Eli stepped out of their home and into the bridge. He pulled his cloak tighter around him, holding his body heat in. It was always cold, even with Knox shining down on them, it was always cold. He pulled his hood over his eyes and reached for his mothers hand as they walked the bridge. She squeezed his hand tight in hers, clinging to the warmth their bodies emitted. And clinging to the tie they had to one another. 

Eli looked down at the ice below them, underneath the bridge where very few walked. Apparently in other sectors there were no sky bridges, technology not wasted on transportation. Eli passed people leaving for their assigned work and going to their school hours. He would not be going to school this day. He would be in the laboratory with his mother and the others. The girl would be there too. He didn’t know her name, it didn’t really matter either way. He would never know the child they created together. Men fathered many children in their years of fertility. Women only carried for five years, after that they were finished. Eli had wondered what it was like to grow with siblings, all of his had died before they could take a breath. Children had called his mother a wasteland, nothing growing in her womb but him. He hated the other children for that. He knew that his mothered had cried for his dead siblings and had loved him more because of it. 

They stopped outside the laboratories, getting into the lift that carried them up over the city. Eli squinted away from the sunlight and looked down at his black boots. They had been a gift from his mother after his first insemination fail. They were lovely squiel leather, thick and warm. He couldn’t understand why his mother gave him a gift for failing, but he wouldn’t ask her. He knew what she would say, she had been saying it his entire life. ‘Everything I do for you I do because I love you.’ She was a very good mother. 

“Remember, Eli. Don’t speak while you’re here. Just stay quiet and do what you’re asked, alright?” Raiza whispered before they stepped off the lift. 

“Yes mother,” Eli agreed, the doors sliding open as they stepped into the hallway. He followed his mother down a long tube until turning to a door. She scanned her biometric and stepped inside. He appreciated her ability to bypass the check in. It was crowded and filled with anxious and excited boys and girls. Hopeful for their future. Eli stood and waited as his mother signed in before following her through another set of doors. She pulled on her lab coat as three other technicians all began to surround him. 

“Eli Lennox. Age fifteen. Height 160. Weight 2.8” One was saying as the other typed all of this into his pad. “Blood type X. Second insemination day. First day failed.” 

Eli winced at the words. He had tried to remember what his mother had said. No one failed their second, but his curiosity had already proven that was not true always. 

“Raiza if you’ll leave the room, no mothers allowed during.” One woman said, turning towards his mother. 

She nodded before meeting Eli’s gaze. She smiled and gave him a single nod before stepping out and into another room with another child. 

“Eli,” the scientist smiled at him. “I am Lanter. I’ll be handling your insemination today.” 

Eli said nothing, as he had promised his mother. 

The technicians were wrapping a robe around him as he sat on a cold bed. 

“If you’ll lie back and close your eyes, this will be over quickly.” 

Something was being injected into his blood stream as he got hazy. He had asked his mother what it was before, but she simply said it helps to relax him during the procedure. He couldn’t think of anyone who would be able to relax during, it was painful. He wondered if the girls procedure was just as difficult as theirs. 

“You’re all done, Eli. Great job.” The scientist patted his shoulder as the technicians helped him dress. He was pushed out in a chair as another boy waited outside the room. 

It must be his first time, his eyes got huge at seeing Eli wheeled out looking exhausted and in pain. No one really explained what insemination looked like, but Eli could guess. He didn’t like the idea, he was sure no one did really. It had turned into a necessity to keep their population alive. He figured it was better than what they did hundreds of years ago. Now it was all very clinical. He was wheeled into a waiting room with other boys who had finished their cycle. Some were chatting with each other, some were quiet. Eli waited until he could stand and left without another word. His mother would be at the laboratory for the rest of the day, he wouldn’t wait around for that. He walked slowly across the bridge, his body aching from the procedure. He opened their home, locking the door behind him and going for the shower. His mother would be angry with him for wasting hot water after he had already bathed that day, but his muscles ached and he needed to clean himself of the laboratories stink. It was too sterile there, it smelled of chemicals and sanitizer. It burned at his nose if he was around it too long, so he rinsed himself off before falling into his bed. He reached for the button on his wall that shut his shield and his room was once again dark. 

