Chapter 4: Chapter 3: Crisis of conscience

It is very hard to keep track of time when you are almost always asleep. But, after what I estimate to have been a couple of weeks, I have come to three rather shocking realizations about the me of this new life.

The first realization I had… It seems that I am not human. As for how I realized this, well... It seemed fairly strange at first, but I noticed after a while that I had not been getting fed, not even once in all this time. Sometimes, a woman would take me and sit me in her lap. I could tell this woman was not my mother. She had a different voice from the one I heard while in the womb. So, I suppose she was a care-taker of some sort. The strange part about this though, the part that was the beginning of my suspicions that I was not human, was how they would have a slightly older child play with me. In fact, she would outright force them to at least sit next to me, even when they didn’t want to.

Yes, that is certainly not enough to make anyone suspect they are not human. Not on it’s own anyway. It was just the first in what was becoming a large trail of strange things in my life.

The second piece of evidence of my non-human nature is quite likely the first thing I ought to have noticed. It was the fact that the woman was making no attempt, at least from what I could tell, to put anything in my mouth. Not a breast, not a bottle, not even some kind of syringe. Nothing was being put into my body and, as far as I knew, nothing was coming out either. They hadn’t even bothered to put me in some kind of diaper. I was just wrapped in a blanket.

There was no attempt to clean me down there, and it seemed there was no need for it either. I do not suspect newborns have as much sensation down there due to otherwise being incontinent as well, but I do think I would at least notice if I was wet.

So, I was left with the conclusion that I must either not be human, or I am being fed in a way that I did not recognize as feeding. A way that also left no waste byproducts. More likely, though, is that it was actually both. As if to reinforce that conclusion, the woman had recently started to feed these other children, and would only do it if they sat in her lap along with me or my sibling. They would be given some kind of solid food, and were not allowed to eat it anywhere other than right next to me.

That told me something else, though. This was the second shocking realization. These other children did not want to do this, and had to be forced with food. I could also tell from their body language that over the course of these weeks they have been growing increasingly weary of the thought of sitting next to me.

I could only conclude that they must know something I don’t. They don’t want to sit next to me because they ARE my food, and they probably don’t like the idea of being fed to a newborn. Not that the one consuming them would really matter.

I am still not having anything placed in my mouth, and it’s nothing I’m having to do actively. I also don’t think any tubes are being stuck into my body in order to feed me that way. But, I am obviously being fed somehow, and the origin of it is these older but still small children. Is it some kind of energy? Am I just absorbing it from them through the ether or something?

That seemed like the only reasonable conclusion, if you could actually call concluding that you are some kind of energy vampire who is feeding on small children reasonable. But, the more I think about it, the more I am left with that as the only available conclusion. I believe it was Sherlock Holmes who said that once you have eliminated the impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. And, the evidence seemed to line up for this one.

And then came the final of the three shocking conclusions. I have identified that there seems to be two older children who are used most frequently as mine and probably my sibling’s food sources. And, the adults have recently taken to locking them in together with me and my sibling when it’s night time. This brings us to just now, when I heard them talking to each other. And, what I heard shocked me on so many levels I just didn’t know what to do with it.

“So whad do we do?” the squeaky small child’s voice said. Their speech was pretty broken and halting, but they seemed to have slowed down and were being extremely deliberate about making their words at least a little intelligible.

“We odda do somefin.” The other said. I was surprised after hearing the first kid speak, but now it was undeniable after hearing the second one. They were speaking English. “Maybe… uwe. Wee gan hurt um.” The kid said.

“What!?” The first kid screamed at the first one’s suggestion. “No! Err babies!”

I held my breath when I heard this. What was going on? No, I think I probably know what’s happening. They probably realized the same thing I did, but… what do I do!?

“Yeah, budt…” the one who made the outrageous suggestion said, and then they went quiet for a while.

“Dey might gill us if we do dat!” the first one suggested.

