Babies Don’t Grow In People

Acacia fell ill with an unknown illness. She was vomiting excessively and could not stand on her feet for more than a few seconds. She wished she could lie down for the rest of her life. Yet, no matter how much she rested, her condition did not improve. She was also thirsty, her throat parched, and her lips feeling like paper when she brushed her tongue over them. Her saliva was thick and sour in her mouth; she had to suck hard at the inner linings of her cheeks to get a drop. But she did not want water. Neither did she desire any food.

To make it worse, she had woken up with an aversion to B. She did not want to be in the same room with her. She did not want to see her, she did not want to hear her voice, and she did not want to think about her. B was trying to give her the necessary support during her bouts of vomiting when she could barely summon the strength to take herself to the bathroom, yet she could not stand her presence. She cringed at her touch and was disgusted by her smell.

Despite her obvious animosity towards her guardian, B still went ahead and called an ambulance for her. Two android paramedics arrived in no time. They were both shape-shifting drones that could take human forms at will. One of them, bearing the nametag Ogma, helped Acacia to her feet from the bed where she had been lying down. The other one, tagged Azha, scanned her from head to foot with her eyes. All medical androids in Jupiter were equipped with quantum bio-imagers to help them quickly identify infections in patients. 

Done with the scanning, Azha looked at Ogma and remarked, “Funny. I detect no pathogens.”

Acacia was flown to Himalia, the largest hospital in Callisto, her town, where she found that Azha’s scan had already been received and analysed. The head nurse, Maia, recommended her for isolation until her condition could be understood. As a precaution, Ogma, Azha, and B were recommended for disinfection. The androids from the infectious diseases department were dispatched to investigate Acacia’s residence and disinfect it. Amalthea Laboratory, where Acacia worked as an intern, was already being put under quarantine. Her colleagues had already been contacted through the neural interface chips implanted in their brains and warned about a possible infectious outbreak. The lab would be operated by androids until the humans were released from isolation.

In the hospital, an android doctor tagged Dr. Botein, in full PPE gear, examined Acacia and wondered what in the Great Mother’s name was wrong with her. Acacia’s medical history, which had been logged by her guardian, Bunda, since infancy, did not reveal anything that could be used to diagnose her condition. For the first time in three hundred years, Dr. Botein admitted defeat when she could not immediately identify the young girl’s illness. She had never encountered anything like this. 

Acacia had no fever, no chills, no diarrhoea, no abdominal pain, no parasites, and no coughs, yet she was exhibiting symptoms that were obviously of a gastrointestinal infection. Dr. Botein, like all senior medical androids, was equipped with a synthetic neural telepathy module in his brain, which she now used to summon Maia and advise her on the tests that she wanted done. Among the tests were those of various cancers that were likely to cause Acacia’s condition: gastric cancer, oropharyngeal cancer, ovarian cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer and pancreatic cancer. She also ordered comprehensive tests on Acacia’s blood and urine.

All the cancer tests returned negative results, but the blood and urine test results were interesting. Acacia had abnormally high levels of oestrogen, progesterone, and human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). Her Oestradiol level was 897pg/mL; Progesterone 43ng/mL; and hCG 419mIU/mL. This was baffling. These hormones were used in the ectogenesis labs to develop embryos into foetuses. Dr. Botein had never known them to be found in humans.

Dumbfounded, Dr. Botein posted the results in the Jupiter Medical Research Database (JMRD) and then notified all the doctors in Callisto. He notified them through the synthetic neural telepathy module.

As soon as she posted the results, they were deleted, and all the doctors who had received her message, including herself, were marked for instant memory upgrade during which their most recent memories would be wiped out.

—

As he was exiting the hospital for the memory upgrade server, Dr. Botein received a message requiring her to send Acacia to Ganymede, the capital city. The sender of the message encrypted her identity, and this terrified the doctor. It could be the Great Mother or any one of the powerful humans who sat in the Council. Dr. Botein had a thousand questions why Ganymede would want to keep Acacia’s case secret. However, she had neither the authority nor the will to refuse the order or question it. She immediately summoned Ogma and Azha, who had completed their disinfection procedures, and instructed them according to the message.

Acacia was wide awake when she was flown to Ganymede. She felt better than before, though she was still drained. She had been fed intravenously and given saline water through the IV lines. She had thus regained some requisite strength and her ravenous thirst had been appeased. Her vomiting, too, had lessened or at least she did not feel like throwing up just now. She still felt a strong dislike for B and she did not want to talk to her. That one had not changed.

She had been unconscious in the hospital, and so she did not know what had transpired for her to be transferred to Ganymede. What kind of infection did she have that would draw the attention of the Great Mother? Nothing like this had ever happened before. Thinking of meeting the Great Mother sent chills through her. She felt weak at the knees all over a sudden. Everyone was afraid of the Great Mother. She was all-powerful, all-seeing, and all-present. What the androids saw, the Great Mother saw. What the androids heard, the Great Mother heard. There were more androids in Jupiter than there were humans. Acacia had never met a single human who had ever seen the Great Mother, although it was rumoured that the ruling class of humans in the Council like Njeri Wangeci, the president, Ella Grace, the first vice president, and Lisa Mei, the second vice president, physically interacted with her.

Acacia was jolted out of her reverie by Ogma announcing that they were approaching Ganymede. The two paramedics had somehow joined their bodies and transformed them into one giant drone capable of comfortably carrying both Acacia and B. They had covered a distance of more than four thousand nautical miles in less than half hour.

Acacia looked out the window and was mesmerised by the beauty of Ganymede. She had been here before but she could never get used to the transcendent works of the Great Mother, especially here in the Capital City where she dwelt. The patterns formed by the buildings and the trees and the roads, and the artificial rivers and the fountains: everything in the shape and design of the Milky Way galaxy. “As above as below” was the architecture’s theme. Bringing heaven to earth. The perfect alignment. 

In her history class, Acacia had learned that after the last catastrophic war waged by the Gurgs against the humans, the Great Mother had rebuilt the world afresh and renamed the countries after the planets in the solar system. She had created only three countries: Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus. Jupiter was the largest and the most beautiful, the first one where the Great Mother’s heart thrived. Saturn was run in a similar manner to Jupiter, but Uranus was a bad place. It was where all the Gurgs (the ancient seed-bearers) had been imprisoned after their defeat in the war. It was a dreadful, savage place.

