Microstory 2444: The Sandbox

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This dome isn’t for everyone, but it’s available to anyone. Do you have an idea for a new dome, or an improvement on a preexisting dome? You can come here to conceptualize, pitch, and even engineer these designs. Not everyone here has the educational or working background to translate their thoughts into functioning prototypes, but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have their voices heard. I’m not either of these people. I don’t have any ideas, or the means to implement them. But I did want to hear from other people, and they were totally cool with this. Some meetings have closed doors, but it was always very clear. They have a constantly updating map on their prospectus, which shows you when and where the next meetings will be, and whether you’re allowed to just show up to watch and listen. It’s not even always about some crazy and unique concept that’s meant to blow people’s minds. I was at this one pitch from someone from a planet that I had never heard of because it was mostly just a number. She was asking whether they might consider building smaller domes for smaller communities. I can’t tell you whether they’re going to do that, but it’s not a bad suggestion. I’ve always wondered why every dome has the exact same dimensions regardless of the theme. My gut tells me that they constructed all the domes in one go, pressurized them, and only decided afterwards what the purpose of each one was going to be. That would be an all right excuse, but there’s still a lot of land out there that hasn’t been domed over, mostly because the terrain doesn’t allow it, but again, if it’s going to be smaller, that might be okay. Or, instead of that, you could have one large dome with lots of smaller domes inside of it, which might be good enough for what that woman was looking for. Anyway, the Sandbox is for ideas. If you have even only one suggestion, you can send this dome a message, or take the vactrain to it. They seem to be really considering the feedback that they receive. If an idea grows from there, it looks like they sometimes begin building models or prototypes here before making an investment at full scale. A lot of those were kept secret, though, and even the ones I did see, I don’t feel comfortable reporting. You’ll just have to come see for yourself, and find out what they’re willing to show you.

The Advancement of Mateo Matic: December 15, 2398

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Okay, the other times could have been indigestion, or something, but that was definitely a kick. The baby is kicking. Arcadia finds the nearest device, and pulls up a calendar. Based on every test she’s undergone, and every memory she has of her experiences with Vearden, their best guess is that she got pregnant on the first of September. No date before that is possible, and not many dates after make much sense. They weren’t trying to get pregnant, so it’s not like the two of them were having sex every night. They had just gotten together, and things were still new, so September 1 is the best estimate. The doctor agreed with this assessment. And as long as she’s not crazy, and today is indeed December 15, it’s only been fifteen weeks, which is too early for kicking. According to the baby books, the earliest should be sixteen weeks, and even then, eh, probably not too much. It shouldn’t be this intense either. “Feel.” She takes Vearden’s hand, and sticks it up her shirt. “I think something’s wrong.”

Vearden doesn’t know why he’s doing this, but he leaves his hand there patiently. He’s prepared to stay like that for months. He knows better than to question her requests, however bizarre they become. Then something happens, he feels the kick. “Oh, wow.” He smiles. “That’s amazing.”

“That’s amazing?” She scoffs. “Don’t you know what this means?”

“That our little girl is an early bloomer.” He read the baby books too.

“Don’t be ridiculous. It means that the baby isn’t ours!”

“What are you talking about?”

“Someone else was using this body before I showed up. I think we’re way off on our estimate.” She looks back at the calendar. “We would be off by a month. Leona Delaney could have gotten pregnant the day she left her body, on August fifth.”

Vearden doesn’t want to upset her, but... “Honey, the doctors are not off by a month. Those tests are pretty accurate.”

Who knows how accurate these dumb Third Rail doctors are? Third Rail? More like third rate. She’s distraught. This is someone else’s baby, and she stole it. Who cares if the math doesn’t work out so great? The baby books don’t lie. They don’t lie!

Vearden can see how close she is to the edge. “It’s okay, we'll figure this out,” he promises. “Let’s think about this. If this body was pregnant before you started using it, you couldn’t have ever had a period, right? Have you had a period in this body?”