“eah, bud onwe if we urt em ureal bad!” the second one said, his babyish speech seemed to degrade harshly as he became more agitated. That one seemed to sound a bit like he said (Yeah, but only if we hurt them real bad). Then, he had more to say. More deliberate this time, as his attempts to reason through his actions probably allowed him to calm down a little. “Maybe jus pinch dem owr zomethin an make em cry. Dey might say we can’d ee wit em anymower.”

The first child seemed to go quiet after hearing that argument. Then, I felt a shifting on the mattress the four of us were on.

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“No! Don’t!” the first kid said. Then, before the second kid could cross much more of the bed, I heard my sibling start crying. I was the one closer to the older children, so it seemed like my sibling must have also been listening into the conversation and decided to call for help. They were really putting everything into trying to cry at the top of their lungs.

Both of the other children froze when this started up.

“Whah? Uhh…” They seemed torn about what to do now. That seemed like a pretty decent plan. If we’re already crying about something, nothing they can do would change the kind of reaction they got. But, the opposite could also be true. They might decide to hit us or something once an adult arrives, though. In fact, that would do even more for their plan. They don’t want to actually hurt us, they want the adults convinced they are a danger to us. That being the case, this kid might just decide it works better if his crime is witnessed by an adult.

Honestly, I really didn’t know what to do with this situation. A strong part of me actually wanted to cooperate somehow, to do something that would help their plan work. I didn’t like the concept that I was eating something from them any better than they liked being eaten, so I fully supported the idea of their plan working. But, would it really work out as well as they imagined? And what would happen even if it did? Maybe things might really get worse for them if they did this, like the first kid’s suggestion that they might get killed over it.

There’s also the matter that they would probably just get some other kids or something like that. It would not change anything about the moral question of my own situation.

Deep down, though, I realized there was a little bit of selfishness wanting their half-baked plan to fizzle and do nothing, or not even be carried out to start with. These kids were speaking English, after all, and were clearly speaking better than was normal for their ages. Did this mean they were somehow like me and my sibling?

Well, if I’m going to be selfish, the least I can do is give these kids something that might change the calculus of their thinking.

“What? Is she hungry?” one of the kids said.

“oooh!” I tried to say ‘no’ as clearly as I could manage, only to find that my newborn mouth was not properly obeying my intentions. I found myself licking my lips in surprise at how badly the attempt had gone. I struggled out of my swaddling blanket and then touched my own lips. I tried to writhe and squirm around onto my belly so I could crawl, but my uncoordinated body wouldn’t even allow me to do much more than a back-bend, by pressing my hips and head into the rough mattress the four of us were all lying or sitting on.

My mind went through all of my neonatal development knowledge. Indeed, now should be a period in which I wouldn’t even be able to lift up my head. I had done a little bit of testing before. Thanks to the sections on postnatal development, often present in most nutrition and physiology classes, I knew my body movements would be limited. I’d experimented a little, I’d been trying to get my strength and coordination up, but this was the first time I’d ever tried talking.

After hearing how well these two other kids were talking, relatively speaking of course, I thought that, surely, I’d be able to manage something. But it seems my speech centers are every bit as undeveloped as my motor centers.

“Whah… whad doo ee do!?” (Whah… what do we do?) the first kid babbled.

“I… uhh… noffin? Ahh…” The other seemed equally baffled by the sudden crying.

Well, this is great. If only I could communicate, maybe we could all work something out. As things stand now, though, I have to just lay here. Trapped in my own undeveloped body. Meanwhile, I have to worry about one of these kids physically bullying and harming me or my sibling.

This impotence in and of itself was frustrating enough. The sudden added threat of being harmed because of it struck a real gut-wrenching terror into me. I’ve gotta think of something.

Fortunately, they didn’t actually do anything that night. Maybe the second kid was convinced, by the fact that no adults came in response to my sibling’s crying, that this tactic of theirs wouldn’t get them the results they wanted by hurting us now. If that’s what was going through their head, though, we could be in danger once morning came. I had to come up with something before then... but what can I possibly do to convince them with just this newborn body that seems to disobey all my commands?

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