Chromosome Quest

by Nathan Gregory

  By the end of six weeks, the progress was significant. I was easily counting out 1000 pushups with a 100-pound weight strapped to my back, and hardly feeling the strain. I could easily do one-handed pushups with either arm, counting them out with speed and precision. I joked that the next challenge was to do so with the 'short-arm' and that got a hearty laugh from Petchy.

  Once I had demonstrated mastery of pushups, we moved on to other, much more demanding strength-building exercises. Oh, we still did pushups by the thousands, but pushups became merely warm-up exercises to the much more demanding regimen devoted to pushing the boundaries of what my body was capable of in musculature development.

  I had no clue that I had such athletic potential. Were the 'nutritional supplements' paying such dividends? I had always had a good physique, although as an engineer and computer guy my lifestyle had been too sedentary to do much with it. I had once joined a gym and taken up strength training and made exceptional progress for a while. I suppose I have good genes for this sort of thing. It was, however, time-consuming and a lot of work.

  After a few weeks, the demands of my job intruded, and I abandoned the gym membership. That may have been a grave mistake. I was beginning to realize that I had real potential at this, a physicality I had heretofore neglected.

  Petchy's training was brutal, and my body responded faster, and in ways I never anticipated. At the six-week milestone, I equaled his strength in many ways, and no longer found it challenging to keep up with him on many endeavors. At the eight-week milestone, I was exceeding his best on most benchmarks.

  He had added rope climbing to the training. I discovered that used a whole different set of muscles, and for a time I did quite poorly at it. He kept telling me that the ability to go up a rope, or down one, might easily save my life. I persevered and after a while began to do better. I was never very good at it, but he darkly hinted that a predator at my heels would inspire me to excel. I took that to heart and worked harder at it.

  I had become comfortable with Language, and quite a few bulging bellies attested to my competency in performing those 'short-arm' pushups. I was, however, a little surprised that more babies weren't on the way, and worried whether I was producing sons. These poor people did not especially need more females.

  Petch had assured me that the medical exam I had endured in the beginning had not only confirmed that plenty of 'Y's' swam in my 'genetic alphabet,' but in fact, I was overwhelmingly prone to sons, expecting about a ten-to-one ratio or better. They had been looking for precisely that in their original selection process, and they had further tweaked my hormones to augment both the type and quantity of output. My tadpoles were rocket-powered, apparently.

  But, he told me, not only had their male's fertility vanished, their females too were in severe fertility decline. That was why I had been faced with what I considered initially as 'jailbait,' only the young girls conceive quickly, and even then it does not come so very easily. Their waning fertility peaks soon after puberty and declines rapidly thereafter. That explained the low uptake. Many of my suitors seemed immune to even my Energizer-powered tadpoles.

  That we had as many expectant mothers as we did was miraculous and a tribute to my virility, he assured me. These people were dying out, and even my virile contribution would only forestall the inevitable.

  I didn't understand why the people were so fertility challenged, nor why something more was not being done to help them. It seemed evident that Petchy and his people must have advanced medical technology. Can't they help?

  One day I put this to him bluntly. He stopped, sat down on the bench beside me. He stared into the distance as if thinking hard before responding.

  “My boy, there is a bigger picture here than I have shown you. A much bigger picture. I'm not intentionally keeping secrets, really. I am trying to ready you for what is to come. The survival, or not, of this stone-age culture on this backwater planet, while important to them, and to me too I might add, is but a pixel in the larger picture. The success of our mission affects not only the long-term survival of these people but your homeworld, and mine too. Honestly, we are not working and sweating here for whimsy or trivialities. More than you can possibly imagine is at stake. Trust me.

  “Now quit jawing and get up that rope!”

  Although I tried various tactics, I seldom elicited any useful information from him. He would just say, “All in due time, my boy, all in due time.”

  Tranquility

  After a hard day standing at stud and an even more demanding one developing muscles, I spent my evenings with Williya, or as she now preferred to be called, Lolita. I guess, as the boss mother's privileged (fertile) daughter, she had claimed me for her own, though circumstances dictated she must share my seed with her sisters. We had grown close, but once she knew she bore my child, she insisted that any tumescence I could muster must be spent upon a fertile recipient. She would not let me waste my essence on her bounteous baby oven. That was okay with me as I was pretty well spent by the end of the day anyway. I was sore, and at times barely able to function. I won't tell you how many of the castles' fair, fertile ladies I was boinking in a day. Frankly, you wouldn't believe me anyway.

  Sex, whatever else it is, is an athletic skill. The more you practice, the more you can, the more you want to, the more you enjoy it, the less it tires you. I will just say I was kept busy, and the veggies seemed to augment more than just biceps. Maybe. Nor can we ignore the 'Coolidge Effect' from the unending variety. Even so by the time I had fulfilled my day's quota I was utterly exhausted. Tough duty!

  On our second night, seeing my exhaustion, she left me alone for a while and when she returned she brought me a special treat. She called it, more or less, 'Grow Juice,' as best as I can translate the idiom. Well, it tasted like fertilizer. She assured me it would help me recover more quickly. Bitter, foul tasting stuff.

