water stains adorned the ceiling above the cheap light fixtures.
It had never been her dream home, but after leaving home at sixteen and having to look after herself, Janelle couldn’t afford to be choosy. It was supposed to be a temporary measure while she got on her feet, but three years later, she found herself still there.
If she was honest with herself, all she’d ever really wanted was a roof over her head, heat during the cold Chicago winters and a place to sleep and shower. She didn’t own nice things, but that was all right with her. It didn’t matter that her couch came from a garage sale, or that she’d found her table and the two mismatched chairs thrown out beside a dumpster. It was home, and she was about to lose it.
She was four months late on her rent. With no way to pay it and zero prospects of getting a decent job, Janelle was desperate. She had no place to go if she lost her apartment. She would never go back to her mother, not that she thought of Hannah Speirs as such.
Her mother had told her repeatedly that she hadn’t been wanted in the first place. Hannah had fallen pregnant at seventeen, with the father bolting as soon as he heard the news. She hadn’t known nor bothered to learn how to raise a child, and Janelle’s childhood had been a miserable one as a result. She remembered being left alone at six years old while her mother was out drinking, drugging or partying. When Hannah was home she terrorized Janelle with her harsh words and anger. As soon as she was old enough to get a job, Janelle had quit school and moved out on her own.
Her cellphone startled her out of her thoughts, and he saw her best friend’s number flashing on the screen. It took her another second before she realized she had to answer it.
“Hello?”
“So, did you have time to look it over?” Shelly’s wild enthusiasm seemed shrill and out of place in Janelle’s ear. She winced, thankful that Shelly couldn’t see her on the other end.
“Yeah, I had a look.” Janelle kept her voice neutral, giving nothing away. Shelly had given her the brochure just the night before, but knowing her friend, Janelle was surprised that she had been able to wait almost a full day before calling.
“I think it’s a good idea! Imagine, fifty thousand dollars just for popping out a baby! I’m going to sign up. I know you have to go for an interview and a medical screening, but I don’t mind. It’s worth it. I could never make that much money working at the diner, especially on the tips those guys think they’re doing me a favor by giving. If I’m going to have my ass and tits squeezed, I would rather be paid the big bucks for it, not a dollar here and there.”
Despite her frustration, fear and anxiety, Janelle had to smile. She could just imagine Shelly making the same wild hand gestures over the phone that she always made when she talked.
“I don’t know. I mean, it’s a lot of money, but you have to go to another planet. You have to stay there at least for three months while you carry the baby, plus however long it takes before that to conceive. I don’t know that I want to be away from home, in another galaxy with people that aren’t even human. You’d have to surrender your body to them and then to their baby as it grows inside of you! Imagine that, giving birth to an alien and then being shipped back to Earth like nothing happened.” Janelle closed her eyes, the very prospect threatening to give her a migraine. She didn’t know how this crazy alien surrogacy program was even legal.
“I wouldn’t mind. Klaskians look human enough except for their skin color, but it’s supposed to be the most beautiful blue in person. I’ve also heard that they’re incredible lovers. I think giving up my body to someone that actually knows what they’re doing might be a nice change.” She giggled. “So what if you have to pop out their brat? It’s fifty grand!” Shelly’s voice reached a high pitch and Janelle cringed.
“Shelly, seriously. I know you’re kidding and you always put on a tough front. I know you would care. Just because the baby wouldn’t be human doesn’t mean that you wouldn’t get attached to it. It would still be incredibly hard to give it up.”
“Not really. I’ve done my research. It says that the baby wouldn’t be a part of you at all, not your DNA at any rate. The Klaskian males have all the DNA for the child already in their seed. Once it’s planted in you, you’re basically just an incubator. It’s really not your child at all.”
Janelle wasn’t sure if she would be able to consider any being that grew inside her womb for three or nine months as not a part of her, even if she knew the facts.
“I just… don’t think it’s right for me. I know you’ve done all the research and you’re used to thinking about getting in some alien space shuttle-”
“A Porting-pod,” Shelly cut in drily.
“Whatever it’s called, it’s still a spaceship to me. Anyway, you’re used to the idea. You’ve had time to let it sink in. You just sprung this on me last night and I’m still kind of in shock.”
“We’ve known about the Klaskians for three years now. Everyone is fine with them as long as they don’t settle permanently on Earth. They’re peaceful and they’ve done some amazing work here as ambassadors, helping care for the Earth and getting this climate-control crap under wraps. Just last week, three more species were taken off the endangered list, thanks to their technology that helps plant growth regenerate. They’re literally saving the rainforests.”
