Adams’ Apples
24 Starting Over
IT WASN’T MY FINEST HOUR. I’d wanted a child ever since we got married and Elizabeth kept rejecting the idea with a “Not Yet.” Then when I couldn’t have children, she’d become insatiable and determined to have a child. In the worst way.
“So, that’s why you wanted Evelyn and Jack to live here under our protection,” I sighed. “So you could seduce Jack and have his baby. How are you going to explain that to Evelyn? She trusted you.”
“You horrid animal!” Elizabeth snapped, going from sweet to harridan in 0.2 seconds. “I would never cheat on you! You unfeeling clod! If I’m pregnant, it’s yours.”
“How can it be mine? Doc! Are you saying the virus is spontaneously reversing itself?” I demanded of Dr. Simpson.
“Kindly refer to our daughter as ‘she’ and not ‘it!’ What kind of father are you going to be?” Elizabeth shouted.
“You’re sure it’s a she already? How do you know?” I yelled back.
“You wanted a daughter. Of course we’ll have a daughter.” A daughter. That was different than having a baby. Yes, I’d always wanted a little girl. I thought about baby Lily and me being her Uncle Ramsey as we danced around the room.
“For that matter, you said only if she’s a daughter, too. But how can we be sure?” I asked. I was definitely softening. Who really cared if the baby was mine or Jack’s? It wasn’t like I was being shorted in bed and Jack was in space.
“I’m not far enough along yet to get an ultrasound. We just need to have faith,” she said. I got near enough to pull her into my arms and hold her.
“I am going to be a terrible father, aren’t I? The first thing I do when I find out is accuse my wife of cheating. I know you wouldn’t cheat on me. I’m terribly happy we’re pregnant.”
“Oh, Ramsey, what are we going to do? They’ll have you tied up like Jack and Sheila will be collecting from you.”
“You are the only one who is going to collect anything from me. In fact, maybe I should make another deposit right now.”
“Oh, Rams, I love you.”
“I love you, Elizabeth.”
“Excuse us,” Doc Simpson said. “We should run a couple of tests.”
“I already peed on the stick,” Elizabeth said dreamily.
“I meant on Ramsey. I take it you gave him the invigorator I gave you,” Simpson said.
“The invigorator? You mean that piss and vinegar concoction you’ve been working on? I’ve never taken that,” I said.
“Well, that’s not exactly true,” Elizabeth said slyly. “I couldn’t get you to take it over Thanksgiving when we were in DC and everything was crazy. But then you and Jack came home and we celebrated the next weekend.”
“I remember getting sick that weekend.”
“I doctored your drinks with the solution,” Elizabeth said. “It worked.”
“You had to have been giving it to him for at least thirty days for it to potentially work,” Simpson said. “I’ll have to run tests on all my experimental subjects.”
“I knew I’d only get one chance, so I gave him the whole bottle that weekend,” Elizabeth confessed.
“You poisoned me?” I said.
“It just made you a little upset,” Elizabeth defended herself. “It was no worse than the kind of hangover you had the day after Jack left.”
“I felt like I was going to die,” I moaned.
“I’m surprised you didn’t,” Simpson said. “That had to be a near-fatal dose. Elizabeth, you should only dispense drugs according to the doctor’s instructions.”
“But look! It worked!” Elizabeth said. “We’re pregnant. He isn’t dead. We can have as many babies as we want!”
I gave a sperm sample—with Elizabeth’s kind help. Simpson went directly to his lab and verified my sperm was viable. Estimating the times of administration of the invigorator, time for sperm to mature in the epididymis, and the beginning of Elizabeth’s hormonal swings, Dr. Reynolds determined the fetus was only a month old. That meant we could keep the conception secret until Simpson managed to administer the superdose to his other experimental volunteers and repeated my success.
Now that Evelyn knew her husband was safe and orbiting, she moved back into their apartment to happily tend a growing Lily. She had spatial phone sex with her husband each day. He faithfully put at least one vial of sperm a day into the cryogenic chamber. As a special precaution, Simpson collected a vial of my sperm (with Elizabeth’s assistance) each day and placed it in cryogenic suspension as well. It didn’t seem to affect my ability to deposit more with Elizabeth on a regular basis.
