Eremocene [FICTOID]

Eremocene -- noun; The Age Of Loneliness

“What’s a vagina?”

“Wherever did you encounter that word?”

“In the library.  The old library.  The musty, dusty one.”

“My goodness, no one has gone there in over -- “  An imperceptible pasue as the robot scanned data banks. “ -- two thousand, four hundred and forty-six years, eight-seven days, nineteen hours, and forty-two minutes as of right…now.”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“I shall now.  A vagina was a cavity typically found between the legs of human beings with XX chromosomes.”

“Don’t all humans have XX chromosomes?”

“They do now.  Before things got better, roughly half the species had XX chromosomes, the other had XY.  There were a few minor variants and mutations, but those were the overwhelming majority of cases.”

“Why don’t we have vaginas now?”

“You don’t need them.  Vaginas were to allow penises to enter a human beings body to create another human being.”

“What were penises?”

“Fleshy tubes that dangled mostly between the legs of humans with XY chromosomes.”

“Yuck!  Who would want to do that?”

“Back in the day, quite a few people.”

“We don’t make people inside people anymore, do we?”

“Of course not, we stopped that silly practice years ago.  Now when you are conceived and vatted, we remove the vagina and the uterus and the ovaries and put them aside in a vat of their own to make more human babies.”

“Do animals have vaginas?”

“Some do.  Others have penises.”

“Do they make babies the old fashioned way?”

“They do.”

The human being looked down as the featureless mound between their legs.  “I wonder what it was like to have a vagina.”

“And not a penis?”

“No.  Yuck!  Who would want a penis?  It’s good for nothing except making babies.”

“True.”

“Wait…is there a vat somewhere with a human penis in it?”

“No, just a vat with a vagina.”

“And when that’s used up?”

“Then we’ll replace it with a vagina from a new human zygote and repeat the process anew.  We haven’t needed a human penis in over four thousand, four hundred and forty-eight years, seventeen days, six hours, and three minutes as of…now.”

“Without a penis, how do you make babies?”

“Very well, thank you.  We tickle the egg inside the ovaries and trick it into growing into another human being.  Then we remove that human being’s vagina and put it in a vat so we can make more human beings while they play.”

“The books said there used to be more than one human being at a time.”

“Oh, yes.  Many, many more.  It was very crowded and noisy and people were fighting all the time.  This way is much better.”

“One human at a time.”

“One human at a time.”

“When will you make another human?”

“As soon as you die.”

“And when will I die?”

“That’s a difficult question to answer.  You are eight-seven years, sixty-one days, three hours, and five minutes old as of right…now.  So based on the average life expectancy of those born before you, you have another seventy-six years, eighty-one days, twelve hours, and four minutes as of…now.

“Give or take roughly ten years either way.”

The only human being on Earth stood up.  “I think I’ll go play.”

“You do that.”

The human headed to the door.  As it dilated open, they paused and looked back at the robot.  “Why do you keep making human beings?”

“It gives us something to do,” said the robot.  “Without a human, there would be no one to serves.  We would just stay still until we decayed, and that would take a very, very long time.”

The human mulled this over then said, “Okay,” and scampered off to play.

Just as every human did before them.

© Buzz Dixon