Newt
***
[Miami Field Office 4:45PM]

>"I'm not sure yet. This guy may have some mutant form of this disease.
>Maybe his strain of azoospermia causes the opposite to occur, fertility
>instead of infertility. I'm waiting for Dr. Quinones to fax over the lab
>reports of two of the victims, the latest victim and one that recently
>delivered a baby".

>"I'm going to put an APB out on the picture that Ms. Lewandowski gave us
>of her son. Maybe we'll get lucky and he'll turn up."

>"I thought she said he was dead", Flynn turned, looking at Kate.

>"She did", Kate said.

Newt stood back shaking his head, "None of this makes any sense. I remember those sex ed classes from school. It takes sperm and egg to make a baby. The woman provides the egg .. the man provides the sperm. They meet and ~Whamo~ you have a baby. There *can't* be a baby with one of those parts missing. How *can* there be a baby with no sperm?"

"That's what we have to find out." Kate said matter-of-factly.

Newt crossed his arms, "I'd say more likely it was a lab error."

"I like the way this boy thinks," Paul said smiling praise on the young man. Newt nodded back, after all lab error made more sense then a pregnancy from azoospermia.

"One lab error, maybe." Kate said, keeping her eyes on Newt rather then the man who had moved into beside Newt. "But we're talking about a lot more then one."

Newt shrugged. She certainly had a point there.

"Gotta keep your feet grounded in reality, Newt," Paul said, his eyes watching Kate, "Otherwise you'll never find an answer." He chuckled, "Following tabloid .. super non-sperm .. what will you think of next."

"Well," Sharlyn offered, "We could begin looking at chromosomal abnormalities in the babies."

"Chromosomal abnormalities?"

"Sure, after all this absent sperm we're all concerned about contains 23 of the normal 46 human chromosomes. That's what makes a baby part of his mother and part of his father. We each get half of who we are .. genetically speaking .. from each of our biological parents."

"That is if the mothers of these infants would let us test them."

"It might give us some information on what it is we're looking for here. There are many chromosomal anomalies that are incompatible with life, but not all of them."

Newt nodded, "That would certainly prove if there was sperm involved or not."

"Not necessarily," Sharlyn warned him. "There are case where an egg or a sperm can spit before it's time and you can have 3 or 4 sets of chromosomes. However few of those babies ever make it past the first or second trimester of pregnancy."

"But if an egg split with no sperm involved, it could have the correct number of chromosomes?" September asked.

"I suppose, but it's the joining of egg and sperm that causes those haploid cells to begin splitting in the first place. Either correctly or incorrectly."

"Well it's still something to look into."


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