After Lawson’s big speech, he left quickly. I was grateful for his absence, as I had no idea how to respond to him. The tight feeling in my chest didn’t go away. His kind words actually worsened my feeling of guilt, but at the same time, I was relieved. Every sentence out of Lawson’s mouth made me want this to be real so much more. I couldn’t help being concerned that it would all fall apart. Afraid that Lawson was building me up so that he could knock me down. I decided that I couldn’t let my fears stop me from trying. I couldn’t make them disappear, but I could absolutely learn to overcome them.
Shortly after Lawson left, my internal clock, which I had no way of confirming, decided to let me know that it thought it was night-time. I still wasn’t feeling particularly tired, but Lawson had had a point about me needing to rest to recover. I stood up from the bed, but got right back on, just in a laying down position that wouldn’t hurt my wings.
While I was not sleeping, I decided to use my time to think. I had a major decision to make: whether or not to help Lawson with his experiment. He had told me most of the major details. He didn’t want poisonbirds to go extinct after me. Considering my anatomy, it would technically be possible to produce poisonbird offspring.
The problem with that option was that it would remove the genetic diversity in the poisonbird population, and obviously it would be effectively worse than incest. Lawson’s goal was to study human and poisonbird DNA and try to find a way to make them equivalent enough to create a human-poisonbird hybrid, ideally one that could produce fertile offspring with either a human or a poisonbird.
I would have to be involved for the experiment to be carried out. Lawson didn’t have any way to gain a DNA sample from a poisonbird without taking it from me, and in addition it seemed like diet would be the most problematic factor of the process. The “mother” of a poisonbird would likely have to feed the child poison for it to receive the nutrients it would need. I would have to mother the children for them to… well, not die.
In addition to the toll it would have on my own physical body, I had to consider the future of my species. I had never been exposed to another poisonbird besides my mother, and I had very little time with her. My ancestors had killed themselves to avoid being kept in captivity, and if I agreed to help Lawson and he was successful, I had no guarantee that my children— the future of my entire species— would be safe. I had no promise they wouldn’t be enslaved and tormented like I had been. Even if Lawson was a good person and tried to protect them, there was no system in place that would protect them forever.
And would the poisonbird species even want to see a future generation if it was going to be a hybrid? Our species couldn’t naturally reproduce with humans, so I doubted it was ever a concept that was discussed, but now that I could hypothetically, would all the dead poisonbirds want to see us live on, or would they just want to let us fade away?
I was overwhelmed with all of the consideration that had to be done. I divided up all of the issues that I had with agreeing to help Lawson, and went through them one by one.
Issue one: If I didn’t consider any other factors, only the issue of having to give DNA and having to carry the child, I honestly didn’t mind. I had no idea what to expect, but although I was typically referred to as male, I didn’t have the same opinion on gender and sex as humans seemed to, and had no problem with being a mother. I only thought that if I was to have children, I expected them not to be taken away from me.
Issue two: I had no context for what other poisonbirds would have thought about this, but decided that, frankly, it didn’t matter. I by no means wanted to diminish my species, but they were dead. Our future was up to me, and me alone, so I should get to decide my actions. I was sure that my mother, at least, would be proud just to see me seizing my life, trying to distance myself from my species’ tragedy.
Issue Three: This was the issue that broke the deal for me; I could not bring myself to agree to this in a world where the children would not have guaranteed protection. I would not let any more poisonbirds suffer what I and so many other poisonbirds had suffered. Even if I assumed it was safe to trust Lawson, he wasn’t in charge of the world. He couldn’t necessarily protect the children from being taken from him. He owned me, but technically not my offspring. Even if they weren’t somehow taken, one day Lawson wouldn’t be around anymore, and by the time that day came likely I wouldn’t be around either. Then who could protect them? Who could protect their children? It wasn’t something I could bring myself to do. I had my answer.
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