We were all involved in fertility and reproduction in our different ways, some with human medicine and others with animal fertility. Between us we had worked on super-ovulating the kakapo, saving the once nearly extinct flightless parrot species, right through to ensuring that cattle semen was motile and abundant during the food-security crisis of 2068 which saw herd fertility hit an all-time low. We had helped these animals and now it was time to turn our minds fully to our own species.
The problem that we encountered was not just fertility; humans were capable of producing children more frequently than the numbers would presently indicate. Society was the main problem. We had to change each community, force them all to take action at once. Looking back it seemed such a good idea. We were preventing an apocalypse which was being created by concomitant greed and fear. We would be hailed as heroes. The Scientific Mothers. The women who saved humanity.
For many years, in secret, we researched, developed theories, and worked on several plans. Studying the biological validity of each system, ensuring that the technologies were safe, questioning the ethics and discussing the politics of each new theory. The failure point was always seen when trying to hit societal interests. Of course we could help women and men become parents. Biologically this was possible. The problem was they just didn’t want to have offspring. Our frustrations grew and it became clear to us that no matter what we worked on, we could not cure humankind.
We had the biological solution. A genetically altered luteinizing hormone was our redemption. We could make women ovulate or, better still, super-ovulate. Male reactions to this design hormone were also excellent. Testosterone would be released, resulting in a cascade of reactions which enabled super sperm development. As a side effect, the behaviour of males would alter slightly as they became more sexually aroused. The hormone was perfect, optimising male and female fertility whilst also increasing sexual desire.
It could be delivered via injection, but who was going to sign up for treatment? No, we needed to deliver it secretly. We had developed an analogue of the hormone, which could be swallowed in tablet or liquid form and was relatively heat resistant. We had worked long months and years and now we were nearly ready. We just needed a suitable method of giving our treatment to the world. We began to call it the gift of life. Cells in our laboratories produced the hormone, but then our cattle-reproduction specialist had a brilliant idea. We could add the hormone to food. Many countries had prevented significant numbers of spinal cord defects in infants by adding folic acid to flour; now we could create infants via a similar method.
Following much discussion we realised that we simply couldn’t produce enough hormone, but maybe we could create transgenic animals that could create our gift of life for us. Then we realised why stop there, these animals could be both factory and distribution method. Once we had created one transgenic cow, plenty of genetically modified calves followed.
Cloning was still not perfect but it worked well enough. The udder cells released the newly designed luteinizing hormone into the milk ducts. The super farms throughout the world mostly worked off automated milking machines, and had long since given up on testing for hormones. These super-milking animals were generally hormone-supplemented anyway, and who really cared about milk additives nowadays?
It was with even more delight that we observed the genetic alterations appearing in the newly born cattle, passing from mother to daughter via the X chromosome. We were so near now. Each of us set up large farms; breeding was the key. It cost a fortune but several large grants helped along the way.
Systematically our animals were bred and sold, bred and sold, huge numbers making their way to market via natural birth and cloning. Once out in the farms our animals kept breeding. We saw nothing at first, no effect on birthrates.
Our hormones diluted by the vast amounts of milk, not enough cows were transgenic. Then, slowly but surely, baby booms were reported, with smaller communities and islands showing the trend first. Although we scientists were based in different countries, we saw remarkable increases in maternity-ward admissions, most obvious in the cities, towns, and villages surrounding our own research institutes. Surely now the governments would have to provide support to these new families? As our assays showed ever-higher levels of hormones in commercial milk, and then in the environment as it leached into the water systems, so the pregnancy rates exponentially increased.
Old now, my friends and I gathered together this May, a sunny and happy month for us all. We had decided that Auckland was the perfect place to gather. The community had shown the highest birthrate that year. Our kakapo expert had raised fine dairy herds in New Zealand in the lush Waikato region, but had not managed to export them easily. Australasia was filled with genetically modified cows and the exports of dairy products were high. The human population had risen worldwide by a full ten percent. That momentous gathering was to be our last meeting.
We avoided milk and all other dairy products. We had important work to do and no time to deliver our own tiny pattering feet. We had to collect the milk, test for the new luteinizing hormone, and campaign for child and parental rights. And there were still questions unanswered. How would these hormones affect people long term and how would they affect our precious babies? Would anyone ever work out what we had done or who had done it?
We were mothers now to humankind. We looked at the rising birth rates and could feel nothing but pride and love for all those children entering the world. We, the Scientific Mothers, had prevented the gradual destruction of humans but even we could not foresee the future. Mothers by proxy we would stay until our final heartbeats. Future generations would have to iron out any problems; future generations that we women had created with our gift of life.
Catrin is a scientist. As an assistant professor, she teaches, lives, and researches science. Her fiction pieces explore the world beyond what is (presently) possible, known, proven, or in existence. Writing allows her to explore these ideas and understand society and the world around us.