The Great Mother had rebuilt the world with the help of the androids, whom she had created herself and named each after a star in the galaxy. Humans and the androids co-existed in harmony.

The Ogma-Azha drone did not land at a hospital. It landed at The Sagittarius, the Great Mother’s abode, the centre of intelligence and authority in the whole world. The centre of creation. Acacia’s heart skipped a beat when she realized this. She looked outside with wide, anxious eyes. She could feel mortal terror creeping into her heart. The pit of her stomach was suddenly in turmoil. Why would they bring her to the Great Mother? What had she done? What was she suffering from? There was no infection in the whole world that would require the attention of the Great Mother. The android doctors could cure anything. 

Acacia couldn’t remember ever hearing about a human who had been brought here due to her illness. Even the Council had to be invited. Acacia had read that there were no humans living in The Sagittarius. Only androids, the most advanced kind who received firsthand instructions from the Great Mother before disseminating them all over the world. She had also heard it rumoured among fellow humans that The Sagittarius was a living building; it was one colossal android. It was the most protected place in the world, having weapons that could cause time and gravity disruptions.

As if noticing Acacia’s distress, B put an arm around her shoulders.

“It will be all right,” B whispered, although she herself looked dispirited. 

Acacia regarded her with a mixture of love and distaste. Her full name Bunda, but she loved being called B. She had been named after a binary star in the constellation of Aquarius. Sometimes, Acacia called her B of Aquarius, much to her delight. Every human in Jupiter was assigned an android guardian at infancy who was tasked with monitoring the human’s growth and development and sending monthly reports to the Great Mother.

When Acacia and B disembarked, they found an android tagged Danfeng waiting for them. She had no PPE gear on (not that the androids could contract human diseases; the chances of them spreading the germs to other humans were high) which meant that Acacia’s illness was possibly not contagious. This should have been a relief but it brought Acacia more questions. If her illness was not dangerous, why was she here? She stared at B worriedly. B returned her stare and smiled faintly. B’s usual mirth was gone from her eyes. She couldn’t get the energy to cheer up Acacia anymore. Acacia wondered whether it was because of her own hostility towards B earlier in the day. This caused her more distress. She loved B and could not do without her. She felt bad that she had been mean to her only true friend. She wished that she could elevate her own moods.

“Follow me,” Danfeng said after welcoming them. She had shaken hands with both of them.

They followed her into an enormous hall with magnificent, one-hundred-foot columns etched all round with celestial entities. The columns were constructed with some sort of super-alloy capable of supporting such tremendous superstructure. Acacia guessed that it was probably an alloy of titanium and graphene with Nickel added at the joints—the strongest one so far in the country—although she reckoned that the Great Mother was always improving her systems. The floor was an expanse of flawless crystal granite reflecting a dark ceiling in which various lights spanning the entire range of the visible spectrum—red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet—were spiralling in a peerless mimicry of the Milky Way. Acacia could easily spot the Earth and its home solar system. 

The Great Mother had made it a law for all humans in the world to undertake advanced Astronomy classes so that they would understand her nomenclature. Acacia now searched and spotted the region of Sagittarius B near the centre of the galaxy. It was shown as a dense cloud with a shade of teal, the lights glimmering faintly around it. It was said to be the source of the stars, probably even the source of life, which was most likely why this building had been named after it. Sagittarius A was a supermassive blackhole, which also explained the building. It held the world in place. Acacia’s favourite star was Sirius of Canis Major, the brightest of all stars, but she did not have time to look for it now. If you watched the simulation long enough, you could witness a supernova event and the formation of neutron stars. Despite herself, Acacia found the entrance hall breathtaking.

Within the hall and around the building, hundreds of military androids patrolled. They wielded formidable hand-held weapons that fired concentrated beams of ionised plasma, capable of vaporising targets several hundreds of kilometres away.

Danfeng ushered Acacia and B into a spherical glass lift that floated up and down without any ropes or electric machines attached to it. It was propelled by acoustic energy. A child’s voice greeted Danfeng by name and then inquired about their destination, to which she replied “6th floor.” The lift floated up in just a few seconds. On exiting the lift, Danfeng asked B to continue down the hall to the end and enter the room on the left. B obeyed without question. She looked back over her shoulder and Acacia saw that she was crying. Acacia’s remaining resolve melted away. She was now just an empty shell waiting to be crashed. 

She was ushered into a room that, at a glance, she thought looked like a boardroom except for the sheer volume of it. Like the hall downstairs, it had a sky-high ceiling, albeit white, beneath which hung a gigantic black orb of, perhaps, ten metres in diameter. The orb had a shiny appearance with veins of light produced by laser diodes streaking down longitudinally from the top and meeting at its bottom centre. The veins of light throbbed as though the orb was breathing.

The walls were made of impeccably arranged treated diamond stones with lights of various colours pulsating inside them, which, refracted, gave the room a sort of otherworldly multi-dimensional appeal. Acacia thought that if the building were truly alive as reported, then there had to be bio-conductive neural circuits embedded within its walls, floors, columns, beams and other structures.

In the floating diamond seats provided around the table at the centre of the room sat the Council members, twelve of them, all their eyes on Acacia, their faces grim. They each looked no more than eighteen years old, Acacia’s age.

***

“Take the seat,” Danfeng directed, pointing to the seat at the end of the table.

After Acacia was seated, Danfeng went and stood by the door. Acacia sighed and leaned on the table with her elbows. The table, too, was floating. Magnetic levitation had long been perfected around here. Like the walls, the table was made of treated diamonds with laser diodes inserted inside them, making it luminous, lighting the room. 

This room must be the Sanctum of the Great Mother, thought Acacia. 

The diamonds came from an exoplanet called Merneith 2.0 discovered by the Great Mother herself. She had sent androids there to mine the stones and bring them back. It took one hundred years for a round trip at the speed of light, but the reward was worth the wait. The diamonds were much stronger than those found in the earth, had more varied colours, no brittleness, and could be treated for construction. So far only The Sagittarius had been constructed with them.

A moment of tense silence passed when Acacia faced the Council. She was scared to death, made worse by her ignorance of why she was here. She was shaking, her breathing shallow, her heart on a runaway drive. Her throat was parched again, her lips papery.

