Project WOMB
Literary Passport:
Announcement
The last of the Pure — grown to be flawless, and never once made to feel that someone was waiting for him — not for the result.
Hashtags
#RestrainedDystopia #ExistentialFiction #Incubator #IskandarKadyrov
About the Literary Project
THE INCUBATOR™ is a cycle of philosophical novellas by Iskandar Kadyrov at the intersection of intellectual prose, psychological drama, social satire, and dystopian literature.
- Literary Project: INCUBATOR™
- Cycle: I. "The Threshold"
- Author: Iskandar Kadyrov
- Age Rating: 18+
- Novella: "Project WOMB"
- Genre: Restrained dystopia · Autobiographical retrospective monologue · Existential prose
- Slogan: Created to save humanity. Not created to be loved.
Announcement
The last of the Pure — grown to be flawless, and never once made to feel that someone was waiting for him — not for the result.
Hashtags
#RestrainedDystopia #ExistentialFiction #Incubator #IskandarKadyrov
About the Literary Project
THE INCUBATOR™ is a cycle of philosophical novellas by Iskandar Kadyrov at the intersection of intellectual prose, psychological drama, social satire, and dystopian literature.
Project WOMB
My name — well, it hardly matters what my name is. To the few of you who will still be reading this, a name won't tell you much. We, the Pure, were usually known by our protocol number, and only afterwards, almost as an afterthought, did someone get around to giving us a name — the way you might give a good dog a name only after you've already brought it home. I'm not offended by this. I only want you to understand the rules of the game straight away, right from the start. It always struck me as more honest than revealing them gradually, as if deliberately putting off something unpleasant.
I'm not young, not by human standards — rather too old, if I'm honest — and I believe I'm the last of us. Not that I made a particular point of keeping track of the others all these years, though I confess I did, at first, while it was still possible, and while there was still anyone left worth keeping track of.
I'm not telling you this to be pitied — truly, that isn't the point. I've been strangely fortunate, if you measure by the ordinary scale: I was rarely ill, and I've lived to an age that many of those born, as people put it, "the usual way," never reach. It only occurred to me recently that if I don't write this down now, no one ever will, and I would rather not have it all simply... end, without leaving behind even a poorly told story.
I suppose I should begin with the moment we understood, I now realise, too early and too precisely — with the conception protocol.
I read mine when I was fourteen. I can't say exactly why it was then — I imagine we all became curious about such things at a certain age, the way ordinary children grow curious about where babies come from, except that in our case the answer was already written down, to the minute, in a document. I was conceived, if such details interest you, on a Monday morning — the time noted in the protocol with the same everyday precision with which a bus timetable lists a departure.
I had a friend once — I'll call him Claude, though that isn't, of course, his real name — also one of us, one of the Pure, who read his protocol at around the same age and then went almost a week without speaking to anyone. And then, quite suddenly, he was talking again, as though nothing had happened, and within a year or two he was laughing about it himself, remembering that silent week as some sort of charming childish foolishness. I still find this remarkable — not that he fell silent, but that he was later able to laugh about it. I suppose there really was something arranged a little differently in us — some capacity, in the end, to smile at a thing that at first made you want only to weep. I don't know whether this was built in deliberately, or whether it simply came about as a side effect of everything else.
The moment of conception, as I learned later, was chosen with great care — certain astronomical alignments were considered, along with the quality of the donor material, and other factors I never fully understood, even when someone tried to explain them to me. I remember finding it more amusing than hurtful: so much effort, so much calculation — and at no point, at no stage, did it occur to anyone to ask me.
Although, thinking about it, no one asks ordinary children either. Perhaps the only difference is that they're left with the illusion that they were personally awaited — whereas we, I have to admit, never had that illusion, not from the very start. It seems to me now that this isn't such a small thing to be without — an illusion. Perhaps it's the only thing we genuinely lacked.
We were called the Pure — not with contempt, more with the kind of respect that always has a little fear folded into it. The way people look, I imagine, at a very good, very sharp knife: admiring it, but careful not to pick it up more often than necessary.
