“Phew... I don’t know what to say.” Josh shook his head, dumbfounded, looking out the window at an almost completed building in the courtyard of the research complex.

“Aw guys, I don’t understand why you got all sour about, it's just wonderful!” Sandro sang enthusiastically. “Finally, there is a more tangible hope for the salvation of mankind! Kids are a wonderful thing! I would have one. Or two. Oh, Chris, will you give me a baby?” The blondie cooed languidly, snuggling close to Chris sitting next to him. “I would give everything for the opportunity to get impregnated by you,” he trailed off, dropping both his voice and face while finishing the thought.

“I am the last person anyone should be wanting to have a baby with...” Chris muttered irritably.

“That's so wrong of you! Such a gene pool is being wasted. Don’t think any badly of me; I won’t demand recognition, legal fatherhood or anything else. It’s just ... for me.”

“Sandy...” Chris sighed. These games, when you don’t understand whether the ex-boyfriend is being playful or if he’s serious, are no longer as touching as before. Perhaps, if Sandro did not show so much attention and adoration towards Chris, they could still be together, but Sandy wanted too much, and Chris... well, he didn’t really need anything at all.

***

Born in 820, like the entire first hormonal generation, Chris Newman was not one of those who craved any kind of attention. His mother died in childbirth, so since childhood, he used to achieve everything on his own. He was reserved, but his determination did not allow him to turn into a feral sociophobe. He did not seek fame or recognition, he did not care about the praise or respect of others, did not crave relationships. He understood the impulses of Sandro and the other representatives of the new generation, more susceptible to hormonal influence, but such impulses were not characteristic of him. His body accepted the gene modifications as needed, had adjusted as prescribed in the dissertations of a whole generation of Zirkaazte. He sometimes got emotionally overwhelmed, but Chris did not really like such moments. Probably, something ancient was left in him, constantly repeating that not everything they are is the way it was intended by nature.

Evolution has made an immediate turn and not of them is where they should have been after all this time if an experiment of a universal scale had not been launched. Therefore, the young man worked on himself. He regularly trained in the gym, meditated when the so-called hormonal waves hit him. He did not allow himself to relax both physically or spiritually. Chris was comfortable being who he was born, but the cocoon of calmness and loneliness suited him more than the temporary or permanent partnership with which his fellows escaped the hormonal waves’ impact.

From the first stage of training, that is, in school years, Chris’s brain was focused on acquiring knowledge and self-development. He did not shy away from any company that sometimes formed around him, but he was never the initiator of a relationship — neither friendly nor romantic. He was spared of all youthful loves, the bragging of classmates about the first kiss stolen under the stairs at the biochemistry class, or being the first one to have sex with the insanely cute four-eyed boy – the best of the class.

After graduating high school with honors, Chris entered a technical college, but after studying for only a couple of years and choosing a main direction, which was of particular interest to him, he realized that it would be much easier to pass graduation externally than it first seemed. Thus, thanks to assertiveness, he managed to enter the leading robotics university at only twenty years old, although usually students usually reached the fifth stage of education at twenty-five.

It needs to be said that the scientific magic of the zirks really did work, and not only for themselves. For centuries, they tried to somehow influence not only the nature of the Earth, but also its inhabitants, in one way or another by improving the quality of life and making the average life expectancy higher, pushing further the general mortality of the humans. People who live to be a hundred years old have long ceased to be considered rare, because at the age of a hundred years not all humans have retired, having a decent margin of time both for career growth and to freely explore their planet and themselves.

Robotics was one of the main branches of New Earth humanity. Automated factories, farms, smart homes, autopilot cars, and almost everything that surrounded people, had intelligence. Even the “personnel” serving this clever technique were robots. However, human control should never be completely ruled out, for no matter how perfect and durable the robots are, they too could sometimes go wrong. Therefore, it was extremely important to educate specialists who could provide service for all the lines of the latest intellectual technology so that life would not lose one iota of its comfort level that was obtained by the long work of not one race, but two.

However, Chris did not proceed with higher science. After graduation, he rented a compact but comfortable room in New London and got into the most ordinary car service station in the same building where he lived. A quiet life more than suited him. Although he was invited to graduate school, he was prophesied to have a successful future in the development department, in the aerospace department, in another department—he did not even remember all the possible outcomes if he’d agree to go further. Chris just felt that this wasn’t his thing. Or at least not yet. At that time, he wanted privacy, so he went on by honing those skills that he had already received, and then... Who knows what the future holds for him?

And so it happened. A few years later, some dormant dissatisfaction and a craving for new knowledge perked up, and Chris began to look for a new place for himself where he could develop further. Having studied the prospectuses of the leaders of modern higher education a bit, he decided to try his luck at The Biological Research Institute – the scientific complex of the Biosphere 2. Thus, he became a resident of an artificial island and a promising member of Professor Shirokawa Kazuaki’s research team, and so far, he liked it. There was a lot of interesting work, a nice team... in the end, one shouldn’t spend their whole life in the shell.

He liked their supervisor – a rather old and absolutely tranquil Japanese man who knew his job well, and it was a pleasure to work with him. Chris also managed to get along well with his fellow students and teammates – some of them was a bit noisier and pestering than Chris would have liked, but they all had a common goal. There were also a lot of Zirkaazte here – that's who Chris was sometimes much more comfortable working with than humans. The green lizards were extremely silent, constantly immersed in themselves or in performing, cold and rational, just a lot like Chris.

It was interesting to observe them, especially outside the laboratories. What earthlings knew about them was still not a very large slice. The way they behaved in public, in the media, or at work, was different from behavior among their own kind, at homes, in an environment where they could not be watched, where it was not necessary to behave otherwise. That is precisely why Chris visited the training room, where mostly zirka teachers and researchers went to workout.