Daughters of Darwin

It took Mark a moment to realize what he had just heard Theresa say. Then it took him yet another moment to understand the meaning of it, and then the implications. He opened his mouth to reply, closed it again, stared at her, looked at Mona (wearing one of her mischievous smiles again), then back at Theresa. He had no idea on how to react to that.

Eventually, he decided on just a "What?"

"I think the right thing to say would be 'Hello, Theresa'", Mona laughed, "wouldn't it?"

"Come on, it's a lot to process," Theresa defended Mark. "Give him a minute, mom."

That final little word was too much. "Wait, 'mom'?" he gasped. "Why are you calling Mona your mom?"

In the background, Stefanie chortled. "Because she is her mom, knucklehead," she said. "Theresa is the daughter you gave Mona."

"But how can- That's impossible!" Mark looked at both women before him again, one tall and willowy, one of average height and buxom. They had quite different facial features, and one wouldn't really have considered them related. Of course, what really made Stefanie's statement impossible was the fact that both of them seemed to be around the same age - if anything, Theresa looked a year or two older than Mona.

"It's still true," Mona replied, her voice suddenly much softer as she positioned herself at Theresa's side and put an arm around her daughter's waist. "This is our child, Mark. Yours and mine. And I'd say she came out beautifully, don't you think?"

Theresa huddled closer to her mother while still keeping her eyes fixed on Mark. "I think he's starting to get it," she said. "Give him another minute to realize how much I look like him."

Raising an eyebrow, Mark took a closer look at her. Could this woman really be his daughter? She did have pitch-black curly hair like he did, and her eyes shared the same medium-brown tone with his. And then there was the overall shape of her face too, and the delicate-looking cheekbones that showed in most of Mark's pictures from junior high. She was right, there was quite a bit of similarity, but still...

"Okay, explain it," Mark said, deciding that he was done with figuring things out when he could just be asking. "How is it possible that you're my daughter with Mona when we only just met a few weeks ago?"

"You already know that we're born only four weeks after we're conceived," Theresa answered. "We grow super-fast in our mothers' bellies. But we don't stop with that when we're born. We're able to fully mature within another four, sometimes eight weeks, and that only ends when we reach the physical age of nineteen."

Mark stared at her in disbelief. "So you're saying... you're pretty much just a few weeks old?"

Shaking her head, Theresa chuckled lightly. "No, you got that wrong. I'm nineteen years old. I just went through those nineteen years a whole lot faster than most people you know."

"I suppose you're now wondering how this is biologically possible," Naira joined the conversation. You're wondering where all that body mass comes from in just a few weeks, and how on earth she has learned to walk and talk and form coherent sentences in that short time. Am I interpreting that expression on your face correctly?"

"Pretty much," Mark said. "I see a woman here who definitely looks like she could be nineteen but who's telling me she was conceived just this summer. That's- Well, it's a lot to get my head around."

Naira nodded. "It's the most amazing part of our biology. Until maturity, our metabolisms are capable of working over two hundred times faster than those of 'normal' people." She drew quotation marks with her fingers upon the word 'normal'. "So we really go through those full nineteen years of physical development, only at a highly accelerated rate."

That still left more than a few questions open, Mark thought. "But how would a tiny baby even eat enough to grow so quickly?" he asked. "And how would changing diapers even work at that speed?"

"A valid question," Naira answered, giving scathing looks to the other women who were unanimously giggling among themselves now. "But the answer revolves less about the how and more about the what of eating. You see, the key to it all is in what we feed our baby girls. Now, in your experience, what do babies have for breakfast, lunch and dinner?"

"Well, milk," Mark said. "Mother's milk- Wait! So what you're saying is that the mother's milk you're producing-"

Naira nodded. "Bingo. That's what makes our baby girls grow so well. It contains a stupendous amount of energy, plus all nutrients, vitamins and other essentials one needs to become healthy and strong. Our bodies are able to convert almost all of it into mass - there's very little waste. And to answer your earlier question, until we're fully mature, we need to have our diapers changed - or go to the toilet - about sixty or eighty times altogether. In around four to eight weeks of real-time."

