CHAPTER 11
“Please explain again, Dr. Polkingham. How does this sperm sorting work?” Fintidierian scientist Filipineaus Cromntinier looked over his shoulder as he brought the sample into focus on the monitor.
“Well, Filip, this is called flow cytometry. We are using lasers and fluorescent dyes to sort the sperm,” Polkingham replied.
“Lasers? Yes, the intense beams of light from atoms you have?”
“Well, yes, I guess that is one way to think of it, but we have lasers that are generated from various types of interactions, but they are typically due to the excitation of electron populations inverted from ground-energy population.” Polkingham didn’t want to get into explaining lasers. He was a biologist not a physicist. “We first have to treat the sperm with a fluorescent dye that binds to a specific protein on the sperm cell’s membrane. The sperm are then passed through a flow cytometer, this thing here, which uses a laser to excite the electrons in the fluorescent dye, which then in response deexcite by releasing a light signal. The light signal is then used to sort the sperm into two populations: those that carry the X chromosome and those that carry the Y chromosome.”
“And this works?” Filip asked.
“You can watch the live action here on the monitor. In this bin will be the X chromosome sperm and here the Y.” Polkingham pointed to the monitor.
“Then what?”
“Aha! That is the right question.” Polkingham smiled and turned to Sentell and the young Fintidierian physicist who had been assigned to him. “Once we have the sperm separated, I’ll show you. Chris, have you spun up the microbots yet?”
“The computer is handshaking with them now,” Sentell said over his shoulder while interfacing with the computer system across the lab. The Fintidierian scientist mouthed the words “computer is handshaking” quietly to himself, attempting to understand.
“Handshaking?” Filip asked.
“Ah, that is a word we use to say that the computer, our controller box, is connecting to the robots. Just like when people meet, they handshake.”
“I see.”
“Right here, Grag, that is the microbot I was describing,” Sentell said as he turned back to his work.
“Why have you not done this experiment until now, Dr. Polkingham?” Filip asked.
“Well, to be honest, we didn’t think of it. We’ve been looking for sicknesses and treatments to the overall cause rather than thinking about simply engineering the births. While we did try washing the sperm early on and using the washed mostly female sperm, it never worked. We just didn’t consider brute forcing it. Dr. Sentell recently had the idea.”
“Nope!” Sentell exclaimed loudly from across the lab. “Young Grag here thought of it.”
“I did not, Dr. Chris. I simply asked you if it could be done,” Grag said sheepishly.
“Do you have the sperm yet, Neil?”
“Yes. Done.” Polkingham removed the sample from the separating device and carefully walked it to Chris’s station. “Here are several thousand female chromosome sperm.”
Sentell took the sample and carefully sat it in the open panel and locked it down into place. He then slid the panel closed and locked the door mechanism with a snap as it went into place. Once he toggled a few icons on the computer monitor, a view of swimming sperm was on the larger monitor above their heads.
“Okay, now for the egg.” Polkingham nodded at Candis Twickingham, a PhD biomechanics engineer who also worked as a technician in the biolab. She was working with the miniature cryobed apparatus used to maintain the eggs that had been collected.
“The eggs have reached the appropriate temperature, Chris,” she announced.
“So then, they’re ready to go?” Sentell asked, not looking up from his station.
“Here. These are from sample X-138340. Fintidierian female approximately twenty-two years past puberty. The egg is viable,” Dr. Twickingham said as she inserted the egg container into the microbot machine. The egg appeared almost instantly on the monitor overhead in a split section of the screen.
“Okay, now, Grag, I’ll use the tweezers here…” Sentell explained as he worked icons on the computer. “I’ll pick up the egg and plop it down in the sperm.”
“This is what we have seen many times, Filip.” Polkingham pointed at the screen. “At first the sperm look normal and indeed are strong swimmers. But then, the sperm seem completely uninterested in the egg once it is placed in the environment with them. We can’t explain this. As soon as the egg hits the environment, the female sperm just stop swimming.”
“How can that be?”
“We have no idea, yet.” Sentell grunted. “But we can nudge them along.”
“How so?” Filip asked.
“Microbots.” Grag smiled. “From the stars.”
“Well, I guess you could say that, bud.” Sentell focused on his work and then suddenly a flood of small spring-shaped objects slightly smaller in length but larger in diameter than the sperm appeared on the screen. Even to the untrained scientist the image was clear. The screen showed a mix of nonmoving sperm, an egg, and a plethora of spinning springs.
“What are they?” Filip pointed.
“These are very tiny machines. Now watch as Chris controls them,” Polkingham explained.
“It’s like driving a remote-control drone,” Sentell observed as he took the controller with both hands. He carefully used the left-thumb joystick to place crosshairs over one of the springs. The spring was suddenly highlighted on the monitor and then Sentell had control of it. “I can steer this bot anywhere I want it to go.”
Sentell demonstrated a figure-eight pattern all the while describing how he was controlling the spring through magnetic fields. Then he slowly guided the spring in behind one of the docile sperm. The spring then engulfed the tail of the sperm.
“Got it,” Sentell said as he guided the spring shaped bot up until only the head of the sperm was sticking out in front and the tail was protruding from the rear. “Now I have captured this sperm and I can drive it right into the egg.”
The bot turned the sperm back toward the egg and Sentell steered it right into the surface. Once the bot forced the sperm through the outer membrane of the egg the magic of life suddenly began. And just like that for the first time in decades a female zygote from fully Fintidierian parents was formed.
“Voilà! We have conception,” Sentell announced.
“From the stars!” Grag added.
“From the stars.” Sentell smiled. “And we have all these other female sperm. Let’s catalogue this zygote so it goes back to the right family and then let’s impregnate another one!”
“You’ve done it, then?” Filip asked Polkingham.
“Well, we’ve gotten this far. Now we have to implant the zygote and hope the pregnancy holds,” Polkingham replied. “But, while we haven’t discovered the cause, we have discovered a work-around…perhaps.”
“And this will work for any family?” Filip had tears forming at the corner of his eyes as he looked at the younger Fintidierian, Grag, who was grinning from ear to ear with joy and excitement.
“If I may,” Sentell interjected. “We will fertilize several with each family set of gametes and implant up to quadruplets based on the female’s health. There could be a very large boost in the female population soon.”
“Dr. Cromntinier, they have saved us.” Grag continued to cry tears of joy. “This could stop the riots and change our world! These people from the stars, sir, have saved us.”
“Grag, buddy, it was your idea,” Sentell noted. “My grandpa used to always say if you couldn’t figure something out, take the day off and go fishin’. Thank you for that.”
“No, Dr. Chris. Thank you!” Grag exclaimed. “And we can go fishing anytime you desire.”
“Come with me, young man. It is time you meet Secretary General Arctinier and tell her of this yourself!” Filip grabbed Grag’s hand and shook it in the Fintidierian style vigorously. “My heaven, thank you, doctors!”
Filip took time to shake each of the scientists’ and technicians’ hands between wiping tears as they streamed down his weathered cheeks. He asked to watch the process a few more times before grabbing Grag by the arm and dragging him to the exit.
“Come, my boy. We’ve lots to tell the world.”