Boy, Pregnant

At 19:42, I’m leaving North Commonwealth Futures Academy, upright if possible.

The train goes at 19:46. It reaches Southbank before eight. Seven minutes from the station to our building, three flights up, wet blazer on the bathroom floor, bedroom door shut, music on.

The adults can keep saying your choice to the other families.

If Mom refuses to leave, I have dizziness prepared. Nausea if she asks follow-up questions. Collapse isn’t available. Bex would enjoy it too much, and for me it creates attention instead of ending it.

Mom has my sleeve twisted around two fingers. “Kairo. Keep up.”

“I’m attached to you.”

“You know what I mean.”

Rain drives everyone toward the academy. Parents come up from the station in dark coats, heads lowered, umbrellas colliding and turning sideways in the wind. Below them, the station trench glows with blue route maps and red delay warnings. A train screams below street level. Its lit windows slide beneath the plaza, carrying people in the direction I need to go.

Then they’re gone.

The academy rises ahead of us through the fog: glass, white concrete, blue light sunk between the paving stones. Rainwater runs down its ribs in bright lines from the entrance screens. Banners snap between the pillars.

FUTURES BEGIN WITH READINESS.

Mom reads it. Her fingers tighten on my sleeve.

A woman near the top of the station stairs loses a shoe. She keeps climbing until somebody behind her steps on it. Then she turns and fights her way back down, one bare foot slapping the wet stone.

Dad watches her and walks into a stroller. One of the school loaners. Thick gray wheels. Commonwealth branding. An amber panel stitched into the hood blinking INFANT AIR QUALITY: FAIR.

The woman pushing it jerks back too late. Dad catches the handle before it hits a pillar wrapped in donor ribbons that keep animating somebody’s surname in gold.

“Sorry.” She’s tapping the control panel with her thumb. “It drifts.”

The stroller rotates left and nudges the pillar anyway.

Dad pushes it back into line. “Clearly.”

Mom hauls me half a step sideways just before a man with three to-go coffees shoulders past under one of those clear umbrellas that only protect you in theory.

My shoulder goes where her hand puts it. Automatic. Public places are easier if you let the first correction work.

“Kairo. Eyes open.”

“I’ve got both of them.”

“Use them.”

The coffee man glances at me because I’m sixteen and in his way and therefore, by the law of public places, partly responsible for all decline.

One lid has come loose. Coffee freckles his cuff.

I step back. “Sorry.”

School voice. Careful. The one that says I don’t leave crumbs in library books or make adults wonder what else I might do if nobody corrects me in time.

He gives me a short nod and keeps moving.

Mom lets go of my sleeve.

The academy swallows us.

Heat hits first. Families cluster beneath signs and block one another. Wet coats steam beneath the heat vents. Shoes squeak over bright floors. Fog presses against the glass, but somebody from the principal’s office has decided the whole school should smell like bergamot, so beneath the rain and coffee there’s a sharp clean citrus smell catching at the back of my throat. My collar is already sticking to my neck. Good start.

A little girl lies face down beside registration, arms stretched over her head. Her father steps around her to speak to a volunteer.

I consider joining her.

Blue strips run through the floor, feeding everyone toward the security gates. Whenever somebody stops, the light behind their heels brightens.

Mom follows it.

Dad looks down. “It’s herding us.”

“Please don’t fight the floor,” Mom says.

A welcome screen glows above the registration desks.

NORTH COMMONWEALTH FUTURES ACADEMY
PARENT READINESS NIGHT

The words dissolve.

Because tomorrow is not self-managing.
senior pathways / family futures / activation literacy / civic readiness

Activation literacy. As if my body is homework I forgot to start.

My hand goes to the place beneath my ribs where the implant sits. I catch it against my blazer button and lower it. Everybody has one. That was the point. Nobody exempt. Nobody singled out. Later, you request activation. Then the Commonwealth congratulates you on making a personal choice.

Mom goes still. Registration desk. Security gates. Families nearest the donor wall. She checks each one without moving her head.

A soft chime taps at her wrist. A translucent apartment plan opens above her cuff.

SOUTHBANK / TWO-BED
FAMILY ROUTE: PENDING
WAITLIST: 3,812 DAYS
SECOND ROOM: NURSERY-CONVERSION ELIGIBLE
VIEWING WINDOW: 07:10

A wall shifts on the projection. A little cot appears where somebody’s desk probably is now.

Mom kills the plan with one irritated swipe.

We move with the line.

Dad is digging through the inside pocket of his coat for the entry badge he definitely had two minutes ago.

