"Auntie Rose, is that really true?" Madison asked excitedly."Yes, it is quite a strange culture. The island was unaffected by the rise of the Demon lord and the subsequent fall of man. As a result, they have radically different values from our own. They demand the population remain even, and thus kill the majority of babies. Only male babies are allowed to live, and of course the finest of female babies. It is said that doing this for so many years as made their women exceptionally fertile to seed.
"They seem to birth men at a rate of 1:100 rather than 1:1000. That still means they prematurely end 98 out of 100 pregnancies. Only one female is allowed to exist per male. The relationships are strictly monogamous, and decided at birth. Since the rates are so low, they start having babies as soon as they reach p.u.b.erty, and continue on until they are in their seventies.
"Despite this, their population hasn"t decreased at all. Scientists have been studying them to figure out how fertility was increased. It doesn"t seem to be a result of the men, but some fundamental change for the women. Some scientists hypothesized that the rate of birth is dependent on the population. It isn"t so much that the women changed, but that the birthrate is modified based on environmental factors, keeping them from selectively breeding themselves into extinction."
"Fascinating…" Madison muttered.
It was at that point while listening at the door that I finally decided to push my way in. It appeared like this Aunt Rose of mine was a worldly woman. She had spent a lot of time abroad visiting the world. She was a bit of a bookworm and seemed to like telling stories as much as Brooke, but of the more Ripley"s Believe it or not variety. She had a bright voice that sounded like a chime, but it was only after I opened the door that I got a look at her.
Aunt Rose was a short, chubby woman. I was actually a bit surprised. I had expected her to look a lot like mom. I was expecting a tall, buxom beauty with pale skin. Instead, about the only similarity between these two sisters was the buxom part. This woman had big b.r.e.a.s.t.s which sat on a stout frame. She wore gla.s.ses, and had her hair up in a bun with some chopsticks seemingly tied up in them. Her clothing were a pair of dress paints and a loose fitting s.h.i.tting which hung low and showed a bit of her sagging cleavage.
Her body was tanned, and her face, neck and b.r.e.a.s.t.s had numerous freckles from having had so much sun. She wasn"t an ugly woman by any sense of the word. She probably didn"t weigh any more than mom did, but considering she was about a foot shorter than mom, it led to her having a chubby look. Her face was quite pretty, and she gave me the impression of a s.e.xy, earthy teacher. She was one of those girls where you wanted to see what she knew. One could imagine her experience translating to being a freak in the sheets. Well, that was the memories from my old world talking.
"Oh… so you must be him? My nephew?" Aunt Rose noticed me first, raising an eyebrow and giving me a slight smirk.
Suddenly my arm was grabbed, and Hannah hugged me, pushing her own growing b.o.o.bs against my arm. "Yes! Aunt Rose, I wanted you to meet my brother."
Why did Hannah seem to emphasize the "my" part? I looked down at her, and she looked back at me with a glowing and innocent smile. Hannah was also wearing makeup and a dress, and I hadn"t noticed it before because I was caught up looking at Aunt Rose, but she had a bow in her hair and she looked quite stunning. I found myself staring at her longer than I intended.
"Ahem!" Madison suddenly spoke out the words, not even bothering to cover it with a cough.
At that point, I realized I"d been staring at Hannah for an uncomfortable amount of time. She had been staring back, her eyes bright and a smile on her face. For a moment, I actually thought she was going to kiss me. However, she immediately turned away. Rather than letting me go, she dragged me down to the loveseat, sitting snuggled right next to me. Madison starred at the pair of us, specifically eyeing Hannah"s b.o.o.bs pressing against my arm with a rather dark expression.
The strange silent atmosphere this created thankfully only lasted a moment, as mom pushed the door open and walked in a second later. This caused Rose to stop focusing on us and stand up.
"Morgan…" Rather than elated, she seemed somewhat sad and cautious.
"Rose…" Mom gave Rose a soft and gentle smile.
"You… look good, Morgan. After Noah died you looked so… lost… I"m glad to see you look…" Rose stopped as if she couldn"t find the words anymore.