  I can't honestly swear it helped, I might be experiencing merely a combination of the Placebo Effect and the Coolidge Effect; but it did seem to help.

  Honestly, it seemed to help a lot, and I resolved one day I would find a way to do a real study to prove or disprove it. I asked Petchy about it, and he admitted it might help. He said he had once checked into it a little and it seemed harmless at least, being more or less a concentrated extract of the 'vegetable steroids' I was already eating in pursuit of physical development. He seemed confident there were no harmful effects in either the natural dosage I would get from eating or the concentrated variety. I decided to consider it a worthwhile supplement and made it part of my routine.

  Though Lolita and I were not actively copulating now, we were intimate in other ways, and she was a quite pleasant bed-mate. Not to imply that our relationship was non-sexual, more the opposite. She's an insufferable tease who, although not accepting my bounty unto herself, ensured I was primed and ready for my duties at stud each day.

  Fun gal!

  She did love to touch, hold and fondle my maleness. I never in my life met a female so fascinated by the penis. I'm not sure whether she loved me, or just my alter ego.

  To be fair, I think most of the other ladies felt much the same. I guess a healthy penis had become quite a rarity in their eyes, and thus an object of fascination. Frankly, they love a penis the way most men enjoy boobs, and can't stop looking, touching, squeezing. They can't get enough. Even when not being overtly sexual, they will find any excuse to touch it, even just to brush against me in the hallway.

  Lolita also permitted, or I should say demanded, that I pleasure her with whatever other methods I might bring to bear. She liked orgasms, big, boisterous, noisy ones. Her screams of pleasure could doubtless be heard all over the massive stone residence, which made me cringe. Well, as Petch had said, my taboos were not hers. She seemed quite proud of her orgasmic histrionics.

  She also loved to talk, almost as much as she loved to fondle my manhood, and gave my budding skill with Language a real workout. I would frequently have to stop her and ask her to ex
plain or teach me how to correctly pronounce something. No doubt I was learning. I would learn to speak it too if only she would let me get a word in edgewise. Perhaps I exaggerate. But if we were to be in a long-term relationship, I must find a way to rein in her loquacity. This could get really old.

  I was only mildly surprised to learn that the group dinner on our arrival was not exactly a special occasion just for us. They put on a big, formal group feed every evening. This was known as 'Evening Feast,' being both the main meal of the day and an essential part of their social structure. Sort of a traditional family dinner, but for a very big family.

  True, they did not have naked aliens reciting morbid Shakespearean poetry and singing folk songs a capella in an incomprehensible language as after-dinner entertainment every night, nonetheless, they did eat communally and after the dinner hour came a period when various members presented status, updates or concerns in their areas of responsibility. The head gardener might give an update on the progress of the potatoes, for example. The after-dinner entertainment was usually pretty dull compared to the day of our arrival.

  I was asked to give several more performances over the coming months, both by improvising whatever new pieces I could pull from memory, and repeating what I had done before. I even, with Lolita's help, translated 'Clementine' into Language and taught it to them.

  Of course, then I had to explain what a 'forty-niner' was, and what 'excavating' meant, what a mine was, and so on. I was a little surprised at that last; they seemed not to grasp it easily at first. It took a few tries, but I think they got the flavor of it, and by the time a few weeks had passed I would often hear 'Clementine' being hummed or even sung by someone going about their daily labor.

  I came to wonder about the consequences of such cross-cultural pollination. Not only was I leaving a healthy portion of my y-chromosomes here, but subtle leakage of concepts as might be embodied in that silly song could conceivably have a profound impact. For example, the concept of 'mining' was foreign to them. The idea of digging into the earth for bounty, minerals, metals and such had simply not occurred to them. No wonder this planet seemed so parsimonious with her bounty. They had simply been, until now, content to pick up and use whatever was on the surface. I was unaware of the impact my simple song had until one evening at dinner a newly minted 'Chief Excavator' stood to report on the progress of their first deep mine. I stared open-mouthed, wondering what I had unleashed on this innocent world.

  I took my worries to Petchy. He smiled and then shook his head. “Truth is son; it won't matter. Unless we succeed in our quest, this society, these people, are doomed, despite however many strong male babies you may make here.

  ”The gift of your semen is merely the most valuable currency we can offer them for their help and support.

  ”They do not understand the greater reason for our presence. Only that we are on a quest, preparing for a great mission. They scarcely comprehend that their own survival is at stake too.

  “This household, this castle, is one of only a small number of outposts of humanity left on this planet. A hundred years ago a great house like this could be found every few miles all over this continent. There were thousands of communities like this, many much bigger, and all thriving. A hundred years from now, they will be all gone.”

  I asked, “Why. What is this monstrous plague that has sapped their fertility? How can it be stopped?”

  “It is not just them. I told you I am not from your Earth, but that I have lived on Earth and studied your culture for a long time. The simple truth is, I have made the Earth my home these last many years because my home is already gone. I am the last surviving son of Krypton.”