“Got it,” he says.

He does not. He pulls out an old transit card, a receipt and a packet of gum that has melted out of its wrapper at one corner.

The badge turns up in his other pocket.

Mom breathes in through her nose.

“I said I had it.”

He clips the badge to his coat and tries the scanner.

Red.

Again.

Red.

The machine projects a cheerful diagram showing the correct angle for people having trouble with a rectangle.

I put my hand out. “Give it here.”

Dad keeps the badge away from me. “I can manage a door.”

“You’ve had two goes.”

“Three is still respectable.”

Mom says, “Talen.”

He hands it over.

I tap once.

Green.

The gate opens.

Dad looks at me. Then just past my shoulder, where a volunteer in a silver lanyard has absolutely watched the whole thing and is pretending she hasn’t.

He takes the badge back. “I hate being corrected by appliances.”

“That’s why I stepped in. I care about your relationship with them.”

That almost gets a smile. It catches in his beard and doesn’t quite make it through.

I should leave it there while the evening is still quiet. Instead I say, “Maybe it can smell fear.”

Mom gives me a look.

Dad snorts.

There goes the evening.

Past the gate, a model of the city hangs above the center of the atrium. Tiny trains cross tiny bridges. Pale towers rise through projected fog. The western Commonwealth pulses red beneath the storm line, right where the seawall, port grid and school district meet.

The model updates every few seconds with a dry little tick.

The school district glows gold beside the orange port. The seawall flashes warning red where the tide sensors are already struggling. Beyond it, the projected ocean is a sheet of dark glass.

When I was little, I thought the city model was beautiful. Then civics taught us what the colors meant. Weather pressure, housing pressure, activation compliance, projected care demand. After that, it stopped looking like a toy.

To the left, sponsor booths in expensive blues and whites are lined up beneath the academy crest.

ELIXA FAMILY SYSTEMS
Good futures don’t happen by accident

Dad says Elixa sells external gestation like a kitchen upgrade. Body carry gets the character-building font.

A woman in matte blue hands out nutrient strips to parents, who accept them with the expression people usually reserve for exam envelopes. “Mineral balance and calm focus,” she says. “Approved for pathway evenings.” She fans the silver packets in one hand.

Heat gathers beneath my collar again.

While Mom is looking at the city model and Dad is studying the booth as though it has footnotes the woman forgot to hide, I take one.

Nobody notices when I slide it into my blazer pocket.

Behind the representative, a biotech display loops smiling men with open shirts and perfect light falling across their pregnant stomachs. One stands in a white kitchen. Another walks along the seawall with his hair untouched by the wind, which is a nice trick if your life is sponsored.

Text rolls beneath him.

POSTNATAL ARCHITECTURE MAINTENANCE
ACTIVATION PLANNING
THREE-MONTH CARRY SUPPORT
RETURN-TO-WORK RECOVERY

Month one: adjustment. Month two: stabilization. Month three: contribution management. Mr. Halberd teaches it in civics with diagrams and a voice calm enough to make anything sound voluntary year-on-year.

A boy no older than thirteen stands in front of the display with his mother. The toes of his trainers are split at both seams. He keeps staring at the timing strip with a blank, doomed focus.

His mother points at the strip. “Could month three overlap exams?”

The Elixa woman smiles before she answers. Her eyes stay on his mother.

“It’s optional until it isn’t,” Dad says under his breath.

Mom hears him. “Not here.”

“That’s where they put it.”

She gives him a look sharp enough to cut through donor glass.

His thumb rubs the bent edge of his badge. His face goes flat. The newspaper face he used to bring home before he stopped writing about the Administration.

On the far wall, a broad-shouldered man in a fitted school-sport jacket rests one hand on the curve of his pregnancy.

CARRY WITH HONOUR
Three months. No interruption. Full contribution.

The poster version is always a body with good lighting. The contract, the income math and the family argument never make it into the frame.

Two juniors pass behind us, keeping their voices low.

“His profile bloomed late,” one says. “They made the whole family redo the pathway interview.”

“The advisor cried,” the other says.

Mom touches the inside of my wrist. “Cuff.”

One sleeve has folded under. She fixes it fast. Her thumb is cold from the rain. Then she straightens my collar, which was apparently offending her in a way it had failed to offend me.

“I’m not up for sale.”

“Stand still.”

Dad says, “You’ve got the face.”

“What face?”

“The one you use when you’re with us.”

Mom glances at him. Then at me.

I let the smile drop before Dad can send it back. “It’s parent night,” I say. “There are witnesses.”

