Chapter 3

I was closely approaching sleep, when something Emily asked me, brought to instantly awake.

“Do you know, I feel like you have already made me pregnant!”

I did not, entirely, sit bolt upright. “What did you say? Pregnant? What? How...”, I sputtered.

She blinked at me, slowly, once or twice. “I asked if you knew that I already feel pregnant. Since I have not slept with anyone, except you, in months, that means that you ought to feel like a daddy.”

I stared at her. Stupidly. (for me, it was beginning to feel like character acting).

She did not let that slow her down. “Yep, I just know that I am pregnant. This will be Brenda. We will have three other children, and we will name them Candace, Daniel, and Edward. You will start your own little dynasty, and just think, tonight is when everything began! How exciting!”

Words finally found me. “So, how on earth can you know that you are pregnant, what? twenty minutes of pregnant? How does that work, anyway?”

Emily shrugged. “Dunno. Mom told me that she knew, every time, that one particular lovemaking session had made her pregnant, and Grandma said the same thing. Maybe it’s just our line of women?”

I was beginning to collect my wits. “And, what is this about naming this child Brenda? Isn’t that your great grandmother’s name?”

Emily smiled up at me. “Nope, Brenda was my grandmother. You are my great grandfather.”

I continued. “So, how does that work? Once you are back in the future, and you have your daughter, Brenda, won’t she, well, object to being named after her own great grandmother? Or something?”

Emily disentangled herself from me, and sat up. That, of course, had entertaining effects upon her bosom, effects that I ignored (because, I suppose, I am a dumbass).

“First of all, buster, Brenda will be our daughter! Secondly, since I am staying here with you, so that you do not backslide into decrepitude, there will be no stories of grandma, or great grandma, Brenda. Thirdly, I do not really know all of how this works, because, I suppose, nobody ever in history has ever been her own great grandmother. But, now, I suppose that after enough time, I will be the first! Even if it happens posthumously.”

I had read, years ago, that mammals had evolved from fish. Supposedly, as an embryo grew, and developed into a fetus, and matured until the baby was ready for birth, anachronistic structures developed, and were reabsorbed, or re purposed, until the contemporary Homo Sapiens human being was born. The way I had heard it, so many years ago, was the assertion that “ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny”.

Well, after that revelation from Emily, I certainly was channeling my inner trout. I felt my mouth work, but no sound came out. I was not, quite, flopping on the dock in an effort to return to the water, but my movements were about as purposeful, and about as effective.

Emily’s eyes got big, and she released a belly laugh of such magnitude that she fell right over onto her side, kicking her legs and pounding on the mattress with her fists, as she released gales of laughter.

I gradually reoriented myself, which was nice, and conveniently enough happened about the time she regained some measure of control.