Arcadia hangs there earnestly for a moment, but then her heart rate starts to drop back down to acceptable levels. She sighs. “Yes, of course I have.”

“This is your baby, this is my baby. Like I said, she’s just a little ahead of the game. If you’re really worried, we can set an appointment for later today, or tomorrow. We are time travelers, so it’s not irrational for us to be extra cautious.”

“Okay, I think we should do that, yeah.”

Vearden nods, and pulls up the medical scheduler app. “There’s one at nine tomorrow morning.”

“Book it, Dano.”

He laughs, and does the thing. Then he puts the device down. “In the meantime, what do you think of Delaney?”

“Leona or Theo? Doesn’t matter, I can’t rightly say that I’m a fan of either. They started out as my enemies, and I’m a work in progress.”

“No, I mean Delaney as a first name,” he clarifies. “I feel like it would be a nice way to honor the genetic mother.” 

She mulls it over for a second. “Delaney Haywood. I think it’s an unusual choice, so I like it.”

“Or Delaney Preston,” Vearden suggests. “I’m a modern man.”

“I don’t believe the world needs any more Prestons,” Arcadia decides. “It may have been a lie that I could never have children, but one thing’s for sure, the idea behind convincing us of that was a noble pursuit, and I can admit that.”

“I dunno,” Vearden muses, “I don’t regret having a child with you. Do you? And do you think Nerakali would be a bad mother?”

“No, and no.”

Ramses opens the door to the room, and waits there. “She’s ready for you.”

Arcadia nods, and stands up. “Arcadia Haywood, reporting for duty.”

Ramses stops, tilts his Spock brain, and stares at the corner.

Arcadia gently lunges towards him, because he’s blocking the way through. “Are we doing this, or what?”

“You just called yourself a Haywood. Are you married?”

“Umm...no. I mean, we haven’t really discussed it.”

“Well, I’ve discussed it a little,” Vearden argues.

“Argh,” she growls softly. She didn’t expect to have to have this conversation again, especially not with Ramses.

“No, it’s good. Um...do you remember when the Officiant showed up, and took Cheyenne and Curtis away?”

“Neither of us was there, but yeah, I remember you telling us about it. Why?”

“The Officiant. She comes for divorce, but she’ll also come for a marriage, won’t she? That’s her main job, I would hope.”

Arcadia winces. “Not in this reality. That was a special occasion. Cheyenne had a magical script to read, and  had never heard of it before. I’ve actually only crossed paths with the Officiant once, and that was for Leona and Mateo.”

“Well, what prompted her to show up for that?” Ramses asks

Arcadia shrugs. “It was the biggest event of the timeline, everyone was talking about it. I think it’s harder for normal time traveler couples.”

“Maybe we could try a few things to see how hard it really is.” Vearden offers.

Arcadia gives him that look.

“If only to help our friends. We don’t have to get married if you don’t want to.”

“Some people’s psychic calls work by intention. You have to really mean it, or it won’t work,” Arcadia explains.

“Then let’s mean it!” he suggests.

“I thought we were here to help Alyssa,” she reminds them both.

“Yes, right,” Ramses remembers. “She’s waiting. We can talk about this later.”

“Okay.” Arcadia steps through the door as Ramses is holding it open for her. But she swings back, and switches her gaze between them. “And for the record, there’s no such thing as an illegitimate child. I won’t get married just to satisfy some kind of traditional, socially acceptable standard of a dutifully nuclear family dynamic.”

Vearden holds his hands up in defense, but doesn’t rebut, because he agrees with what she said. He wants to marry her anyway.

