Humanity 2.0, Year 041, Day 112

"Well." Emily smiled. "That's that. My brother got me pregnant. We did it."

"And neither of us went crazy yet." I raised an eyebrow.

Emily frowned at me. "Idiot." Her hands ran across my shoulders. "I... love you... I mean I love you so much, Ben."

I gave a low chuckle and pulled her in closer to me. She didn't resist, and cuddled up to me for a while. We remained that way for an interminable time, listening to the rustling wind outside and the cranking of the old heater unit outside. Emily heard the approaching passel of children before I did.

"That's them." She sat up. "Get dressed."

I shrugged. So much for my rest before having to take care of the kids for half of the day. Groaning, I slid out of bed and fished around, finding some slacks and a collared shirt. Emily, who still didn't handle the cold all that well, put on thermals then a pair of jeans and a dark green cable-knit turtleneck sweater. I had just got down to the kitchen when I heard the children outside, and a minute later, the back door opened.

Tristan and Jacob first, of course; neither would settle for less. After those two, it was the 'six witches', as they called themselves – Katherine, Jacinta, Fallon, Sophia, and then Ava and Mia – the twins-but-not-really, Hannah and Melody's two daughters that were born only an hour apart. Those six girls, all in a ten-to-twelve age bracket, had formed a little pack and were rarely seen apart for long.

Claudia and Nadine came in with the main pack of the children; Claudia was hefting the youngest of the little travelers, Wren's daughter Zoe. She wasn't even two yet, and was no less inquisitive and curious than her mother. They were surrounded by Lily, Alice, Constance, Fox, Genevieve, and Mackenzie. The group Nadine and Claudia had kept around them were the youngest, from three to five, and afterward, the last five, those young enough to move about on their own but still too young to let out of sight, came in – Fiona, Rose, Stephanie, Angela, and the seven-year-old Blake, my only other son than the first two at the time.

The affiliation of those five was a looser thing than that of the witch cadre, but it would ultimately outlast them. Claudia had a little bit of a swell, being four months pregnant herself with a daughter who would later be named Gemini, and Nadine was on a three-year break from having children – a record for her since we'd been reunited.

Rasima raised an eyebrow at me when she proofread those last few paragraphs. People think I don't remember the names, birthdays, mothers, and everything else about every one of my two hundred and nineteen children. Even here and now, six hundred years later and my body and mind finally feeling the effects of age, that's the absolute last thing I could ever forget. 15226 didn't do much to make me smarter, but it seemed criminal to not know everything about my children by heart.

That being said, I've been asked – both politely and pointedly – by the bulk of that first generation of children to skip over any great detail of their earliest years. For some it's to save them embarrassment, as many of them are now highly placed and well-respected individuals who might not want Dad to share with all hominus-kind who stopped wetting the bed when, and for others it's just that they would prefer to write their own story at a later time. Worry not; I will respect both wishes.

The whole lot of them were bundled up in various cold-weather clothing; it wasn't freezing out, being a northern Alaskan summer, but it could be chilly even on the balmiest Alaskan day. I hadn't had time to prepare lunch for everyone, which earned me a frown from Nadine; with a quick scramble, I was able to put out sandwich makings for the whole lot of them.

The amount of food consumed by twenty young children is truly a staggering thing. We had food delivered by the pallet monthly, and even then I sometimes had to have rush orders placed when I ran low. Nina had thought to have a large underground freezer installed in the basement, so we could go for a year or more without resupply if we needed to, though the fare would rapidly get boring. Even a master chef couldn't work miracles with an inexhaustible supply of canned fruits and vegetables, tofu, and soybean derivatives.

The scent of food wouldn't escape the girls, even in a separate building. A few minutes later, we were joined by Wren, Rain, and Nina, who had been out at Wren's laboratory-cum-shed. It was always freezing cold in there lately – Wren said it had something to do with some superconductors she was working on, though I suspected she just liked it that way.

Before long, school was in session. The little field trip had only been half of today's alleged school day. I had had my doubts early on about the method the girls wanted to use for teaching the kids; my original plan had been to either hire some tutors or find a way to sneak our kids into public or private schools somewhere.

