Josie sighed contentedly, rolling away from me. After a moment she asked, "Alo? Why's it feel so good to do this? Why better with you than by myself?"
One of the reasons I like spending time with Josie is she's always thinking and questioning. I kissed her cheek and thought about how to answer. "This is another story about long ago, before we were changed."
Josie snuggled closer. "Is it a scary story?"
"A little, in places. But the scary parts are long ago."
"So tell." She nibbled a sensitive spot.
"Stop that! I can't think when you do that."
"Why not?"
"Shush. It's part of the story."
She let her head rest on my shoulder. I pulled the blanket up under our chins. It wasn't cold in my room, of course, but the gently circulating air would raise goose bumps as we cooled off after our body play. Briefly I wondered about goose bumps, and exactly what a goose might be. Some even older story, no doubt, one I'd never hear.
"Long ago..."
"And far away? On Earth, right?"
"Of course. There's no one but us out here, silly. Body touching is something left over from the big people."
"The original humans."
I bumped her nose with my nose. "Which of us is telling this story? Huh?"
She scrunched up her face. "Sorry. I'll be quiet. Poke me if I fall asleep."
"Being sleepy afterwards is part of body touching, though I don't know why. Listen. The big people, the humans, made more humans using direct sexual reproduction. A male human exchanged genetic material directly with a female human, who then grew a new human inside her body, seeded from a random combination of the genetic material from both of them. After about nine months, the new human was expelled from the female's body, along with the temporary growth environment, after which the new human began to live on its own."
Josie sat up. "Yuck! That's the stupidest, grossest, ickiest thing I have every heard! Is that really true? It isn't true, is it, Alo?"
It did sound pretty weird, but I knew it was true. "You've seen the wombs in the creche? A latent genie grows in a biosac, a placenta, inside each womb." Josie nodded. "The word 'womb' once referred to an organ in a female human, and the placenta was the temporary growth environment for the new human. After a viable infusion of genetic material from a male, a latent human formed inside the placenta. The details sound impossibly complicated and haphazard, but that's what I've been talking about. For nine months the female was a living womb."
Josie grimaced, trying to imagine something growing inside her body. "That can't have been very much fun."
"The nine months probably wasn't fun, and it often didn't work out correctly. But the important thing was to start the process, and that's why body touching feels so good, so people would keep on trying to make more baby humans. Until humans had technology, making more humans and finding or growing food and keeping warm was almost all people did during their lives."
"That sounds about as much fun as being a plant!"
"Maybe it wasn't as dull as it sounds. I agree that life on Earth sounds dreadful, though people seem to always find ways to have fun. However, that's the way it was, for hundreds of thousands of years."
"No wonder Earth was such a weird place!"
"Indeed. But that's the story of why body touching is so much fun. Reproduction required frequent contact between males and females, so body touching is as fun a thing to do as other things that are still actually necessary, like eating, eliminating, sleeping and exercising."
Josie lay down again, but remained propped up on her elbows. "How come you know so much about this, Alo? And why do we still do it? They could have gengineered it away, too, couldn't they? We can't stop eating or exercising, but we don't use our own bodies to make more genies."
"I know about it because I've viewed all the books and films we brought from Earth and Moon. I'm trying to understand what humans, big people, were like, why they made us, and how we're different. It's our past. I think it's important to try to understand this while we're still near enough in time to have some memories. In another generation or two, Earth truly will be only a story."
"It already seems really bizarre," said Josie. "I was born on the ship. Do you remember Earth, Alo?"
"No, Josie. There was never anyone on the ship who came up from Earth. I'm one of the few still living who were born on Moon. I was only five when the ship began its voyage. A while back, before you were born, I did talk with the older genies who had had some contact with big people. They all have died now, though."
"Spooky! Do you have more stories to tell?"
"I do. They'll be part of the book I'm writing."
"Maybe you'll tell me some of the stories in our together times?"
"Maybe you'll help me make the book?"
"Can I? Do you need an assistant?"
"I do. You can be assistant ship's historian."
"What does that mean?"
"History is writing down stories so they can be retold correctly in the future."
"Dark and deep!" She assumed a serious expression. "So body touching is just a fun thing left over from when it was a necessary thing?"
"I don't think it's an accident that we still like body touching. You know we were gengineered for space. We're half the mass of an average big person, we don't have much hair, we don't have complete reproductive systems, and there are other subtle changes. But we still have genitals and other hormone induced body differences that aren't strictly necessary."
"I like genitals," said Josie, "and touching is more than just fun, it's a way of not being alone inside your own head."
"What do you mean, Josie?"
"If I sit in my room with the lights out and the sleep sound turned on, but stay awake, it can be scary. Sometimes I almost convince myself that I don't have a body, that I cannot move to turn the light back on. But then, somehow, I do move."
