Under a Starless Sky novel Chapter 66

Kali went down stairs, placed the sample in an exchange lock. She then opened the portal and stepped through, back into the laboratory. She was 36 feet tall again, and back to fair skin, hairy, and only two arms. She turned off the portal, collected the sample from the other side of the exchange box, placed it in a holder where material was sorted, analyzed, and some prepared for delivery. Tiny drone orbs collected material and flew away to their assigned targets, like bees collecting nectar and then off to the hive. A small mechanical arm delivered a giant crystal, which she inserted into a ‘reader.’ A hologram of him appeared, starting at conception and running to the end of life. She tracked health and what sort of medical interventions would maximize life time and health; an optimum path was illuminated. “Very healthy specimen, longevity wise. I do recommend better maintenance of your teeth. Don’t brush so hard.” She returned to the sperm sample. Every functioning gamete was measured and catalogued for its unique flavor; the bulk of the material went to a storage place. The computer took the analysis and showed her optimum pairing with images of the egg donor- samples already acquired, simply awaiting selectively optimized gametes. The egg and sperm sample was rendered virtually showing what the offspring would look like, and statistical probabilities of attributes that would be innate or potentially developed under the right conditions.

“Oh, I so love my job.” She touched ‘face’ icons to illuminate pairings she favored. She had enough data to map out seven generations of potential outcomes, as if using she were using ‘Facebook’ to generate her genetic lineage. The pairing had ancestry maps; his had unidentifiable history.

“Do you want to see your future children?” Kali asked Shen. She pushed data results to a screen near him.

Shen recognized the hobbit people in his memory from a science magazine; anthropologists had discovered a species of humans that were no larger than the average 3 year old. The pigmy people were strange looking, round faces, but clearly had adapted to their environment. They had even lived along side of pygmy elephants and ten foot lizards. They lived in alien world, ripe for conspiracy theories of aliens and hybridization, but they were human, and were still genetically compatible. They were not dwarfs. It occurred to him, there was sufficient ‘pygmy’ samples of variety of species that people should just accept there could pygmies of anything; which also meant, there could be giants of any species- and there was time when oxygen levels on earth were so great that most things were bigger- they had fossils of dragon flies with wings spans of three feet.

“Impregnating her would kill her, or the baby, or both,” Shen said.

“Nice. Intelligence, reasonable conclusion, accompanied by empathy,” Kali said. She looked directly at him. “I like you, Little Big Man. Very few of my specimens are capable of sophisticated dialogue. Yes, bigger can breed smaller, but smaller can’t always breed bigger. At least, not through traditional means. In this situation, artificial insemination and total development will occur in an artificial wombs. I am aiming for a hundred offspring, probably 70 females, 30 males. They will live in a virtual world to create the paradigm I need for compliance. Some of them, the ideal ones, will come to a habitat in heaven, as my personal favorites.”

“Why?” Shen asked.

“These hobbit people have a natural connection to their environment. A natural ecological intelligence. They are the canary in the coal mine. I want to capture that in an in-between race. These pigmies are too comical and would likely be killed or enslaved. Unreasonable harassment increases stress response decreasing their environmental connection. Even if they were accepted, interbreeding in the wild, randomly, would likely result in adulteration or extinction of their adaptations as they focus on competing against the dominant form. Though the human male will fuck anything, most normal size women will not fuck the pigmy male. That leads to social bias in the sample size,” Kali explained. “Ah. Look at this one! She is so beautiful. From baby to adult, every stage of her. No man would refuse her, though at four foot you’d have to wonder if there is a latent pedophilia gene. Giants would kill for her, that’s certain. She would incite wars. I will create a world just for her.” She stomped her feet in excitement.

“So, there are men giants?” Shen asked.

Kali looked at him sharply, suspiciously. She relaxed. “Gathering intel, are you? You will not escape. You will comply with my wishes. Or not. I liked our tumble session,” Kali said. “The male giants are dogs. They’ll fuck anything that sheathes their dicks. They would cut a cow heart out and fuck it if it still beat, and if it stopped beating before they finished, they would use a defibrillator on it until they got off.” Her face was angered and disgusted.

“I guess you never use a dildo,” Shen said.

“Not the same,” Kali snorted. “Giants can’t satisfy us. They only care about their own wants. They remain asleep, in their own habitats, playing the virtual games with grotesquely, inappropriately proportioned females of their own creations. They don’t see us.”

“So, how do you get baby giants?”

“They shoot their wads into collectors and CI delivers it where it’s needed,” Kali said. She turned back to her work.

“Are you clones, or genetically locked?” Shen asked.

“I am working. No more questions,” Kali said. She stopped. “I might trade answers for future samples.” She licked her lips, then went back to work. “Science has demonstrated that samples willingly given affect the quality of the specimen.”

Shen was shown another wild divergent adaptation- long skulled humans. Scientist in 1913 had found skeletons of these strange looking people, speculated to have been geniuses; their weirdness may have explained why there were cultures that bound babies head to shape the developing skull to be freaks. These people may have thrived in the height of the human population that built Göbekli Tepe, 11,000 years ago- in a time not recognized by archeologists as being important. It would coincide with Plato’s dating of Atlantis. Why so few people could make that connection astounded him. If there were smarter races, and there were regular humans, the regular humans would have wanted to imitate the superiors in every way, even in appearance. The discovery of these skulls did result in talk of aliens among humans of Jon’s time. If people realized how large the potential human continuum is, and how many adaptions came and went, no one would believe in aliens. Cone-head people existed. Star Trek got it right- the base plate for intelligence was human- and all variety was adaptation, spread through the galaxy by a progenitor race. Giants!

The list of ideal pairings that was available to Kali was delightfully huge, and she rambled how nice it was to have fresh, alien stalk. It was a game and her new piece had unlocked a myriad of options unexplored. “Contrary to popular belief, the average human population holding at 20 billion allows for the greatest stability in duration, minimal upset by pandemic, which usually strengthen existing stock, while also allowing for greatest divergence.” She gave a shout of happiness. “You’re compatible with elves! Fuck, yes! I am so happy I may fuck you myself.”

The door opened and four giantesses came in. They were identical. The only variance was in their hair style and eye colors. They did not have body hair.

“C.I. reports you have discovered an anomaly,” one of them said.

“I logged the information. My research has always been available for public scrutiny,” Kali said.

“We want access to the alien,” the lead said.

Kali stood, she put her hands on her hip. “I am in charge of this department. I am the one that sets the traps. I am the one doing the work. You do not have the authority to interfere with my research or take my property. You have access to data and reports. The specimen, and any offspring, remain in my care, my intellectual property.”

“You have a monopoly,” one of them said. “It’s not fair.”

“Oh, grow the fuck up. When has anything ever been fair?” Kali asked.

“We are tired of getting the lesser samples,” one of the four said. “Your biotech is always a hundred years more advance than the specimens you make public domain.”