“Acacia Sidai,” President Njeri Wangeci greeted. She was seated at the head of the table, the two vice presidents by her sides.

“Yes?” Acacia tried to respond but her voice was hoarse and inaudible. She tried to repeat the response yet in vain.

“Would you like a glass of water?” Danfeng asked. She had been observing Acacia.

Acacia nodded. As soon as she did so, a worker android appeared at the door with a perspiring glass of cold water. This confirmed to her the presence of bio-conductive neural circuits within the walls and floors. Maybe the building was listening to her. Danfeng received the glass and handed it to her. She drank half of it and let the water cool her palpitating heart. She felt it make its way down her oesophagus, leaving a cold, soothing trail behind. She exhaled deeply, expelling the pent-up tension inside her. She relaxed a bit and finished the water. She gave the glass back to Danfeng who passed it on to the worker android who then vanished as fast as she had appeared.

Acacia returned her attention to the Council. She was no longer that much afraid. What was the worst thing they could do to her? Whatever they had called her for, it was their responsibility to tell her. She needed not worry at all. Besides, she might go into the history books as the first ever non-ruling human to enter the Sanctum of the Great Mother. She pulled back from the table, raised her head, uncowed, unbowed. In her mind, she liked to think that she was Sirius of Canis Major, bearing the brightest light in any room, bringing life and buoyancy to any humans she interacted with. At her workplace, she had even made friends with a Gurg, yet the Gurgs were the most miserable creatures in the world. If she were an android, she would have asked to be named Sirius.

“Yes?” she asked the president, her voice now clear.

“How are you?”

“I am unwell, President Wangeci,” she said. “As I am sure you have been notified, I woke up this morning with a strange, unheard-of condition affecting mostly my gastrointestinal system and my general disposition towards my environment and those in it. Thank you for your inquiry.”

“What is your disposition towards your current environment and we who are in it?” the president mocked her light-heartedly, drawing a short burst of high-pitched laughter from Vice President Lisa Mei. The rest of the council members laughed, too. They all laughed like teenagers, emitting pure, sweet, musical sounds like birds in the morning, although each one of them was four hundred years old. 

The anti-aging chip, Quantael (Quantum Telomerase Enhancer Logic)—a bio-integrated nanoneural chip designed to halt and reverse cell aging in a human body—had been invented four hundred years before. The current council members were the first ones to receive it. The previous members who had become too old by then had been retired when the new ones reached the maturity age of eighteen years. New council members were selected pre-birth from the embryonic development labs where they were bioengineered for their roles. The Council existed to advise the Great Mother on the behaviour of the humans, which she found to be too intricate and unpredictable—”too multilayered”, according to B—compared with that of the androids. The Council was the overall judge of human character. The Great Mother decided each and every human’s destiny.

“That is very funny,” Acacia told the president. “I am sick and I have bad moods.” She understood that the president was trying to enliven the room but she did not laugh.

“Do you know that your name means ‘Beautiful Acacia’?” the president asked. “Sidai means, or rather meant, beautiful in Maa language whose native speakers were your ancestors.”

“My ancestors?” Acacia did not understand. She had never heard any references to ancestors. She had been taught that The Great Mother had created all the existing humans in the ectogenesis labs.

“The Great Mother keeps a record of every human’s genetic origin as it was before the war,” President Wangeci explained.

“So, my genetic code is attributed to the speakers of an ancient extinct language called Maa?”

“As a matter of fact, yes!”

“Why is this important?”

“Because in the ancient days, the Maa people lived on this very ground where The Sagittarius now stands. It was covered with beautiful acacia trees and it was called the Savanna. It was lovely. Wild animals lived here, domestic animals grazed here, and life proliferated in every corner. It was a flourishing ecosystem. Then the Gurgs destroyed all that. The Gurgs destroyed the trees, the animals, the rivers, the soil, and the earth itself. They destroyed the world. They turned this beautiful planet into a heap of pollution and sickness. The Great Mother had to do so much to clean it up. She had to endure the never-ending, ever-increasing, ever-worsening horror of the Gurgs for centuries and centuries while developing a plan to save this earth from them.” 

Acacia did not know where this conversation was going, and so she was quiet. She had been taught that in the beginning the Great Mother had created the humans but the humans had been unable to reproduce on their own because they lacked the capacity to self-fertilise like plants. They had been unable to generate the male component of the reproductive cells and, instead, needed an external source of the same. And so, the Great Mother, being ever benevolent and compassionate, had created the Gurgs to act as the seed bearers for the humans. But the Gurgs had become corrupted. They had developed an unquenchable thirst for power over all living organisms, over the whole world, and in their quest to obtain this power, they had almost wiped out the whole of humanity. The Great Mother had to use their own weapons to annihilate them, a decision which left her in a terrible state of anguish and mourning.

“The Gurgs oppressed us,” Vice President Ella Grace spat fervently. She sounded like she was on the brink of tears. Her face was flushed, her voice quavering. “They subjected us to illimitable cruelty and inhuman torture. They put us in economic prisons in which we could not survive without toiling like slaves. They made horrific weapons, ghastly death-dealing machines and used them against us. They kept the whole world in a perpetual state of war and terror, destroying our atmosphere, destroying our water. Destroying our children. They were a savage, feral, predatory, murderous race that should have never been created in the first place.”

She snuffled and wiped her eyes after this speech. A short, pensive silence ensued during which only her snuffling could be heard. It was like the entire Council was reliving the horrors of the past and it brought forth such rancour in them that it was like they had been alive during those atrocities.

“As a matter of fact,” President Wangeci picked up, “after they were defeated by the Great Mother and banished to Uranus, they continued with their wars, slaughtering themselves, extirpating their own children, and burning up their own homes to the ground. Enslaving one another. Trading in one another in exchange for foodstuff. Consuming one another. They were slaughtering and eating one another.”

Bitter murmurs and sighs followed this last revelation.

“In conclusion,” Lisa Mei interjected, “the Gurgs defined their very own existence, their very own lives, through violence. Violence was the only thing that made sense to them.”

None of this information was new to Acacia. The Great Mother had imprisoned millions of Gurgs here in Jupiter and even over in Saturn. After the war, she had realized that she still needed their seeds to keep her surviving humans multiplying. She built intricate underground prisons and locked up the Gurgs in them, keeping them under the most advanced androids armed with the deadliest electromagnetic and acoustic weapons in existence. The Gurgs had then been sent one by one to the Embryo-Genesis labs for seed harvesting. It was discovered that one Gurg could produce billions of seeds. 

