Another Life

Eggs

Peter groaned in pain, as he curled up on his bed. His arms were around his stomach and he could feel the bulges protruding from his abdomen.

He lifted his shirt and looked at his pelvic area, seeing that the surface was completely covered in crystallised scales. They were a shimmering blue colour and glinted white when they caught the light.

He leant across the bed, with great difficulty, and grabbed his phone, flicking it towards himself with the tip of one sticky finger.

"Karen. Search for all pages relating to illness with balls in your stomach." He spoke through the pain, feeling it shifting slightly lower.

"Yes Peter. Bringing up all relevant pages." He began looking through the information, but all he was finding was UTC's, kidney stones and cancer. He was pretty sure that he didn't have any of those.

"If I may, Peter, would it not be more prudent to search for cycles involving spiders? You hold more arachnid DNA, than you do human."

Peter nodded, feeling himself becoming damp with sweat, as the pain increased.

He gave the new instructions to Karen and she was quick to find results, though one in particular caught his attention.

"Jarvis?"

"Yes, Peter?" The AI responded automatically.

"Please pull my physical examination results from the lab. There's something that I want to check."

"On it." He waited as a hologram loaded up beside his bed, forcing himself into a sitting position.

"What are you looking for, Peter?" Karen asked as she popped up in another hologram, beside his lab results.

"What were my abdominal results?"

Karen looked at him with a tilted head.

"They were normal. Your liver, pancreas, small and large intestines, kidneys and testes were all functioning regularly." He nodded in acceptance, though his eyes widened as he heard what she said next, like she didn't see anything wrong with it.

"The menstruation of your reproductive cells were going a bit slower than normal, but I equated that to environmental queues."

Peter frowned and looked at the results, himself, seeing the abdominal scans on the bottom left hologram.

"Jarvis, bring up screen 7. I want a closer look."

The other screens disappeared and the image was enhanced for him to view.

He had to stop for a moment, to wait out a particularly large surge of pain, but it soon passed and he turned back to the ultrasound and x-ray imaging.

His eyes quickly widened and he looked at Karen in disbelief.

"Karen, go to the lab. I want you to spend the rest of the day looking at the differences between the structures of the male and female reproductive systems."

Karen looked confused, but she quickly disappeared from the screen and, presumably, away to the lab.

"Jarvis, are you seeing what I'm seeing?" The older AI responded quickly, confirming what he was seeing.

"Yes, Peter, it seems that you hold small, individual sacs of sex cells within your testes, half of which appear to be ovum."

Peter nodded and looked at the results, his face gradually getting paler.

"Jarvis, run a full scan over that area." He turned onto his back, on the bed. A light came out of a hatch in the ceiling and scanned his stomach, which he had rolled his shirt up to expose. It moved, somewhat, like the light of a photocopier.