Lie Back and Think of Efficiency
by http://meika.loofs-samorzewski.com

I had my dopamine-producing response to baby faces dampened on a clear Tuesday morning in autumn.

"Please lie down within the scansurgeon," the clinician's voice had all the charm of a stock market report. Another day, another trade in the wetmall.

I slid slowly in. Clonk, wonk and ping went the machine. While I lay staring at my dull reflection in grey plastic, the baby-face alarm bell to my gonad clock was soaked. I was now safe from the diseconomies of motherhood. Pity it wasn't tax deductible. Couldn't even depreciate it.

Something flickered on my eyes. "Ursula, would you look at the following images while we run the post-damp scans."

I let the pictures in. They ran images of test subjects: Cradle Mountain, racing cars, myrtle beech leaves orange on snow, smoky valleys, pademelons bounding past a wombat, Rock Island Bend, wet dogs, and finally a big sun-like baby face smiling down at me.

"Okay, we’ll slide you out now and you can wait for the final in the recovery room. Please help yourself to a cup of tea and a biscuit."

And that was it. Baby faces were to be no more captivating than a wet umbrella. No reproductive urge would ruin this one-woman productivity drive over the mid-term road to success.

Babies were off the strategic plan until the franchise was fully entrenched in the Ralph’s Bay Submarina 'burbs of the sea. Now I could concentrate on my client needs without being distracted by their 9-month-old crawler wandering along a garage dike. Global warming might have burnt the expectations of the consumer generally, but those old fools who bought into marina housing developments just as sea levels started to rise were still around. In the same houses even. They were rich enough to afford, and thus require, my gardening service — Ursie’s Seaweeding. Heavy Metal Recovery At No Extra Cost.

"Baby faces will still look cute, but not in that captivatingly pleasurable way. Cute in that neat, trim sort of way, like the way a proud homebody enjoys ironing tea towels, and not in that goo-gaa totally wet way." That’s what Isabel said. And it certainly seemed true now. Already.

Even that earthquake on the Cascades Fault in Hobart, 2014, had not wetted down demand. The only houses abandoned when the reclaimed land spurted up into liquefactional mud — and then slopped back into the sea — were those whose owners were too poor, too over-mortgaged, and too-child ridden to have installed sea clear domes as advised. They would not be able to afford Ursie’s fees in any case. No matter.

My eggs were frozen. Time enough for all that later. If I felt like it.

I took my tea and teddy bear biscuit. I sat down, took a sip, and wondered, as I rained on my biscuit, why is it that our tears taste of the sea?

published at
http://www.antisf.com/   Issue 110 (July - Aug. 2007) 
archive: at
http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/10063/20070724-1440/www.antisf.com/text/storyt04.html