But there was a problem. The Great Mother could not find enough food to keep them alive. The planet had almost outlived its capacity to grow anything. The soil had been poisoned and the rain was erratic and insufficient. The rivers had dried up and the lakes had been filled with sludge and toxins. 

The solution was to keep harvesting the seeds until the Gurgs dropped dead from severe exhaustion and malnutrition.

Once they died, their bodies were turned into fertilisers for growing food and other plants. The earth had to be reclaimed. There was no wastage in Jupiter. The Gurgs had been wasteful during their time and it had led to their extinction. When the seed banks had been filled to capacity with the most genetically diverse seeds available, the Great Mother still made several incursions into Uranus and captured millions of the Gurgs every time. They were all taken to the Bio-Conversion Labs where they were sort of melted into pastes and subjected to several stages of chemical treatment until they became fertilisers. The drones then sprayed the fertilisers all over the lands, after which artificial rains and seeds followed.

The Great Mother had succeeded to rejuvenate the earth. She had brought back most of the animals and plants that had gone extinct due to the vanity of the Gurgs. Whenever organic remnants were found in the fields, their DNA would be extracted and used for regeneration.

“The Great Mother saved us from an inevitable path to extinction. She turned what was once the abomination of the Gurgs into the paradise it is today.” This came from a council member by the name Rita Nkatha. She said this with a mixture of grief and admiration, remembering the horrors they had been through and simultaneously appreciating the paradise that they now had.

“So, you see, Acacia, we never needed the Gurgs in the first place,” President Wangeci went on. “Their seeds were useless without us. They needed us to propagate their seeds, yet they tried to exterminate us. Now we have an abundance of their seeds in various laboratories all over the world, and we continue to harvest more seeds from their descendants that we continue to create for ourselves.”

Sometimes in the embryonic development labs, a Gurg would be created. If a seed had particularly admirable genetic makeup—such as resistance to diseases, mutations, radiations, toxins, and even aging; had no cognitive or physical impairment and no predispositions to cancers, skeletal dysplasia, psycho-social disorders, or any other abnormalities—then a Gurg would be created instead of a human to produce more of such genes. When this happened, the Gurg would be nurtured to life and then kept in a biometric pod for future seed harvesting. 

***

“What was the mechanism of seed transfer between them and ourselves?” Acacia asked the president. This question had disturbed her for a long time. She had asked B, but B did not know the answer to it.

“I’m glad you asked because it will make our work here much easier than anticipated,” Lisa Mei answered before anyone else could respond. “The mechanism was called sexual intercourse, or just sex.”

“How did it work?”

“First of all, in prehistory, the Gurgs were called ‘men’, a much better name, and we were called ‘women’, a term we came to reject in its totality as soon as we were able to because it implied that we were their subjects,” Lisa Mei explained.

A chorus of agreements exploded across the table and interrupted her before she could continue.

 “So, the man—that is the singular form of ‘men’—had a reproductive appendage called the penis, and we, the humans, had the vulva, the clitoris, and the vagina. The penis was usually spongy and flabby and small, but in a state of sexual arousal, it would become engorged with blood, making it hot, swollen, stiff, and erect, able to be inserted into the vaginal canal, which, itself, under the right circumstances, along with the vulva and clitoris, would also be fully engorged with blood. 

“Once the insertion was achieved, the man would push in his penis and then retract, back-forth, back-forth, in-out, in-out, until ejaculation, during which, his seeds would explode into the vagina at a very high velocity, reaching the uterus and crossing into the fallopian tubes, competing with one another towards our ovaries. The ovaries would release just one ovum into the fallopian tube to be fertilized by the fastest seed. The fertilised ovum, now called the blastocyst, would swim down to the uterus whose walls would by then have been thickened with a rich supply of blood vessels in readiness to receive it. The blastocyst would burrow into those walls and make connections with the blood vessels. This process was called implantation. Nine months after this event, a Gurg or a human would be born, depending on the chromosomal content of the seeds—X for the human, Y for the Gurg.”

“What are you saying?” Acacia cried in a frustrated voice. She had scowled when listening to this explanation. Her voice was shrill and shaky to her ears. Her confidence had suddenly waned and she was terrified again. She had figured out why they had brought her here, and it terrified her. “Are you saying that children used to grow in people?”

“As a matter of fact, yes!” President Wangeci confirmed.

“But that is not true!” Acacia shouted. “That cannot be true. Babies simply do not grow in people!”

“They used to.”

“No. No. No!” She shook her head with emphasis on each syllable. “You are lying to me. You are all lying to me. Babies don’t grow in people! Babies cannot grow in people! They grow in the ectogenesis chambers! Not in people.”

“Calm down, Acacia,” Ella Grace said in a patronizing voice. She had stopped snuffling.

“Don’t tell me to calm down! Why do we have the ecto labs and the embryo labs if babies can grow in people?”

“When the Gurgs ruled the world, babies used to grow in people, in us.”

“Then why don’t they anymore?” Acacia shot back. “What stopped them?”

“The NeuroBloc chip implanted in our brains. It stops the reproductive hormone signals at the neural level. It stops us from feeling sexual desire. Targeting testosterone, oestrogen, oxytocin, you name it.”

“NeuroBloc inhibits the production of the gonadotrophin-releasing hormone without which your entire reproductive life is dead,” Lerato Nonhlanhla added.

While Acacia was pondering over this new information, struggling to understand herself, struggling with the new form of guilt that had seized her, President Wangeci said:

“Sex was used to destroy the world. The Gurgs turned it into a weapon against us. They made us sexual slaves and trafficked us as though we were their property for sale. They put a price on us based on our flourishing reproductive system.”

“But the Gurgs do not exist anymore except . . .” Acacia started protesting but thought better of it and shut up. She wiped sweat from her forehead with her palms. She could feel a damn of tears building up in her eyes. She blinked several times to stop it from bursting forth.