Microstory 1877: Obeying Gravity

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I don’t remember where I was when we first put a man on the moon. What I remember is that I made a point not to be near a television or radio. I was a dumb little rebel back then. If normal people were into something, then I had to not be into it. Funny enough, I stayed away from drugs and alcohol for this reason, which is probably the only good choice I made in my youth. Normal people cared about grades, and finding good jobs. It was a long phase, but I finally grew out of it. I still didn’t care about things like the moon landing, but I wish I hadn’t been so eager to avoid it. Of course, I would later be able to watch the footage—and more recently at my leisure—but it just isn’t the same as knowing that millions of others were watching the same thing. Then again, everything I did, including not watching the landing, has led me to this moment. Because of this thing my niece told me about called the Butterfly Effect, I may never have met my future wife, nor had the children that we had, and without them, I wouldn’t have met my first grandchild. She was born in the most unusual circumstances, but not by accident. You see, even before people went to the moon, humans have been trying to live up in outer space. At first just for a little bit, but further missions increased the duration. Part of this research was to study other things about low gravity, but a not insignificant amount of it was to test an organism’s ability to survive under such conditions. Obviously no creature evolved to live this way. We were all designed by nature to exist in this exact atmosphere, with this amount of surface gravity. Some are better in water, and some can even fly, but we’re all the same in this regard. If we want to visit other planets, and other star systems, however, we have to figure out how to adapt. We have to learn.

As of yet, scientists don’t really know what any of that looks like. They have some ideas, but these ideas have to be tested first. We can’t just fly up here, and hope it works out. Can it be done in the first place? What do we have to do to prepare ourselves? Should we create certain habitats, or is there a way to modify our bodies to cope with the atrophy, and other health problems that come with low gravity? All of these questions are being studied on a new mission that my family and I were selected for. Most astronauts have to go through a series of tests, and be in peak physical condition, in order to qualify for even the most modest of missions. Not us. The whole point is to understand how normal people handle low-g. We were each chosen for a number of reasons, but my daughter, her husband, and I are up here to test family dynamics, along with a few other things. For instance, it’s important that scientists know whether people can have children in space, and now we know they can, but what will her physiology be like? Will she be able to go back down to Earth after this mission is over? If so, will she have to acclimate in a certain way? This is a dangerous mission, but we all agreed to it, and I’m proud to be a part of something so vital to the future of our species. Not every person, and not every country, is on board with this, but my nation has a space program of their own, and they didn’t need anyone else’s permission. As morbid as it may sound—and as unethical as you may consider it—our team believes it’s important for us to get these answers under controlled experiments, rather than experience them as surprises. Until today, many have died in the attempt to travel to space, but I’m honored to be the first ever to pass on while already all the way up here. The last thing I see will be a great thing of beauty.

Microstory 1761: Pavo Matic

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Sanela Kolar and Marko Matic met in The Kingdom of Yugoslavia in the 1930s. Their relationship blossomed after their families immigrated to the United States together, and they were married in 1948. They had their first son immediately, and decided to name him Pavo. He was a good boy, who followed the rules, and cared deeply about the people around him. Perhaps he cared too much. He didn’t like seeing anyone hurt, and he especially hated the concept of death. He always knew about his father’s temporal condition, which caused him to sense the moment of people’s deaths upon looking into their eyes. He was glad to have not inherited the same characteristic. When his younger siblings were still young, Pavo was approached by a man who appeared to be standing on a different continent entirely. He would turn out to be The Delegator, whose responsibilities included delegated assignments to those entrusted with maintaining, or perfecting, the timeline. The Delegator was actually in Stonehenge, in the past, and could transport himself to any time period, anywhere in the universe. He told Pavo that he was born with his own power, and was, in fact, unique. He had the ability to reincarnate people at will. It would be his job to bring people back to life that the Delgator’s bosses, the aptly named powers that be decided were worthy of the gift. Pavo didn’t like that someone else would be making these decisions, but he learned that it was a lot more complicated than that once he began his new job. He was free to facilitate the reincarnation process for anyone he wished, to any mother he chose, but he was expected to drop everything, and go work for the PTB whenever they summoned him. They were pretty good about making sure he wasn’t in the middle of a freelance job.