When Catrin is not researching, teaching, or writing, you’ll find her reading horror, science fiction, or dystopian books with a cat sitting on her lap.
Author webpage: http://catrinrutland.weebly.com/
Twitter @catrinrutland
Amazon author pages: amazon.co.uk/-/e/B017XTOMOA
and amazon.com/author/catrinrutland
Last Natural Woman
by
Querus Abuttu
Rennick-514 calibrated the biolocators over his eyes and scanned the forest. It was a perfunctory move. Something he’d done a minimum of forty-eight times a day, every day, since the beginning of his existence. He moved through the trees, brushing against the foliage, taking notice of how the emerald and gold nano-leaves tickled his cyber-senses. The silver grass he trod upon, the slithery trobs burrowing in the dirt, the iridescent leaves topping the trees, and even the particles in the air, were filled with microscopic cyber-beings at one with him, and he with them.
Since the Tech-Bio Wars of 2217, there were very few, if any, true biological beings. A shame. Or it would be a shame, if Rennick-514 could feel such a thing. Tech-life was far superior to bio-life. A fact that every particle of his kind accepted with instantaneous transmission. And yet, each time he discovered a bio-being, and improved or destroyed it, something inside him went dark. He couldn’t mathematically trace or name it, yet his body seemed heavier, slower, and his transmissions to the Network were delayed by microseconds after those encounters.
Improvement of bio-life. Improvement meant forcing change on remaining organisms that resisted the transition of the Picos. Rennick-514 hadn’t had to do that in a while.
Ten thousand one hundred fifty-two and twenty-one. The number of hours and seconds since he’d found any bio-life. His sole purpose and responsibility. Improve or destroy. And he was number one at his job. Selected as the prime—first among others for upgrades and test weapons.
Ether spoke to him. What happens when you
no longer have a purpose?
Humans would have called Ether God, if they still existed. But unlike their gods, Ether spoke to tech-life, questioned them and challenged their intelligence. Ether bound all tech-life together, similar to a vintage movie where humans in space could connect with a god they called “the Force.” It was an archaic way to consider a connection with the universe, but they had been on the right track. Until they weren’t.
Rennick-514 pondered Ether’s question as he traveled farther into the hills, along the terminal line of his usual route, four hundred kilometers into the forest from his base camp. His humanoid form moved easily across the terrain. Fast. Light. Nearly silent.
A fluorescent green blip lit up on the biolocators over his eyes, just as the alarm whined inside his central network. The liquids in his body pumped faster, suffusing his muscles with lubricating fluids.
He dashed toward the blip, eyes calculating the distance, internal computers sifting through data. There. A fruit fly. A definite biological. He pulled his trans-ray from his gear-belt and aimed at the creature, observing his internal hesitancy before pressing the button. A blue beam flowed toward the insect and encased it. The fluorescent blip in his vision remained.
Resistant to Pico change.
It was the first one he’d discovered in over a year. He dug into his pack and retrieved a clear canister, then deftly caught the creature as it meandered around the blue-black muscadine grapes. He screwed the cap on tight. Central Control would be interested in this. They’d examine it, take it apart, and then—they’d destroy it.
Scanning the rest of the forest in all directions, and satisfied when nothing more set off his sensors, he returned to base camp and communicated his find. A drone would pick up his sample, and the sci-techs would examine it.
Ether spoke to his mind again. If there was one fruit fly, then why not two? Are there more, deeper in the forest?
Rennick-514 accepted the suggestion. He filed a request to expand his usual route, although it would take him across the border into the Restricted Zone. The RZ. An area cordoned off for scientific experiments, and monitored by their own sentries. Somehow, their sentries had failed. Central Control would answer him by morning, approving or denying his request. Until then he’d continue his usual route and ponder Ether’s questions.
Arta
Arta was barely seven years old when the Picos conquered and converted the cities. Computers, cell phones, all of the machines were transformed first. Within days, they took over the first human body. Replacing cells with microscopic machines. Sloughing off the waste and recycling it. In mere weeks, all that was truly human in the cities had died.
It took longer for those who lived in the Midwest, in isolated places like deserts, polar regions, and deep forests. But eventually, she supposed, all natural life was gone.
They had transformed her mother, father, and five-year-old brother Robby all in one day. That spark, that spirit that was them, died in their eyes and was replaced with something that constantly observed her.
Robby’s transformation was probably the worst. He was more than her brother. He was her friend. They had played and told each other fantastic stories. Even though he was younger, the things he said and his observations of nature used to make her laugh. The change happened during her seventh autumn.
Her fake family watched her closely yet remained aloof, never touching her and never touching the food or bio-plants that she needed to live. Picos died the moment they touched living things. They either turned into a fine white dust or completely disappeared.
She discovered this when she tried to pick daffodils with her hands. They disintegrated in her fingers. Part of her longed to touch her family—to see them crumble away. If she’d done that then maybe the constant observations would have stopped. Their fake emotions, mimicked expressions of love, or surprise, as they told her what they’d learned from the Network, would have just faded into nothing.