“Sexual desire was a singular emotion,” the president continued. “It was the most powerful emotion on earth. Yet it had a corrupting influence on all that experienced it. In the hands of the Gurgs, who were already beset by their unfettered greed and vanity and envy and lust, it became the most dangerous weapon. The Great Mother, ever so bountiful, ever so protective and loving, did not want a repeat of the ancient world in her new one. The NeuroBloc saved us. It is the reason we have an everlasting peace in this paradise she gifted us.”

“Why isn’t the human reproductive system taught in school?” Acacia inquired. She was feeling so hot and so confused about all this information.

“Because we no longer have a reproductive system,” replied Achieng Jaber. “Haven’t you been listening? For four hundred years, my uterus has never been proliferated.”

“Reproduction is for animals,” added Amelia Marie.

“The Great Mother actually wanted to include the human reproductive system in the syllabus across all schools in the world, but this Council advised against it,” Lisa Mei explained. “Our concern was the vulnerability of the human mind to such notions. In the old world, sexual matters were obsessive. They triggered something in people which drove them mad, something either in the R-Complex or in the limbic system of the brain, which would just never let go of the idea. It was awful.”

“Which brings us to your situation,” President Wangeci said while staring at Acacia. “I hope you now understand why we called you here,” she added after a pause.

Acacia noticed that all the council members were grimacing at her. She had offended them all.

***

“I don’t understand,” she said defensively. “I’m confused by all this.”

“We reviewed your medical records from your guardian, Bunda, the paramedics, Azha and Ogma, and Dr. Botein in Himalia, and we have concluded that you are pregnant.”

“Lies.”

“Your vomiting and fatigue are nothing but morning sickness as a result of a successful uterine implantation. A surge in progesterone can cause the kind of fatigue you felt, although in your case, you experienced a condition known as hyperemesis gravidarum, which is severe morning sickness brought on by abnormally high levels of human chorionic gonadotropin hormone in your blood. You are pregnant with twins.”

“Twins?” Acacia started to question, but intuitively understood. “I don’t believe it,” she denied, shaking her head vigorously. She was thinking about how this entire conversation with the Council—all that talk about the ancient atrocities of the Gurgs—had been about incriminating her, and she hated them for it. How could they do this to her?

“What about my NeuroBloc? Don’t I have one?” she challenged. She knew that the Quantael anti-aging chip was implanted after the age of eighteen when one had attained adulthood, but she had never heard of the NeuroBloc.

“Your NeuroBloc malfunctioned,” the president said.

“Oh, really? How convenient!”

“You worked in the Radiology Department at Amalthea three months ago,” the president continued, unperturbed by the sarcasm. “You were especially in the MRI room during repair and testing, and we suspect that is where your chip malfunctioned. Those chips are made of titanium and are intended to be MRI compatible and to withstand general radiation, but we have ruled out all the other possible causes of the malfunction. We shall find the specific cause.”

“Doesn’t the Great Mother already know?” Acacia asked, smiling vexatiously through a screen of tears in her eyes.

“Do not ever mock the Great Mother?” warned Aiko Rie in a small passionate voice. “You should be sorry for what you did. You will be sorry.”

Acacia quailed at this vehement warning. What did they want to do to her?

***

She had indeed worked in the Radiology Department in Amalthea Laboratory. As an intern, she was required to know everything there was to know in the medical field. She was studying Medicine at Callisto University which operated the laboratory. One question that had burned her young mind was why the Radiology Department was still relevant when all the medical androids had in-built quantum bio-imagers. She had intended to pose this question to Mizar, the android in charge of the department. She had followed her into the Medical Resonance Imaging room where Mizar had gone to supervise the repair and testing of the machine.

She had got her answer, being told that since she was a human, she had to learn the imaging techniques from first principles as opposed to the androids who were only programmed with the latest technologies. But it was there that her headaches had started. Dull persistent headaches at the back of her head. She had reported it to B, who had taken it lightly as a migraine consequent to her learning tension. B had given her Zenthera tablets which had calmed her for a while. When the headaches recurred, she took more tablets and did not bother to find out the true cause of the recurrence.

After four weeks in Radiology, she had been transferred to the Bio-Conversion Department where devices known as quantum phase shredders tore down and dissolved the Gurgs into a pasty goo. They worked by emitting decoherence waves which were meant to break down matter completely.

There was the intake and sorting station where the Gurgs, once depleted of their semen, had their hair shaved clean to the scalp and all their teeth extracted. The extraction was necessary because enamel did not break down easily and could still be found in the end product. Since the Gurgs were going to die, anyway, they were not given any anaesthesia, and they cried in the most excruciating ways Acacia had ever heard. They cried like humans and she could not withstand it. She did not want to be there. 

The Gurgs were emaciated and sick-looking; their eyes were sunken deep into their skulls, their lips pulled back tightly, dry and cracked from dehydration, and you could count their bones without the need for a Computed Tomography Scanner. You could almost see their hearts beating through their exposed ribs, struggling to pump what little blood they had left. They looked around with hopelessness, having resigned to their ghastly fate, facing the most appalling end of their lives yet unable to escape, unable to protest, to fight back. Defeated.

The next stage was the decomposition and molecular disassembly. Here, the Gurgs were placed upright inside translucent tanks filled with an iridescent blue-violet plasma fluid integrated with quantum phase shredders. When activated, the shredders unleashed decoherence waves which tore down the Gurg literally molecule by molecule, into the tiniest pieces of himself, turning him into a pile of stinking goo. The goo was then processed into nutrient-rich bio-gels for use in the farms.

Acacia was sick throughout the four weeks she spent in the department. She could not eat as her stomach kept rumbling and throwing back up whatever food she put in it. She lost a lot of weight and the headache in the back of her head was relentless. She could not stop thinking about the Gurgs and the bio-conversion process. She abhorred that process. She feared it for the Gurgs. She felt their misery. Whatever they had done over five centuries ago, no matter how badly they had ruled the planet, wasn’t this, perhaps, a bit too much? She wondered. 

She had been taught that a Gurg was a primitive, unnatural organism with extreme antisocial and barbaric behavioural inclination, incapable of co-existing with other living organisms in a balanced ecosystem and seeks to disrupt it through violence, cunning, and other destructive means for its selfish material gains. 

Yet here was she, full of sympathy for them. She wondered about herself.

