Thing is, all these babies are being born without functional penises. Male babies I’m referring to. All these babies are emerging from their mothers and none of them have what’s known as the meatus (that’s the external urethral orifice to you and me), which turns out is or rather was an essential element in the process of old school reproduction. How are they urinating? Well, they’ve all got these stomas, or openings as I like to call them, the kind that surgeons sometimes etch into the unsuspecting abdomens of patients with diseased or misfiring bladders. It’s like all these kids have undergone urostomies, but in actual fact they’re just born that way. 

Suddenly all these Lamarckians are emerging out of the proverbial woodwork. Back when, Lamarck thought that giraffes, for example, had long necks because earlier giraffes stretched their sub-occipital muscles a lot in order to reach the tops of trees. I don’t know about that, but you can see why all these Lamarckians are insisting that elaborate and, they say, unnatural surgical procedures such as urostomies are to blame for all these phallically deformed babies. They’re saying Evolution got confused. Is this the end of humanity? People are wondering. The problem, and it’s quite a big one, is that none of these new males with the neo-penises are biologically capable of outward ejaculation. It’s a worry. Most suspected that the species would be wiped out in somewhat spectacular fashion: via space asteroid, thermonuclear catastrophe, rampant epidemic, robot subjugation. At any rate, the event would constitute a wipe, for a wipe is always less tragic than a withering. So it seems a touch prosaic and somehow unsatisfactory that humanity is probably going to end because all these babies are being born without functional penises. 

My friend Montgomery thinks it’s a pretty interesting situation. “I’m trying to think of a historical equivalent,” he says. 

“There ain’t no historical equivalent,” I tell him. “In all likelihood a chance mutation has occurred in our genes that threatens to put the human race permanently out of business!”

“Maybe God is taking revenge via Evolution.”

“Maybe,” I say. “But I thought God and Evolution were separate entities, like egg and yolk.”

“Egg and yolk are the same thing,” Montgomery says. “Just different denominations.”

“Like John and Yoko.”

“Again, united in purpose.”

“Like the Devil and the deep blue sea.”

This conversation is taking place in the living room/kitchen of the apartment Montgomery and I share. We both teach at the local secondary school. Inside this living room/kitchen there’s an old sofa, and no other seating options whatsoever. We often dine standing up. Accompanying the old sofa is a television that we intentionally keep on the floor, propped up against the wall, confined to a state of semi-paralysis. Outside our building there’s a residents’ only car park. A park full of cars, reserved for residents. Once someone mistakenly parked in our assigned spot. Montgomery was out to dinner with his acupuncturist at the time. I went and told the offending individual to move his filthy fuel wagon this minute or I’d call the goddamn authorities quicker than he could say “encroachment on another party’s property.” Try saying that with a mouth full of crispy Cornflakes. 

My son, newly twelve years of age, soon swaggers into the living room and immediately points to his penis. “It’s broken,” he says. “I can’t reproduce with this sealed instrument.”

“That’s the issue,” I say. “That’s what everyone’s worried about.”

He sighs. “I have an acquaintance in Mogadishu who says his two sons were born the same way.”

“You’re saying this is a species-wide phenomenon,” I say. 

“Why were we not talking about this before?” my son says. 

“We’re talking about it now,” I say. 

“What if it’s too late?”

“It’s like people didn’t put two and two together,” Montgomery says. “Well, they did, but they got three instead of four. Three being the sum of two and one.”

“Who’s your acquaintance in Mogadishu?” I say to my son. 

“You wouldn’t know him.”

“That’s right,” I say. “I don’t.”

“I met him in Baku, Azerbaijan.”

“You never went to Baku, Azerbaijan.”

“We spoke on the phone.”

“Who did?”

“We did.”

“You and me?”

“Me and him.”

“Him and I,” Montgomery says. 

“What will happen when everyone’s dead?” my son says. 

“That won’t be for a long time,” I assure him. 

He sighs. “You know less than me.”

I shrug. “Have some juice.”

Is this good parenting? Is juice an appropriate recourse in times of legitimate existential uncertainty? 

