Dorian's Deal - The Future
Continuation of Dorian's Deal, following on from Jake & Jill. We come full circle and put the fifth point on the pentagram.
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Dorian sighed, and flopped on the couch in their shared apartment.
"Long day?" Tatiana said, sitting next to him and leaning over to kiss him.
"My boss is the devil," he grumped.
"You say that like devils are so bad," Tatiana teased. "They need jobs too, you know."
Dorian snorted, cracking a smile. "You just say that cuz you got a spitroast because of one once," he accused.
"It's a good reason to have a little sympathy, don't you think?"
"I don't know. That kind of talk could literally land us in hell."
"Still clinging to that, huh?" she said gently, stroking his leg.
"It's hard to shake. I mean, if there's no hell - then what happens when we die? Poof, nothing exists anymore?"
"Maybe you'll poof into nothing because you don't have enough faith in yourself," she said sarcastically.
Dorian ignored it. "And where did she come from anyway? What scares me the most is we have a way to find out. But the cost..."
She sobered. "We'd have to be willing to entertain a trade with Ovidia again."
"Right. What have you been up to today?"
"I had a couple interviews. I'm hoping to get some work by next week."
"That's great! I'm glad you're making the dream come true."
"It is much easier to be a model on this side of the mountains."
Dorian ran a hand up her back, trailing little shivery sensations along her spine. "It's easier to do everything we want. Go out together, be lovers, sleep in the next day."
"We don't get invited to as many parties, but I bet when we do, they'll be better parties." She stroked his face, smiling down at him. "Should I summon Ovidia and get her to point me to the person I need to seduce to get you off of swing shift?"
"Ugh, don't even joke about that. I can only imagine the price."
She laid down and snuggled in and became the little spoon to his big spoon. "Don't be sour, baby. If it wasn't for her, we wouldn't have found each other this way."
He sighed, breathing in the wonderful smell of her hair. "I know. But the more we tempt fate, the more likely it is to blow up in our faces. She said herself I was lucky to get out of it with the price I paid."
"Hey, do you have enough brain for a discussion?" she said.
"Do I have to open my eyes?" he said.
"Nope."
"Then yeah, I think so. What's on your mind?"
"Well, I've been doing some research. About us, having kids you know."
"Mm hmm," he said.
"We talked about starting a new race. It turns out, that could be really hard to do, especially by ourselves."
"Why's that?"
"It's complicated. I don't understand it all, and some papers are locked up where you have to be a student or faculty at a university to get access. Can you imagine? Public money paid for those studies! Anyway, before I go off on a rangent, the science says there really aren't multiple races. It's just humans. So a whole new one would be more or less impossible."
"At risk of starting a rangent, what uh... is, a rangent?"
"A rant, and a tangent, all at once."
"I see. You're silly. I love you."
She giggled. "I love you too, baby."
"So it sounds like our dream is dead."
"Not unless you're married to the idea of calling it a race. In which case, imagine the scandal our relationship will cause in the newspapers. 'Man cheats on ephemeral concept with his own sister. News at 11'."
Dorian smiled and slapped her on the ass, making her squeak, then gently moan.
"But... what do we call it then? Can't we still start something?" he said.
"Sure. We call it a family. But the other complication is how to make ourselves distinctive the way we talked about. Families can have a look, you know. The family nose. The family profile, tall, curly hair, whatever. But genetics is complicated. Really, really, complicated, and not only would it be hard to identify the specific... they're called 'alleles', that make up all the different characteristics - there are multiple of them per biological feature, and we haven't identified what all of them do yet - but because of dominant and recessive gene behavior, it will be hard to guarantee this feature even if we've already got it. I've got great bone structure-"
He reached around and started fondling her breasts. "I noticed."
"-hey! Quit it!" she teased, pushing his fingers deeper into her flesh. "I'm trying to have a conversation here!"
He laughed, kissing her neck. He twined his fingers with hers, and held on tight.
"But this all assumes we want all our family to look just the way we are now. If we want to introduce other features, we need to breed in those genes, and then we need to cultivate them in our children and their children somehow. It will take centuries, and we'll be long dead before it becomes real. And I really would want us to look different, because I don't like where we came from - or, who we came from."
"That's a lot of words to tell me that our dream is dead. We could have fucked in the time it took to explain that."
She snorted. "You men and your one-track minds. You think I was wasting your time?"
He sighed. "No. You had to explain it, because I'd be trying to poke holes in the short answer until you explained it anyway. So what now?"
"It doesn't mean the dream is dead, though. Dorian, there's another way."
"Huh? You just said it was basically impossible and would take several lifetimes."
"If we did it the normal way. The scientific way. There's another way."
"What are you talking about?... oh. Oh, god. No, no, tell me you don't mean-"
"I talked to Ovidia about it. She says it's possible."
He let out a longsuffering groan. "We agreed no more agreements with her!"
"I didn't agree to anything with her. I just asked questions."
"You know she needs an offer every time she gets summoned."
"Yes. And I made one. Side note, I learned that asking to become the progenitor empress-queen of the known universe is not considered a serious offer. Just by the way."
He giggled at that. "So then what-"
"I offered her to take out my IUD and seduce you, and make a baby. I asked what she'd give me in return."
He lay still for a minute. "But you didn't take it."
"No, Dor. I wouldn't betray you like that. I don't want to lose you, and I know I would."
"So what would she give you for that?"
"A healthy child."
It took him a minute.
"Wait a minute. All the genetic issues from in-breeding, they'd all just be magically gone? Not an issue?"