We really were handsome, if I can say that about ourselves without seeming immodest. We learned quickly, were rarely unwell, grew tall, and, it seems, genuinely lived longer than we were meant to. People called us "exemplary" more often than they used our names, and for a long while, I remember, I didn't see anything unusual in that — until the day I noticed the particular way ordinary people looked at us: admiration with a carefully concealed wariness running underneath it. The way one looks at something flawless that nonetheless seems to be missing something — though I doubt any of them could have properly explained what.
We envied pregnant women — I remember this very clearly, because the feeling was almost physical, as tangible as thirst. Not because we wished to be inside another person's body — that wasn't it at all. But because there, inside, was already someone who was loved in advance. Without selection. Without a protocol. Without any conditions whatsoever. Simply because they were there.
I'm not sure I can properly explain this feeling to anyone who has never experienced it. I suppose it's a little like looking through a shop window at something warm, glowing from within, and understanding that you weren't meant to go in — through that glass — and that no one is really to blame for it, it's simply how the circumstances of your arrival in the world happened to be arranged.
We were raised correctly. Too correctly, if such a thing is possible.
The routine, the diet, the development, the sleep — all of it scheduled with the same care as the moment of our conception. Even our boredom had a place in the schedule, though they called it something else — something like "time for self-reflection" — and we found this, I remember, rather amusing among ourselves, though we tried not to joke about it too often out loud.
We were taught to be resilient. And I have to admit that, in that respect, the upbringing succeeded entirely: we did indeed become resilient — I'm just not sure how alive, in the sense that word is usually meant. It's difficult for me to explain the difference to those who grew up otherwise. Perhaps it's like the difference between a greenhouse and a garden: flowers grow in a greenhouse too, and grow rather well — it's only that they never quite know that outside, it sometimes rains.
Later they began placing us with families — I can't find a gentler word for what happened then, though of course everything was arranged differently, with forms and interviews that resembled a serious selection process more than an adoption in the usual sense. A Pure child became, in certain circles, something of a status symbol — a rare acquisition one could be proud of in company.
At first, I think, it was pride that moved people. Then — for some, at least — real love followed. For others, fear that without such a child their household might look incomplete. Some found in me something like family. Some, a project. Some, I suspect, a kind of experiment that was convenient to love in public.
I ended up with people who loved me correctly. And, I suppose, precisely for that reason — carefully. So carefully that it could almost never cause any pain. And just as carefully, I'm afraid, it could hardly be called love in the sense the word is usually meant. I don't wish to say anything unkind about them — they did what they could, and no doubt genuinely believed they were doing enough. It's only that "enough" and "the real thing" are not always the same, and it took me rather too many years to learn to tell the two apart without bitterness.
There is another memory I return to more often than I probably should.
Once, already an adult, I found myself in a museum of medicine — I don't recall exactly what brought me there — and saw, behind glass, a white cube. That very first environment of mine, that first home, if I may call it that. A school group was being led past nearby, the children laughing, and one of them, not troubling to lower his voice, said something like "born out of a coffee machine" — and the others laughed along with him, an ordinary, harmless children's laugh.
I remember thinking, at the time: so this is how it happens — how a tragedy gradually becomes background to someone else's school outing. Not that it wounded me particularly — I imagine, by that point, I had long since stopped expecting anything else. I simply stood and looked at that cube — the perfect temperature, the perfect light, the perfect nourishment, everything thought through flawlessly — and I thought that the machine, for all its perfection, had never learned one very simple thing: how to wait. And, accordingly, it had never learned to love — because, as far as I understand it, one does not exist without the other.
The project was closed quietly, without announcements or ceremony — at some point they simply stopped building new Wombs, and later dismantled the old ones. We, the Pure, gradually became, more or less, ordinary people. We only went on living a little longer than we were meant to. Sometimes, looking back, I think that this is, perhaps, the whole of the difference between our lives and everyone else's — not so very much, when you consider it, and yet enough that one of us should eventually be left as the last person who remembers how it was.
This morning the system informed me that my life cycle is complete — quite matter-of-factly, in the same tone one might use to announce the end of a subscription to some unimportant service. I closed the application. Outside the window a woman was holding a child, and he was laughing — simply, for no reason at all, the way children laugh when they are already loved and need to prove nothing to earn it.
