The Overlife bloomed one spring morning and persisted all through that summer.

I was awake and outside that first sunrise, was present in the fields as it happened (Or, I should say, was absent, being lost deep in my thoughts already). As light broke through the trees and light mist, I saw at once the reflections of a billion worlds on the dew that set on each blade of grass. And these world-containing reflections, this universe of mirrors, sat in a golden carpet of light that led from me to the warm sun.

Drawn out from within myself by such a scene, I felt my heavy heart lighten for a brief moment. It was then that their cries drew my notice, before I saw a single babe.

A thousand newborn babies, wet from fresh birth glistened on the grass like dew. They littered the field randomly, evenly, like sprinkled salt. No just God would torture me so. No. So I ran. From their pitched screams and from the horror of the scene. I ran from that field where the Overlife had bloomed not knowing if I stepped on any of them, not knowing this field was but one of thousands. By midday those thousand-thousand babes had melted away like drops of dew.

I never wanted a child until it was too late. Even the monthly tug of the moon couldnt abate my fears of an accident throwing my life into disarray. I was constructing ever so carefully the jigsaw puzzle of my life and children were messy things.

They called it the Overlife. And were it not for worldwide videographic evidence to the contrary, we could’ve chalked it up to a mass psychosis. We would’ve been happy to. Theories abounded about what it was, what it could possibly mean.

The term Overlife itself must’ve caught on because it was such a neutral-positive phrasing for a phenomenon so horrifying to witness. As though it was a mild pleasant abundance of goodness, and not the sudden emergence and extinction of a million unsheltered souls from somewhere unknown. Ridiculous, yet somehow we were placated. Naming the thing took away its terror. So much so that when the event repeated not a fortnight following, it was barely a blip. Markets moved on, joggers jogged on. I think we would’ve been more inconvenienced if each crying child was replaced by a rotting cauliflower head.

With my career where I wanted it at last, I felt an empty pit in my belly. An empty hole that left me unfulfilled, unsatisfied and hollow. I realised that I wanted so badly to have a child of my own. That he or she was the central piece of the puzzle, not some outside chaotic force. But by then my womb had grown barren with age. It was an empty pit, incapable of producing offspring.

The souls of the unborn and aborted, some surmised of the Overlife. That was the best we could philosophise whilst scientists tinkered away in their labs for a cool explanation. That these were unwanted souls who were somehow perforating their holding womb-space together, and entering into the cold world regardless.

None of them were mine. Certainly not in some genetic sense, as I had not terminated anything viable. But I decided I would make one mine nonetheless. Why should a babe in need of a mother be denied one willing? I felt my womb quicken and ran out, letting it lead me to the child, as though we were connected by a cord.

I knelt in the grass and waited for the Overlife. Soon enough dew followed and then the wails and wails. I picked up my baby and held her tight as I felt my chest grow heavy with milk, grateful that she’d chosen me.

The Overlife didn’t bloom again that year.

—
Dedicated to Mo and Ibraheem