Welcome to the Journal of Now and Forever. This Journal is a collection of my Star Control and Star Control 2 fiction. Note: Some of this material is, by necessity, extrapolation from the slim information provided by canon sources.

New fiction is posted first at My Livejournal before it appears here. This story is in response to First Lines 1000's Challenge #23.

Grif sat down next to Dina. "You okay?" he asked quietly.

Dina raised her head from her arms. "I think so. Just trying to clear my thoughts before I go in there."

"You'll do fine." Grif absently began collecting Dina's assorted computer paraphernalia into piles. "You're representing all of us, but you know the research best. You can present our case in the best way."

"Thanks, Grif." Dina started packing the work she'd need for the meeting. "It can't be any worse than back on Earth."

~ ~ ~

Nonetheless, Dina could feel her heart rate increase as she took her seat in the conference room. As head of Reproductive Research, she normally was left alone to do as she saw fit, in research direction and personnel. But the collective leaders of the Androsynth had requested a status update. It had been over a year since the last one, after all, and while the Androsynth took increasingly long views for returns, this particular project was of special interest to them all.

She wasn't the last to enter the room; that honor went to a short, wiry Androsynth with dark flyaway hair. For the sake of the meeting, they'd been asked to wear nametags; the latecomer's tag read Jack. Somehow they'd all kept dry on the route here, despite the rain outside.

Looking around, she didn't recognize anyone, but hadn't expected to. She'd sent her last status update by email. More interesting was the fact that another female Androsynth was here. Dina was so accustomed to males that for a moment, the other female, Ruth, disconcerted her. Besides Ruth and Jack, the other Androsynth were Tomo, Gary, and Kurt; no two from the same series.

"Sorry I'm late," Jack said, and set up his microcomputer. Everyone had them; Dina's was set to record all sound except her own typing, so she'd have an audio record of the meeting.

"Let's begin," Tomo said. He appeared to be the one in charge; Dina thought his name sounded familiar. "Dina here is from Reproductive Research. Dina, I'll be blunt: how long before Androsynth can reproduce?"

Best to get it out, Dina thought. "We won't."

She'd expected something – comments or outbursts – not the silence that greeted her statement. They didn't appear to be in shock, just... waiting.

"How bad is it?" Ruth was tall, dark-skinned, with long hair; probably of subcontinental extraction, Dina thought in the back of her mind. "What's the stumbling block?"

Ticka, ticka, ticka fingers typed as Dina answered. "There isn't anything to work with. My researchers and I have tried many different ways to create sex cells from ordinary cells, and we've had no success. At this point, we must assume it is not feasible."

"Nothing at all?" Jack asked, eyes not leaving his microcomputer. "I know we're sterile, but how did we reach adulthood without hormones?"

Dina looked at him, then briefly at Tomo, who mouthed "Engineering" at her. She nodded, and continued: "With a few exceptions, Androsynth were quick-grown in tanks to physical late teens and then brought to consciousness. This was the only way to make cloning time- and resource-efficient, because waiting sixteen or more years for custom-series clones was not acceptable to – to the Earthlings.

"During tank-growth, we were given appropriate hormonal treatments, and continued to receive them in smaller doses after consciousness. Our systems produce the hormones via other glands, but in quantities too low to be effective or noticeable. The hormones themselves mean nothing in our research."

"So." Gary, an older Androsynth – he looked all of forty, but looks were deceiving – leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head. "Do we need hormones, or more?"

"More." Dina quickly typed in the command to send the relevant information to all present. "Androsynth have no ovaries or testes, and without those, our research can go no further. We cannot make them from other cells, and – "

"Animal substitutes?" Jack asked, still not looking up.

Ruth and Gary looked horrified. "Do you want pig 'nards that badly?" Gary said. Jack looked up briefly, with no change of expression, then returned to his computer.

"Therefore," Dina tried to continue, "we're dead in the water. We cannot proceed."

"When did you come to this conclusion?" Tomo asked.

"Four months ago. We've spent the intervening time double-checking our results, and we - I - stand by them."

For several minutes nothing was said, as each person reviewed the information Dina had given them. Dina knew she was right; knew it was worse than disappointing. You couldn't call it a setback so much as a dead end.

"Earthlings," Kurt said at last.

Dina had almost forgotten he was there. Kurt had the sort of built-in blandness that nearly guaranteed being overlooked. If he was in this room, however, he must be someone of import. It suddenly occurred to her that she wasn't entirely sure who he really was. Uniforms weren't common among the Androsynth these days, so she couldn't identify his field.

Evidently she wasn't the only one confused by his one-word statement. Everyone else stared at him too, even Jack.

"We need to capture some Earthlings," Kurt continued, in an even voice. "I gather we'll need them alive?"

Dina's mouth went dry. She swallowed and spoke. "I – I believe so, yes. Dead bodies decompose so quickly – "

"We could freeze 'em," Jack interrupted.

"Er – " Dina swallowed again.

"They haven't come around here yet, so we'll have to go to Earth. Make sure it looks like an accident." Gary studied Dina with a sharp gaze, but she withstood it. "If they find out we're kidnapping humans, they'll come after us."

"And more than one of each," Tomo mused, looking out the blued-glass window at the rain falling on fields of wild-growing cereal crops. "Backups."

Backups. If your clone has a critical problem, replacement parts or even whole clones can be made available for a nominal sum. Dina's squeamishness died a quick death against memories like that.

"I'll work up what we need," she said. "In terms of age, sex and so on – although equal numbers of each, and young adult, would be best for our experiments."

There. She'd said it. And as the rest of the conference members nodded and spoke their agreement, Dina had mixed emotions: she should feel guilty about using other humans, Earthlings, for experimentation, but instead she felt... relief.

Comments? Email me: laridian at aol dot com