Shards Ch. 01

Falling asleep was the next challenge I faced. Nancy closed our eyes after thinking, 'Good night, Dan. I love you.' But, I could not seem to get my half of our brain to shut down. It didn't seem connected to my own body. I felt Nancy slow our breathing, but I wasn't reacting. I couldn't even toss and turn. I felt myself getting more and more frustrated.

So, I decided to meditate instead. Using Nancy's breathing in place of a mantra, so that I would not wake her, I focused on relaxing my mind, trying to reach a state of floating outside of myself, instead of being trapped inside.

Eventually, I sensed Nancy reaching REM sleep and my thoughts seemed to finally synch up with her breathing at that point.

The next moment, imagery began flashing in my mind's eye. Dreams. But was it my dream or Nancy's?

I didn't get an answer, because my next thought was realizing that I had fallen asleep and was waking because the insides of our eyelids were getting lighter. It must have been morning, sun brightening the curtains of the bedroom windows. Then the alarm went off and I I was awake again and I began to feel Nancy waking as well.

'Good morning, love,' I thought to her, bringing her fully awake.

'Good morning, sweetie,' she replied, her eyes opening. 'Ready to face a day of work?'

'We don't have much choice, do we?' I replied. 'We lost two days in the hospital already. I doubt either of our bosses would look kindly on taking another day off just because it's Friday.'

After urinating, showering, talking Nancy through shaving my face and getting dressed, we went to the living room, finding Cathy also dressed for the day, gazing out the living room window. We watched her from the kitchen as Nancy started our coffeemaker.

"Good morning, Cathy," Nancy said, finally. "You seem fascinated by the view. Is our world that different from yours?"

Cathy turned away from the window, saying, "It is hard to say, Nancy. Your eyes see your world so much differently than ours that I have a hard time comparing even things as simple as your vegetation. I think Teclewtans perhaps saw a wider range of light wavelengths, but we did not distinguish between those wavelengths the way you do. You would call us totally color-blind. We did not even have a word for color, because we did not sense it. The effect of different matter on light's frequencies was a scientific curiosity that did not affect us much. That was the most disorienting part of waking up in your hospital, when I opened my eyes and saw so much that was new to me, but that your memory told me was routine."

'Interesting,' I thought. 'I expected you would think that your species was superior to ours in every way.'

"Not superior, Dan, just different," Cathy replied. "Some things better, some worse. A lot the same. Of course, even superior species can wind up extinct in a catastrophe." It was the first time I really heard her sound sad about her species' fate.

'Where does humanity having two genders fall on the better/worse line, then?' I asked. 'You seem determined that having one gender is better.'

Cathy answered, "From what I have observed in your media and can see from Nancy's memories, gender is more of a sociological problem on Earth than a biological one, although there are drawbacks there, too. Misogyny is another word my species never had. If human men and women treated each other equally, your society would be more harmonious. The problem does not exist without gender."

'I treat Nancy as my equal,' I protested.

Cathy shook her head. "You try, Dan. Nancy knows that. But you are still a product of your society, with implicit biases you grew up with, gender roles you still expect, beyond just childbirth."

Nancy said, "I'm with Dan on this. I don't know any men who are better at treating women as equals than he is. Besides, men aren't the only ones with expectations of gender roles. Women can be just as guilty of it. We were raised to be princesses and mommies. I agree that misogyny and gender-based violence are problems our world still has, but I fear that introducing a new variant of humanity, combining the two genders effectively into a third, will just trigger new bigotry to form. Unless you can transform the whole species at once, there will be competition and opposition. You mentioned a biological problem from having two genders?" Nancy asked.

Cathy said, "It's less efficient, putting the burden of pregnancy and childbirth on only one half of the species. To maintain the population, human females need to give birth at least twice, once to replace themselves and a second time to replace their male. Hermaphrodites are all capable of pregnancy, so each half of a mating pair could get pregnant once each and maintain the population, sharing the burden and risk. If growing the population, a doubled birthrate is possible, compared to having two genders."

'Makes sense, mathematically' I thought, as Nancy poured some coffee and took a sip. 'But if it's such a biological advantage, why didn't animal species here evolve it, too?'