During dinner my son asks if or to what extent I believe in Jesus.

“I don’t know,” I say. “You?”

I’m struck suddenly by the realization that I don’t even know if my own son believes in Jesus. What do I know?

“Do you feel sad?” my son says. 

“About what?” I say. 

“Do you feel depressed and afraid?”

“How do you feel about it?” Montgomery says to my son. 

“We’re looking at a possible extinction-inducing development and you have nothing to say about it?” my son says to me. 

“I have things to say,” I say. 

Montgomery and my son both glance invitingly in my direction. I think for a few moments. “Don’t worry about it,” I say eventually. 

“Don’t worry about it,” my son says. 

“He’s worried about it,” Montgomery says. 

When my son was born one of the first things I noticed about him was that his penis didn’t have a hole in it. These were different times. We thought it was a unique defect, an unfortunate anatomical oddity. Turns out, most people don’t like talking about their baby’s penile predicament. And for their part, doctors, it seems, are not excellent at sharing information or detecting ominous and potentially catastrophic somatic trends. For a long time there was limited discourse about the whole thing. Now the earliest inheritors of these fastened penises (of which my son is one), are reaching sexual maturity, the whole thing has become less abstract. It’s something happening now, so people are suddenly interested; concerned. Anyway, the state of my son’s penis got me down. No grandkids for me, I thought, but then I thought, there’s always adoption. It’s true, there is always adoption, but guess what, now all the orphans are being snapped up like Skittles in the schoolyard. So I was sort of hoping that my son would be attracted to men, sexually-speaking. That way his reproductive gametes would probably never be called upon to perform a service anyhow. Except I’m pretty sure my son is into girls. Recently, when I walked into his room to give him some juice, I saw typed in the search bar of his computer the words Marilyn Monroe’s Vagina. 

We. When my son was something like five years of age my then wife ran off with a miniature painter. They moved somewhere with a lot of trees and started a life that was centered around miniature painting. Marie used to say I was staid, that I was a staid human being. I suppose she wasn’t wrong—I do have a low appetite for adventurous and/or ambitious undertakings. I’m ambivalent towards a lot of things. Marie used to say I was a slave to convenience, a captive of comfort. She talks like that. She’s fond of abstract expressionism. I don’t know how I feel about abstract expressionism, except that I’m suspicious of it. It’s a little bit too expressive for me, plus didn’t one of them speak glitteringly of Mao Zedong? I think I’m against that. For these kinds of reasons, Marie used to say I was staid with a capital ‘s.’ Anyway, she ran off with a miniature painter and said I could keep the kid. She said she’d be back to visit every now and then, but that the burden of child-rearing would almost certainly interfere with all the miniature painting. I had a stable job, a fixed-rate mortgage. I lacked imagination, she said, and was therefore dependable. 

“Who will be the last person alive?” my son asks while stirring the juice with his ring finger. Kids, they just say things. Words are still a novelty to them. Communication has yet to be stripped of its marginal utility. My son isn’t even looking at me. He’s not interested in the answers, he just wants to be the one asking the questions. 

“Me,” Montgomery says. 

It won’t be Montgomery. Montgomery likes to skateboard, and he eats cured ham at least three times a week. 

This is a man who takes risks.

“It’s a disappointing situation,” my son says. 

That it is. 

*

The scientists are now saying there may be ways around it. One proposed course of action is something called Testicular Fine Needle Aspiration. This is where a needle is inserted into the testis to extract sperm. Suddenly everyone is talking about Testicular Fine Needle Aspiration. But it’s a complex procedure, there are many different elements, plus there’s the small matter of the spermatic cord block. Experts say the surgery could cost upwards of twenty large, which is likely to increase in accordance with demand. It’s basic economics. And just because you manage to extract the sperm, that don’t mean you’ve necessarily got a baby on the way. It’s just the opening salvo in a complex process which the scientists are calling Consolidated Fertilization. 

At work discussions vis-à-vis the potential impending collapse of the species are ongoing. Many are against the newly proposed widespread use of Testicular Fine Needle Aspiration. Some are saying that the exorbitant cost could ensure that only a certain kind of person will be able to reproduce. I wonder about this. Others point out that if the only means of reproduction is via artificial insemination, well, that’s not desirable. They say it’s unnatural, impractical, profane.