Both ideas had been voted down in short order, which in hindsight probably makes sense. When an eight-year-old is roughly as strong and fast as a human professional athlete, one cannot realistically expect them to keep that concealed day in and day out when surrounded by other kids their age. It also meant keeping too many of them out of line of sight before they could defend themselves. I had, however, prevailed on them to let our kids choose to go to university on their own.

Instead, each of the girls brought them all together and took turns teaching them all lessons. I had wondered at first how that could work, when there was such disparity in their ages; when one kid is still learning to read, and another is burning through novels, how can you teach both at once? Still, in fairness, I suppose the education I would have sent them off to probably wasn't all that much better. As a one-time outcast and nerd, I probably had a bad image of the social cliques and constant jockeying of public school, but I doubted they'd have learned more that way than what we were doing here.

As we sat back and watched Rain walk her army of siblings through some simple first-aid techniques, Emily settled in next to me on a couch. Claudia happened by, and bent down to whisper something quietly to Emily, so as not to disturb the class; as she put her hand on the opposite side of Emily's head to draw her in closer, she suddenly turned and looked at my sister. The two shared a brief exchange which took place only in their expressions, from where I sat, then Claudia smiled and came up. She looked at me and seemed overjoyed, and practically loped away.

I guess the news was already out, then... damn electrophoric stuff. I really felt cut off sometimes. Claudia worked her way around to the others, sharing the news quietly, and we got happy glances from everyone.

School finished, and the girls wandered off in turn; Emily went to take a nap, and Nina then Nadine followed her upstairs – likely she wanted to hear the story of how she'd finally given in. Wren and Rain went out to Wren's lab again after talking quietly for a long time about something intensely technical; they were followed by Fiona and Rose, the two younger ones who seemed to show an interest in the science. In Fiona's case, obviously, she stuck it out and became quite a scientist in her own right; Rose said later on that she just liked to look at all the glowing buttons and lights.

Claudia graciously stayed with me to assist; I spent the following eight hours with my passel of children. I don't think 15226 could have given me enough stamina to keep up with that many young ones for more than a few hours alone, and the girls all generally agreed; even if the schedule usually just had one or two of us with the kids, it often ended up being more for simple practicality. It wasn't like any but a few of us had jobs anyway. Nadine, Nina, and Emily brought in the real money, along with Wren's patents – the rest of us just had side interests and hobbies, really.

We all watched some shows together, and played some games. Those older than six or so went back outside to play what appeared to be something like soccer, except they had a tendency to make up new rules if nobody was around to correct them. One time I looked out and it had turned into a full-contact sport where they threw the ball with both hands, like basketball.

Some returned with cuts and bruises as it got into the evening time – though it was still bright out, welcome to Alaska – but I knew they'd all be fine by the morning. Bethany said they healed up even quicker than any of us did, which was saying something. To date, not one of them had taken sick or shown even a hint of any congenital health issues. 15226 was to be praised for her ingenuity.

Most put themselves to bed after such a busy day, though a few had to be shown to their rooms. They had a whole wing of the house. After another hour or so, the kids were largely in bed, and Claudia and I had found our way back downstairs. I put away the mess the kids had inevitably made, and packed up the many food items strewn about the kitchen. Taking one last look around, I glanced at the stairs. I was still running on three hours of sleep, and crashing sounded very inviting right now.

"Where are you going?" Claudia's clipped accent, from behind me.

"Bed. I'm tired."

"Like hell you are. Come back down here and make us some party food."

"Party food..." I sighed. "We just partied the night before last. Remember? It was Nina's birthday."

"We can't party again?" Claudia put her hands on her hips, giving them a nice little shake. "You aren't allowed to go back to bed until you've celebrated with us. The girls will be back in a little bit, and we've got to ring in Emily's pregnancy. It's certainly been long enough."

I paused for a time, letting out a long breath. If I crashed anyway, they'd probably sneak in and ambush me with a threesome or something. Not that I was particularly against that idea, but it was clear I wasn't going to be allowed to rest much either way. Turning around, I went back to the kitchen and cut up some small pastries, crackers, and assorted party food stuff; Claudia, meanwhile, broke out the booze.