“Yes,” he says. “And you’ve got a different face for each night.”

Two little kids in visitor stickers and paper halos tear through the gap between us. One clips my hip and ricochets away without noticing. Their father follows two strides later without increasing his speed, saying, “Don’t run,” in a voice that sounds like he has been saying it for years and expects to keep saying it until he dies.

Near the donor wall, a woman in a navy coat leans toward another parent. “I told him, if his maternal carry banding stays this low, we are not paying for another activation consult just to miss the next window.”

Her son stands beside her. He can absolutely hear. She absolutely knows.

The other parent makes the correct sympathetic face. “Sometimes they bloom late.”

“He’s fifteen.”

The boy’s ears go red. His hands remain loose at his sides, but one thumb worries the seam of his sleeve.

I know the move.

Mom has already shifted into greeting posture.

A woman from our block approaches with her husband and daughter. “Nira.”

“Selene.”

Air-kiss. Close enough to count.

Dad gets a handshake from Selene’s husband.

I get the standard adult glance that means familiar child, mentally filed.

Selene’s daughter wears a silver scholarship pin on her lapel. She touches it when she says hello.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey.”

Her eyes flick toward the pregnant man beneath CARRY WITH HONOUR. Then back to me.

“Can you believe the turnout?” Selene asks.

“No,” Mom says, which in her mouth means yes, obviously, and also I planned for it.

My phone buzzes.

BEX: alive?

Then:

BEX: or did the school already marry you off to a bloodline

I look down before the smile can show.

ME: standing under a giant banner that wants me to carry with honour

The typing dots appear at once.

BEX: with a u?
BEX: disgusting and colonial
BEX: steal it
ME: too large for pocket
BEX: coward

Bex has been locked out of the school network twice. The first time was for changing his attendance code. The second was for proving the lockout hadn’t worked.

I put my phone away and tip my head toward the east hallway. “I’m checking in with Edevane.”

Mom breaks from Selene’s conversation. “Wait.”

I stop.

She looks at the corner of my blazer pocket, where the stitching has begun to lift. Her thumb smooths it flat even though that solves nothing.

The nutrient strip crinkles beneath the fabric.

“Don’t vanish.”

“I’m going to advisory.”

“I know where you’re going. Don’t vanish on the way.”

“That sounds more supernatural than I think you mean.”

Selene laughs.

Mom doesn’t.

Dad says, low enough that only I hear, “Go.”

So I go.

The east hallway is warmer than the atrium. The bergamot doesn’t make it this far. Here it is damp coats, radiator metal, floor wax and the salt smell the vents never quite beat.

I take the silver packet from my pocket.

ELIXA CALM-FOCUS NUTRIENT STRIP
CITRUS / SINGLE USE

The wrapper opens without sound.

I look back. Mom is still talking to Selene. Both dads are watching the sponsor booth without saying a word. The scholarship girl stands beside her parents, with her thumb hooked behind the pin again.

I put the strip under my tongue. It's more fake orange than citrus. Chalk. Something cold and metallic at the edges.

The warm feeling stays.

Someone has dropped a guidance packet near the wall. A cleaning drone the size of a dinner plate keeps nudging one corner, backing up, then nudging it again.

READINESS STARTS WITH LANGUAGE.

The drone tries once more. Language remains on the floor.

Advisory Table Three has six families in line. Mr. Edevane stands behind it with a tablet in one hand and a paper folder in the other.

He looks up and spots me. “Sen.”

“Sir.”

“You’re early.”

“It’s the weather. Drives people indoors. Then into institutions.”

“That sounds like the start of another complaint paper.”

“Not today.” Today I need the green check beside my name. No parent conference. Just the check, and then I can sit down and tell Mom I’m dizzy.

At the end of the hallway, Hall B’s double doors glow behind frosted glass. Above them:

7:30 LIVE BIO-SYNC DEMONSTRATION

A little icon spins beside the words. Two hands meeting inside a ring of light.

The queue advances. Edevane crooks two fingers at me. I step forward.

My collar has gone damp under the back seam. The nutrient strip is dissolving into bitter paste beneath my tongue.

He taps the tablet. My profile opens between us. Metrics, bands, aptitudes. At the bottom: mediation score.

CARRY-READINESS BASELINE: NOT YET ASSESSED

Because I’m sixteen and the school still pretends waiting is the same as restraint.

A gray box beneath it reads:

STANDARD FUTURE PATHWAY
REVIEW NOT YET REQUIRED

“Strong term,” Edevane says. “Language metrics excellent. Systems interpretation high. Mediation remains…” He leans closer. “Aggressive.”