As far as the jobs went, they weren’t as simple as snapping his fingers, and conceiving an immaculate child. It was a long process that required both lead in, and follow through. In order to bring someone back to life, Pavo had to first learn about who they were before they died. Once he had all of this information, he had to spend all nine months with the new mother, visiting and caring for her during the entire pregnancy. Transferring someone’s consciousness to a new body was simple enough. People in the future did it all the time. Making sure that their soul followed them there was an entirely different story. In that future, it just sort of happened, because clone bodies, and other artificial substrates, contained the barebones ingredients for life, but weren’t actually alive. To reincarnate someone into a new body, with new parents, was a lot more complex, and something researchers never thought to do. Verily, they would not be able to if they tried; not like Pavo could. He coaxed the soul from the aether, and transplanted it into the womb of its new mother, precisely as the egg was being fertilized. It couldn’t just be any ol’ egg, or any sperm. They had to be genetically similar to the original subject, meaning that Pavo would have to search for parents first. This was not an impossible task, and it didn’t require any technological intervention, but it was time consuming, and entailed a shocking amount of meditation. His was a powerful ability, and a rare one, but difficult and tiring, so he could only do it so many times, for so many people. He would never be capable of sustaining an entire population of immortals in this manner. He had to find the right candidates, who deserved to return, due to a set of criteria that he could not come up with himself. For that, he needed help.

Microstory 1099: Viola

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My name is Viola Woods, and I’m dead, writing to you by Dolly’s hand. Don’t worry, though, because dead for me is not what it’s like for you. I am called a voldisil. Most people have two parents; their father produces the seed, and their mother the egg. But there is a third, much rarer gender out there that occasionally helps create life in secret, and when it does, something like me comes of it. I was born capable of perceiving more dimensions than you, and with the ability to sense and channel certain universal energies. I can look to the past, to other places in the present, and to the future. What I do with that information is entirely up to me, but the expectation in my house was that I use my abilities to help others. After all, they’re called gifts, because I’m meant to give them out. My mom and dad weren’t fully briefed on what I was, but they reportedly felt something different during my conception than normal, and that’s all I’m going to say about that. My third parent’s involvement was evidently not completely consented to, or at least not in the way humans treat consent. They did recognize that I was special, and were able to raise me right, but only I, and others like me, fully understand the nature of my species. One thing they didn’t know was when I would die, but I’ve known it my whole life, and it took me a hot minute to realize that this is a trait unshared by my peers. Growing up with this kind of information may be unsettling, or even debilitating, but it made me feel free. Everything thing I’ve done has been part of a plan; my plan, and nearly everyone around me executed it pretty well. But I am not the only one of my kind, and not every voldisil has other people’s best interests at heart.

The way I understand it, voldisila are few and far between, for a number of reasons, including the fact that it’s metaphysically difficult to conceive one. Blast City seems to have a higher concentration of us, and I was never really able to determine why. What I do know is that the more people you have in any population, the greater your chances of finding some bad ones, which is what Homer was. This little town would have become the epicenter for an unstoppable movement of darkness if I hadn’t intervened, and recruited a number of other voldisil, who seem to not fully understand what they are. I wouldn’t be telling you this, Alma, but I need you to understand what’s at stake moving forward. You don’t know this yet, but you are pregnant now. I’m sorry I wasn’t able to do this with your consent, but a new voldisil must be born to take my place. Ada is lovely, but she can only ever be a temporary solution. My abilities can’t survive forever without me, which is why I introduced her to the others; the psychics, the witches, and the medium. I’m hoping they take their responsibilities seriously. You and Ralph were my best options to take on the challenge of nurturing the next generation of voldisil. I will not leave you, but I can only do so much to help in my current form. Protect and prepare her, Alma, and trust Ralph to be a good father. I literally know that he will be. She is destined to be the strongest of our kind, but since she was not planned properly, it will be much harder for her than it should be. She won’t have as much innate knowledge as I did. Everything you need to teach her has come through clues from the interviews you conducted. Thank you, and if you ever need to speak with me in person, you can contact Dolly. One last thing, it’s up to you if you publish this letter as part of your series.