Thank the stars that 15226 didn't make us immune to alcohol along with most of the drugs and poisons that affected humans. Soon she'd filled two coolers with various beers and had a large supply of glasses and tumblers set out on the closed veranda, with its plastic windowing. It was an extension of the old patio, which we'd covered over so that we could keep it heated. Partying in Alaska at night got old pretty quickly without some kind of heat source.

It was nine at night, and the sun was finally setting, when I heard the girls returning one by one – first Nadine, Nina, then Emily, then the two who'd been over in the lab after they put Fiona and Rose to bed. They gathered on the patio. It was a smallish place, cozy, just the way we liked it. It was lit by strings of white Christmas lights they'd strung up along the rafters holding the canvas roof in place, and big wicker chairs and couches dominated it.

There was a large central table upon which all the food and alcohol was set out. The floor was a plush blue rug we'd tossed atop the concrete of the patio. Along the rafters was also set a long space heater that kept the whole room toasty warm, if a bit dry; it was comfortable but not somewhere you would want to sleep. The room had a thrown-together look, but in the many years we'd been there, we'd all gotten quite used to it.

There wasn't going to be a really wild party; this was more a gathering of friends and lovers, to celebrate Emily's decision. They played it up as if it was mine and hers, but mine had been made ages ago; I'd just been waiting for her to get to where she needed to be. They seemed a little perplexed that they were having trouble sensing if it was a boy or a girl, as they seemed to be able to with all the previous pregnancies – it did concern Bethany for a while, until we realized it was because there was one of each growing inside her.

Nina and Wren each took up a position at my sister's side on the couch opposite us, while Nadine and our daughter Rain cuddled on a small love seat – meanwhile, I rested lengthwise on another couch, with Claudia spooned in front of me and letting one of my arms drape over her chest.

The drinks flowed. Claudia made a bit of a show of feeding me, holding one or two morsels at a time over her shoulder in front of my face, alternating them with herself. The girls talked, and I only occasionally butted in. The conversation would go late into the night, I already knew. The sky finally went dark around eleven at night, but I knew it would be brightening again before we knew it.

Nina and Emily were joking about some woman they both knew through their company, a rival CEO whom they speculated had some repressed bisexual urges. A half-dozen jokes awaited for suggestions on how I might use my power to help her get past her inhibitions. Nadine and our oldest daughter were quietly talking something through, inaudible to the rest of us, while Claudia seemed intent on stuffing me full of enough hors d'oeuvres that I likely wouldn't need to eat again until the weekend.

They talked business for a time. Wren was involved in some capacity, her inventions and scientific mind being on the sidelines of their massively profitable joint company, and Claudia occasionally poked her head in and did a few months of work for them at a time; Rain, as well, had never really stopped working for her mother.

In fact, I was the only one there who hadn't done a lick of work since we came together, though none of them complained. The jokes about me being the housewife of the harem – the one who stays home with the kids, cooks and cleans, and makes babies – had all been made and made again years ago. We wouldn't realize how prophetic they'd be about the most common structure of the hominus family that would emerge centuries later.

"The Macao expansion is a complete loss." Nina's head lolled back onto the top of the couch, and she let out a loud sigh. "I'm sorry, Em, but it's time to call it there. Cut our losses and just withdraw."

"Not to say I told you so... but yeah." Nadine shrugged. "They're blaming the floods, but it was caving years before that. Too many bad decisions and bad investments. The whole place is going to be another Dubai before 2050. Another Vegas, for that matter."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time." Emily frowned. "Well, wait, though. Let's say it crashes. It becomes a penny stock then, right? So we buy up the whole goddamn place. We sit on it for a few decades, until the demand is back, then we bulldoze everything and start over. It's basically guaranteed money."

There was a brief silence, then Nadine tapped a sock-clad foot on the ground as she pulled Rain tight to her. "What if the demand isn't coming back, Emmy?"

"We can wait it out. What's Bethany's most recent guess?" My sister looked over at Claudia.

