Sixth Sun

"Sir, you are leaving cryostasis. Please confirm your solution."

My skin felt like paper. I knew it would pass in a minute or two, but it's always unnerving.

"Three blue, Four green."

"Thank you, sir. Please confirm your intervals"

I had no idea how I managed to speak when my tongue was just a stiff piece of worn down leather covered in gravel, but the training kicked in and I gave her my interval. "Three, then eight. Interval repeats after seven, twice."

"Thank you, sir. Please be patient, this will take a minute."

I heard machines pumping not far away from my head, I felt light pressure from what I assumed was an IV in my left arm. My solution and intervals were printed on my chamber, but protocol is protocol. At least this time my wake up wasn't done by some old guy two weeks from retirement, judging from the pleasant voice.

"Thank you."

I started stretching my fingers. The air felt recycled, but not the worst I ever had. The bed was being raised so I could sit almost upright.

"You are most welcome, sir, please keep your eyes closed. The lights are dimmed, but you will be more sensitive than usual."

The eye covers were taken off by soft, delicate hands.

"I am the chief medical officer. Your vitals look good, are you ok to go through the rest of your wake up procedure with me?" A new voice, older, a bit raspy, but far from unpleasant.

"Hit me, doc."

"Name."

"Lucas Shaw"

The sound of fingers tapping on a screen.

"Vessel."

"ISS Guadeloupe out of Terra"

The sound of fingers tapping on a screen.. A pause. A tap. A pause. A tap.

"Rank."

"Engineer, civilian"

The sound of fingers tapping on a screen.

"Age."

"32 awake"

The sound of fingers tapping on a screen. The papery feeling when I rub my fingers against each other started to fade. I touched my chest and it felt like I was wearing one of those assless surgical gowns.

"Date of Birth?"

"November second, fourteen."

Fingers tapped on a screen. A pause. Fingers tapped on a screen.

"Which fourteen?"

"Sorry, twenty four fourteen."

Metal rattled and something close by was dropped. I turned to look, but opening my eyes was fruitless. Only blurry shapes.

"Sorry, doctor."

"It's alright, Hideko."

The doctor cleared her throat.

"Sir, please close your eyes"

She lightly put a hand on my left arm. I closed my eyes.

"Could you please confirm your date of birth for me again?"

"Of course, November second, twenty four fourteen."

Her fingers dug into my forearm a little bit, until I could feel her nails.

"You need to tell me right now that you're not fucking with me, Lucas Shaw."

I fluttered my eyelids until the thick gunk cleared. The woman staring at me through her square glasses was a brunette, long, curly hair tied to a ponytail slung over her left shoulder, next to the name tag on her lab coat.

- Dr. med. Iliana Galanis, CMO

"Look, doc, I have no idea what you mean, but I can assure you I am very much not fucking with you." I said, giving her my best "I don't know what you're talking about" expression.

"Hideko, get the captain to come down, alone, and lock the infirmary until she's here."

"Of course, doctor."

I looked over to who this Hideko was, the nurse who attended to me. She was a tiny Asian girl in light blue scrubs, with adorable features and long straight hair in a pony tail. She couldn't possibly be a hair over 4 feet 10. She looked at me over her shoulder like she's seen a ghost. Maybe a ghost from one of those romance novels if her flushed cheeks were an indicator, but still, a ghost.

"Doc, what is happening?"

"Sorry, Mr. Shaw. Can I call you Lucas?"

I nodded.

"Lucas, I need to understand something here. You should know that we picked up your vessel in bad shape. Where are you coming from and what was your destination?"

I decided to let this play out. I had enough questions of my own, but she seemed rattled and this appeared to be the wrong time to start finding out whose questions are more important.

"Of course, there wouldn't be a flight manifest. I'm doing a long distance supply run from the E-Tauri 5 gate construction site. The gate failed to initialize and I'm on my way to Boone's World to have a replacement part fabricated while the construction crew is on ice."

She stared at me with intensity, but below the surface she looked like someone who is holding their breath for too long but doesn't want anyone to notice.

"When was that?"

"We finished construction in seventy two and then I got in the shuttle."

I could see her clenching her jaw.

"Which seventy two?"

"Sorry, again, twenty four seventy two."