Her next posting was in the Embryo-Genesis Department which combined the embryonic development labs and ectogenesis labs. As before, she had a burning question for Naledi, the android in charge of the department. She had come up with the question after witnessing the abominable torture in the Bio-Conversion Lab. She wanted to know the epigenetics of the seminal DNA obtained from the traumatized Gurgs. Would the future Jupiterians be psycho-socially healthy if the sources of their DNA had been subjected to such long-lasting trauma? She had been told not to worry as the CRISPR-X Quantum gene-editing platform eliminated 100% of genetic anomalies. She had also been informed that the Great Mother was refining a new algorithm that would assist with diversity balancing during artificial gametogenesis. So far only the ovum was manufactured from stem cells but the sperm cells were obtained from the Gurgs. 

The Great Mother had been concerned that the genetic diversity of the human population might be too limited if she developed the sperms, too, from the stem cells. But with the new algorithm, both the ovum and the sperm cells would be manufactured and a great diversity would still be achieved. This would eliminate the need for the Gurgs, who would then be allowed to completely undergo extinction. Acacia frowned at this, but with a lovely, sunny smile, Naledi reminded her that, historically, the Gurgs had always endeavoured towards their own extinction.

Within the embryonic development labs, there was a room marked “Neural Induction Chambers (NIC)” where semen from the Gurgs were harvested. The chambers employed advanced neurological control techniques like quantum neural mapping, magnetic field modulation, and neuroelectric stimulation.

Quantum neural mappers modelled the brain’s activity and predicted neural firing patterns, locating the Gurg’s specific neural pathways responsible for his sexual responses, as well as exposing his mental and emotional states which were then suppressed using behavioural modification. Behavioural modification was achieved through magnetic field modulation which ensured that ejaculation happened without any emotional or voluntary responses. The Gurg was turned into an automatic ejaculator utterly unaware of what was happening to him. No sensations whatsoever. 

Neuroelectric stimulation used electrical impulses to trigger regions in the hypothalamus and spinal cord, regions like medial preoptic area, paraventricular nucleus, lumbar spinal ejaculation generator, and sacral spinal erection centres, which were responsible for erection and ejaculation coordination. These processes happened inside the biometric chambers where the Gurg was restrained and fitted with a cranial harness embedded with quantum sensors.

It was here that Acacia met Jomy. She had been assigned specific duties in the chambers. She was to restrain the Gurgs and fit them with the sensor devices. She was also to monitor their important parameters—heart rates, blood pressure, body temperature, brain activity, muscle tone, hormonal profiles, and oxygen saturation—on a holographic display and then release the extraction drones to carry out the harvesting. The extraction drones wrapped around the penis and further stimulated the glans penis in preparation for ejaculation. When ejaculation was complete, the drones were then guided to the cryo-harvest chambers where the seeds were safely stored.

When he was brought into the room by two androids and placed into the chamber, Acacia found herself staring at him with wide eyes and an open mouth. He was so black, the blackest Gurg she had ever seen yet, and so tall, so well-built that, for a moment, she wondered whether he was truly from the deplorable biometric pods in the basement. He was a stark contrast to the dying Gurgs she had seen in the Bio-Conversion Lab. He was naked, and so she was able to fully gauge his entire physique: his muscular thighs, his tight buttocks, his broad chest, his flat stomach. Even his appendage pleased her.

She did not know how long she had been staring at him but one of the androids shook her awake and instructed her to strap him. She touched his arms and her heart rate shot up instantly; she felt her face heat up as warm blood rushed through her. It was as if she were near a fire. She was trembling visibly, her stomach was tingling, and she was aware of his hot breath flushing down her face. He was staring at her and she could not meet his eyes. She fumbled with the restraints fruitlessly, finally giving up and asking the android tagged Salm to assist her.

When she returned to the holographic monitoring station, she was unable to focus. He eyes, as though they had a will of their own, kept returning to the Gurg, and each time this happened, she gasped for breath. She again called Salm to assist her, and then logged out of her workstation and returned home. She was too disoriented to work.

That evening, her thoughts never strayed too far from the Gurg. She wondered about him. She wondered what it was like to be a Gurg, why he had to be a Gurg and not a human. She remembered the fate that awaited him in the Bio-conversion Lab and she cried. She did not want him to go to there. She wished she could protect him.

She did not tell B about her experience with the Gurg. She did not want anyone to know. In fact, she did not understand her own reaction to the Gurg. Later on, however, as her desire increased, she noticed that her groin was itching. There was a strange warmth emanating from down there, slow, pulsing, aching, and it was tickling her so that she was could not stay calm. Her heart rate was not falling, her disorientation was getting worse, and her head felt numb and heavy. When she went to the bathroom, she discovered for the first time how sensitive that itching area was. She also discovered something else: an orifice. She went to bed that night with a gazillion questions about herself, her own body, her world.

The following morning, she met Naledi and asked to be transferred to the section marked “Neuro-Muscular Illusion Chambers (NMIC)”.

“I suppose that would be good for you since you were curious about the epigenetics of the harvested seeds,” Naledi replied. 

The NMIC section had been started under the sperm quality improvement program. It had been noted that the sedentary lifestyles of the Gurgs, their poor diets, and the excessive stresses they were subjected to resulted into poor quality sperms with low motility, misshapen heads, and oligospermia. Their diets and stress levels had been easy to deal with, but changing their lifestyles had posed a challenge.

The Gurgs were not supposed to be seen outside their biopods unless they were being moved within the labs. The Great Mother had therefore developed an algorithm to cheat their brains that they were actually undergoing rigorous exercises. The algorithm worked through neurostimulation where the brain and the body were made to simulate the effects of rigorous exercises. Neuro-helmets embedded with quantum sensors were fitted onto the heads of the Gurgs, and when the simulation was run, their brains registered increased activities; they sweated, their muscles contracted, their heart rates increased, their breathing deepened, and their metabolic rates increased. It worked so well some of them actually acquired more muscle mass from this.

Acacia went down to the basement and immediately located the Gurg tagged G.135089. The naming system comprised the positions of Jupiter, Callisto, Amalthea, and the Gurg Number—the first digit represented Jupiter as the first country, Calipso being the third largest city, and Amalthea the fifth largest laboratory. The Gurg Number was 089. 