My darkest lover had a mouth full of nacho chips, but managed to choke something out after a few moments. "Five hundred, six hundred years maybe. She says the upward margin of error is-"

"-Huge." I completed her sentence. "15226 said the exact same thing. Even she wasn't sure how long we'd live, only 'long'."

"Well, okay. See? We can play a long-term game like nobody else can. We can sit on an investment for fifty years if we have to."

"Em, the demand isn't coming back because East Asia isn't. China is losing the war they started. Without the anchor, the ship drifts away and eventually runs aground. Most of Southeast Asia will go with it, for that matter." She shrugged. "I've been consolidating what I can into northern Africa, eastern Europe, a few other places..."

"You think it's really that bad?" Nina raised an eyebrow. "I hadn't been out that way in the past few years, but I can't convince myself that the Balkans and the Sahara are the place to invest over China."

"Like you said, Em. Long-term game." Nadine tapped her temple. "I'm not looking at the Sahara and the Balkans as they are right now. Right now, they're too much of a political quagmire for anyone to bother investing. Nobody could stabilize the place inside twenty or thirty years, and no investors are looking to play longer than that..." She smiled. "... except us."

"Ehhh...." Nina and my sister seemed unconvinced. There was a brief lull in the conversation. I was buzzing on about three beers at the moment; at my size, it was the same effect as about one would have before I grew to my full hominus size.

I cleared my throat, setting my beer down on the endtable. "While we're playing Illuminati..."

Nadine snorted. "Hardly. If we were the Illuminati, maybe we might have a shot in hell fixing this cluster-fuck of a world. I don't see it happening. For any of us." She let her mostly-empty beer dangle down in front of her, looking at my sister through its brown glass. "It's kind of hard to invest in the future when there isn't-"

"There's a future." I shot her a glance, which she met coolly. Nadine's cynical outlook was tempered by the other girls, but if she was left alone for long she could become quite gloomy. "Actually, I was going to ask for everyone's help for an idea I had."

I got a response in semi-unison from all of them - "Huh?"

It shouldn't be surprising that they were taken aback. It was something of an unspoken rule that I stayed out of business. We all agreed I had no head for it; I was more the lover, counselor, and mascot to my industrious harem of girls than I was a bread-winner. 15226 hadn't been clear if she expected me to take a leadership role or not, or if she'd even thought that far ahead. I was more than happy to let the experts – particularly Emily, Nina, and Nadine – take the reins almost all the time. This time, though, I felt the need to rise up and do something, both for myself, for them, and for everyone else out there.

I say that, but there was no way in hell I could've afforded it with the money I had. Even wisely invested, the fortune 15226 had left me was pennies compared to the scale of my plan - or to the corporate empire that Nina, Nadine, and Emily ran. So here I was, asking for my girlfriends for the loan of the century. How very manly.

"It's not a big secret that house-husband Ben hasn't gotten off his ass for, oh, forty years..."

I was assaulted by a barrage of counter-arguments. "-It's not like that, Ben-"

"-it's fine with me if you stay on your ass-"

"-You better not want to stick your neck out again..."

"... how do I know I'm about to hear a terrible idea..."

I sighed. "Girls, I can't possibly answer all that at once."

Wren was the only one to respond, as she rolled the deep red wine in her glass around in circles, staring at me with a dark but curious look. "Tell us."

"Thanks... this is a bit involved. And it's a very long-term game." I sat up, pulling Claudia up to my side and taking her in one arm as I prepared to sell them on this scheme of mine. "I was thinking – why aren't we panicking? The reason we exist, the reason we were all created, is because a really fucking smart alien put it together that human civilization isn't going to save itself. There wasn't anything she could do to save everybody; too little, too late, and she had other civilizations, other species who needed her expertise."

They were all silent, so I continued. "I could tell it tore her up, because she really did like us. All she could do was make one male of her new human species, with a few tricks... and leave. But not before she gave us the Vault." I took a long breath. "That's the big thing. We have the Vault to go to if things go really south. 15226 was afraid of something she called an algae blackout, which could potentially wipe out anything that needs more than 5% oxygen in the air to survive – so basically everything bigger than a fruit fly. The Vault would keep us alive through that, until the world was habitable again."