Mom gently lifted a hand and put it on Rose"s shoulder. "It"s good to see you."
"I-I shouldn"t have taken off, I-" Rose"s eyes grew misty.
Mom then gave Rose a hug. "It"s fine. I missed you too."
The two older women hugged in the middle of the room, while us three children could only look at each other questioningly. It seemed like the last time mom and aunt talked were on bad terms. This wasn"t just some old friends meeting up. This seemed more like a reconciliation of a strained relationship. No wonder mom wanted to look her best.
"So-sorry… I promised myself I wouldn"t come here and dampen the mood." Rose sniffed and wiped her tears away. "Since we"re here, let"s catch up."
Mom waved her hand, sending one of the maids out and the two women took to the couch. It was at this time that mom saw Hannah clinging to me. When mom"s eyes caught Hannah"s, Hannah actually tightened her grip and tried to lean more into me, moving just short of snuggling her cheek on my shoulder. Rather than look jealous or upset, mom only gave a smile. She probably felt relieved that I was getting along with Hannah too.
Although mom"s relationship with Hannah and Madison was strained, she really did love and worry about them. I had enjoyed enough pillow talk lying naked with mom that I knew quite a bit about her, not as a mother, but as a woman. She had a great many worries, worries that her daughters hated her, worries that I"d end up being scammed. I never had the heart to tell her about my night with Veris and her daughter. Mom would likely be furious, and she can be scary when she truly got angry. In some ways, I think mom believed she truly did have exclusive rights to my seed, and my c.o.c.k, and my body.
The maid came out and she had a pitcher of iced tea and chocolate biscuits. Hannah, Madison, and I attacked the biscuits while mom and Rose caught up. Although the other two girls were young and only half paid attention to the talking adults, I kept an ear open on their conversation. There wasn"t really much to it. Rose talked about how she traveled the world and worked for a traveling company. It turned out she was a science reporter, and often reported on ecological findings. Of course, there was no shortage of women in STEM in this world. It was much rarer for any men to ever become scientists or mathematicians. Since they had no pressure to become smart, and had free entrance into Academy, few men found meaningful jobs. They ended up trading favors (ie. seed) for secretary positions to high powered CEOs and the like. Basically, the role was flipped from my old world, with men being offered positions for s.e.x.
"So, yeah… this job has been good to me all these years, but I"m starting to think I ought to settle down." Rose was laughing and scratching the back of her head, but mom grew tense at these words.
Madison was looking bored like she wanted to be somewhere else, while Hannah had a biscuit in each hand stuffing her mouth until she looked like a squirrel. It was only I who was paying attention to this exchange.
"Is… that to say you wish to get pregnant?" Mom drank from her cup to hide whatever expression she made, and leaving those words up for interpretation.
Rose didn"t meet mom in the eye as she spoke, but she kept her voice chipper. "An old lay like me? We both know men don"t go for women over twenty-five. That"s why they get free access to the university. Every year over 18 a woman"s chances of being impregnated by a man drop. Now that I"m thirty-seven, I have less than a 1% chance of getting into a s.e.xual encounter. Even the government considers it a waste for men to use their seed on women my age. What was the slogan they told boys in school? If they"re over thirty, consider them dirty?"
"It"s not that bad!" Mom protested, although she had a complicated look on her face that seemed torn between wanting to comfort her friend and also chastise her.
Mom was likely thinking the same exact thing I was thinking. Rose didn"t come here just to reconcile with mom. She came to use mom as a contact to get to me. Just like my sisters would use me to find a man to impregnate them, Rose wanted to use her bond with mom to get mom to offer me. I wondered if mom was willing to do that. To me, I didn"t really mind that much. From what I heard, most men were even more irresponsible with where they stuck it, so impregnating a family friend isn"t so bad.
I still felt a little guilty over Veris and her daughter. I shouldn"t have given them my seed. However, I was too excited by the act of getting two women at once, something I had never had in my old life. In the end, it was the teenage me that won out. To this day, I still worried what they did with my seed. Did I have a baby now with one of them? Or more likely, was my sperm sold on the black market and now I have an illegitimate baby with some lesbian couple I"ll never meet. That"s when my mind clicked on a solution for the tenseness forming between Aunt Rose and Mom.