  I don't know what I expected. This was not it! I almost laughed. Then I realized he was deadly serious. I pondered his words for a moment, the incredulity spreading.

  “Krypton?” I asked with raised eyebrows.

  He shrugged. “My little joke, an obvious paean to a popular comic book hero in Earth's cultural mythology. The actual name of my world wouldn't mean anything to you, and I don't want to get into the semantics of my language. Just as we have been calling this place Planet Oz, Krypton, or just 'Planet K' will do for my world. My former world.

  “These people have no actual name for their world, no real concept of the multiplicity of worlds, of cosmology. They are, in fact, highly intelligent, but some things just haven't occurred to them yet. Like mining, for example.”

  He went on, “Few of us are left who are old enough to have been born on our home world. Only one other actual survivor of my world is on our team, one other actually born there before the cataclysm. Fortunately, our peoples had long before spread to other planets, and our civilization survives although our planet is devoid of life. We, and they, have been fighting since long before you were born to combat this. Not only for the sake of these stone-age people, for the sake of all of humanity, all over the galaxy.

  “You notice, their beautiful fur notwithstanding, how similar these people are to Earth humans.” I nodded silently. “They may superficially resemble felines because of their fur, but they are human to the proverbial nineteen decimal places. So am I. Your race, my race, their race can all freely interbreed. As can a variety of other human families scattered all over the galaxy. I can't tell you why this is so, exactly, although I might hazard a few guesses. For the moment, just accept that it is true. There are many regional variations, such as their fur, differences in stature, differences in melanin, the epicanthic fold and so on.

  “I know these variations cause difficulties in many cultures under the general rubric of race, but in the larger reality, there is only one race, the human race. All humans everywhere are inter-fertile. Present concerns notwithstanding.

  “This plague is decimating humanity everywhere, every race, every culture. Earth's scientific press has carried numerous concerns for the last two decades, articles on the declining sperm counts of men, and in general, women have been having fewer and fewer babies. Many couples are resorting to in vitro fertilization (IVF) and hormonal therapies to conceive at all. Many Earth societies are not reproducing at a rate to even sustain themselves. Only a few cultures remain fecund, and even they are noticeably declining in total numbers of offspring.

  “Simply put, male fertility is falling, and the span of female fertility is shortening. Cultures that embrace young motherhood are still reproducing madly, but those who wait for more maturity are finding themselves more and more challenged at this most basic of life's mandates.

  “This is not new! In fact, the number one cause of the fall of human civilizations has always been uncontrolled depopulation. When the Romans conquered the ancient Greeks, it was because the Grecians had entered a period of significant population decline. When the Roman soldiers entered the Greek peninsula they found cities virtually deserted, few present to resist the incursion. Roman soldiers did not even need to set up camps, as there were plentiful unoccupied houses they could move into. When the Romans asked the Greeks where everyone was, they were told that Greek families had merely stopped having children.

  “The same thing happened to the Romans too, by the time of Attila the Hun, few Roman families had more than two children. In the case of the Romans and the Greeks, much of the blame can be laid on lead poisoning. The population drank wine which was stored and shipped in lead-lined casks, which leached lead into the wine. The Romans also built a massive public water system which made extensive use of lead for the piping. The effects of lead on the human organism are well documented, and reduced fertility is one of those effects, as well as impaired cognition and a host of other problems.

  “Lead isn't a factor in the current decline, of course, but affluence is. Not that wealthy people don't have babies too, but the effect of a rising standard of living on a population changes how various factors play out. In impoverished cultures without decent medical services, infant mortality is high. It is necessary to birth many babies to have a sufficient number survive.

/>   “Then there is the issue of providing for one's elder years. In a society without significant social safety-nets, elders must be cared for by their children. As the society becomes wealthier and provides increasing services, the pressure decreases to raise many children to take care of the parents in their decline. Children no longer bring their elders into their own home and care for them, and the parents do not wish to be a burden to their children. The state takes on the role of elder care, even though that of itself is fraught with difficulties.

  “Finally, wealthier people tend to wait until later in life to have children, something made easier by the advent of medical technologies that allow for easy control of conception. It is one of the great conundrums of life that the best age for childbearing, the period of youth and fecundity is an awkward age for actually raising children, much more comfortable in the later years of maturity, wisdom, and greater wealth. When a society becomes wealthier, people tend to defer children, spending their youth on education, career-building and such instead of childrearing.

  “That fertility declines rapidly later in life becomes a factor in the lowering of reproduction as a culture becomes more affluent. A healthy young mother may easily birth a dozen children between ages 15 and 30 for example, whereas the years between ages 30 and 45 are not nearly so fertile. Affluent people often wait until after age 30, and then struggle to birth even two or three children.

  “Much of that is cultural of course. Affluent cultures wait until later to marry and have children, but today there are additional factors. Fertility is crashing on the Earth. Human fertility. Some Earthly societies are on an obvious path to extinction. Others are still thriving due to young motherhood, but that too will soon change as the decreasing fertility continues down the inexorable curve. As has already happened on this planet, even very young mothers will eventually be challenged to bring babies into the world.