After Dark the Last Child Cries, Chapter 1: The Genesis Seed

Have you ever been the youngest in your group of friends? They don’t invite ya to the cool parties because they are afraid they’ll get busted for providing alcohol to a minor. Or how about the youngest of your family, they treat you like a baby, your older brothers and sisters pick on you all the time. Think that’s bad? Try being the youngest in the world. Take it from me. It’s not good.

16 years ago I was born, like most, in a hosptial. The difference is, most doctors deliver 4 or 5 babies a day, if not more. The doctor that delivered me had five years of rust in the tank. He told me when I was ten years old that he almost dropped me because he hasn’t done it in so long. Good thing he didn’t, dropping the last baby born won’t get you any kind of good publicity.

The youngest people in the world, besides myself, are about 21. My mother told me that, 21 years ago or so, something strange happened. A purple light travelled around the earth, orbiting it from outside. At the time astrologers, scientists, and calmists said it was just a shooting star that got locked into earth’s gravitational pull. They said that the moon came to be in the same way. That it orbitted around the planet, gathering space dust until it got bigger and slowly drifted further away. They say our moon is still drifting, a millimeter a year, in 2,000 years it’ll only move half a millimeter annually. Then less, then less. But, apparently, our moon will be gone in a couple hundred billion years. It’ll get too big, too far away for the planet to pull it in and it’ll float off, probably getting wrapped up in Jupiter’s pull, or the Sun’s. If it drives around the sun it’ll evenutally get some space rain and, trillions of years from now, it’ll be another planet. I’m not a scientist, and I don’t know a whole damn lot about constellations, Orion, Ursula Major, and all that, but it sounds like they’re a little off their rockers, those scientists. But the alternative explanation wasn’t much better. The religious explanation is just as crazy as any other.

Priests, prophets and the like claim its a sign from God. God sending us a interstellar text message saying “Hey you down there, stop fuckin’ shit up.” They say God changed the world that day. My parents didn’t notice a big change. The ocean was still wet, California trees were still on fire, people killed other people for no reason, all seemed right in the world. The only thing that was different was nobody could get pregnant anymore.

The couple days after God’s Sign left the Earth fertility clinics started getting more clients. Then the next week even more, then more, until it snowballed into a world wide epidemic. They tried taking the sperm from the men and putting it in the egg, then putting it back in the woman. Nothing. Then they had the sperm and egg in a test tube, left them there until they made friendly with each other. Nothing. Then they went to sperm banks. Even that jizz was spoiled. Then they said it was the next stage of Human evolution. The male couldn’t get the female pregnant the same way. That gave every guy amnesty to stick their dicks in evey hole that they could find on their wives. Still nothing. Then there was panic. No one could get knocked up. Everything else in the world was fine, just no babies. At least all those orphans got adopted. But they seemed to make a huge deal out of it. I personally think it’s a good thing.

No one really knows if its a problem with the woman’s egg, or the man’s baby batter, or both. Scientists say that radiation from God’s Sign could have floated down and contaminated the ball sac of all the men on Earth. But a few good things came out of it. World hunger is ending, population problems are slowly being controlled, the Rain Forest isn’t getting cut down as much anymore, but there’s still panic. How is the earth gonna continue 50, 60 years from now. People will be too old to farm food, too old to put out fires, There won’t be enough social security for people to retire on. They’ll all be too shitty to give a damn about anything anyway. Eventually going crazy from lack of human contact. Maybe blowing their heads off. Who knows.

Then, 16 years and 9 months ago, during a time where people basically fucked on the streets because of the advances of STD cures, and because they couldn’t get pregnant, but someone did. My mother. Her and my dad were dating and one day she said those two words that no guy wanted to hear 21 years ago, but it was rare at the time, “I’m Late.” I don’t know if my dad shit himself or what, but apparently, I’m a pretty big deal. Doctor’s first thought that Dad had super-sperm, Godly come, The Genesis Seed. Then they thought my mom’s vagina was God’s salvation, but they figured it was just a lucky combination of the right sperm cell, and the right egg. With 400,000,000 white tadpoles per session, I guess its not too hard to believe that it was just a freak occurance. I suppose that makes me the world’s biggest freak. But some say my dad was the major freak. He didn’t stick around very long after he found out he had millions of microscopic superheroes in each nut. He went all biblical, started going around, showing the picture of him in the news paper, the one with the “The Man with the Genesis Seed” headline. Using that as a pickup line. I guess it’s a good one at least. The fertility scientists wanted him to stick around and study his sperm. But he was already gone, spraying it into all the women that would let him. He thought he was the guy who was gonna repopulate the world. No more kids were born after me. But hey, at least dad got laid.