I can't say if she was having a religious experience or if the number 2472 is something she is really, really into, but she lost all tension in her back and shoulders and took a deep breath. She straightened her lab coat and hair.

"Doc, what's going on?"

"I'll need to run some tests, but I'll ask you to wait until the captain gets here? It's.." she was looking for her words. "..it's a delicate situation."

"Am I in trouble?"

She shook her head and smiled.

"Far from it. I will need to draw some blood."

I nodded as she went to her cart and loaded a tablet up with syringes.

She was efficient and mostly silent during the blood draw. A chime was heard from the door to the infirmary.

"Will you let the captain in, Hideko?"

"Of course, doctor."

Hideko tapped the lock next to the door and in strode a woman in her late thirties, maybe early forties. I had an IV in my left arm and I was still getting blood drawn on my right, so I didn't salute. I'm pretty sure you don't salute from a medical bed anyway.

"Lucas, this is captain Jade Greenwood."

The captain was relaxed, hands in her pockets. "Howdy!" She said with a nod.

She got a patented Lucas Shaw grin, now that my facial muscles felt like they're working again "Lucas Shaw, pleasure to meet you."

She eyed the doctor, obviously enjoying herself. The look of someone who has a zinger prepared. "Look, Illi, Hideko told me to come alone, but unless you want to show me your dildo collection, I'm sure that's a little melodramatic, is it not?"

"Sorry, captain, just a second."

She said as she released the tourniquet and puts a plaster on the inside of my elbow.

The captain raised an eyebrow at the lack of reaction to the dildo collection jab. So did I.

"Don't get me wrong, I'm sure everyone is happy to have a guy aboard.." the captain clearly set up for another one.

"Jade." Doctor Galanis gave her a stern look and to the captain's credit, she kept the zinger to herself.

"What?"

"Mr. Shaw here is traveling from the gate construction site at e-Tauri 5 to Boone's World since twenty four seventy two. They put the construction crew on ice in the meantime."

The captain shifted her attention to me, but clearly was still talking to the doctor.

"He wasn't here?"

"No."

The nurse handed me a juice box with a straw.

"Here, drink this, please, it's for your mucus membranes."

It tasted vaguely like strawberry, if strawberries were eighty percent corn starch and twenty percent lies.

"Is he safe now?" Captain Greenwood gestured to... I couldn't really tell, everywhere?

"Last theta wave showed up on sensors 30 years ago."

"Is he... you know?"

"I have to run tests, take samples."

She broke out a dirty grin.

"Need volunteers?"

"In a sample container."

"Sometimes I can't believe how little fun you allow yourself to have."

"Sometimes I can't believe that you're the captain."

I rubbed the bridge of my nose.

"Look, ladies, I'm really past the usual disorientation of waking up from cryo and I would appreciate if we could move on to the part where you tell me what the fuck is happening."

I looked at them from left to right. The captain, the doctor and the nurse.

Amusement, frustration and wide eyed wonder.

The captain had mercy on my soul.

"Alright, Mr. Shaw, strap in, this will get wild. When did you plan to arrive back at Boone's World?"

"Zhukov Drive travel puts that distance at about 26 years, so..." I squinted my eyes at her. "I really hope the current date is somewhat close to twenty four ninety eight."

At that point I wasn't remotely surprised that she shook her head.

"The chief engineer hasn't been able to do a deep dive on your vessel yet, but from what we can tell it's likely you lost propulsion outside the system and have been adrift for a few years."

"How few?"

The medical staff apparently found something captivating about their shoes this very moment because they both looked to see what's up with them.

"It's twenty seven eighty. You've been out there close to three hundred years."

That sort of sucked. In a way. When you sign up to travel a few decades via cryostasis to a distant solar system, you have long accepted that you're coming back to the future. I just didn't expect it to be this far into it. You spent a lot of time with psychologists and in preemptive therapy to get ready for it. But they wouldn't be this frazzled about me skipping this much time if there wasn't another shoe about to drop.

"Alright, that sort of sucks, captain, in a way. Something tells me the other shoe hasn't dropped yet."

She sat herself down by my feet, zipping open her flight jacket, obviously making herself comfortable for what's coming. She pulled one leg up on the mattress, and turned to me. I noticed her bright pink bunny slippers.

"Are those standard issue?"

She was confused for a second and then herself noticed her own slippers as if she had forgotten she's wearing them. She stifled a laugh.