Microstory 963: Adoption

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When I was four years old, and still felt okay with making wish lists, I asked for a baby for Christmas. I wasn’t asking for a baby brother or sister, and I certainly wasn’t asking for no doll. I just figured it was about time I have a child to raise myself. Of course this was an absurd idea, but that’s how deeply my imperative to raise children was, even back then. I ended up getting that doll, named him Johnny, and changed his clothes every other day. A few years later, I had still never had a girlfriend, and didn’t think I ever would. Surprise, Past!Self, you were right. A neighbor told me that some children weren’t raised by their parents; that they were given to other families. She didn’t go into detail about why this was necessary, but I figured it out over time. I realized that this was the most logical choice for me, and I’ve held to that sentiment ever since. There are currently hundreds of thousands of children today in foster care—in the United States alone—who have not yet been placed in their forever families. Many will age out of the system, and have to fend for themselves as adults. This reality bothers me quite a bit, and has led me to developing a fairly radical stance on the matter. I keep seeing TV shows and movies get into this issue. Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. Boy and girl can’t have children, so they find a surrogate. If it’s a comedy, the surrogate is probably crazy. If it’s a tragedy, the couple just go their whole lives without children. That’s such a terrible message to be spreading to audiences. Infertility/sterility are good reasons to not conceive a child, but not good reasons to not raise a child. It’s troubling how rarely adoption occurs to characters, and they almost never consider adopting an older child. Never forget, you have options.

Everyone wants to be biologically related to their children, and they seem unwilling to budge on this. I don’t how well these fictional stories reflect real life, but judging from the number of foster kids, they’re pretty accurate. The fact is that there are already plenty of people in the world, so we don’t need to be making any more until we find a way to protect those people first. I would love it if your only way of having a child is by conceiving one, or using science, but there are too many kids in need of homes that can’t be unborn. Families come in all shapes and sizes. You don’t need a baby, and you don’t need it to be your baby. Older children need good homes just as much as the babies, but they are easily dismissed—or trivialized, which is how it looks in that new Racist Mark and Rose Byrne film, Instant Family. It’s true that I’ve not yet seen the movie, but since half the trailer shows people “hilariously” getting hit in the head with various objects, I don’t have high hopes for it. Now for the radical part, I’m not entirely convinced that conceiving children shouldn’t be illegal until every child in the world is placed in a good home. The problem is that this would be impossible to enforce, because any punishment for a breach would only hurt children further. So you’re free to go off and live your life as you please, while children across the globe are all but alone. If everyone with the means to adopt did so, our problem would be solved overnight. That’s really why I’m trying to publish a book, because nobody’s going to give a child to a single man who doesn’t have much money, and that has always been my life’s primary driving force. Without it, I probably wouldn’t have any ambition, because the next generation is perpetually the point of life.

Void: Doctor Who (Part IX)

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It was November of 2168. The salmon battalion was gone, back to some point in history on Earth, to fight in some other war. That was evidently all they did. Saga hoped they had some good mental health care. It was one thing to be a soldier, it was entirely different to alter one’s allegiances every time one is dropped into a new conflict. Did they have any role in the decisions, did they sometimes have to fight against those they once fought alongside? Did they receive any compensation?

Durus was doing exceptionally well since the battalion left. The government was strong, working under the guidance of a sensible Constitution, one written with the future in mind. The people were learning to start working for themselves, and with each other. Unemployment was coasting at a healthy low rate, and sponsored programs were supporting those in transitional periods. They still lived in separate cities, but none was isolated. They maintained relations with each other, sharing knowledge and resources, and operating under the global banner. It was kind of the first time that Saga and Andromeda felt like they could take a breath, and really focus on their private lives. No one was asking the latter to build them anything, because they realized that, though this would be easier, if they utilized human labor on a construction crew, they could pay those people, and support the economy. Paramounts were still around, and using their time powers when warranted, but the entire system didn’t rely on them. That was what the Mage Protectorate was lacking; self-sufficiency, and they knew they couldn’t make that mistake again.

