To create life. That was Dr. Adamson’s dream; from the time as a child he had read Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the idea seemed so exciting that it propelled him through seven years of medical school with nary a backward glance. At some point in his studies he found time to woo and wed a lovely girl, but it was always the dream, his dream, that was his true passion: to create life.

It was on a dreary night of November that he beheld the accomplishment of his toils. The thing in the cloning pod convulsed and stirred, its dull yellow eyes opening...and then the alarm sounded! Something had gone wrong! The core matrix was failing...the clone was rejecting its own DNA...its skin was melting from the exposure to air, from a million factors he had forgotten to take into account, from a million failures...

The dream died there on the laboratory floor, in a drying puddle of biosynthetic goo. Depressed, broken, Dr. Adamson drove himself home, blinking back the tears that blurred his vision and threatened to obliterate the road completely.

“I’ve got some good news,” his wife smiled sleepily as he slid into bed beside her.

“Oh?” he replied, struggling to keep the despair from his voice. What do you say to a man who has recently been crushed by the impossible weight of his dreams? What do you say to cheer a man who has failed at the only thing he has ever wanted to do?

“I’m pregnant,” she said, and kissed him.