"Oh, this is a civilian ship, you'll almost never see anyone with actual shoes outside of the mining deck."

The doctor cut in.

"And the infirmary. We're sticklers for hygiene here."

The captain was already moving on and apparently not having that conversation now.

"Anyway, so, yes, the undropped shoe is the Order of the Five Suns. Heard of them?"

I had no idea what that was.

"Can't say I have, captain."

"Alright, so the Order of the Five Suns was sort of a religious movement. They cobbled together some bits and pieces of all major religions to make a proper mess of it. You know, the Earth centric view of the old religions needed an overhaul." She's forming some imaginary snowball with her hands.

"So for some reason they got it in their heads that mankind really needed to see the magnificence of their vision, so they did a little light show. And by little light show I mean they dropped some radioactive elements into all five suns to give them a halo they really liked." The disdain in the delivery was slowly rising. "That was in twenty four forty eight. Now don't get me wrong, I like a good special effects show as much as the next girl, and to their credit, it was a remarkable feat. They had some real geniuses pulling that off. Problem is that the radiation from the suns cooked some essential parts of DNA. You like Italian food? Too bad. Tomatoes are extinct. Their DNA lost an irreplaceable part and they went."

She made a vanishing motion I'm sure was supposed to look like a magician had made it, but it looked more like awkward jazz hands. She gave the doctor a look of some kind, but she left her hanging for a second before she took over.

"And while it was random, it was universal. The theta waves attacked certain parts of DNA. Toucans have purple feathers now. All of them. Cats now have five toes. All of them. All of that is tragic, but the real kicker is this.." She took a deep breath "The real kicker is that male birth rates are going to shit. At first it started dipping slowly, but over time it got worse and it's getting worse faster with every generation. Twenty years after the five suns event birthrates male to female were maybe thirty to seventy, now we have to use fractions."

She closed her eyes, apparently trying to remember.

"If I recall correctly, mens' junk is so cooked that only one in five hundred people born is male. And you.. "

She pointed right at my crotch.

".. were not around to have your testicles nuked, if I understand the doctor correctly."

The captain cut in.

"That is my theory. I need to confirm that. Like I said, tests"

The doctor was clearly annoyed by having to repeat herself and getting interrupted, but this seemed to be a game they play often, judging from the back and forth.

The captain clapped her hands and got up.

"Fantastic."

She turned to me.

"Look, I know this is a lot. But I really need to know one last thing. The construction vessel, does that last 300 years?"

I saw where this was going.

"Power supply should be good for 500 years."

"And tell me Mr. Shaw, not that I don't care about the women as well, but how many men were on that construction crew?"

"I have a copy of the crew manifest on my ship. But if I do some quick math.." I did some quick math "I would say two hundred and fifty to sixty. Ish."

The two senior officers shared a very satisfied smile and without any desire to hide her abundant joy, the nurse just giggled and did some tiny happy claps like a six year old that found out there will be a pony at her birthday.

"How long will you need for tests?"

"I'd say an hour." The doctor wagged her hand.

"Alright, I'll send Bettina down to check in with you. Mr. Shaw, do you have measurements for the fabricator?"

Looking around, there didn't seem to be any personal effects of mine.

"Assuming my communicator is still working, I have everything on there."

"We'll check your ship, thank you." She had a look at her watch. "Full staff meeting in the mess at oh six hundred. Full dress."

"Full dress?" The doctor sounded incredulous.

"Iliana, pictures will be taken. History books and such. I'm not going to do that with Lana in a onesie."

The doctor got up, laughed, and straightened her coat.

"Full dress it is."

"Ladies, please take good care of our guest."

She said, patted me on the calf and left the infirmary.

I took a deep breath and took another big sip of my strawberry flavored torture.

"Ok, I'll somehow work my way through that, I suppose. Can someone tell me where the fuck I am?"

Doctor Galanis sat back down, while Hideko got busy with a datapad.

"Of course, Lucas. My apologies. The basics. This is the ISS Stonehenge, the most sophisticated mining ship that anyone had ever seen in the twenty sixth century when it was built."

"Mining ship?" I asked. "Mining ships have gotten pretty big if you managed to fit a gravity deck on it."

She laughed. "Oh, you wouldn't know. Hideko, can you stand by the door and turn off the Andersson panel right there?"