Things were slowly coming together in Mark's mind, though something seemed to be odd about the explanation he had just heard, and when it finally hit him, his eyes grew wide. "But for that all to work- Are you saying you're breastfeeding your daughters until they're nineteen?!"

"Yeah, that's pretty weird," Mona chimed in. "You're a teenager, you have all these interesting new things going on with your body, you'd really like to try it all out, and then it's dinnertime and it's off to mommy's breast." She looked over to Tanya. "No offense, mom."

"None taken," Tanya smiled, "and yeah, I can relate to that. I felt pretty much the same when I was still growing up. But that's the way it is."

Mark shook his head. "Breastfeeding teenagers," he mused. "I really have a hard time imagining that. I can't even picture you as teenagers-"

To his surprise, Mona giggled. "You never drew the connection, did you?" she asked.

"What connection?"

"You saw me once when I was fourteen or so," she said. "The first time you came to the safehouse. I was just outside stretching my legs, and you gave me the scare of a lifetime when you suddenly showed up there."

Mark's eyes widened. "So that girl out there was you!" he said. "Fuck! Sure, now that you're mentioning it, that was totally you! How could I not have seen that?"

Naira nodded. "You see, our breast milk is pretty much the biggest of our secrets", she said. "It's why we're able to develop so quickly - and not just physically. It also stimulates our mental growth, and that's the part that's truly amazing: Our breast milk contains all the knowledge we need to start out into this world."

Now she had entirely lost Mark. "Uh, what?" he blinked at her. "What do you mean, your breast milk 'contains knowledge'?"

"I'm speaking in layman's terms, of course," Naira explained, "but it's not that far from the scientific truth. Our breast milk contains substances that form the brain in a certain way. It creates specific connections between brain cells that result in knowledge of all sorts. Some of it is very broad knowledge - pretty much a general high-school-level education. There's also all sorts of basics in there - how to walk, how to jump, more than a few sexual techniques..." She chuckled a little. "But there's also everything about us - who we are, what we are, where we come from and what our goals in this world are. Once we mature, we can pretty much start the lives of young adults without having to spend any further time on school. Though some of us choose to advance beyond that and get a degree."

"Wow." Mark was impressed. "So you're saying one could pretty much learn all there is to know about you - and a few things beyond that - by just drinking enough of your breast milk?"

Naira shook her head. "It's not that simple," she said. "Our breast milk is set up to fully develop the brain of a newborn, not fill the brain of an adult with information. If you're already grown up, there are already billions and billions of connections inside your head, and the substances in our breast milk begin to overwrite them. As you can imagine, that has a few heavy side effects. Hallucinations. Headaches. Fever. Your brain resists the changes, quite violently. It's not a pleasant experience. And it changes some of your biochemistry permanently." She made a short pause. "You already know that, though."

Mark's eyes widened. "You're saying- The shake?! The shake was your breast milk?"

"It wasn't MY breast milk in particular," Naira smiled, "or rather not just my breast milk. Stephanie, Tanya, Mona and I, um, mixed it together for you."

"There was a little bit from each of us in there," Stephanie grinned.

That revelation was just a bit too much for Mark. With a heavy sigh, he sat back down on the bed. "Breast milk," he said. "I passed out from drinking breast milk."

With a sympathetic look on her face, Tanya walked over to him and sat down by his side, putting her hand on his leg. "Don't worry," she said, "as far as we know, that happens to everybody who doesn't share our biology. Normal bodies cannot bear the speed the milk tells them to run at. Oh, and by the way, it wasn't the first time you had our breast milk."

"It wasn't?" Mark looked at her, then his eyes slowly moved down her naked chest. "Oh, I get it! The first time we met, right? You told me not to touch you and just let me do whatever you wanted to me, but I managed to get a quick suck from your titty-"

"And you got a few drops of my breast milk into your mouth," she nodded, "since I had just started breastfeeding Mona at that time. It wasn't enough to get your metabolism into overdrive, but the stuff that alters your brain seems to have worked anyway. At least that's the only way you could have learned of the existence of the safehouse."

Naira approached them again, turning towards Mark. "To continue with our biology lesson," she said, "let me tell you what happens to us when we grow up without our special mother's milk."

