The Honeycomb

"Do not awaken the hosts, Willis, they might ask for something."

Willis softened his step against the cement floor. The beds were large and soft, with down comforters, huge pillows, some with canopies. Each compartment was its own little unique capsule filled with furniture, a television, and picture frames everywhere. A large number of photos was perhaps the single common factor. Friends and family everywhere...on the nightstands, shelves, and dressers. He had never seen anything like it. It was sort of like a hospital, but arranged in a matrix of hexagonal rooms packed against one another. There were hundreds of these cells. In each lay a woman, some new arrivals. Others had been there 7, 8, even 9 months and pushed the center of the comforter up in a characteristic mound.

It was Willis' first day at the compound. He was being trained as a Maternity Warden. Many military folks signed up for maternity service to stay as far away from the front lines as possible. Life expectancy was much longer in the remote compounds saving innocent babies than in the suburbs breaking through doors of suspected terrorists.

Willis was trained for hand-to-hand combat, which qualified him for duty in the Honeycomb, which is what they called the boarding quarters. The Honeycomb was perhaps the safest place in America. It sat in the very center of the compound along with the delivery rooms. Surrounding the Honeycomb were the food storage and preparation areas, followed by the staff quarters, and finally the Perimeter. The Perimeter was a heavily reinforced series of fortifications that surrounded the complex. Two steel 30 foot walls were separated by a moat with machine gun nests every 50 yards. Beyond was an additional series of electric fences along with coils of barbed wire. The Perimeter was under constant video surveillance and observed from towers by the armed guards. Many had tried to escape, all had failed.

This was the Neil Horsley Institute, Georgia's premiere Pregnancy Fulfillment Facility. In the early 2010s, the state passed and began enforcing the "Right to Life" bill. The bill required all women of child-bearing age to wear Conception Indicators. They were small, non-invasive devices inserted beneath the flesh, usually in the back. They included a GPS tracking system and Conception Monitor. The device was designed to identify and track all women who had been fertilized.

Although state law required installation, few women would voluntarily accept the Conception Monitors. In order to enforce compliance, a state funded genomic research lab engineered an easily contractible STD requiring immediate treatment and immunization. Women at risk came to the state hospital where they were treated for the disease and underwent the Conception Monitor installation procedure, by force if necessary. It was estimated that within weeks all sexually active women in the state of Georgia were being monitored 24 hours a day.

A host, married or single, becomes property of the state at the moment of conception. This moment is immediately detected by the Conception Monitor and the Right to Life headquarters is alerted. The location of the host is identified and a unit of specially trained Embryo Protection Corps are deployed to the scene. If the host offers any resistance, she is sedated and brought by armored car to the Pregnancy Fulfillment Facility. There, she is given the appropriate diet and specially designed hormone supplements necessary for a healthy, growing fetus. Most importantly, she is separated from any physician capable of performing an illegal, murderous, abortion procedure.

The original Honeycomb was a minimum security environment offering hosts the option to move freely around the interrior of the facility. It soon became obvious that an open living quarters was hostile to the fetus. Irrate women would often attack guards in protest. Some hosts even committed murder by struggling with the compound staff. Others managed to attack and kill their own embryo in the womb using crude, makeshift instruments...all such offenses are, of course, punishable by death in the state of Georgia.

Today, all hosts are secured to their beds at all times. Maternity Wardens, such as Willis, are responsible for trips to the bathroom, showers, and so forth. The cooperativeness of many of these women demand two combat soldiers present whenever restraints are removed. This requirement is in addition to sedatives fed to the women intravenously, along with hormones and vitamins, during the duration of their pregnancy. The very low chance of birth defects that accompanies the use of this sedative is far less dangerous than allowing the host to act irrationally when unrestrained.

Willis continued to walk softly along the rows of beds. The wide, terrified eyes resembled those of captured terrorists behind bars in Florida's detention camps.

At least he was off the front lines.