“That feels rude.”

“In your case it isn’t.”

I smile. Then the word catches. Mediation. The smile disappears before I tell it to.

His eyes lift from the screen. “That isn’t what I said.”

“No.”

“But it is what you heard.”

The tablet text blurs at the edges. I shift my weight. The floor slips half an inch sideways, then snaps back. My fingers find the edge of the table.

Edevane looks at my hand. “You all right?”

“Perfect.”

He keeps looking.

The green check appears beside my advisory line.

Done.

“A little warm,” I say.

“That would be because you’re alive.”

“Strong theory.”

The announcement chime sounds. People all along the hallway begin moving. Parents straighten coats. Students push away from walls. Bags come up off the floor. Everybody turns in the same direction.

The Commonwealth voice rolls out overhead, deep enough to make the ceiling panels vibrate. “Good evening, North Commonwealth families. Hall B is now open for the live bio-sync presentation.”

Edevane glances toward the doors.

“What?” I ask.

“The Commonwealth software team is presenting live.”

“And?”

He closes my profile faster than he needs to.

My phone buzzes.

BEX: if they dim the lights, leave

White light spills from Hall B across the floor, catching polished shoes, umbrella drips and silver lanyards.

I swallow what remains of the nutrient strip. My vision holds.

I tuck my phone away, square my shoulders and follow the crowd.

Hall B has been staged for the evening. Strip lights run beneath the tiered seats. Floating screens turn above a white platform and two glass podiums. Over everything, a projected ring revolves in slow silence for no reason except money.

Parents go in first, because parents always do.

Students get funnelled around them.

Rain comes in with everybody anyway, shining on coat shoulders and leaving dark commas across the aisle carpet. The hall has always looked too smooth for a school. The seats are soft enough for governors. The walls are acoustic glass.

The seawall grant plaque shines beside the emergency exit, bolted high enough that nobody has to read it.

All I have to do is sit beside Dad, survive the presentation and let the green check beside my name remain the most interesting thing that happens to me tonight.

Mom and Dad are three rows down, dead center. Dad has one arm stretched across the seat beside him.

I slide in.

Mom leans past him. “You vanished.”

“I went to advisory.”

“You took a while.”

“There was a line.”

Her face says that was not the point.

I straighten my cuff before she can.

Too late. Her eyes catch the movement anyway.

Dad leans closer. “What did Edevane say?”

“Apparently I’m doing well academically and failing spiritually.”

His mouth twitches.

Mom says, “What does that mean?”

“It means he had charts,” Dad answers.

“That does not answer the question.”

“It didn’t answer mine either.”

The lights drop. Conversations flatten. Screens wake above the stage. Uterine maps rotate beside hormone loops and pair-bond routes. A diagram of a three-month carry blooms and collapses through the familiar stages. Adjustment. Stabilization. Contribution management.

The room warms beneath the electronics. Sweat gathers under my shirt.

Across the hall, two sections over, I spot Iona Won because two teachers spot her first. Their eyes perform the usual inventory. Her jacket is wrong, her shirt hangs loose on one side, and white tape crosses one knuckle. She has one knee pulled up against the seat in a room designed to make everybody sit the same way. The stage light catches the tape whenever she moves her hand.

She sits beside a woman dressed beautifully and unhappily. Her mother, probably. Or an aunt who has agreed to look furious on behalf of the family.

Iona watches the stage as though she is waiting for it to embarrass itself.

The Commonwealth presenter walks out.

People clap because the lights tell them to.

He is younger than the ones they usually send. Early thirties, friendly face, soft gray suit, silver Commonwealth pin level at his collar.

His smile arrives before the rest of him. “Good evening, North Commonwealth. My name is Daniel Marr. I’m with the Youth Development and Family Futures Office.”

Too many nouns.

“Tonight isn’t about pressure. It’s about information.” Blue light lifts the underside of his jaw. “The more clearly our students understand their pathways, capacities and future options, the more freedom they have to enter adult life with confidence.”

Parents nod.

I fold my arms.

Dad knocks his shoulder against mine. “You’re doing the face.”

“I’m sitting.”

“The other face.”

Mom says, without looking at us, “Could both of you not.”

Daniel gestures toward two pale figures rotating above the platform. “This evening’s demonstration uses anonymized volunteer bio-sync data to illustrate developmental compatibility under current Commonwealth standards. The model may assess endocrine balance, carry viability and future co-parenting potential.”