For the last several months, the two of them had been discussing having children. Years ago, they couldn’t imagine bringing a child into this world, but now that things were going so well, it didn’t sound like such a bad idea. They were now fully ready for the commitment—excited for it, even. The only problem was that they were both women, and conceiving a child together would be a little complicated, especially since Durus was still an underdeveloped state. At the moment, Camden Voss was visiting from his new city of Jaydecott, to discuss their options.

“Why me?” he asked.

“You’re one of the few people here that we trust,” Andromeda replied.

“Don’t you think that makes it a little awkward?” he questioned.

“A little, yes,” Saga agreed, which is why we’ve decided that the child would be born of Andromeda. I imagine being with her would make it a little less awkward.”

“For who?”

“Whom,” Saga corrected.

Camden blinked, and repeated, “for who?”

“Everybody,” Andromeda put forth.

“I don’t know about that. Have you tried contacting a prostitute? They’re very professional, and the industry is heavily regulated. You can trust them, even though you won’t know the donor very well.”

“We want it to be you,” Andromeda said honestly.

He took a breath for the first time since sitting down with them. “I don’t know how I feel about fathering a child to whom I’m not allowed to be a father.”

Saga shook her head at that. “We wouldn’t cut you out of our lives. You would be a part of this. No, you wouldn’t be his or her father—maybe more like an uncle—but we would want your input. They would grow up knowing you, and loving you.”

He shook his own head, but out of hesitation, not complete opposition.

“If we were on Earth,” Saga continued, “we would go to a doctor for artificial insemination, but we would still ask you to donate the sperm.”

“If we were on Earth, in present day, you wouldn’t need sperm. You could have a two-parent child using your respective DNA samples.”

“Earth in 2002, then.”

He sat in thought for a moment, then a lightbulb clicked in his head. “You can have a doctor.”

“No one here can do anything like that. I mean, they might be able to, but like we were saying, it all comes down to trust.”

“No, I know of a real doctor. In 1997, I was on a mission in Tennessee when I was suddenly transported to the future, in a different person’s body. As it turns out, a choosing one was sending her consciousness back in time, into other people’s bodies, to complete her own missions.”

“She was a doctor?” Saga asked.

“No, but there was a doctor there. It was her job to help the people whose lives had been temporarily taken over not totally freak out. Of course, as a salmon myself, I didn’t need anyone to calm me down, but I benefited from some therapy, just the same. She was a brilliant psychiatrist. She’s like the choosing one version of Baxter Sarka.”

“And she can help us?” Andromeda asked. “I assume she’s on Earth.”

“She travels all over,” Camden explained.

“You can call her with your sheetphone?” Saga hoped.

“Well, I can page her. She is a doctor, afterall.” Camden’s phone had only been used once here, to contact The Officiant, yet he still carried it with him wherever he went. He took it out and dialed. Then they waited. “Could take a few decades,” he said after a beat. “She’s not going to get it for another negative a hundred and forty years.”

“What?” Andromeda squealed.

“I’m kidding.” His phone rang. “See?” He lifted the phone and pointed it away from them, like a remote control. Once he pressed Accept, a light appeared from the phone, and corporalized a body in the middle of the room.

“Mister Voss,” she said. “Nice to see you again...for the very first time.”

“Same to you. How are you, and Quivira, and the rest of the team?”

“Well, thank you,” the doctor replied.

Saga stood up and shook her hand. “Saga Einarsson. This is my wife, Andromeda.”

“Pleasure to meet you two. I’m Dr. Mallory Hammer.”

“We’ve heard of you,” Andromeda realized. “The Officiant mentioned you before our wedding.”

“Ah, yes,” Hammer said. “Couples often need a consult before they commit to marriage.”

