"Speci-Men" - Part Two

Part Two

            “Ohhhhhhhhhhh, man…”

            Miya felt like she had been run over by a stampede of patrolling Judoon, after regaining consciousness. Her head throbbed, specifically from where she was clocked by the police baton. Even as a blond Japanese girl, there’s no avoiding police brutality. Of course, as her memory recovered as well, she realized what happened to her was more than typical racial profiling.

            She was the only woman on an Earth full of men.

            Remembering that tidbit didn’t do much to ease the bump on the back of her head – a head that she had just got from her regeneration. Had she been in the first fifteen hours of the cycle, the bump would’ve healed instantaneously. Unfortunately, it would have to heal entirely on its own, with two days having passed since the initial regeneration.

            Sitting up, she noticed that she was on an examination table inside of a well-sanitized examination room. She expected to find herself in worse shape, considering that she was an alien to this world and, per usual, its government couldn’t resist dissection. However, her torso was still intact – not a single surgical incision made.

            Her warders didn’t appear to have stuck around to see her wake up.

            Or so she believed, before spotting a curly-haired 8-year-old African-American boy looking directly at her through the only window in the room. Something about him seemed very familiar to Miya; and then she remembered…The lil’ fella I saved at the crosswalk!

            She wasn’t sure why he was there…or where ‘there’ even was.

            “Hey there!” She sweetly greeted him. “Funny seein’ you again, lil’ man.” She removed herself from the examination table. “You wouldn’t happen to know where I…” The child ran out of sight before she could finish. “…am?”

            She tried to call him back, hoping he could clear things up.

            She went for the door in an attempt to exit the room, but she didn’t see a handle. There was only a keypad to the left of the door frame, accessible only by the personnel that ran this mysterious facility.

            “Automatic lock,” she groaned. Makes sense…they wouldn’t want their extraterrestrial guest to have too much freedom!

            Fortunately, she had her own key to freedom – her sonic cuffs.

            A wearable variant of the traditional sonic screwdriver, the Tinkerer invented the sonic cuffs sometime during their original incarnation, Steven Curtsinger. Due to the large size of Skeeta’s wrists, they wouldn’t be properly worn again until the current ‘Miya’ incarnation; though her wrists were a lot smaller than Steven’s, causing the cuffs to gradually slide back and forth, every now and then.

            She was just about to use them to unlock the automatic door until she heard footsteps resonating from outside. They sounded heavy, which ruled out the possibility of the crosswalk boy returning. Instead, it was an African-American man in his mid-thirties, donned in a suit, tie, and lab coat – all of which were blue.

            “H-Hello,” he timidly greeted. He then enunciated his words, speaking slowly and carefully to Miya. “My…name…is…Richard…Chambers. Can…you…understand?”

            “Yes…I…can,” Miya mimicked mockingly. “I’m…not…an…idiot.”

            Her capability of speaking perfect English caught him off-guard, but not as much as her wit did. “How do you know our language?” he inquired. “Are you a telepath?”

            Miya smirked. “I am, but that’s not how I know your language. I’ve traveled to many worlds but the universal language is always English…at least, in most cases.”

            “Where are you from?” Chambers asked.

            “A planet called Gallifrey,” Miya replied. “My people are known as ‘Time Lords’…or ‘Time Ladies,’ if you’re old-fashioned.”

            “Time Lords?” Chambers mulled with interest. “Do all of them look like you?”

            “You mean do they all look like a woman?”

            “Wo…man?” Chambers again enunciated, frowning over the term that he had just learned for the first time in his entire life. “I don’t understand your species. Are they ‘Time Lords’ or ‘Wo-man’?”

            Miya huffed, feeling overwhelmed yet intrigued by Chambers’ ignorance.

            “Man, you dudes do live in quite the testosterone-friendly utopia, don’t ya?” After the critical remark, she attempted to explain, “Time Lords are a complex race. We’re both man and woman, but we can swap between the two when we regenerate. For example, I wasn’t always a woman. Two days ago, I was a man like you and every other on this planet.”

            Chambers gave a gentle chuckle. “Ridiculous, even for your species.”

            “I figured you’d say that,” Miya smiled. She proceeded to remove her suit jacket, throwing it on the examination table, and adjust her sonic cuffs while facing Chambers. With a simple tap on each cuff, blue lights projected off of them, creating life-sized holographic images of Miya’s two previous incarnations, Steven and Skeeta.

            Chambers recoiled from the holograms of the two men. “W-Who are they?!”

            “They’re me…or who I used to be,” Miya said.

            Chambers gazed explicitly on the mountainous hologram of Skeeta. “Even him?”

            Miya held back a giggle. “Yes, even him.”

            An amused grin formed on Chambers’ face. “Remarkable! A man who can change his entire appearance…even into something so foreign.” He looked up and down at Miya whilst uttering that last part.

