Nicely written dystopia about an ice age occuring in 2020 where Dylan, formerly working in his own "Babylon" cinema, retreats to a caravan that his deceased mother had bought. Some emotional development, particularly regarding Dylan and Constantine's love, felt a bit stretched, but it was a good read.
Stella imageins the brightest sun is for her, the second is for her mother and the last is for clarity, most recently lost. Her mother wants this back in their lives, but the child does not know why she should want it so much when clarity is no ally. It isn't any kind of a companion at all.
We all share twenty-two identical chomosomes; the twenty-third is the sex chromosome and they don't kick in for at least ten weeks. Everyoe starts out female and they stay like that for months.
- What, even Dad?
- Even Jesus. Go tell that to the nuns. For some embryos the Y-chromosome creates testosterone and female organs change into male ones; about three months in, what starts out as a clitoris, in the XY gene, gets bigger until it becomes, you know, a dick.
- Mum! Can't you say penis?
- It sounds so sterile.
- Why don't they teach all of this stuff in Sex Ed?
- Gender indoctrination. It's state-imposed. The male body still holds the memory of it - the line below a scrotum is called a raphe line, and without it you'd have a vagina; every embryo has an opening at the genitals and it becomes labia and vagina or, when male hormones kick in, the tissue fuses together and it leaves a scar, which is the raphe line.