“Do you have any idea why we’ve asked you here?” Saga asked. She wasn’t sure, because sometimes time travelers knew everything about the outcome of events before they arrived. Knowing who knows how much, and when, can make communication a little difficult, which was why you kind of had to keep a laid-back attitude towards what would normally be treated as dumb questions.

She shifted her gaze between the three of them. “If I could hazard a guess, you two are looking to spice up your relationship?”

“No.”

“No?” she asked rhetorically. “Then my second guess would be that you’re trying to have a child, and you would like me to perform the procedure.” That was likely her first guess, and the other was just her attempt at humor.

“That’s the one,” Camden said.

“I am from the twenty-twenties. Under these conditions, I will need sperm. I don’t know if you were expecting same-sex conception, or...”

“Camden is meant to be involved,” Saga said, then she turned towards him. “That is, if you’ve agreed.”

He took a reverent pause. “I would be honored.”

“Sounds great,” Hammer said. “Do both parents want to be related to the child? Camden is obviously the sperm donor. One of you can supply the egg, and the other the uterus. Or the bearer can provide the egg as well.”

The others hadn’t thought about it yet, but Saga had. She wanted the child to be part of her, but she would not be able to carry it. She requested to speak with the doctor in private. “I can’t carry a child.”

She nodded understandingly. “Okay.”

“I’m much older than I look. I’ve been thrown throughout time, and de-aged, and torn out of reality. I was considering raising a child when I was stranded on Earth a few years back, and learned then of my infertility. My eggs, on the other hand, should still be fine.”

She nodded more. “Yes, the de-aging process has been known to produce a sort of...resupply of eggs. However, it can also cause spontaneous endometrial thinning. I wrote my thesis on the effects that time travel can have on reproductive organs.”

“Wrote your thesis where? What school would understand what you’re talking about?”

“It doesn’t matter.” She set the conversation back on track, “does your wife know?”

“She does. We told Camden it would be less awkward for him to impregnate her, rather than me, but really, she’s our only option. But if I can provide the egg, I would love to.”

She nodded a third time. “That can be done. Easy.”

“Thank you.”

They went back to the other two. “All right, we’ve set initial plans.” She looked at the time on her pager. “I’m going to be back in two days.”

“Why?”

“If you still want to do it in two days,” she said, “you still want to do it. Never make a major change on the same day you decide to do it. It’s like going to the grocery store hungry. You’ll buy the wrong things. Let this sink in. In two days, we’ll iron out the details. Two days later, we’ll go over the details again. After another two days, assuming everyone understands the ramifications of what we’re doing here, we’ll begin the actual procedure.”

They didn’t say anything. They just had to concede to her expertise.

“I’ll need a sterile environment anyway, so if you could put me in touch with the hospital, or clinic, or whatever you have here, I’ll get going on my own process. Is everyone okay with how we’re proceeding?”

“I am,” Saga agreed.

“I’m going to need a verbal agreement from all of you.”

“I am.”

“I’m in.”

Hammer smiled. “Get used to making your intentions abundantly clear. I do nothing without consent.”

On November 22, 2168—one day after the report came out of Camden’s sister’s death—they made a baby.

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Microstory 55*: Excerpt from [Redacted]

What interested [Redacted] the most was the fact that humans of different breeds were functionally incapable of conceiving children together. Two Earthans could make an Earthan. Two Universals could make a Universal. Two Legitimates could make a Legitimate. But they were unable to crossbreed with each other. By far, the most common breed was the Universal. No other species, subspecies, tangent species, or superspecies could compare to their magnitude. And she had met no one who knew where the Legitimates were, or if they were presently on hiatus. This meant that incompatibility was statistically rare, and usually just something couples dealt with on their own. But now, because of a death she wasn’t yet sure she believed, she was incompatible with the one man in the entire universe that she was predestined to conceive a child with. She was literally born for this, and it was impossible to follow through. It felt like God had reached down and flicked her in the face.