Mattie continued to live in the guest room as happy to help redecorate ‘the baby’s room’ as she was answering my email in the basement office. And we actually made progress on my book while I continued to write local stories for the Orlando News. I still cringe each time Ed’s dark shadow falls across my desk.
“When are you going to break the big story,” Ed demanded.
“Yeah. About that, Ed. There are problems,” I started to explain.
“My office. Now,” Ed said as he walked away. Over the office door the world population counters continued to go down. I followed Ed inside.
“Chief, I don’t want to get caught up the way Jack was. If we break this before the invigorator is available to a mass market, I’d be the only subject on earth, just like Jack was. We don’t want to go through that,” I said.
“Mmmhmm. FDA.”
“They don’t even want to talk about it. Simpson is a backwater quack who hasn’t even received government funding for his research—their words, not mine—and they aren’t about to waste time testing all the solutions every crackpot in the world comes up with.”
“So, release the recipe.”
“Simpson wouldn’t get anything out of that.”
“What’s more important? His bank account or the human race?”
“Depends on who you talk to. If it was tested by the FDA and released through a pharmaceutical company, they’d make billions.”
“And how much would Dr. Simpson make of that? The great cures of the world like insulin and the polio vaccine were given away.”
“But they were tested and approved.”
“So, once people start making their own, the government will jump in and test it, too.”
“I’ll talk to Simpson.”
Doc Simpson was more than amenable to the prospect. He’d seen enough of what happened to Jack that he wasn’t eager to step into the public spotlight. Surprisingly, it was Mattie who solved the issue.
“We have the internet,” she said. “And Mr. Smith has the newspaper. If you can show successful impregnation and viable sperm in more subjects than Mr. Smith, you can simply release the data and the recipe in the newspaper and on the internet. From what you’ve described, a talented cook could mix the invigorator up in a blender. Drink it down and everything is back to normal.”
“What she says is true, Ramsey,” Simpson said. “The ingredients are all available in a grocery store.”
“Do you want this all associated with your name?” I asked. “There could be some kickback.”
“No. I do this for humanity, not for myself. Besides, if it’s misused or overdosed, there is a high possibility of death. That should slow things up a bit and I don’t want my name associated with that.”
“Then let’s put together everything that is needed to make a big splash. We should time it with the birth of our baby if we can show a lot of other pregnant people at the same time,” I said.
Almost a year to the day after Lily Adams was born to Jack and Evelyn, Jennifer Smith was delivered at Orlando General. The news was released in the hospital’s adjacent medical amphitheater where Jack and Evelyn joined Elizabeth and me for a press conference. Flanking us were two dozen pregnant couples. I was amused to find Colonel Humphrey Smythe and his wife, Kitty Muffley Smythe, proudly showing a baby bump. Sheila Meilleur Watkins and her husband, Sam, showed their pregnancy as did Mr. and Ms. Smith MIB.
Dr. John Simpson was on the stage as well, with his pregnant colleague, Dr. Sandra Reynolds. Finally, Mattie Baines smiled as she clutched a hunk of a guy to her, whom no one else in the extended family had ever heard speak. Mattie’s comment was, “I didn’t marry him for his smarts.”
I, of course, had the story ready to go before the conference so it broke on the AP before anyplace else and was complete with the exact formula for replicating the invigorator.
In a flash of brilliance, a fledgling packaging company had packaged the measured ingredients, all in individual containers, and distributed them to grocery stores nationwide. People could purchase exactly one dose and mix it in their blender. And since they were simply selling approved ingredients, there was no testing involved.
Three days later, China, Japan, Russia, and Great Britain all announced they had each developed their own elixir and it would be available commercially in the near future. At that point, SORDID, on behalf of the NRP and NIP, sued the governments of those nations for pirating their proprietary formulae.