My mother was killed when I was 12, almost 13, right after I passed puberty. The over-zealous religious folks took God’s Sign and the following world-wide infertility as God’s way of saying the Earth was too populated, that we needed to stop being fruitful and multiplying for awhile. They say, through prayer of course, that God will forgive us all and we’ll be able to reproduce again. As fate would have it, I was the exception to God’s rule. The devout decided that since no one could reproduce besides my mom, my mom’s womb must be the work of the Devil. Some sick fuck shoved a steel cross in her eye and through her brain when she protested that she wasn’t possessed by Satan. Talk about an exorcism.

I ran away from home, if you want to call it that, after my mom died. The fertility scientists that were at our house more than family wanted me to masturbate in a cup, to see if I had “The Genesis Seed.” To see if my pale army could bring an invasion. I never did let them find out. I was never interested in repopulating the world. Maybe my semen is the last hope for the world, maybe it isn’t. I don’t know, quite frankly, I don’t really care. It wasn’t my fault there aren’t anymore kids. I don’t feel like I’m responsible for making any. If my sperm even works that is.

The past three years have been interesting. Living on my own. Sleeping under bridges. In alleys. Where ever I can. Stealing a bite to eat. Trying to stay off the grid. The entire world knows me. Well, they knew me three years ago. I’ve changed a bit since then. There are search teams with the last known pictures of me of when I was 13. Black hair that has since been shaved. Kinda chubby, I lost a few pounds. Cute, boyish face. Now I could almost pass for a 21 year old. Almost. I’ve get recognized occasionally. Guys want pictures with me. “Look, there’s the youngest guy in the world! How about a picture?” Breaking out their digital cameras like I’m sasquatch. Women are the worst. They hear the stories about how I might be fertile. Trying to sleep with me. Their husbands or boyfriends offering me money to fuck them. Coming up to me with wine glasses and turkey basters. Hoping I’ll jerk off in the glasses, kiss them on the forehead, say something in Latin and tell them to believe in Jesus. Most guys would jump at the chance to sleep with 25-35 year old women. Pretend they have the Genesis Seed so they can get laid. But that’s not what I’m about. Not that anyone will hold up the statutory rape laws that used to exist 4 years ago. They wouldn’t care if my sperm wasn’t broke. Sure, my 16 year old hormones get the best of me at times. A guy can’t always say no. But, I’m careful. Spermicide lubrication. Pulling out and rubbing it in the dirt or into a carpet. Like I said, I don’t need to save the world. I have a purpose. I have a destiny. But it’s not to knock up thousands of would-be soccer moms. I’m looking for someone. The owner of the bloodstained cross in my back pack.

Every now and then I pick up a news paper, or a gossip sheet, and I see I’m front page news. I read about how there are man hunts for me. Thousands of people all over the globe looking for me. They’ll arrest anyone who has seen me and doesn’t give them information. Those papers and magazines call me The Last Child. Kid Omega. The Hope. The Demon Seed. Johnny Genetics. The Man With The Golden Sperm. Anything that will make a good headline. Not that my real name isn’t headline worthy. My mom, ironically, named me Revelation. Revelation Tristan Harris. Friends, or at least people who want to try and be hip, just call me Rev.

“Where ya goin’ Rev?” I’ve heard that too many times. Before I’d tell them. Then I realized they’d tell the cops. Then I’d give them wrong directions. Then I decided to start having fun with them. The religious freaks anyway.

“Rev, where are you going?” They’d ask.

My answer would be simple. “To Hell. Or helping someone get there.”

Afterall. I’m a wanted man. And I haven’t even commited a crime. Yet.