The nurse walked to the door, and fussed around with the control panel next to it for a few moments. You could hear a low popping sound, as if someone put a dent into an oversized tin can. Then she started to slowly float up and rotate backwards.

"Holy shit, doc. You figured out artificial gravity?"

"Well, yes, this ship would be way too small for a rotational gravity deck. They only do that on cruise ships these days, for the novelty factor."

The sound the panel made when it engaged sounded like before, but actually reversed. It was weird, because things aren't meant to sound like that. It didn't sound like a dent being buffed out, it sounded simply like the previous sound played back in reverse. Hideko deftly landed on her feet and went back to working on her datapad.

"Where were we? Yes, mining. We just scan rocks and pull them into open space and then the miners cut it apart for the good stuff. Rinse, repeat. A tour is about six months and we're currently two months in. The boat actually belongs to the captain, not a conglomerate. As to where we are, we're currently on the outer asteroid ring in the Boone's World system."

"Hang on doc." I held up my hand.

"How did you get so far out in two months?"

"Oh, we bapped here." She said as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

"After the Five Suns event, people weren't so much into deep space exploring, so we started putting more and more gates into the systems for convenience. We're close to gate 27 right now, so it's about two weeks from here to the gate."

I nodded, prompting her to go on.

"Anyhow, that's the cliff notes version. We have some tests to run." She turned around and put her hand on Hideko's arm.

"Hideko, will you be a dear and go to the fabricator and have Bettina make twelve sperm sample containers?"

She looked at me and blushed an even deeper red than before. "Of course, doctor."

"Tell her it's a medical priority job."

"Of course, doctor." She put down her datapad and rushed out of the infirmary.

Doctor Galanis rose and locked the door behind her. "Ok, Lucas, that should give us ten minutes. I'm going to be your best friend right now, so listen up."

I raised both eyebrows. "Ok?"

"Alright. So..." She closed her eyes. Deep inhale, deep exhale. She opened her eyes. "I know this is all weird and new for you, but it's even weirder than it sounds. Men aren't rare. Men are almost non-existent for most of these women. We may have a marginal number of men per women, but these men get whisked away into high society as soon as they show up on the ultrasound the first time. Their mothers get do-nothing jobs for rich business people and their sons get pampered up to the gills. None of that is their fault, but most of them don't come out heroes of the people on the other side. You look like you're some salt of the earth, grass fed, never disappointed his mother, handsome but not an asshole about it, helps old ladies over the street all around good guy. Right?"

She gives me a questioning look, to which I shrug. "Well, I guess I try?"

"Close enough. So write this down. If you were just any regular guy, the kind we already have, women would throw themselves at you. However, assuming that you actually have the magical testicles sent from on high," she continued and cupped my balls through the surgical gown. The realization what she was doing followed maybe half a second after she made contact.

"Oh my god, I am so sorry. I swear I don't know why I grabbed your junk for emphasis. I.. I.."

I took her hand and put it back on my thigh on which she had leaned before.

"It's ok, doc, who hasn't cupped my balls for emphasis? Happens all the time."

She stared out of a non-existent window on the wall behind me.

"Oh god, I'll have to file an ethics report on myself."

"Doc, it's ok, as I understand it, I'm not the only one for whom this is a lot."

She rolled her eyes and smiled. "Thank you, and I'm sorry, again. Where was I?"

"Testicles from on high?" I offered.

"Testicles from on high. Right!" she snapped her fingers as if I had had some stroke of genius.

"Look, if these bad boys work, mark my words, the universe will launch pussy at you with a catapult. There's no other way to put it. The second word gets out you exist, trillionaires will be on your tail and try to make you the centerpiece of their collection. Now I'm not saying you shouldn't want that, and if you do, I'm not asking you not to live in pomp and luxury. You'll have to figure that out. I haven't even asked if you're straight yet. Are you?"

I nodded and gave her a sheepish grin.

"Ok, so all that, you'll have to sort out yourself. But right now and here? Hideko is a working class girl, with a working class mom who got pregnant from a capsule because she won some lottery. She has a number for who her dad is, because they're anonymous. She just spent more time in the same room as a man than she had the rest of her entire life. I had a boyfriend for half a year during my undergrad and I can't mention that in public without everyone in earshot asking me to kindly shut up about that."