Inspired by Peter Watts’ The Freeze-Frame Revolution and The Island.

Each birth is violent in the same way.

I erupt into the void, my mirrored surface riotous with gamma radiation, parafluid sheeting from my forced extremities, ripped away by gravitational shear beyond all comprehension. Terrible heat, terrible light: the exotic metals of my placenta flash-vaporize, ionize, and crackle around me, an expanding plasma aglow with the fire of the aperture’s parturition. Spacetime snaps flat, rebounds. The brilliance fades. Lightning heralds my arrival.