"Surely Aunt Rose has enough pull to get some from the government? And if they won"t support someone as prestigious as Aunt Rose, there is always the black market!" I declared.
Mom and Aunt Rose turned to me in surprise. Even Madison gave me a look, suddenly trying to remember the conversation that suddenly caused me to speak up so pa.s.sionately. This was a world where men speaking up and talking was considered an abnormality. Even now, Aunt Rose was treating my seed like it was mom"s permission to grant. Until I turned 16, I didn"t have much choice, and after I turned 16, I was stuck under government mandates. Basically, my seed would never be my own unless I formed a harem of sixty to a hundred women and made them all love me and want to remain in my life.
"Clyburn, right?" Aunt Rose gave me a smile. "That"s a very good idea. You"re such a smart boy for your age!"
I hid my own frown with a drink myself. Most boys my age where homeschooled by their moms. Without rigorous testing, and with few expectations, it shouldn"t be surprising that most men were much stupider than women. For a science reporter, Aunt Rose was used to her words being something that would go over a man"s head. Perhaps her own struggles with finding s.e.m.e.n weren"t so simple. Since she unconsciously seemed to look down on men. Naturally, an intelligent, forward, and blunt woman like Rose would put them off.
Mom was also looking at her with a frown, but it seemed to come from a place of not wanting her own lover to be talked down to. However, realizing she couldn"t speak up without hinting at our unhealthy relationship, she merely gave me an apologetic look. Rose"s comments weren"t said in malice. Quite the opposite, in fact, it felt like she was trying to b.u.t.ter me up. She must think one or two compliments were enough to get on a man"s good side. Either that, or she just didn"t think much of thirteen-year-olds. Either way, a part of me wanted to destroy her misconceptions.
"I never understood why they don"t just separate the seeds and engineer male babies." I muttered, as if I was speaking to myself. "Since sperm carries the X and the Y gene, men are responsible for deciding a baby"s s.e.x. It shouldn"t be difficult to isolate and separate the Y carrying sperm, and thus create male only sperm. Then it"s a simple matter of in vitro fertilization."
I pulled out every science term I knew. Was it in vitro or in vivo, I always forgot which was which. My business was actually a biotech firm, so I had taken a biomedical terminology cla.s.s in order to speak with rep doctors. Still, my biological knowledge didn"t go much past this. Still, it felt like I had dropped a bomb in the room. Mom was staring at me with her mouth open, and Rose had her eyes widened. Even Madison was staring at me like I just grew horns, although she also had an expression that said she really didn"t understand what I just said, and to hear it could just have easily been gobbledygook nonsense as something profound.
"are you interested in science?" Aunt Rose said wonderingly, her previous misconception clearly being disrupted.
I gave a little cough. "Ah… actually, I just read a lot of books from the library. In truth, I"m just repeating things I heard."
My words were partially true. It really was just things I had heard from others. As to my deep understanding of it, I had none.
Rose gave a nod. "Still, I"m impressed. I"ve met a few boys your age in the past, they are… ahem… nevermind that. As to your question, you speak of things only talked about in science fiction. If we could just take an egg out of a woman and fertilize it, that"s pure fantasy."
I c.o.c.ked my head curiously as my mom shot Rose a look that quieted her down. I was genuinely interested to see how men acted in this society of women. Were they agitated? Defiant? However, as I remembered that video I had seen, I realized I was better off not knowing. As to her answer, I was almost certain that our world could do exactly that. However, in a world where s.e.m.e.n was rare, it likely made it an expensive research material. It seemed odd to me that in a world full of women, it was reproductive research that was more inhibited. However, perhaps that is because this "curse" that inflicted the human race interfered with our capacity to research it. After all, to this day, no scientist could explain why our species didn"t breed equal men and women like most other mammals. When "magic" was a very real answer, and healing could be achieved with chants and potions, it was only natural that medical science lagged horribly.