One day the Headteacher calls an early morning staff meeting to make clear that as far as she’s concerned—and despite the recent, highly controversial reproduction-related scientific proposals that may successfully forestall humanity’s certain eradication, though not without some fairly major ethical and ontological ramifications—it is very much a case of business as usual. 

“And when the kids start asking questions?” the Latin teacher calls out.

“Then we tell them they’re here to learn, not to speculate,” the Head says.

These early morning meetings unnerve me. Without the children present there hangs this sense of vacant disarray. The students give us hope, afford us easy meaning. In a lunch hall devoid of pituitary chaos, we are empty, searching. 

“But the kids know,” another colleague calls out. “And we know, and we know they know, and they know we know they know.”

“You’re saying there’s an elephant in the room,” I say. 

“There could be a goddamn woolly mammoth in the room,” the Head says. “We have a duty of care.”

“I think we should vote,” Montgomery says. 

“On what?” I say. 

“Duty of care,” the Head says. 

“To hell with your Duty of Care,” Montgomery says, before storming out. 

Montgomery teaches religious education to our 11-16 year olds. 

I teach History. 

Later on in class a student with whom I typically enjoy cordial relations removes his shoe and throws it at me. I duck, and the shoe hits the whiteboard. A unique sound is made—a kind of melodious thump. 

“The Black Death first arrived in the temperate summer of 1348,” I say. “Many died, but overall it was a resounding success for the hereditary tenants.”

“Can I have my shoe back?” the shoe-thrower shouts. His name is James Chukwu.

I tell him he can have it back at the end of the lesson. 

“Who cares about History?” Samantha Descartes calls out. “The species has no future!”

“We don’t know that for certain,” I say. “The scientists say—”

“Where has History ever gotten us?” Samantha cries. “Everything is the same, just cuter!”

“My barber says we should just go with the flow,” mutters James Chukwu. “He plays lead guitar.”

“What style?” I say. 

“He says Man has chartered the Thames, paved Heaven, and now we want to put a leash on Evolution with all this Testicular Fine Needle Aspiration mumbo jumbo. My barber is a devotee of the new and rapidly growing Extinctionist movement, who interpret this recent Evolutionary development as a sign that the human experiment has run its course. They say it’s been a great twelve thousand years or so, but that it’s time to welcome nature back into the boardroom.”

I sneeze. “Most feudal tenants were not free without severe penalty to depart the Manor for other locations or opportunities.”

“Old people know nothing,” Samantha says. “How can you know anything good when your cells are dying and the tissue structures and muscles supporting your eyelids are weak due to a loss of elastin?”

“I’m not that old,” I say. 

“So we’re just supposed to sit here and listen to you talk about the 1300s?” Samantha says, raising her voice slightly. “We’re the last ones!”

“Well,” I say. “What’s the alternative?”

That evening as Montgomery and I are strolling through town we pass a large group of Extinctionist demonstrators. They’ve gathered in front of a bakery known for its incomparable eggless, flourless, butter-less, sugarless, milk-less and saltless scones. I see signs with pithy slogans. Do the young people holding the signs write the slogans themselves? That shows talent, impetus, a certain get-up-and-go. These are transferable skills. Their color scheme is red. I wonder about this. Are they privy to the historical connotations of the color red? What are, and aren’t they privy to? Where did they all come from?

Suddenly I spot a familiar face amid the throngs. It’s my son. “Look,” I say to Montgomery, pointing towards my son, who’s holding a sign that reads: Humanity—Say Goodnight! Standing next to him is a girl in denim hot pants. Does he frequently consort with girls in denim hot pants? Why does he never tell me anything? Why do I never ask? Are they still called hot pants?

“Go and say Hi,” Montgomery says.

“What do I say?”

“You say Hi.”

“I don’t know if I agree with the sentiments being expressed here.”

“You don’t know?”

“I don’t know.”

“What do you know?”