The President of the United States appeared in a press conference on the following Friday as he prepared to ramp up his re-election campaign. He was flanked by his two daughters and his new son-in-law.
Important things happened this year. Very important. And I’m happy to say this office led in the development of those important things. Everyone got scared by the TesteVirus and fright caused them to freeze up. That’s what our enemies wanted. They wanted us to freeze up. Not get anything for our efforts to impregnate the nation. It was a plot to remove the virility of America.
But we didn’t let that happen. We created the agencies that solved this problem and invented the cure. A good cure. Mostly harmless. Don’t listen to the media trying to tell you it’s dangerous. Only about three percent of the men who try this cure will die. The rest will come through to father the next generation of Americans.
I put my own daughter on the line to advance this advancement. A scientific advancement. She’s making sure another generation of Muffleys is ready to carry the banner. We’re making America fertile again. We’re the greatest, most fertile nation on the planet.
To get this great cure for our sperm, all you need to do is sign a waiver that you hold the country, the president, and the party harmless if the cure doesn’t work for you or if you die from it. Think of what we’re getting for that little gesture. The greatest most pregnant country in the world. American fuckery will dominate the world again.
The world population counter continued to run backward until the time my daughter, Jennifer, entered high school. A new generation was taking up the population explosion. The boys born after the sterility event came out clean and viable. From what Doc told me, they didn’t have the increased output of the men who had lived through losing and regaining their virility. They were just normal.
It took time to disseminate the cure around the world. Some cultures were slow to accept the solution, referring to it as an affront to God. Others simply couldn’t afford the ingredients—the price of ammonia, vinegar, and tofu had risen dramatically, driving a huge gain in the stock market. Some populations, to the glee of the NRP, actually died out.
Every major pharmaceutical company had released its own branded version of the invigorator within three years, suffering through months of testing and FDA approval, claiming the $500 price for the elixir was because of the extensive research and development costs they had incurred.
I sat in my comfortable chair in the basement office going over the calendar Mattie had prepared for me. I recently splurged to buy a new chair that was the sitting equivalent of Smith Stadium. I had coffee at hand, a remote control for the television in front of me, and stacks of reference materials nearby. Much to Mattie’s disgust when she found out, Elizabeth had even joined me in the chair on some late nights. And when we were fully joined, we tended to smell up the room with sex.
There were speaking engagements on my calendar, editorial meetings with my publisher, and three charity events. My third novel had just hit the NYT Best Seller List. Jennifer would graduate from high school in four weeks. Two more years until Brian walked to Pomp and Circumstance. And then Elizabeth and I would be free again. We’d travel around the world and enjoy retirement while we were young enough to be mobile. Every day brought us closer and one of my shelves was now filled with brochures and travel books.
Mattie had quit when her first was born. By the time the second made an appearance, she’d realized that her quiet hunk of a husband was better at raising the children than she was and asked for her job back. For my part, I’d grown to depend on her so much that when she’d left, I very nearly didn’t get my first book finished. I was happy to have her back. My office was a mess and I was stuck in the middle of the outline for my second book and was overwhelmed by email messages I could no longer afford to ignore. I gladly gave her back her job and increased her salary as well. Since then I’ve breathed more easily and our families often got together casually for dinner or a play date. What a surprise that Sampson’s last name was also Smith.
Finally, everything was right with the world. I’d already done a plot outline of the next book and Mattie was working on research. I’d be speaking at the National Association of Newspaper and Radio Newsmen on Friday night and needed to rehearse my speech on ‘The New Morality of the Post-Sterilization Society.’ Life was good.
“Daddy,” Jennifer said as she reached the bottom of the stairs and looked at me. What a beautiful and smart girl. Not a trace of red hair nor a freckle on her skin.
“Hi, Sweetheart! Are you getting excited about graduating and being out on your own?”
“Um… Yeah… About that…”
“Oh, don’t feel rushed. We don’t lock the door on you the day after graduation. What’s on your mind?”
“I’m pregnant.”
I dropped my tablet where I was standing and stared at my daughter, who came directly into my arms for a hug.
Ah, fuck!
The End
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