Today, I am the happiest woman in the world, not only is it my birthday but finally after nine months of pregnancy I will get to have a C-section to have my baby born on the same day as me, I have scheduled this operation online using the hospital app, who knew that South Africa would have been this advanced 15 years ago, when we barely had access to basic human necessities in South Africa, I booked a “gari” ‘Car in Swahili’ a South African online taxi service system to take me to the hospital.

While I was in the gari, I thought of how it all started at the beginning of 2018, when the South African prime minister unveiled the plans for Swahili Valley, a super advanced, state of the art technology and investment park in Johannesburg transferring the slums to one of the poshest and most sustainable mini cities on the planet. Soon after tech companies starting flooding in, and so came the tech experts from all around the world, and I was one of them.

I moved from Sweden to establish my own company here when I was 38, a company that is meant to develop microchips to identify and eradicate virus, and with the help of government investment funds and research funds also diminish the number of HIV infected people in South Africa, by microchipping them with this live virus repellent. The microchip was developed soon after, with the help of Truvada, we have created a microchip that releases it slowly into the system creating a sort of vaccine that will protect the microchipped organisms against the virus for at least five years. 

It took us three years to get FDA approved, but the South African government was so keen to protect its people, it developed a shortcut around the certification process by signing around a 100,000 thousand people a year as clinical trials, due to the nature of the discovery this was somehow ethical and possible, all these 100,000 people annually are now safe because of my microchip, and I felt like I can finally bring a baby into this world. 

I am now 52 years old, with a life expectancy average of 95 years old. I don’t see why a woman like me cannot have a baby and raise it to have a healthy happy life in South Africa. There were many cases of different women from different tribes opting for getting artificial inseminations from different tribal sperm donors, they thought some tribal mixing will produce beautiful and strong offspring. Many women that work in my company and other giant tech companies in Swahili Valley think so, I used a sperm donor from the Xhosa tribe, a tribe that is mainly found in rural areas, but thank with the new advanced drone technology donate sperm in a container that is then being flown over by fertilization clinics to sperm banks, to preserve south Africa original genetic mapping and also donating it to help develop infrastructure in these rural areas, while the men also get paid for their contribution without even having to leave their rural area home.

Many of these donors live on a farm that is catered to by Artificial intelligent machines and robots that do the farming, harvesting and then production and exporting of South Africa’s agricultural produce, like the biological father of my child. Although he does not really believe that our son is truly his, he still writes to me and asks about news of my pregnancy, he is only 19 years old and used the money from donating the sperm to pursue his online education, a degree in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics from the Online University of South Africa, one of the most prominent online universities with faculty from all around the world that teach and conduct research in South Africa.

And as my gari approached the hospital, I heard the robotic voice speak to me in my preferred language which was adjusted to Swedish, “du har kommit till din destination”, which means you have arrived at your destination. The taxi slowly came to a halt, and as I exited the driverless vehicle, I was greeted by a robot that identified me by doing a facial and retina scan, “good morning Ms Isabelle Lucas, are you ready for your C- Section today, follow me to your allocated suite where my colleague will also test your vitals and prep you for the surgery, would you like me to notify the father that you have checked in?” 

I did not think it was necessary at this point, he did mention he wants to see the baby at some point, but I will wait till after the C-section, even though I am sure it will be okay as baby mortality rate in South Africa has dropped to 2.3 births per 1,000 live births in the last 15 years thanks to the Artificial Intelligence Midwives robots developed in Swahili Valley about 10 years ago. But, I think it was something I wanted to do on my own. 

A few hours later, and as I was holding my baby in my hands, happy, confused and wondering what I will name him a robotic nurse with a bunch of doctors came to me to congratulate me. The robot took a glance at the baby and said, this is the South Africa Department of Home Affairs, please let us know what you would like to call him so we can print a birth certificate, and I simply looked at the robot and said, “Isaiah”.