"How about we get that cake?" Mom announced just as their conversation started to lag.
Hannah nodded excitedly, although she didn"t let go of my arm. As mom left the room, Madison shot Hannah a glare, but Hannah only held my arm tighter.
"You two… are close?" Rose asked with a smile, trying to fill the silence.
I could only shrug helplessly with a smile, while Hannah readjusted her grip. "It"s my birthday, I wish to hold brother. That is all."
Did Hannah feel threatened by Aunt Rose? That was the only thing I could think about as Madison frowned at us while Rose gave an awkward smile.
"You"ll be turning fifteen then. You excited about starting Academy?" Rose tried once again tried to spark a conversation.
"I"d rather start next year…" Hannah responded, lowering her head. "Brother will be starting academy next year."
"The boys and the girls won"t be together, Hannah." Madison sniffed. "Brother will be too busy picking women to impregnate to concern himself with us."
"Madison!" Aunt Rose gave Madison a shocked look while Hannah looked hurt.
"That"s…"
"It"s true…" Madison shrugged. "That"s how all boys are… you can just hope brother here will set you up with a man early and then we-"
"Madison, stop…" I spoke up this time, a little put off by her comments.
"Stop what?" Madison snapped. "Hannah needs to hear it. You"re not going to be there for her. The sooner she learns she can"t depend on you, the better!"
"You"re my sisters, you can always depend on me!" I declared. "We"re family!"
"You say that now because we"re the only women you know, but as soon as you go to Academy you"ll see all these pretty women and suddenly your sisters won"t matter anymore. That"s what all the other girls at school with brothers say. It"s just the truth!"
"I won"t do that!"
"Prove it!"
"Both of you, stop this!" The last voice came from mom, causing both of us to turn our heads.
It was at this moment I realized I had pulled away from Hannah and was now standing in the middle of the room. Both Madison and I were shouting at each other. Aunt Rose was flushed and looked at a loss of what to do. Meanwhile, mom was at the doorway holding a cake. It wasn"t one she made herself, but one she bought at a store.
"Prove it…" I muttered, breaking the silence, "Fine… you want proof?"
"Clyburn…" Mom said in a warning voice.
I turned to Aunt Rose, "I"ll do it…"
"Huh? What?" Aunt Rose looked around confused with a fl.u.s.tered look on her face, and even Hannah and Madison didn"t understand what I meant.
"You"re here for a reason, Aunt Rose. You didn"t stop by after all these years just to catch up with my mom. You want something."
"What?" Aunt Rose protested, giving mom a look. "What? No, I"m not… I mean… I didn"t… this is just…"
"We"re not stupid."
"Clyburn, stop!" Mom demanded angrily.
"You came here because you want to have a baby and I"m a fresh available source for s.e.m.e.n."
"Ah!" Hannah gave out a cry and covered her mouth, as if this was the first time she realized this to be true.
Madison remained there with her arms crossed, a frown creasing her pretty forehead.
"It"s no-not… I didn"t…" Aunt Rose, when confronted directly, was having trouble defending herself.
"There is no use denying it." I continued forward.
"Clyburn, this is something we can discuss l" Mom started.
"So, if you want a baby, I"ll give you a baby. You can live here. I want to be in my child"s life and I want to help my family. I don"t care if you"re a half-sister to Mom or whatever, you"re family-"
"Clyburn, right now, this is a bad time, so-" Mom cut in before Aunt Rose could respond.
"Why mom? Why does it matter? I"m going to have to make five women a month pregnant. That"s required of me even though I don"t want it! I hate this world that looks down on men. I want to be in my child"s lives! I want to know my baby"s mothers. Every one of them! I want to raise my babies. Why can"t we raise a baby in this mansion? She"s your sister, right?"
"Clyburn…"
"Give me a reason! Why can"t we raise a baby in this mansion?"
"Because we already will!" Mom"s voice cut into my tirade, causing me to look up questioningly at my tearful mother"s eyes for the first time to see the anxiety in them. "I"m pregnant, Clyburn. Your mother is pregnant!"