Mark turned his attention to her. "Oh? Now how does that work?"

"Not quite as fast," Naira smiled. "Without the breast milk boosting our metabolisms, we grow up the same speed as any other girl. We can just live on formula, and later on normal food. If we're not given our special milk, we even lose the ability to metabolize it fast after a month or so. We then need nineteen real years to advance to the age of nineteen, and we go through a normal childhood. But then we become teenagers - and things start to get difficult."

"Yeah, I can imagine that," Mark said. "Even normal teens do strange things when their hormones go bonkers - I still remember a bit of the shit I did when I was that age. But in your case, with your supercharged hormones..."

Nodding affirmatively, Naira crossed her arms. "It's usually not a problem because when we're breastfeeding, we're only in that state for a week or so. There's just not enough time to cause much trouble. However, you can make a whole lot of bad choices if you have six or seven years of time for that. Especially taking into account that if we do get pregnant as teenagers, we still give birth within just a few weeks. Needless to say, that opens an entirely new can of worms - especially if you have no idea your body works that way."

Tanya gently squeezed Mark's leg. "Good thing that rarely happens," she said. "We try to take care of our family. Some of us even abducted a girl from her foster parents, decades ago, to make sure she could give birth and raise her kid safely. Needless to say, we were taking some pretty big risks there."

"And speaking of risks," Naira continued, "here's the last thing about our biology you must know about. I already told you that if one of us has several daughters from you, they'll all be identical twins, remember?"

"Yeah, that was sorta hard to forget," Mark nodded. "Like, how my DNA and yours will combine in exactly the same way every single time."

Naira nodded enthusiastically. "And that's where this last thing comes from too," she explained. "See, the way our bodies create life is very different from how it is in 'normal' people. It's a fascinating process, but it's more prone to errors than the way a sperm cell and an egg usually combine. And because it is already a little error-prone to begin with, very dangerous things can happen when it's given the wrong genetic material to work with."

Mark raised an eyebrow. "And what would 'wrong genetic material' be?"

"That would be genetic material from our own families," Naira said. "You see, we're very liberal about our own sexuality. We enjoy our bodies, and we don't even need to invest years of time to have children, so we can be pretty relaxed about almost everything. But if there's one thing we absolutely cannot have, it's an incestuous relationship. A child born from that could be..." She shrugged. "In any case, it's too dangerous. And that's why every one of us tells her children who their father was, so that they can avoid accidentally having a daughter with him."

"Okay, important safety tip, I see." Mark looked to Theresa. "I suppose since most of you never meet their fathers in person, you're getting told quite a lot about them."

Theresa nodded. "Mona told me a lot about you. Though..." She smiled with a hint of lewdness, and Mark suddenly saw the family resemblance between her and her mother. "Some things she told me about you didn't quite sound as though she wanted to stop me from having sex with you."

Mark gave her a wry smile back, but at the same time, he could feel Tanya getting tense next to him. There seemed to be something about this entire topic that apparently unsettled her, to the point of looking down in what to him looked like shame. "Hey," he turned to her, "everything okay with you?"

"Not quite," Stephanie said. "As I told you, Tanya goofed up, and maybe you can already imagine in what way."

"I think Tanya can answer for herself," Mark shot back at Stephanie before turning his attention back to the woman who had been his first connection to this strange family he was now a part of. "It's fine," he said. "What happened? You can tell me."

Tanya didn't look up. "I goofed up," she parroted Stephanie's words. "I- I wasn't careful enough, and now you..."

Gently putting an arm around Tanya's bare shoulders, Mark pulled her a little closer. "Just tell me what's going on," he softly encouraged her. "I won't judge you."

"It's..." Tanya finally met his gaze. "The woman you know as Madeline. The one you... met recently."

"Yeah, the one who's giving us all that trouble. What's up with her?`"

Tanya took a deep breath. "Her real name," she said, "is Marcia. She's our daughter."

***

That revelation had been the straw that broke the camel's back. Mark thought he had been ready for everything, but after what Tanya had revealed to him, he had needed a drink, and since he hadn't eaten in two days, a breakfast too. Fortunately, the mansion was well-equipped in both respects.