And it was then that I thought — not for the first time, but, I believe, for the first time with complete clarity — that I had never, not once in my whole life, truly belonged to anyone. No offence to those who raised me — they tried, and I remember that, and I'm grateful for it. It's only that, it seems, there are things that cannot be raised under the right conditions, no matter how hard one tries.
But I still find myself hoping — foolishly, no doubt, in my position — that next time, if there is a next time, someone will wait not for the result.
But for me.
My name — well, it hardly matters what my name is. To the few of you who will still be reading this, a name won't tell you much. We, the Pure, were usually known by our protocol number, and only afterwards, almost as an afterthought, did someone get around to giving us a name — the way you might give a good dog a name only after you've already brought it home. I'm not offended by this. I only want you to understand the rules of the game straight away, right from the start. It always struck me as more honest than revealing them gradually, as if deliberately putting off something unpleasant.
I'm not young, not by human standards — rather too old, if I'm honest — and I believe I'm the last of us. Not that I made a particular point of keeping track of the others all these years, though I confess I did, at first, while it was still possible, and while there was still anyone left worth keeping track of.
I'm not telling you this to be pitied — truly, that isn't the point. I've been strangely fortunate, if you measure by the ordinary scale: I was rarely ill, and I've lived to an age that many of those born, as people put it, "the usual way," never reach. It only occurred to me recently that if I don't write this down now, no one ever will, and I would rather not have it all simply... end, without leaving behind even a poorly told story.
I suppose I should begin with the moment we understood, I now realise, too early and too precisely — with the conception protocol.
I read mine when I was fourteen. I can't say exactly why it was then — I imagine we all became curious about such things at a certain age, the way ordinary children grow curious about where babies come from, except that in our case the answer was already written down, to the minute, in a document. I was conceived, if such details interest you, on a Monday morning — the time noted in the protocol with the same everyday precision with which a bus timetable lists a departure.
I had a friend once — I'll call him Claude, though that isn't, of course, his real name — also one of us, one of the Pure, who read his protocol at around the same age and then went almost a week without speaking to anyone. And then, quite suddenly, he was talking again, as though nothing had happened, and within a year or two he was laughing about it himself, remembering that silent week as some sort of charming childish foolishness. I still find this remarkable — not that he fell silent, but that he was later able to laugh about it. I suppose there really was something arranged a little differently in us — some capacity, in the end, to smile at a thing that at first made you want only to weep. I don't know whether this was built in deliberately, or whether it simply came about as a side effect of everything else.
The moment of conception, as I learned later, was chosen with great care — certain astronomical alignments were considered, along with the quality of the donor material, and other factors I never fully understood, even when someone tried to explain them to me. I remember finding it more amusing than hurtful: so much effort, so much calculation — and at no point, at no stage, did it occur to anyone to ask me.
Although, thinking about it, no one asks ordinary children either. Perhaps the only difference is that they're left with the illusion that they were personally awaited — whereas we, I have to admit, never had that illusion, not from the very start. It seems to me now that this isn't such a small thing to be without — an illusion. Perhaps it's the only thing we genuinely lacked.
We were called the Pure — not with contempt, more with the kind of respect that always has a little fear folded into it. The way people look, I imagine, at a very good, very sharp knife: admiring it, but careful not to pick it up more often than necessary.
We really were handsome, if I can say that about ourselves without seeming immodest. We learned quickly, were rarely unwell, grew tall, and, it seems, genuinely lived longer than we were meant to. People called us "exemplary" more often than they used our names, and for a long while, I remember, I didn't see anything unusual in that — until the day I noticed the particular way ordinary people looked at us: admiration with a carefully concealed wariness running underneath it. The way one looks at something flawless that nonetheless seems to be missing something — though I doubt any of them could have properly explained what.
We envied pregnant women — I remember this very clearly, because the feeling was almost physical, as tangible as thirst. Not because we wished to be inside another person's body — that wasn't it at all. But because there, inside, was already someone who was loved in advance. Without selection. Without a protocol. Without any conditions whatsoever. Simply because they were there.
