BATTLE FOR STARS

“But in that case, the child wouldn’t experience what it truly feels like to be inside a mother’s womb. Their attachment to their mother would be reduced.”

“Modern artificial wombs can almost perfectly replicate a human uterus. Babies can’t tell what’s real and what’s not. And from another perspective, most of the babies here are born as slaves. They don’t need to know who their parents are. Even on our planet, many children don’t know who their father or mother is.”

“Wouldn’t that have a significant negative impact on their psychology from an early age?” Ding Yufei asked.

He recalled an experiment conducted on Earth with rhesus monkeys. Cloth and wire frames were used as surrogate mothers. In the end, the baby monkeys chose the cloth mother. When it was taken away, they became extremely anxious. Those monkeys that grew up without a proper mother—or without a sense of security—developed various problems later in life, many even losing the ability to reproduce normally.

“You don’t need to worry about that,” Belina said. “There are now many highly realistic ‘mother robots.’ They can do almost everything a real mother can, and they don’t have the bad temper or negative traits that some mothers have. Also, on our planet, many fathers or mothers regularly visit their children in nurseries and growth centers.”

“Mother robots…” Ding Yufei repeated the words. He had never seen such a robot, but in his mind, no matter how lifelike it was, a robot was still a robot—it couldn’t replace a real mother. But then again, there were indeed many unqualified mothers in the world. Was this progress or regression? He couldn’t tell.

“By the way, Weiyang, I want to ask you something. I don’t know if you’re comfortable answering it.” Ding Yufei looked at Belina.

“What is it?”

“Were you also born and raised this way?”

“I was born this way, but not raised this way,” Belina answered without hesitation. “A few months after I was born, I was brought to my father. He raised me. That’s different from my three brothers.”

“You’ve always said your family consists of only your father and your three brothers. Just now you said you grew up with your father. What about your mother…” Ding Yufei asked hesitantly.

“I don’t know who my mother is. I grew up with my father. And where we come from, most children only have one parent—either a father or a mother. They stay in nurseries, and when they grow older, they move to growth centers. Very few children grow up with their parents. Most can only spend a short time with them each year, so blood relationships aren’t as important to us as they are to you.”

Ding Yufei had already inferred from the use of artificial wombs that parent-child relationships wouldn’t be as close as on Earth, but he didn’t expect that even Belina, a princess, didn’t know who her mother was.

“Why don’t you know who your mother is? Didn’t you ask your father?”

“I did. He didn’t tell me. In our world, a single person can have a child. They simply use their own sperm or egg and let the system match it with another. The matching is done by a computer—it can meet your requirements, but it won’t tell you who the other person is,” Belina explained.

“Then your father must know. He just doesn’t want to tell you,” Ding Yufei said. He believed that even if the system didn’t reveal the information to others, it would definitely tell someone like her father, who was a king.

“Maybe he has his reasons for not telling me. I never really thought about investigating it before. But this trip to Earth has made me feel something we rarely experience—maternal love,” Belina said, looking at Ding Yufei.

“Someone like you, who grew up in your mother’s womb and was raised by both parents, is almost nonexistent where we come from. I don’t know whether to call it a blessing or a waste, but for us, it’s definitely a rare experience.”

“Are all interstellar nations like this?”

“Actually, artificial womb technology is very simple. Every planet has it. But the Hill Empire and the Duir Republic advocate natural childbirth, so they don’t use it much. The other nations mostly follow the model of the Resk Empire, though the level of adoption varies. For example, in the Hania Federation, about eighty percent of people use artificial wombs to reproduce.”

“Then that baby probably only has a mother and no father.” Ding Yufei observed that aside from the staff, the woman on the bed was alone. “Is it difficult here to find a man willing to have a child together?” he asked, puzzled.

“Very difficult. Much more difficult than in other places.”

A voice came from the side.

Both Ding Yufei and Belina were startled. It was the woman who had been in the room with them all along but had remained silent. Even though they had spoken softly, in such a quiet and enclosed space, it was inevitable that she had overheard them.

After a pause, the woman continued, “Most people on this planet are slaves. They have no parents, no family, and most of their income is taken by their masters. To have a child, they need to save money for at least ten years. To raise the child to adulthood requires even more. Under these circumstances, it’s extremely difficult to find someone willing to share that burden with you. So most slaves choose not to have children.”

“I actually admire that mother,” the woman added with a sigh. “Although artificial wombs are expensive, choosing to carry a child for ten months with her own body is truly something remarkable.”

“Although I don’t remember what it felt like to be in my mother’s womb, I believe it must have been something wonderful,” Ding Yufei said.

“Unfortunately, I don’t remember it either. I hope, as you said, it was a beautiful time,” the woman sighed softly, looking at the woman in the room. Her voice was light, but clear enough for both Ding Yufei and Belina to hear. It sounded like she was talking to herself, yet also like she was speaking to them.

“Ah! You too?!” Ding Yufei was surprised to meet someone else who had also been born from a mother’s womb.

The woman turned around and removed her hood. Only then did Ding Yufei see that she was an extremely beautiful female slave—her ears made that unmistakably clear. But in the next moment, he realized something else.

He recognized her.

“You… you are…”

“You know me?” The woman looked surprised at his reaction. She rarely interacted with others and had never met either Ding Yufei or Belina before.

“Your name is Lina. You’re a mech fighter!?” Belina said, having also figured it out.

“Yes. And you are…?” The woman admitted it after hearing her name being called.