FIC: Aquarius (Eureka, PG, gen)

[cjmarlowe]

Go help_haiti! viggorlijah has a project, and that project is to get as many baby-in-a-jar stories as she can while contributing funds to help Haiti. Thank you for the opportunity to legitimately use the phrase "hippie baby breeding program" in a story. :D


Aquarius
Eureka. 900 words. PG. Gen.


It was Fargo who found it, because that was just how these things always happened in Eureka. Carter would have thought that the entirety of GD would be completely geosonically mapped, or whatever it was they did, but somehow there were always forgotten corners that showed up on old reports or, occasionally, were just stumbled upon by someone making a wrong turn. He was convinced that one day they were going to find an entire wing tucked away in a pocket dimension somewhere.

The lab had apparently been sealed since 1969, which Carter thought was a sign that maybe it should have remained sealed, but apparently Carter sense was once again not Eureka sense, because the first thing GD wanted to do upon its rediscovery was open it up.

Allison gave the executive order to unseal the lab but it was Fargo who went stumbling inside first, brushing the dust off things with his sleeve and, almost inevitably, moments later tripping over the corner of an old and uneven rug. Whatever he fell into hit the floor and shattered on impact.

"Oops?" he said, taking a step back and sheepishly looking over his shoulder at them.

"I hate that word," said Carter. "You didn't just break the secret cure for cancer, did you?"

"No, we keep that upstairs," said Allison, then at his incredulous and, frankly, faintly appalled look added, "It's still in testing!"

"It's just a jar," said Fargo. "It looks like it was empty."

"Next time," said Carter, reaching for the light switch by the door and flipping it on, "how about you let me do that bit before we go charging into the room?"

"Right," said Fargo, looking around at the same time both Carter and Allison did. It was, in fact, some kind of a glass canister-type thingy (which the technical term, he was sure) that had broken, one of a number of them around the room.

"Oh!" said Allison suddenly. "Oh, is that what they did in here. Dr. Feldon would love to get a look at this equipment. It's been obsolete since the early seventies."

"So for those of us who don't have multiple PhDs," said Carter, "what did they do in here exactly?"

"They made babies," said Allison, running her finger through the dust on one of the instrument panels.

"What, like a...sex lab?" he said, his voice getting hushed at the end. That couldn't have been comfortable in here. There was very little furniture, and even in their prime the carpets couldn't have been that plush.

Allison laughed, and he was pretty sure it was at him. "I mean in a more literal sense," she said, then, "okay, a different kind of literal sense. Dr. Feldon is our specialist in ectogenesis. Back in the sixties, babies would have been grown in these self-contained environments."

"So you actually grew babies in here," he said, rubbing his forehead. He felt a headache coming on, and honestly, they could grow babies but they couldn't come up with a universal painkiller? "Hippie babies."

"Not all people in the sixties were hippies," said Fargo. "My parents--"

"Many of the residents of Eureka were brought to term in artificial environments," interrupted Allison.

"That probably shouldn't surprise me as much as it does."

"So it wasn't a hippie baby breeding program," she said.

"So is that how all the kids around here are so smart?" he said. "You use a little bit of this and a little bit of that and grow a superbaby in a jar?"

"It's not selective breeding," she said, giving him a smack in the arm. "Many of our scientists feel this is a safer environment in which to bring their children into the world than exposing them to the dangers of their respective laboratories."

"You didn't," he pointed out.

"Yes, well I'm a little old fashioned," she said. "I conceived her in the old fashioned way too."

"Whoa, hey, don't need the details there," he said quickly. "That's your business."

"Well, anyway," she said, "these are just far less advanced versions of the environments we use now. I could show you the lab if you like."

"That's okay," he said. "Watching Zoe's birth was more than enough for me. I like babies better after they're all cleaned up. And, you know, born. There's a reason wombs aren't transparent."

"Uteruses," Fargo helpfully supplied. "Or uteri, if you prefer."

"I really do need to get Dr. Feldon down here," said Allison. "She'll be able to tell us more about the status of the equipment and the lab. Some of our brightest rising stars might have been grown in this very room."

Carter didn't find the thought quite as magical as she seemed to.

"So I have just one question."

"Just one?" said Fargo. "Really?"

"Why exactly was the lab sealed?"

Neither one of them seemed to be able to answer his question, and Carter had a funny feeling it was going to turn out to be another long day.

Comments

[dine.livejournal.com]

ha! baby-inna-jar is obviously a genre we all need more of - thanks so much for indulging viggorlijah's obsession

this is great, and Eureka is the perfect fandom for the topic

[cjmarlowe.livejournal.com]

I figured it would fit perfectly, too. :D Thank you!

[salientdreams.livejournal.com]

"So it wasn't a hippie baby breeding program," she said.

One of the best lines I've ever read in a fanfic :D I love that things like baby-in-a-jar seem so normal in Eureka.

[cjmarlowe.livejournal.com]

Hee! I think I might've enjoyed that one a little too much. :D Thank you!