I'm not sure I can properly explain this feeling to anyone who has never experienced it. I suppose it's a little like looking through a shop window at something warm, glowing from within, and understanding that you weren't meant to go in — through that glass — and that no one is really to blame for it, it's simply how the circumstances of your arrival in the world happened to be arranged.
We were raised correctly. Too correctly, if such a thing is possible.
The routine, the diet, the development, the sleep — all of it scheduled with the same care as the moment of our conception. Even our boredom had a place in the schedule, though they called it something else — something like "time for self-reflection" — and we found this, I remember, rather amusing among ourselves, though we tried not to joke about it too often out loud.
We were taught to be resilient. And I have to admit that, in that respect, the upbringing succeeded entirely: we did indeed become resilient — I'm just not sure how alive, in the sense that word is usually meant. It's difficult for me to explain the difference to those who grew up otherwise. Perhaps it's like the difference between a greenhouse and a garden: flowers grow in a greenhouse too, and grow rather well — it's only that they never quite know that outside, it sometimes rains.
Later they began placing us with families — I can't find a gentler word for what happened then, though of course everything was arranged differently, with forms and interviews that resembled a serious selection process more than an adoption in the usual sense. A Pure child became, in certain circles, something of a status symbol — a rare acquisition one could be proud of in company.
At first, I think, it was pride that moved people. Then — for some, at least — real love followed. For others, fear that without such a child their household might look incomplete. Some found in me something like family. Some, a project. Some, I suspect, a kind of experiment that was convenient to love in public.
I ended up with people who loved me correctly. And, I suppose, precisely for that reason — carefully. So carefully that it could almost never cause any pain. And just as carefully, I'm afraid, it could hardly be called love in the sense the word is usually meant. I don't wish to say anything unkind about them — they did what they could, and no doubt genuinely believed they were doing enough. It's only that "enough" and "the real thing" are not always the same, and it took me rather too many years to learn to tell the two apart without bitterness.
There is another memory I return to more often than I probably should.
Once, already an adult, I found myself in a museum of medicine — I don't recall exactly what brought me there — and saw, behind glass, a white cube. That very first environment of mine, that first home, if I may call it that. A school group was being led past nearby, the children laughing, and one of them, not troubling to lower his voice, said something like "born out of a coffee machine" — and the others laughed along with him, an ordinary, harmless children's laugh.
I remember thinking, at the time: so this is how it happens — how a tragedy gradually becomes background to someone else's school outing. Not that it wounded me particularly — I imagine, by that point, I had long since stopped expecting anything else. I simply stood and looked at that cube — the perfect temperature, the perfect light, the perfect nourishment, everything thought through flawlessly — and I thought that the machine, for all its perfection, had never learned one very simple thing: how to wait. And, accordingly, it had never learned to love — because, as far as I understand it, one does not exist without the other.
The project was closed quietly, without announcements or ceremony — at some point they simply stopped building new Wombs, and later dismantled the old ones. We, the Pure, gradually became, more or less, ordinary people. We only went on living a little longer than we were meant to. Sometimes, looking back, I think that this is, perhaps, the whole of the difference between our lives and everyone else's — not so very much, when you consider it, and yet enough that one of us should eventually be left as the last person who remembers how it was.
This morning the system informed me that my life cycle is complete — quite matter-of-factly, in the same tone one might use to announce the end of a subscription to some unimportant service. I closed the application. Outside the window a woman was holding a child, and he was laughing — simply, for no reason at all, the way children laugh when they are already loved and need to prove nothing to earn it.
And it was then that I thought — not for the first time, but, I believe, for the first time with complete clarity — that I had never, not once in my whole life, truly belonged to anyone. No offence to those who raised me — they tried, and I remember that, and I'm grateful for it. It's only that, it seems, there are things that cannot be raised under the right conditions, no matter how hard one tries.
But I still find myself hoping — foolishly, no doubt, in my position — that next time, if there is a next time, someone will wait not for the result.
But for me.
Novels
2026 © Iskandar Kadyrov • All rights reserved • RU / EN (18+)
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