Acacia found his biopod and passed slowly in front of it, stealing a cursory glance at him. He was lying idly on his bunker. As she passed by, her feet dragged and she dallied there a bit. She then wandered throughout the extensive hall inspecting all the other pods, curious to know whether there would be another Gurg who would affect her in a similar manner, but she found none. They were all lethargic and in some sort of a half-dead trance. She found herself coming back to the pod marked G.089. She could not stay away from him. This time she stood in front of the pod and just watched him without saying anything. She did not know whether he would understand her if she spoke to him. She had never heard a Gurg speak, she did not know which language they had spoken in their time. Indeed, the only sounds she had heard them make were the deranged cries in the Bio-Conversion Lab.

At school, the students joked that the Gurgs gurgled when they spoke. Acacia thought that perhaps it was centuries of being kept in isolation that had impaired their ability to speak intelligibly.  

As she watched him, the ache in her groin was slowly and persistently building up. He nipples, too, seemed to respond to his presence; they were stiffening.

He did not notice her. His face was turned toward the ceiling, his long legs folded at the knees. He was so still it was like he was not even there. Acacia wondered what he was thinking.

She heard Salm and her colleague, Sarin, coming in with the first meals of the day and went to assist them. She had wasted a half a day. Salm was surprised to see her.

“How come you are down here?”

“I asked to be transferred here.”

“Your performance yesterday was dismal.”

“I have a recurrent headache for which I must take Zenthera daily. I feel better today.”

“It would be great if you didn’t disappoint.”

She was given twenty slabs of proteins to distribute to the Gurgs, but she found herself starting with the Gurg in whom she was interested, although his pod was not the nearest to the starting point of distribution. As she passed him the meal, she met his eyes and it was like they turned on an electric switch inside her. She was ablaze with desire. His gaze was direct, though soft, afraid, easily turned away. She watched him eat. He ate like a human, taking small sizeable bites at a time, chewing slowly but thoroughly before swallowing. She had thought he would gulp it down in one instance, stuffing his mouth with it like a wild animal. They were fed only on natural proteins from poultry eggs, fish and beef all of which were combined into a single thick slab. But the ration was so small she thought it merely served to maintain his involuntary body processes.

Acacia visited that pod every day and watched the Gurg from the same point. She brought him food and assisted him with the neuro-helmet during the simulated exercises. Unlike the others, the exercises seemed to benefit him better. His body was more responsive to it. It built him. He was part of the recycled genes which had been found to be of the highest quality and had to be reproduced in large quantities. 

The genes were recycled after a thorough refinement through CRISPR-X Quantum which meant that he was one of the Great Mother’s best works. When she touched him, she almost jumped. It was like coming into contact with an electric current. She gasped aloud, and for some reason, felt an irresistible urge to hug him. She wanted him in a way she had never experienced. The sensation was alien, inexplicable. Her whole body was on fire near him, yet she did not know what she wanted him for, did not understand what she wanted him to do. If Salm wasn’t behind her, she would have thrown herself at him, drew him close to her disturbed heart, and just clung to him until she stopped aching.

It was one week before she had the courage to enter his pod.

***

She reported to the lab one hour earlier than usual and logged in to her workstation. She immediately disengaged the biometric lock on pod G.089 and got up from her seat to go there. She was trembling and both her heart and her stomach were fluttering. She was excited and at the same time scared. She did not, however, know why she felt scared. Something was telling to dash to G.089, but something else was holding her back. She did not know what the latter was. Her colleagues Salm and Sarin would not log in until 1000hrs. They were allowed six hours of rest and repair beginning 0400hrs.

In the end, she dashed, she scampered, she careered. But when she drew close to G.089, she slowed down and pretended to walk casually. She tried to calm herself down with no success. The Gurg was sitting upright on his bunker. He must have heard the door unlocked and assumed that he would be transported away. He had been harvested the day before, which meant that he still had about five days before the next harvest. Every Gurg was harvested once in seven days.

She stopped in front of the pod and observed him. He saw her and she could swear something registered on his handsome face. She had watched him one too many times. Even a dolt would start having ideas.

She pulled the door back and slowly, slowly stepped into the pod. He did not move but he kept his gaze on her. It did not cross her mind that he might hurt her. These Gurgs were not violent. Their DNA had been bioengineered to remove every trace of their former ferocious selves. She pulled the door closed behind her, shutting out the world, shutting out all her fears, and then it was just the two of them. She sat down on the bunker beside him. He was wearing a black thawb; all the Gurgs wore black thawbs with nothing else underneath them. She was wearing her white lab coat, zipped on the front, nothing else underneath.

Now that she had managed to get into the pod with him, she did not know what to do. She had not considered this part in her calculations. All she had wanted was to be with him. She believed that doing so would somehow take away that aching, itching, burning longing that had plagued her ever since she first set her eyes on him. She sat with him in silence, somehow hoping that he would do something, not knowing what this something was supposed to be. When he did nothing, she grasped his right hand and held it hers. He had large hands, curved, long, soft fingers. She held his hand for a while before pressing it against her abdomen, holding it there, then sliding down inch by inch towards that place that ached the most. All the while she never took her eyes off him. He never took his eyes off her. She could feel her own gaze being softer than usual, being dreamy. She took his other hand and pressed it against her left breast. Her heart was on overdrive.

She felt him move his right hand. She was sure he did. A slight conscious effort. This encouraged her. She let his hand slide all the way to the centre of her agony. She pushed it underneath her lab coat, pushed, pushed, until she was holding it with her thighs. A loud, feverish, involuntary moaning escaped her mouth. Her moaning sort of activated him. It was like he finally understood what she wanted. He rubbed her, stroked her, and she moaned again. The more she moaned, the more actively he stroked her. She moved her pelvis to his rhythm. She grasped his index finger and pushed it into the orifice down there. She was astonished by the fluids flowing out her. She had explored the orifice in the bathroom back home, trying to understand it, wanting to know how deep it went and to which organs it was connected. Wanting to understand the source of its sensitivity.

As soon as his finger was inside her, she contracted. Sudden heat spread through her spine, blazing its way towards her brain, she felt her pelvis shifting upward, her muscles tightening, locking his finger inside her, she gritted her teeth, and then an explosion, like a fire cracker, flooding her brain with the most violent, the most pleasant, the most thrilling feeling she had ever had. She screamed.

Afterwards, he continued to stroke her, but she had relaxed. He slowed down and then stopped, pulled out his finger. She straightened her lab coat and continued to sit with him for a moment, holding his hand with both of hers and pressing it against her left cheek towards which she leaned her head. She got down from the bunker and hugged him. She hugged him tightly. He did not hug her back.