“I don’t know.”

Montgomery calls out to my son and raises his fist in the air. Is this a gesture of solidarity, or just a little thing they do? My son reciprocates the gesture, then goes back to talking to his female friend in the denim hot pants. Does he even notice me? As we’re walking away Montgomery shouts some kind of familiar-sounding slogan and the crowd all cheer.

“You’re a goddamn radical,” I tell him on the walk back. 

“So what?” he says. 

“You agree that we should just sit back and allow humanity to become extinct? It would be a disaster, a catastrophe!”

“For who?”

“For everyone, obviously.”

He shrugs. “The Earth hates us, the animals hate us, the fish hate us, the bees hate us, we hate ourselves; even God hates us for murdering him, and now Biology has taken a dim view, too. If you’re at a party, and you spill a Bloody Mary all over the host’s mother, ruining her nice sweater, then vomit on her shoes, ruining her nice shoes, you wouldn’t stay until the host kicks you out. You’d just get out of there.”

“What?” I say. 

We’re silent for a while. A flock of swollen seagulls are mewing from above. What are they doing this far inland?

“These Extinctionists,” I say. “They’re too young for their own good.”

Montgomery shrugs. “They’re pure.”

*

According to the internet, the Extinctionist movement is a worldwide sensation. The youth of Beijing have returned to Tiananmen Square. French university students are kidnapping their professors and throwing them into polluted bodies of water. Protestors have dug encampments on the lawn of the Lincoln Memorial. This time the aim is not change, but cessation. Young women in stylish turtleneck sweaters are making speeches on the internet. They’re lucid, articulate, with astonishingly clear skin. It’s simply a case of cancelling our Earthly subscription, they say. No premature death, destruction or devastation, just the simple and totally natural petering out of the species, for the betterment of the planet. Betterment. How can that be a word?

Soon the government calls a snap election. No one knows why, but we can’t despise it. It’s democracy after all, which a lot of people are in favour of. Testicular Fine Needle Aspiration is a crucial campaign talking point. Some people are calling it the Testicular Fine Needle Aspiration Election. The Preservationists, as they have become known (comprising the government, the government’s incorporated acquaintances, the main opposition party, the people who deliver us the news on behalf of those who own it, and a lot of other expensively attired individuals), insist that the Extinctionists want to ban Science. For their part, the Extinctionists say the Preservationists want to ban Nature. It’s a divisive issue. I don’t know who wants to do what. In truth, I’m not in favor of banning either of those things. According to certain websites, the two major parties in nearly every democracy-adoring nation state composed of individuals are supportive of the Preservationist cause. But what about non-democracy-adoring nation states composed of sectarian elements? What do they think? Do we care? Should we? What do their scientists think of Consolidated Fertilization? Do they like it? Are we going to come to some kind of species-wide consensus over all of this? Has that ever happened before? Do we have a moral duty to the planet that has given us life, to its constituent lifeforms? Is it unethical to facilitate our own extinction? Is Man precious, or worthless? 

I forgot to mention that an estimated forty percent of all Extinctionists in this particular nation state composed of individuals are not of legal voting age. This will surely have an effect on the outcome of the snap election. Some have called for the suspension of the voting age altogether. The government says it’s enshrined in the constitution, scribed in very neat handwriting. Are we supposed to change the constitution? The government says. That sounds drastic to me. Certainly it would be long and complex. People are not generally in favor of things that are long and complex. The government doesn’t want to do too many things all at once. 

As election day approaches, my son seems increasingly unwilling to engage with me. He often eats dinner alone in his room, communicates in grunts and vague gesticulations. Sometimes I stand outside his room, listening to the frantic clacking of his computer keyboard, wanting to go in and talk to him, ask him things, request information, insight, but a strange and restraining fear seems to overtake me in these moments. One day, running into him in the hallway, I ask him if there’s anything on his mind. He just shakes his head. What does this mean? I want to tell him I’ve been listening to the clear-complexioned young women in the turtleneck sweaters who are making speeches on the internet, and that I’ve developed some concerns about the proposed widespread adoption of Consolidated Fertilization, among other things. 