He slept for a long time, he was always tired. His dreams came rushing into him like ice in his veins. He was cold, colder than he’d ever been in his entire life. He tried to look around but could see nothing. He could hear the squelch of something around him, but he couldn’t see where it was. He could hear the whispers of a language he didn’t understand before the single word came back to him. Ghost. Ghost, invading his senses, sending a chill down him. He woke to his mother shaking him awake. His eyes shot open and he sat up quickly, reaching out for his mothers arm. 

“You’re okay,” she was stroking his arm with her fingertips. “You’re okay. It was just a dream. You’re alright now. I’m here.” 

Eli took a steadying breaths in and out before finally looking at his mother. She looked tired. It had clearly been a long day for her. 

“How was the procedure?” She asked from the cooking unit. She was frying off Squiel fin for them. They always ate some form of Squiel. It was the main food source on Thill. It was rich in protein and nutrients, and squiel were large and easy to breed and kill. He’d read once of large tanks that squiel were raised in until maturity when they were first bred and then slaughtered for meat when their time ran out. He felt a bit like them sometimes. Trapped in a tank until he was bred and then he’d die off when he no longer proved useful. His miraculous mind going first, followed by his other organs until finally his heart stopped beating, his lungs stopped expanding and contracting. Everything died eventually. 

Eli shook his head and cleared his throat. “It was fine. Not like I remember it.” 

His mother nodded as if she didn’t know exactly what happened during the procedure. His mother knew more than most people. She wouldn’t tell him, said it wasn’t important how it happened, and that all he needed to know was that they were handled with the upmost care. That didn’t really ease Eli’s thoughts about the entire thing. He knew that this was how it happened, this was how it had been for hundreds and hundreds of years, ever since the science was rediscovered. But he didn’t like it. He didn’t like feeling no better than a male squiel, kept alive only to keep the food chain in tact.

“Is the process already complete?” Eli asked. 

His mother nodded. “Of course. The process is completed immediately after extraction.” 

“So we’ll know soon?” Eli asked quietly. 

His mother stopped what she was doing and turned to him. “Yes, we’ll know soon enough. In about ten days. Then you won’t have to worry about this again until next year.” 

Eli simply nodded, that should ease his concern. Insemination day only had to happen once a year once successful pregnancy was achieved. But he still couldn’t help but feel some impending doom. He was probably being paranoid. He had always been a very paranoid child, his mother figured it was from his dreams. They kept his heart rate too high and because of that he was constantly on edge. Constantly unsure of his surroundings. Constantly suspect of everyone’s motives around him. Including his mothers. 

They sat at the holograph that evening, like they did every evening to listen to Cillian Knox. Named after the star they orbited Cillian Knox was their great leader. A member of the Knox family was always leader their sectors for them. Assigning each person to their best task at sixteen, controlling the population as best he could. 

“It is with great sorrow that I announce the death of my mother.” Cillian Knox said. “A great leader before me, she has gone to the stars as our oldest living member of society, dying at forty seven.” 

“Forty seven?” his mother sighed and shook. “They must have been keeping her on support for her to live that long.” 

“It is possible though.” Eli said turning the page on his pad. “The oldest record of a person living on Thill is fifty-five.” 

“That must have been hundreds of years ago.” His mother said. 

“Ninety-eight. But apparently he went crazy in his last year of life.” Eli said. “He climbed to the top of a building and jumped off.” 

Raiza grimaced. “That’s horrible. Don’t talk of such things, Eli, please. They hurt to think about.” 

No one wanted to think about difficult things. Everyone flinched or grimaced or cried when terrible things happened in history. Eli was never surprised by them. He’d read something a year back that he knew he wasn’t meant to know. Of the old world. Millions of years ago people killed one another, starved to death, grew old alone. Countries warred with one another, killing fellow humans without a second thought. 

Thill had lost those people it seemed. Perhaps because people died so young, perhaps the leaders had squashed them out over the many thousands of years they had inhabited this planet. 

Eli wondered sometimes if other planets were the same. Inhabited by the last breeds of humans, growing their population to stay alive. He was sure they couldn’t be alone, perhaps some humans from the old world had found other planets to populate as well. Perhaps those humans had somehow found a way to survive too. Or perhaps it truly was just them.