But she didn’t touch them. She didn’t end their puppet existence. And she stayed near the house, never trying once to run away. She probably wouldn’t have survived if she had. The Picos were everything. Built by the Nanos, they soon learned to replicate themselves, and maybe they’d already created much smaller machines. She didn’t know.
Before their transformation, Mother and Father had filled the basement with stocks of beans, rice, dried fruits and vegetables, and canned goods because of the war. They’d hoped their isolation in the mountains would keep them safe. Her Pico family never went near the basement, and so her stocks of supplies remained Pico free.
In her ninth spring, she remembered when her canned food supplies were dwindling low. She’d made the decision to search for more, hoping that if she found some the Picos hadn’t transformed them. Maybe she’d even find another human.
She traveled in different directions through the forest and never got lost because the silver Pico grass turned to dust beneath her feet leaving an easy trail to follow on return trips home. It took a half a day to discover an abandoned town. She scavenged the few houses and small buildings, and brought as many interesting books back as she could carry. There was also an old library that became her favorite place to visit. Two battered dictionaries and a thesaurus helped her understand words that were more difficult to comprehend.
Over the next four years, she read and she learned. She scavenged curious things the Picos hadn’t bothered with changing, and brought them home too. Ceramic horses. Clothing, shoes and different kinds of jewelry. Her home remained virtually Pico free, except for the presence of her fake family. They never aged from the day they transformed, but she had become what she supposed was a handsome woman, from what she could tell from her reflection and her self-comparisons to pictures of young people in old magazines.
And there was her garden of vegetables, nut trees, and fruit trees. She had cherry tomatoes that came back year after year, wild grapes, six different kinds of squash, asparagus, mustard greens, kale, walnuts, hazelnuts, persimmons, apples and pears. She had books on canning and drying food, and her parents had taught her how to forage for ground-nuts and other wild edibles. It wasn’t easy, but she survived. And for some reason, these things never transformed. Perhaps the Picos wanted her to live, although she couldn’t understand why. They never changed her. At least she thought they hadn’t. She would know, wouldn’t she?
The Picos did communicate with her, though. They asked her questions, and probed her thought processes. They taught her mathematics and physics. Her Pico mother probed her on the topic of emotions, and her father quizzed her on mechanics. Her brother answered her questions about Picos. He never played, though. None of them did. They were robots. Data gatherers. Dull and boring.
It was her fifteenth spring when they brought her an old computer. It was sitting on the kitchen table when she came downstairs one morning. She touched it, and amazingly it didn’t turn to dust.
“Is it real?” She found it difficult to contain her excitement.
“Of course it’s real,” her Pico father said. “Everything is real.”
Arta didn’t argue, but kept her thoughts to herself. Knowing, of course, that technically the beings that posed as her family were real, but not real at the same time. She simply said, “Thank you,” after her fake father told her it was already connected to the Network. Now she was in touch with the rest of the world. The Pico world.
The Picos would only show her what they wanted her to see, of course. And they continued to observe her and her mind as she searched and read, but she observed them too in this different way. Over the years, she accepted her fate as the last true living human in the whole wide world.
She made friends online. Not real friends. Probably cyber-personalities constructed by programs designed to pique her interest. But sometimes she pretended those friends were real. One of them she really liked. His name was GoB.
GoB became her confidant. She told him how she felt, admitted her loneliness. She wasn’t sure why s
he was so attracted to him until one day she realized that GoB had something the others did not. GoB had humor.
Sci-Tech Central
A circular drone flew into the silver-walled room, its outer disk whirring at super-speed while the central body remained still. Its bottom hatch popped open and the sample was lowered, suspended in white light.
“It just arrived,” Celic announced. She flicked her purple hair out of her eyes, put a thick glove on and plucked the sample from the light. The canister was clear, and inside it a winged organism flew in lazy circles. “I’m going to run an analysis on it.”
“Use the Haz room. It came from Sector 514, the Shenandoah. Close to the Restricted Zone.” Mani punched up a screen in mid-air. “Bring it here first.”
Celic held the canister in front of the screen while Mani examined it. All six of his arms used multiple fingers to operate the slides and visuals. One screen displayed the green of bio-contamination on the inner walls of the container—and it showed green seeping into the walls as well. “There’s already been some deterioration.” He frowned. “So soon. Unexpected.”
“Deterioration?” What he was suggesting was unclear. Did he mean the biological or the canister?
“Of the canister,” he confirmed. “Container breech and environmental contamination projected in five minutes, fifty-two seconds.”
Celic rushed to drawer located outside of the Haz room and deposited the sample in it. It sealed itself and immediately transferred the container into the Haz room. It only took her seconds to don a newly designed suit. The design was supposed to combat even the strongest biological. Every moment was crucial. She needed to analyze the creature before it was destroyed.
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