Silos of Man

Chapter 21 - Opening Night

I barely get the passenger door closed when Tom accelerates us away.  She looks wild-eyed and dishevelled, and I'm scared.  I say nothing and wait for her to loop me in on our current situation.  An anxiety-filled thickness hangs in the air of our tin-box now speeding us off somewhere, at 83 kilometres per hour.

"Dany, I'm sorry." Fuck, this is going to be bad. I say nothing and she continues, "It looks like an early trip for you and Ry is going to be in the cards imminently." Okidoki, sign-us up and get us the hell out of here. "Okay", is what I answer. I know an explanation is next, and I'm terrified of what it's going to be. Mercifully she gets right to the point. "We just got word from Glenda. Degradation is real." "Whaa", I inaudibly start but because my voice has been shocked into silence, I didn't even bother trying to finish.

Nothing continues to emanate from my gaping-wide mouth, so Tom continues, "The NWG didn't raise alarm bells when they found out what was happening, not because they wanted to disseminate the information in a much more calculated way, as they will claim, but because they needed more time. As far as we can tell, they realized what they were dealing with about twelve weeks ago. Shockingly, it took almost that long for the news to reach our watch-dogs because adherents to the anti-cure movement, fuelled and flamed by the teachings of your boss' mom nonetheless, now comprise most of the upper Councils of the NWG, and so we're losing a lot of our insider information. This anti-cure sentiment appears to be progressing exponentially, and the NWG Representatives were likely waiting until the populous vote threshold for anti-cure proponents is enough to ensure them a win for another term in their respective districts, when they will double-down on their efforts to put bringing back the human male, on the back burner." 

I remain agape and so she cautiously continues, "They were hoping that no cure would be found before then, so that they could convince their voting populous to give up on the male, and agree with the redirection of all resources being expended on The Cure, to their cloning and gamete-manipulation efforts. But then degradation hit a couple of years too early for the successful execution of their social plan. Degradation is a huge plus for them because the Y-chromosome-carrying human male may be wiped out of existence and memory, by their own degrading genetic material, and so the anti-cure collective won't even have to convince the public to let them go, they'll just vanish. On the other, very looming hand, human existence is threatened because they haven't figured out how to successfully reproduce without sperm. Cloning they can do with great success but that will only get us so far. We need the genetic variation inherent in combining two sets of genes to grow humans successfully such that our species will continue to evolve. So, the NWG sits on the news, ramps-up their cloning and gamete-manipulation efforts which they feel is the real salvation for the human species, and make some major breakthroughs.

Tom pauses for questions, but my mouth and brain remain unconnected at this time and so I'm silent.  She inhales sharply, accepting my shock and forging ahead with, "News of chromosomal degradation would spur stronger public support for The Cure efforts, and that would put their 'Keep the Future Female' initiative back by years."  I manage to communicate the obvious, "But if degradation is real, then we all need The Cure quickly and desperately?  Right, Tom?!  Or what am I missing?  What advancement have they made?"  I can see she's relieved that I'm now engaging, and I'm relieved that my face has started working again.  "They've repeatedly managed to successfully fertilize an egg using a cloned spermatozoon-skeletal cell that's been wiped of genetic material, and inserted with the genetic material from another egg.  I don't think we have all the details yet, but it seems that they were able to keep the programming of the sperm cell in tact such that it raced to, and fertilized the egg with the other egg's transplanted genetic material.  Just over 67% of the embryos are thriving, with spontaneous cell-death and lab-found X-recessive mutations making-up the other 33%."