A disclaimer travels beneath him.

EDUCATIONAL USE ONLY
NOT DIAGNOSTIC OR LEGALLY BINDING

“That word always plays well,” Dad says under his breath.

“What word?”

“Anonymized.”

The white platform lights up. Two standing circles appear. A volunteer sweeps a scanner rig over them. Blank silhouettes wake on every screen.

Daniel smiles. “What you’ll see is a standard educational sync. No names. No identifiers. Just a useful look at how students can understand long-term family health and future-informed choice.”

A boy in the front row raises his hand.

Daniel points at him. “Yes?”

“What happens if it flags an active pregnancy outside scheduled activation?”

People laugh.

I laugh too. Mine comes out late and thin.

A girl near the aisle adds, “Or names a match.”

Her mother hushes her.

Daniel laughs with them. “Then our software team is having a much more interesting evening than expected.”

Across the hall, Iona does not laugh.

The first bio-signatures appear. Colored bands spread around heart rates and hormone markers.

Anonymous, like he promised.

The platform hums hard. I feel it through the soles of my shoes.

The graphics move. Lines join, pull apart, then lock together again.

A compatibility ring begins building between the silhouettes. Green. Gold.

Then one side of the display pulses brighter.

Everything stops.

Daniel stops speaking.

On the center screen, a line appears.

CURRENT CARRIER STATUS DETECTED

A gold program slips from somebody’s knee and lands face down in the aisle.

Cold air spills from the vents above the stage.

Sweat sticks my shirt beneath my arms. A tight line draws low behind my waistband.

Daniel’s smile changes shape. “That appears to be an error in the demonstration environment.”

At the console, a technician begins tapping through overrides.

The volunteer lifts her wrist to her mouth. “Why is it resolving further? There’s no registered activation.”

A voice answers from the booth. “It’s past the educational layer. The display lock isn’t taking.”

Daniel turns toward them. “Take the display down.”

The screen flickers. More text appears.

LIVE DEVELOPMENTAL PROFILE ACTIVE
CROSS-COMPATIBILITY MATCH RECOGNIZED
CO-PARENTAL LINK AVAILABLE

The room has gone quiet enough to hear the platform hum.

Daniel says again, “Take it down.”

The anonymous silhouettes disappear.

For one moment, the screen is blank except for the Commonwealth seal.

Then two names appear.

CARRIER: KAIRO SEN
COMPATIBLE CO-PARENT MATCH: IONA WON

The room holds still. Hundreds of people reading my body before I do. A cough starts somewhere behind us and gets swallowed.

Then heads turn. First toward our row. Then across the hall toward Iona.

Mom’s hand clamps around my wrist.

Dad is halfway out of his seat before I move at all.

The same line catches again. Smaller this time. Sharper. I press my free hand against my blazer.

Across the hall, Iona is already standing. Her chair crashes into the row behind her. The woman beside her grabs for her sleeve and misses.

My name remains on every screen. The letters are six feet high. The K has a clean, official angle I don’t recognizStraighten it. Fix yourself before somebody sees.e.

Daniel speaks into his headset. Then to the room. “Please remain seated. We are experiencing a temporary system display fault.”

Mom stands. “We’re leaving.”

“Families, please remain calm.”

Iona laughs. “Remain calm? That’s adorable.”

Every head not already turned toward me swings toward her.

I don’t know what my face is doing.

My wrist hurts in Mom’s grip. The hall stretches long and overlit. My fingers stop feeling attached to me.

Dad bends into my line of sight. “Kairo.”

I look at him.

“Up.”

I stay seated. The aisle is three knees, one dropped bag and a row of people pretending not to stare.

Dad says, “Now.”

I stand. Dad’s hand stays close to my back without touching.

The row breaks apart around us. A parent twists around in front of us. Two students lean over the row behind.

Across the hall, Iona is looking directly at me.

The side aisle is open behind her. She could leave. She doesn’t.

Daniel raises his voice. “The named display is not valid. Let me be absolutely clear. This output is not a diagnostic confirmation of any student status.”

A side screen pings.

CARRIER STATUS: CONFIRMED
RECOMMENDED ACTION: IMMEDIATE CLINICAL FOLLOW-UP

Someone near the front says, “Oh.”

Mom releases my wrist only to place both hands on my shoulders, turning me away as though my name is not still burning behind me in six-foot letters.

Dad says something I have never heard him say in public.

Iona Won stares at me through the crowd.

“You have got to be kidding me,” she says. “Not that douche.”

Then the phones come up.