While Nancy got eggs from the refrigerator and started to prepare omelets, Cathy explained, "Unknown. Teclewtans are not even certain that it is something that evolved on our own world. Our scientists, as many of yours do, believe that having gametes of two sizes, one large and one small, reduces the genetic competition between them when they combine, increasing survival rates. Evolution would tend to favor that. At first, a species might have individuals produce both types of gametes, as many of your plants still do, but then evolve to where individual organisms produce either one or the other gamete based on some factor. When that factor is a single switch gene on a chromosome present in only one gamete type, that becomes the basis for other gender differences to arise, including differentiated genitalia. On Teclewt, our fossil record showed that animal species did exist with differentiated genitals, although the exact details of their DNA were unknown to prove the existence of a switch gene. But suddenly, the fossil record shows that many species disappeared in a massive extinction and nearly all of species which survived then displayed hybrids of the earlier genitals, indicating they had switched to being hermaphrodites, perhaps in a single generation. Very few animal species survived with two genders and most of those went extinct at later times, perhaps due to competition with the hermaphrodites."

"That doesn't sound like evolution due to a random mutation, at all," Nancy said. "For multiple species to be affected at once, there had to be some other trigger."

"Indeed. The prevailing theory was a retrovirus, perhaps spread through the food chain, which altered DNA strands responsible for genitalia development. If there was originally a switch gene, it might have been either removed or copied to the opposite chromosome, causing all individuals to generate the same genitals, capable of producing both gametes."

"And the extinctions?" Nancy asked.

"Besides the possibility that the retrovirus itself was fatal in many species, consider what would happen if, instead of producing genitals that produce both gametes, the altered genitals only produced one type. If all of the next generation are born male, the species still goes extinct for a lack of females. Again, this is only a theoretical explanation. There were those who vehemently opposed that theory and there was no real proof, either way, because the fossils were too old to extract DNA to perform before and after comparisons. Also, there were no fossils ever found indicating the gendered and hermaphrodite individuals living side by side, especially not a female mother with a hermaphrodite child. However it happened, the shift was world wide and so relatively sudden that carbon dating could not determine a progression across the planet to identify an origin point."

I asked, 'So, I assume that the chromosome Z you mentioned yesterday does something similar in altering the switch gene?'

"The crystals were not attempting to replicate the Teclewtan experience, because we really don't know that a retrovirus existed or what changes it made. Instead, the crystals had to analyze human DNA to determine what possibilities there were for change. Between scientific programs broadcast over your television and analysis of your DNA, they determined that human biology actually takes you partway to being hermaphrodites already. For the first seven weeks, human fetuses grow structures which correspond to both genital sets. Then, a switch gene called SRY that is only on the Y chromosome triggers the development of the male genitalia while suppressing the exclusively female ones. Without the SRY gene, the female genitals develop instead. The redesigned chromosome Z supercedes the SRY gene with one we could call SRZ which still triggers the male genitalia to develop but does not suppress the female genitals, then chromosome Z has some other tweaks to the hybrid genitalia that results. Most importantly, both types of fertile gametes are produced, each carrying the SRZ gene, with protection against self-fertilization. Your child will be doubly fertile, even with humans who still have X and Y chromosomes. You can have that as well, if you choose to alter your bodies. Have you given any more thought to that?"

Nancy replied, "Dan and I discussed it a little bit last night, but still have not made a decision on that," Nancy said. "It's a huge risk, because it would be a lot harder to explain our transformations as adults rather than the birth of a fertile hermaphrodite child. If you think our society's lingering racism or homophobia is bad, the reaction to a hermaphrodite who breeds true could be much worse."

'That's if the government doesn't immediately turn us into lab experiments or exterminate us as a threat to society,' I thought.

"That sounds paranoid, even to me," Nancy said. "I agree that we might face some bigotry, but preemptive genocide? That sounds like something the Nazis would do, but today's America?"

"Well, keep thinking about it," Cathy said. "Meanwhile, we should eat this breakfast before it gets cold and head to your jobs. We can discuss it more tonight."

~~~~~

This a work in progress, from ideas that have been rattling around in my head for at least a year. Earlier versions have been posted elsewhere. I have some ideas for future direction, but would love comments, ideas, etc. If you don't like it, be constructive in your criticism, please.

M.R. Leenysman