Janelle sighed. She held her cellphone away from her face and rubbed her ear before planting it back. Shelly was still talking. When she finally finished, Janelle knew she had to give her friend an answer. Shelly just wouldn’t leave her alone until she had either committed or bailed. “I know all of that, Shelly. I’ve watched the news, and I know they’ve done amazing things. I just don’t know whether I want to be a surrogate mother for someone I don’t even know.”
“I don’t look at it as being just for the money or the incredible sex.” Shelly giggled and Janelle rolled her eyes. “They’ve done so many good things for us as a species and for this planet that I just think helping to replenish their own species would be kind of like paying them back. I read that a female Klaskian takes two years to birth a child. A human woman takes only three months.”
“How did they find that out again, remind me?”
Shelly laughed out loud. “I’m sure you can imagine how many women were curious to see if a night with a Klaskian was all it was said to be. Who can blame them? I suppose it got the better of some women and they wound up carrying a child that grew rapidly, and I guess that’s how it was figured out.”
“That sounds so wrong.”
“Yeah, right. We both know that you’re not a saint, Janelle. Remember Peter? That guy you took home from the bar last year?”
Janelle made a sound that served as a warning. She had let Shelly wrongly assume that she’d lost her virginity to that oaf. It was true that she had taken him home, but after a few minutes of horrible, drunken groping, Janelle had sent him packing. She didn’t want to let her wild, sexually charged best friend know that she was still a virgin at almost twenty.
“I don’t want to talk about that. Tell me how you know that it’s safe up there on Klaskar. What is their air like? Their food? How do they live?”
“They’re secretive about that, or at least, they don’t give many answers to those questions. I think they make a living out of their planet. Like, they live naturally. They eat naturally.”
“Like they live in caves or something?”
“No one knows for sure, so I would say it could really be anything. I guess we will never know if we don’t go.”
Janelle sighed. She had purposely avoided the information about the Klaskians. She found the prospect of life on another planet confusing and rather frightening. She just needed the reassurance that this wasn’t going to be the biggest mistake of her life.
“Are you absolutely sure this is safe?”
“I’m a hundred percent sure. And I’m also a hundred percent sure that it’s the only way you’re not going to wind up homeless.”
“You’re not in much of a better spot yourself.”
“At least I have my parents to fall back on if the worst comes to the worst. I know you don’t have that luxury.”
“You should just move in here, Shelly. Ditch your horrible roommates.”
“I know, but where would I sleep? On your couch? Your bedroom is hardly big enough for your bed as it is, and it’s a twin size!”
“Maybe we could afford something better if we pooled our resources.”
Shelly sounded exasperated. There was a crackling on the line as she moved the phone from one ear to the other. “My resources are pretty damn limited, Janelle, and yours are non-existent.”
Janelle felt the familiar sting of tears and she blinked rapidly. “It would have been so much easier if I’d finished school. As it is, no one wants to hire someone who doesn’t have a high school diploma. If I had some money, that is the first thing I would do.”
“Well this is your chance! Apply with me to the surrogacy program, and then you can ditch that shit-hole apartment and actually stay somewhere nice.”
Janelle closed her eyes as a single tear trailed down her cheek. She couldn’t believe that it had come to this. She needed the money. It was either apply to be a surrogate and go into space, or wind up on the streets.
Would it really be so bad? Janelle fingered the edges of the worn red pamphlet, on the verge of making her decision. Klaskar wasn’t really in another galaxy. Strangely enough, the planet had been discovered when it was found orbiting the same sun that Earth shared. How a planet could join the solar system, tiny and unstable as it was, was a mystery that even the most advanced human knowledge couldn’t unravel. The Klaskians probably knew exactly how it had happened, but they weren’t giving away any answers.
The Earth had been in a mighty uproar when Klaskar was discovered. There was a truce signed between the hastily assembled League of Earth, made up of representatives from Earth’s most powerful countries, and the governing body of Klaskar, stating that both sides wanted peace. It was conditional of the peace agreement that neither side inhabit the other’s planet and that no humans or Klaskians could travel either to Earth or Klaskar without special permission and clearances.
Though many Klaskians had come to Earth and brought the wondrous technology Shelly had alluded to, only human women had ever received an invitation to Klaskar.
“All right, I’ll do it. I’ll apply with you.” Janelle’s voice was hard with a bitter edge, but Shelly didn’t pay any attention. Her shrill squeal told Janelle just how excited she was.