A Trapped Cause

Our children, Thayit."

"Well technically, if we had two children together, one would be my child and one would be yours, since each of us only gets one. The whole offspring process would be a lot easier if we were asexual," Thayit mused.

Yanael wrinkled her face and said in a farcically angry tone, "Well thank you very much, darling, I’m glad you told me what you really think about me."

Thayit’s eyes widened and he said conciliatorily, "Oh I’m sorry honey, you know I love you. I just mean that all of the policies we have to keep to the population to a thousand make the whole process of rearing children rather complicated: A child is only allowed when someone has died. An individual may only have one child, although a male can have a second if it is with the same person and a female can have as many as she wants so long as all of the mates but one are different, and in that case the children belong to the males. A child must learn the given craft of the parent who was granted parental rights…" Thayit continued the recitation of several more regulations.

"Well those rules exist for a reason, Thayit. The ship is only so big. We couldn’t have thousands of little people running around causing havoc. We have to have rules that ensure there are only ever a thousand people and that one person creates only one offspring and the individual skills of one person are not passed on more than once or not at all. It’s just fair."

Thayit began to say something, but reconsidered. As strict as the system was, he knew it worked and was necessary. If a parent taught a child the function they performed for the ship, there was never any doubt that that function would be completed. If, however, a male created two offspring and had rights over both of them, then they would learn the same skill and one would have nothing beneficial to do for their whole life. And worse, if any person were to have no child at all, the task they did for a living would be done by no one on the ship, and some vital function would fail, and the new world would never be reached.

Often Thayit thought that the planners of the voyage would have done better to create a ship to accommodate the tens of thousands that would be born if the humans were allowed to live naturally. The engineers onboard, however, said that constructing a vessel to contain and support a single thousand was the greatest undertaking humanity had ever put itself to, and a craft to carry fifteen or twenty thousand would have been virtually impossible.

He stopped the wanderings of his mind. As of today, Thayit was an independent human and as such, he had a job to perform; specifically the one his mother had done. She was retired now. Thayit stood, dressed, and walked towards the food dispenser. He ordered himself a breakfast of eggs and bacon, and for Yanael, pancakes and sausage. Like magic the completed and cooked meals rose from a platform that unsealed and slid open as the food arrived. Thayit knew, of course, that beneath his room a computer given robotic arms had constructed the meal by combining the knowledge of a great database of food items with the organic material grown in the automated hydroponics on the other side of the vessel.

"I guess you should be getting home," he said to Yanael.

"I guess so, too. Have fun looking at space, dear," she said with a sly grin.