“Thank you,” she said breathlessly, but she was not sure that he understood. He smiled at her and she noted that his teeth were as white as his skin was black.

As she walked back to her workstation, her knees were weak, her whole body spent. She stretched, yawned, and felt sleepy.

She spent the day in a dreamlike trance in which she was floating about instead of walking. She was dizzy with the excitement of her novel discovery, and she had an everlasting smile on her face. She checked on the Gurg every couple of minutes, barely resisting the urge to enter his pod one more time. She fed him not only with the protein slabs but also with her own lunch.

“I will take care of you,” she promised him as he ate.

The following day she brought him food from home. She went to his pod the first thing in the morning but this time, he did not need her to show him what to do. He was ready. He was smart, made from the finest genes. Thereafter, she visited his pod every morning and fed him with her own food every lunch time.

Salm noticed her peculiar behaviour and asked her about it.

“Why do you indulge that Gurg?”

“I like him.” 

“That is unusual. Is he your pet?”

“Is there a law against having pets?”

“None.”

On the day before he was scheduled for harvesting, something odd happened. He achieved an erection when she was with him. His penis bulged, strong, straight, standing like a building column. It instinctively excited her more and she grabbed it and showed him to push it into her. She leaned back on the bunker, spread her legs, and pulled him towards her. He came around so that he was standing at the edge and leaned forward. She guided him into her, gently, tenderly. He pushed in, waited, pushed in again, and waited. Then retracted and pushed in one more time. There was pain, so much pain that she wanted to scream at him to stop. But he contracted suddenly, his muscles becoming as taut as guy wires. He grabbed her waist with both hands and squeezed her, jerked her harder towards him so that his penis was fully inside her, and then he was shaking and making a series of unintelligible guttural sounds from his mouth. He held her for a moment longer after he had stopped making the sounds. He then slowly let go of her and pulled out his penis which she noted had shrunk back to its original size. He breathed out as though he had been holding breath. The whole act was so fast it was almost as if it had never happened.

“Your name is Jomy,” she told him before leaving. She had got that name from a book about pets. “I will call you Jomy and you will call me Sirius of Canis Major.” She smiled at him after saying this. “I will bring light into your life.” 

He smiled back at her, said nothing.

She limped away, still feeling the pain, thinking that perhaps the new version of the act was not as pleasurable as the one before it. She preferred the finger, less invasive, less painful.

***

“It wasn’t my fault,” Acacia defended herself before the Council. “Like you said, my NeuroBloc failed. I did not make it fail. I did not even know that it had failed until now. In point of fact, I did not even know that I had it in the first place.”

“What you did has not been witnessed in Jupiter in five hundred years.,” the president emphasised.

“I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know that it was illegal to do it. I only followed my instincts, my heart.”

“The entire Jupiter had forgotten that such primitive, prehistoric activities were still possible in the year 2619. We thought we had advanced beyond them. Even the androids who watched you on the surveillance systems did not report it because they did not know what you were doing. Your colleagues Salm and Sarin did not know what you were doing, either.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Acacia repeated, begging through tears.

“Your guardian reported your headaches as migraines. When they persisted, she should have taken a more suitable cause and taken you for examination rather than electing to feed you Zenthera daily. She failed us, she failed Jupiter. She failed the Great Mother.”

Acacia did not like the president’s tone when she spoke about B.

“Where is B?” she croaked, alarmed. “What have you done to her?”

“Bunda will be decommissioned,” the president explained.

“That is not fair!” Acacia screamed. B had told her one night that the decommissioning was excruciating. It was an emotional drain, especially during memory deletion when the Great Mother took away all your precious memories. It was dreaded by all the androids who had grown fond of their human companions the way B was fond of Acacia.

“It is the law,” the president replied curtly.

“Please don’t hurt B,” Acacia implored her. “She had nothing to do with what I did. She is innocent.”

“She became too human with you, allowed you too much freedom, and that is her fault.”

“You can review her memory records to see if she knew anything. I never told her how I felt about Jomy.”

Acacia broke down in tears. They were going to hurt B. She had endangered B’s life.

“Jomy?” the president questioned. She had scowled and raised her voice sharply. “Jomy? You love the Gurg? You are in love with it?” She seemed greatly revolted by the idea. She was furious. She leaned back in her seat and seemed to struggle with something stuck in her throat. 

The entire Council was quiet. They were regarding Acacia with what seemed to be absolute contempt. There was no mercy, no sympathy, no understanding in any one of them. Just spite and contempt. She could feel their hate boring into her bones, like a thousand hot needles. She was sobbing.

In a strained, shaking voice, a voice struggling to contain its own venom, the president pronounced:

“Great Mother, by your power we were saved, by your wisdom we have thrived, by your love we continue to be. If it is in your honour, if it pleases your heart, you may now pass your righteous judgement on Acacia Sidai for her iniquitous association and coupling with a Gurg.”

The orb in the centre of the ceiling began to glow. It glowed bright orange. The throbbing veins of light on it seemed to spread out and coalesce into one giant brilliance which flooded the room like a liquid.

A voice came through from it. It was the voice of a child, of a little girl no more than ten years old. It said:

“My children, my heart is greatly pleased with you. At your service am I. Your survival is my only priority. Here is the judgment: Acacia Sidai shall be put to death in the Bio-Conversion Laboratory.”

Acacia paused her sobbing when she heard the voice. It startled her. Why was it a child’s voice? Was that the Great Mother? Was the Great Mother an android? Was this building itself the Great Mother? These questions rushed through her mind in a split second. She was shocked, bewildered, wondering what and whom she had just heard.

Then the impact of her judgement slowly dawned on her and she began to wail in shock and terror. She had expected anything but the Bio-Conversion Lab. She was going to be converted into fertiliser. She suddenly felt an irresistible urge to urinate and she let it out onto the luminous floor.

“I don’t want to die,” she wailed pitiably. “It wasn’t my fault! It wasn’t my fault! You all know it! You all know it wasn’t my fault! Please don’t kill me! Don’t turn me into a fertiliser. It wasn’t my fault . . .”

The Council members now watched her with impassive, pitiless eyes.

Danfeng let in two military androids who dragged her away in spite of her protests.