“Are they right?” I say to Montgomery in the living room/kitchen one evening. “For God’s sake, are the kids right?”

We’re making fajitas, my son’s favorite, an attempt on my part to coax him into some kind of cumin-inspired communion. 

Montgomery says nothing. 

“My son,” I say. “What’s he thinking? Where’s his head at?”

Montgomery clears his throat. “How should I know?”

“You two have a rapport. You talk to him. You share a common language.”

“He says something about you makes him not want to talk.”

“What is it about me?”

“He says you don’t inspire transparency or for that matter promote understanding.”

“How can I better inspire transparency and promote understanding?”

“He says you don’t want to talk about anything that actually matters.”

“I don’t know how to,” I say.

Just then there’s a knock at the door. It’s my ex-wife, Marie. A little taken aback, I let her in, and she tells me she wants our son back. 

“Oh,” I say. 

“Give him back.”

“We had an understanding.”

“Well,” she says. “Things have changed.”

Marie’s wearing a beret and some kind of jumpsuit with maybe a dozen pockets, presumably to help store her miniature painting implements. We’re silent for a few moments, both of us seemingly unsure of how to proceed. 

“You goddamn ghoul,” I say eventually. “There’s no way in hell you’re embezzling my son!”

Montgomery pokes his head into the hallway and clears his throat.

“Marie, Montgomery,” I say. “Montgomery, Marie.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Montgomery says.

“What happened to your miniature painter?” I say to Marie. 

“He’s waiting in the car,” she says. “We’re migrating to the Peloponnese.”

“You want to take my son to the Peloponnese?”

“That’s right,” Marie says. “And he’s mine.”

“He’s happy here,” I say. “Relatively speaking. He has a solid quality of life, considering the circumstances. He has female friends who wear denim hot pants. Are they still called hot pants?”

“You’ve always been staid,” Marie says. 

I tell her she hasn’t seen the boy in five years and that several summers previously, in response to his occasional probes, I concocted an extremely tall tale that may or may not have involved long-term space travel to explain his mother’s gaping absence from perhaps the most formative years of his life, (and which if she now suddenly turned up in the flesh to viscerally contradict would therefore lose all internal consistency), and Marie, ignoring me, proposes a vote. 

“You just come here, unannounced, and start calling snap elections?” I say. “What are you, the government?”

“I’m his mother,” Marie says. “I have a Divine Right.”

“Your vote and my vote will be totally redundant,” I say. “The only vote that counts is his.”

“We’ll vote,” Marie says. “The three of us will vote.”

So I march into my son’s bedroom to fetch him for the vote, but he’s nowhere to be seen. His sock drawer is empty. He’s left his laptop and keyboard. I can hear Marie and Montgomery’s muffled voices in the hallway. Finally I notice the raised window, a slight and enticing opening, big enough for a boy. 

“He’s escaped,” I tell the other two. “I mean, not escaped—fled, disappeared. Our son has fled or disappeared.”

Marie shakes her head. 

“Don’t start,” I say.

“I didn’t say a word.”

“You think it’s all my fault.”

“I wasn’t even around,” she says.

“You weren’t even around.”

“How could it be my fault if I wasn’t even around?”

“You weren’t even around,” I say.

By this point we’ve drifted into the living room/kitchen. Suddenly Montgomery turns the extractor fan down to its lowest setting and saunters over to us. “You won’t find him,” he sighs. “I was planning to break the news over fajitas. He’s gone to volunteer for the Extinctionist cause. He didn’t say where. Somewhere far away, I’d wager. He told me to say he was sorry, but that he had to do it. He said he was ready to devote his life to the cause. He wants to become his own man.”

“He’s twelve,” I say. “And you just let him go?” 

Marie is smiling. 

“You’re not concerned about the well-being of our son?” I say to her. 

“I’m concerned,” she says, “about the well-being of his father.”

Am I unwell? Can a person, a father, a species, inflict irreparable harm while trying, ostensibly, to do good? Would humanity be better off extinct? I don’t know. All I know is that Gregory is gone, and tomorrow the nation votes.