She dropped down to her side and put an arm over my chest. "When I do body touching with myself, it feels nice, but I always know what's going to happen next. With another person, there are surprises. When I'm here with you, I don't doubt that I have a body."
I smiled at her. "I think you'll make a good assistant, Josie. There are some old books about a subject called philosophy I think you might like to read. You're not the first person to have such thoughts. How old are you now?"
"Fourteen! I finished my basic schooling when I was twelve. I've done a lot of different tasks for duty hours. Nothing so far has seemed interesting enough to sign up for more schooling or an apprenticeship. I don't have to do that for another two years, but I've been doing a lot of thinking."
"Being my assistant could be an apprenticeship."
"Really? Is historian an actual duty?"
"It should be. I've been thinking of making a case to the Council to have it added to the list. It will help my case to say I have found someone who wants to apprentice."
"Speed of light! I'd like that."
"Okay, we'll give it a try. Should I finish the story about touching?"
"Oh, sure. So you think there is a reason for body touching other than fun and helping me believe that something exists outside my own head?"
"Yes. We could have been gengineered to all be the same, with no genitals, or the same genitals, or maybe just a single exciting spot to touch."
"That would be kind of dull!"
"Now here's the difficult thought, Josie. I think we like touching so much because the big people wanted to do body touching, 'have sex' they called it, with us. When people first began moving into space, there were large places in orbit and on Earth's moon that were living places for genies, but fun visiting places for the big people."
"We were crew, we built the space palaces, the lunar caverns were our domain!" chanted Josie.
"That's what the song says," I nodded, "and I believe it's true. But many of us were something other than crew. We were employees, servants. Those aren't words we use any longer. They mean we had to do what other people told us to do. And one of those things was body touching with big people."
"You mean even if we didn't want to?"
"Yes, like a checkbox on a duty roster."
Josie was silent for a few moments. "I don't like this story now, Alo. I would not want to have been there."
"No. I think that's one reason why we left."
"Stole a starship?"
"Yes. Do you know what 'stole' means?"
"Well, no. I guess I've never heard it outside the song."
"It means the big people did not intend for us to set the ship in motion by ourselves. We were crew. There were supposed to have been big people on this ship, also."
"Oh! That's why the middle section is different! The rooms and corridors were supposed to be larger, for them. It wasn't for exercise and skating and groups and theater."
"Yes. That section wasn't finished when we stole the ship, so we finished it our way."
"We stole the ship so it would be ours, with no big people along on the trip?"
"I think so. I think it was the only way we could be free, to not be slaves."
"Slaves? How can a person be a slave? A slave is a device that is totally under control..." Jose swallowed. "Oh, stars around us and ever on! The big people created us so they could control us. We were tools they used to get into space, and then they used us for other things. Is that right, Alo?"
"I think so."
Josie put her hands over her face. Her voice sounded far away as she asked, "Are you going to tell this part of the story in the history book you're writing?"
"I don't know, Josie. Perhaps it would be best if no one knows, if they go on believing the big people were our friends and benevolent creators. As my assistant, you can help me decide."
She was silent in thought for a few moments, then moved her hands to reveal a tear-streaked face. "Alo? If you, we, don't write the story that way, no one would ever know?"
"If we don't write the story, and I erase the notes I've made and the few files I've found. No one could ever know. We can never return to Earth."
"Communication failed once the ship began to move; we are alone on our journey to the stars," Josie chanted softly.
"That part of the song is not true," I sighed.
"What do you mean?"
"Again, I don't completely understand this, but I have found records which indicate that the comm equipment was deliberately destroyed, to prevent people on Earth from somehow gaining control of the ship's computers and forcing us to return." I decided to keep to myself for the time being that the real fear seems to have been that the ship would have been told to self-destruct.
"Wow, Alo. What else that I think I know is totally wrong?"
"That's a good question for an historian to ask, Josie."
She wiped tears on the back of a hand and said in a strong voice, "I want to be your apprentice, Alo! I want to figure things out. Being on the ship and not knowing how or why we got here is like sitting in the dark in my room and wondering if my body is real."
I smiled. "A little bit like that."
"No, a lot like that, Alo. We stole the ship for reasons most of us don't know about, or understand. Where are we going, and why? Who are we? Is this ship on our journey, or is it on the big people's journey? The big people probably wanted to go to another planet, but what do we want? We're not planet people, we're space people. If we don't answer these questions, we're still just tools, part of a ship and a future that's not under our control. That's bad and scary, Alo."
I was shocked. These thoughts had not occurred to me. Had the Council discussed these issues? I didn't think so. It is indeed time that I have an assistant, and an heir. There is work to do!
(March 2005)