1:13 P.M., Monday, May 15, 2017

PLUR-MAkKikM, just outside Honolulu, HI

Sometimes, Ted Michaels was glad that his wards were in show business. Today was such a day. Being in the midst of a tour, they weren’t attending school but instead were being instructed at home and on the road. This meant that when Paula Akron hit a certain milestone of growing up, she was at home instead of at school. At least, the man thought, it hadn’t happened on stage.

“It was like in Psycho!” the ten year old girl exclaimed, her eyes wide. “Blood running down the drain ... blood from ME!”

Paula Akron’s hair and body were still wet, though she had put on a minimum of clothing. Occasionally she would shift her legs, and Ted Michaels knew that it was because she wasn’t used to wearing a pad. Of course, he’d never worn one either, but he’d had jock itch and he’d been hit in the balls, and the way the little girl acted was similar.

The man suddenly wondered about something. “Exactly when did you see Psycho?”

“When I was eight,” she answered, invoking a time before she and Ted had even met. “Well not the whole movie, but everybody’s seen that one scene. DEET! DEET! DEET! DEET!”

“Oh, well that’s great,” the fifty-one year old man said. “I don’t have to worry about the little girl seeing a disturbing movie like Psycho, just her seeing the single most disturbing scene in the entire movie.”

The ten-year-old giggled. “Well, I was a little girl when I saw it, but...”

“Oh boy, here we go.”

“But, I’m a woman now, right?”

Ted opened his mouth to speak, but then he shut it and gave a little shrug. “Yeah. I mean, you can make a baby now.”

Paula’s eyes grew wide again. “I don’t think I wanna do that! At least not yet!”

“Well, now that you mention it...”

“YOU’RE the one who mentioned it!”

“OK but still...”

“Paul! Paul Macon! Get in here!”

“Right now?” came a voice from the next room.

The little girl put her hands on her hips. “Yes, right now! Get your ass in here!”

Ten year old Paul entered the room backwards, his butt wriggling. Paula laughed in spite of herself.

“And bring the rest of you too!”

At that the little boy turned around and walked over to his girlfriend, draping an arm about her shoulders. “So, what is it?” he asked.

“Do you wanna have babies?”

Paul’s jaw dropped and his eyes were huge as he moved to stand in front of Paula, gawking at her like she’d lost her mind.

“Paula,” he said, “you know I can’t have babies; I’m a boy.”

Paula Akron rolled her eyes. “No, I mean do you want US to have babies ... do you want ME to have babies? Your babies.”

“Well yeah, sure,” the little boy nodded, “someday. But ... not right now.”

The little girl turned back to the older man. “There you go: we want children, but not until we’re older.”

A half minute ago Ted Michaels had been trying not to laugh, but the two children were so serious about this that he found he wasn’t ready to laugh after all.

“Well,” he said, giving both kids a hug, “I’m actually glad, because really you two are kind of young to be parents.”

“Hey,” Paul said all of a sudden. “Wasn’t there some five-year-old in Brazil or Argentina or Ecuador or some place?”

Paula looked at her boyfriend a bit crooked. “There’s probably a lot of five-year-olds in all those places. I mean, those are countries, they gots millions of people.”

“No, no,” Paul shook his head. “I mean, there was some girl who had a baby when she was five.”

“WHAT‽” Paula trusted that her boyfriend would never lie to her, but he might joke with her, and this sure sounded like a joke. Five years old‽

“Yes,” the older man told them. “Her name is Lina Medina, she’s still alive, and it was Peru.”

Paula was still having trouble processing it. She had just started her period today, and a couple of her friends at school had started when they were nine, and she knew about one girl who started at eight. But five years old, AND a full pregnancy?

“But,” the newly minted woman asked, “But how did she ... I mean, her pu ... how did that happen?”

“She’s an anomaly,” Ted Michaels told them, “almost like a genetic mutant or something. She got her period when she was three, grew breasts and hair when she was four, got pregnant when she was four, and had the baby C-section when she was five.”

“Who fucked her?”

“Nobody ever found out,” Ted admitted. “This was in the days before genetic paternity tests. Some people suspected her father, because he was the man around her most, but there was never really any evidence against him.”

Paula shook her head. “I sure hope it wasn’t her daddy.”

“I always thought it was a neighbor boy,” Ted opined. “Some boy barely old enough to make sperm, who noted that she had boobs and figured he could probably talk a four-year-old into anything.”

Ted looked the kids over, and they were paying attention. He decided that the line of conversation would naturally lead back to what he wanted to talk to them about.

“We have to remember,” he continued, “that she had the full set of adolescent and adult hormones coursing through her little body. While she would have mostly had the mind of a four-year-old, she may well have had the desires of an adult, desires she wouldn’t understand at all. So, it might’ve been pretty easy for some slick-talking twelve-year-old to convince her to play his new game. Now I don’t know that that’s what happened, it was before my time and in another country, but that’s my best guess.”

Paula was still wrapping her head around the fact that somebody half her age was a mother, when she knew full well that she, Paula Akron, was not ready for that.

“Did Lina’s parents raise the baby?” she asked.

“Yes,” Ted nodded. “Until Lina was something like twelve, she thought that her son was actually her little brother. She’s the youngest confirmed mother on record.”

“I sure hope there isn’t anybody younger!” Paul blurted out.

“Me too!” his girlfriend added.

“Me three,” Ted agreed. “Now, I mentioned a boy who was just starting to make sperm...”

“I don’t think I’m making sperm yet,” Paul Macon volunteered. “But I’m only four days younger than Paula; if she’s got her period, I’ll probably start making sperm soon.”

“Probably,” Ted nodded. The conversation was going in the direction he wanted it to. “Though it might not be for another year or two. Still, while you wouldn’t be breaking Lina Medina’s record, I like your idea of waiting to become parents.”

Paula put her hands on her hips and glared up at the older man. “If you’re trying to say something, Ted, just spit it out.”

So, Ted Michaels spat it out. “You two are boyfriend and girlfriend, and you spend a lot of nights in that treehouse alone together. And just like Lina, you’re getting some of those adolescent and adult hormones coursing through your bodies. You might find yourselves experiencing the desires of adults.”

Ted saw that both children, sort of children, were now glaring at him, so he finished with his spitting.

“I think we need to talk about birth control.”

“Oh, that,” Paula said as she flipped her hair. “I already talked to Rosi about it. She said you need to go to the pharmacy with me, since you’re my legal guardian. She’s got the prescription ready to go.”

Ted chuckled. “It is nice to have a doctor in the family.”

“Hey,” Paul asked, “do I need to start wearing condoms? Do they even make them in my size?”