            “Gee, thanks,” Miya hissed, feeling insulted. She switched off the holograms and did a bit of her own prying on Chambers. “So, tell me more about this ‘Man World’ that I’ve stumbled upon. ‘Cause I have so many questions.”

            “Like what?” Chambers queried.

            “Like how y’all can procreate?!” She didn’t mean for her question to be delivered so harshly, but it was something that had been nagging at the back of her head (aside from the throbbing bump) from the moment she saved that boy at the crosswalk.

            “Procreate?” Chambers parroted with a frown; another term he had just learned.

            “You know…breeding? Reproduction?” Miya couldn’t believe she even had to elaborate on such a simple concept.

            It was only when she said ‘reproduction’ did he finally understand.

            “Ah, yes!” he exclaimed. “You’re referring to the reproductive biofluid extraction.”

            “Reproductive biofluid extraction?” Now it was Miya’s turn to parrot and frown, more so with disgust. “I don’t think I like the sound of that.” Driven by curiosity, she pressed, “What does it involve exactly?”

            “It’s a process only conducted with a man of able body,” Chambers elucidated. “He consents to the extraction of his blood by a machine that produces his offspring in a ten-minute cycle.”

            Miya wasn’t sure whether to be mortified or intrigued.

            And yet, there was something about this whole process that sounded vaguely familiar to her.

            “May I see this machine of yours?” she requested.

            Chambers’ tentative nature resurfaced on that request. “I, uh…I don’t think…”

            “Let it see the machine, Richard,” an assertive voice said over the intercoms.

            “Whoa! Who’s that?” Miya jolted in alarm, her dark hazel eyes searching upwards, only seeing the tiled, metallic ceiling of the examination room. “I don’t mean to quote Rockwell, but I feel like somebody’s watching me.”

            “My name is Doctor Derek Sands. And, yes, I have been watching you.”

            “Pleasure to hear you,” Miya quipped. “I have a friend whose first name is ‘Doctor,’ too. But I assume you prefer to go by ‘Derek’ instead.”

            Sands cackled over the intercom. “For an alien, you have quite the sense of humor. Let me know what you think of our extraction machine.” On that note, the automatic door to Miya’s room opened on its own, allowing her to finally walk out. “Enjoy the tour.”

            “Thanks,” Miya said to her unseen host.

            With granted permission from his superior, Chambers led Miya down a long, dimly lit corridor. There were other rooms in what looked like the sublevel of the facility; Miya caught fleeting glimpses of their interiors through their observation windows, noting the different purposes each served, from testing to disposal. “So…what is it that you fellas do here?”

            “We help the world progress,” Chambers said, sounding as if he were in a TV ad.

            “One heck of a slogan there, Rich,” Miya teased, just as she spotted the crosswalk boy standing in the middle of the hall, unsupervised. Smiling when she saw him, Miya sweetly greeted, “Well, look who’s back. You aren’t gonna run away from me again, are ya?” The little boy shook his head in response, still spellbound by her. “Good…‘cause I wanna make sure you’re okay after that lil’ episode we had at the crosswalk.” She crouched down to his level, which wasn’t that very far for her petite height.

            “This is my son – Geoffrey,” Chambers introduced the boy. “He’s supposed to be upstairs in the educational unit.” Noting his son’s exchange with Miya, he asked him, “Geoffrey, you’ve encountered this alien before?”

            Geoffrey nodded. “It saved my life,” he spoke with a small, squeaky voice.

            “You’re welcome,” Miya smiled. “So, Geoff? Right? You wanna come see how your daddy made you?”

            Geoffrey gave an overeager nod.

            Chambers didn’t approve of his son ditching his education in favor of being around the alien; nonetheless, he understood his excitement, especially knowing that he was the first to make physical contact.

            Together, they went to a room that was marked ‘Reproduction Unit’.

            Through its observation window, they watched a tall, well-built black man with dreadlocks being laid onto an examination table, much like the one Miya awoke upon earlier. He appeared comfortable as one of the lab coats extracted a sample of his blood from his upper left bicep.

            Another lab coat carted in a large, translucent tank filled with blue liquid – the ‘machine’ itself. The man’s blood was injected into the liquid-filled tank through an available slot on one side.

            On the flip of a switch, the extracted biofluid and the blue liquid were mixed in centrifugal force until a fetus was gestated. Within approximately ten minutes, the fetus grew into a perfectly healthy nine-month-old baby boy that was ‘pushed’ out through a black rubber grommet on the opposite side of the tank. The lab coat manning the machine caught the newborn and cleaned him before handing him over to his father, who expressed zero emotion, seeing his new son. If anything, his reaction was akin to having a tooth extracted.

            The whole bizarre procedure sparked an intense sense of recognition in Miya.

            She had seen it done before…in another reality…on another planet…by another race of male-exclusive beings.

            Their name still rang through the Tinkerer’s mind all these years.

            Prometheans.