An hour later, he was sitting in the salon downstairs, freshly showered and clothed, and Tanya was at the table with him. She had put on a casual sweat suit and watched him finish his plate. The others had given them some space, correctly assuming that this was a topic the two would want to discuss among themselves only. Now, Tanya was just silently looking at him, waiting until he was ready to talk.

Eventually, Mark turned his attention back to her. "Alright," he said, "so I've been fucking my own daughter, and I might have given her a child. You said that was because you 'goofed up'."

"Yeah," Tanya muttered. "Sorry."

"Maybe you could explain how a 'goof-up' would lead to this?"

Tanya slowly started to talk, rather hesitantly. "When we grow up," she said, "we usually learn all we need to know from drinking our special breast milk. However, there's a few things the mothers teach their daughters in addition to that. One of these things is the identity of their fathers. We don't usually make a big deal about that - we're just supposed to tell them who they are so they can avoid accidentally getting in touch with them."

Mark nodded. "Makes sense to me."

"Of course, all of us know that it's forbidden to seek them out, let alone try to... mate with them." She slightly blushed while using that expression. "And pretty much all of us live by that rule. It's one of the very basic tenets of our family. However, even though we all share the same knowledge, we don't all think and feel alike. Our personalities are different from one another. And sometimes, though very rarely, one of us may feel... attracted by what's forbidden."

"Attracted by the thought of seducing their fathers, you mean," Mark said.

Tanya lowered her gaze. "It really doesn't happen much," she explained, "but we all know it can happen, and we're supposed to watch out for signs of it. Signs like if they're asking a lot of questions about their fathers, or if we notice them trying to get in touch with them. There's a protocol for that situation too: we notify one another, and we all work together to get the daughter in question back in line. With gentle persuasion, if possible, but we've also had to lock up one of our own for a few days or even weeks, and sometimes even brought to another place, as far away from their father as possible."

With a frown, Mark shook his head. "That doesn't sound like something you'd do to a family member."

"It's an extreme reaction," Tanya agreed, "but as I said, it rarely happens, and it's done to avoid a possibly devastating outcome. The genetic defects that can happen in incest are so severe for us, we need to avoid them, come what may." She sighed. "Unfortunately, I didn't do my part in that."

"Then what exactly did you do," Mark asked, "or maybe, what did you not do?"

It took Tanya a moment to answer. "It's a little bit of both," she said. "First of all, I told Marcia way too much about you. I told her how the two of us met, how you found out about us and the safehouse, how Stephanie established the rules between you and us, and-" She looked at Mark with an apologetic look in her eyes. "And I also told her that you're a very special kind of lover, one who really cares about his woman enjoying her time with him."

Sighing, Mark buried his face in his hands. "And you told her that despite knowing that all of you have a very active sex drive. Beautifully done, Tanya."

"Just to make that clear," Tanya added, "I did that because I already had the suspicion Marcia felt some kind of urge to get to know you. Her reaction to hearing about you was, well, pretty strong. Even the most harmless stories of you would make her listen with wide eyes, and I thought she was maybe fantasizing about you. That's why I told her the dicey stuff to, so that I would be able to get a stronger reaction out of her and be absolutely certain."

"And?" Mark looked at her expectantly. "What conclusion did you come to?"

"That she was indeed in danger of getting attracted to you." Tanya took a deep breath. "So I did what I had to. I told Tess to keep an eye on your e-mail account, to see if Marcia would try to write to you-"

Mark raised a hand to interrupt her. "Wait - Tess is keeping an eye on my e-mail account?"

Tanya nodded. "I thought she told you she broke into your phone, didn't she?"

"She did, but I thought she would no longer-" He shook his head. "Never mind. What happened with Marcia?"

"Yeah, of course." Tanya picked up the topic again. "I got in touch with Tess, and then I prepared everything for an intervention for Marcia. Invited her to go clubbing with me, with the intention of taking her to a meeting with a few of the other women, all in order to set her head straight. Just as we usually do it." She made a short pause. "And then I forgot to lock my computer when I went out for groceries, and Marcia must have seen the e-mails I had exchanged with the others. When I got back home, she had disappeared."