Chapter 390: Parties and New Starts

Party time, at least according to April at six AM.

Everyone loaded up to go to Elena’s resort near town. She was bringing the girls. The rest of the octuplets were going to be there as well. Seeing all eight together made it pretty clear that they were all sisters. April linked to them all as soon as we arrived. Genetic testing showed the sets weren’t related, but their families suspected. Fortunately, the resort had opened. There were a lot of children in all various child care areas. The seven newborns were off in the nursey just for them and staffed with wet nurses. At one, we gathered everyone, including Skylar, Corwin, and Mary, to sing all eleven kids a happy birthday.

“I suggested to dad that we try for big shared birthday parties,” Elena explained. “The idea is to keep each kid in their own little ‘pen’ where they can see each other but would open their gifts without worrying about the others getting to another’s presents. We don’t want to have a birthday party ruined because one kid opened someone else’s and took it thinking it was theirs. Another is to make sure that each child gets a small cake in their favorite flavor with unique designs. We have larger sheet cakes for the others. Everyone gets all the birthday cake they want without worrying about what to do with the rest. If there is any leftover cake, we will take it to the childcare centers for snacks or rewards for good behavior.”

Not that idea makes sense.

April, her sisters, and siblings liked having their own space to check out and play with their new toys. The best part of this setup is that the resort took pictures of each gift, recorded who it was to and from, and then a video of the kids opening it. It helped with all the wrapping paper flying everywhere.

A super-sugary icing and cake are sure to cause a sugar crash.

All the girls, and my brother, managed to get everything opened and start playing with a few things before getting sleepy. April came over to crawl up into my lap and went to sleep. My brother and sister did that with my parents. April’s sisters didn’t last any longer than April. The nursery staff came to get all the three-year-olds except for April. I knew that she didn’t want me to put her to bed. She wanted me to hold her.

“It is uncanny how all eight of the girls look identical if not for their hair and eye color,” one of the moms noted.

Elena’s dad said, “If not for each set having different colored hair, I would suspect the same. I didn’t look closely at your daughters, but I’ve noticed my two’s eyes have been changing over the years. They are now both closer to an aqua. One bluer and the other greener.”

I looked into the DNA of each girl. Their genes for hair and eye color aren’t altered from how it was when they were born.

A young woman in her late teens said, “Eye color tends to change up until around three years of age. Looking at the photos, you will see that two red-haired girls are closer to hazel, with their sister staying her piercing ice-blue. All three blonde girls have light-colored eyes. From a few feet away, you wouldn’t be able to distinguish it very well.”

A guy, who was her twin, added, “You all had the girl’s DNA sequenced after you noticed their similar appearances on your last visit. I’ve reviewed it carefully, and their being octuplets is an impossibility. On closer inspection, I see that there are enough shared genes, so it appears that the girls result from sisters or cousins from one family hooking up with one guy or brothers and cousins from another family. My suspicion the two families were vacationing in the same area or attending a summer camp. There is no way to tell the age of the father or mother.”

“That is more likely closer to the truth,” one of the mothers said. “My family used to rent a large house near the beach so that all the cousins could spend time together. Our mothers ensured we were on the pill as soon as the doctor would prescribe them after we got our periods. The boys had to carry rubbers with them everywhere. I know I lost my virginity during a beach party with the families on either side of our beach house. A few days later, with my hormones, no curfew, and all the kids sleeping on the lowest floor, I started hooking up with the guys from those families on either side of us. My siblings and cousins were getting it on as much as I did those three weeks. When we adopted the girls, my mom sat me down to have a chat. I found out that I wasn’t getting away with anything during those beach vacations. The boys in my family knew that if anyone found out that they treated any girls like crap, they were in deep shit. I do know that one of my brothers was a girl magnet. He and I were very close back then, so we had a bit of a challenge to see how many different kids we could have sex with the next summer. I thought I was going to kick his butt easily, but he beat me three to one. I was with twenty-one guys. I know that three houses down were having a gal’s summer two weeks at the beach. The dads and boys were vacationing at Philmont. I’m not even sure any of those girls had ’the talk’ with their moms. He tried using rubbers, but the girls said it wasn’t natural, so they all lost their cherries bareback. By the time they left, he had gotten it on with all sixteen of the girls multiple times. I suspect that he got it on with some of their unmarried aunts and maybe even their moms.”

One of the other women there said, “I was a nerd. Well, I am still a nerd. My cousins were determined to lose their virginities over one Spring Break. They stayed in a big cabin in the mountains, with the girls all sleeping in the basement. The boys were all sleeping on to the top level to keep them from sneaking out. From how the girls told it, the boy next door knew less about sex than they did. All of them knew a lot when they left. Three weeks later, the girls all found that they didn’t pay much attention during health class. One lucked out and miscarried, while the others delivered full-term babies. Since the girls weren’t married, they never got to see their babies, not even after delivery. All were already adopted.”

Yeah. I like where you are going with your guesses. Brothers and male cousins could explain the eye and hair colors.

Mom didn’t engage in the conversation regarding April having the same birthday as Elena’s girls and could these babies all be mine somehow.

I noticed the dad of one set of triplets looked me in the eye and nodded slightly before saying, “They didn’t list names of the parents on the birth certificates. I doubt we will ever be able to find out anyway. For me, I don’t care who their birth parents were. The pair made a beautiful set of triplets who are healthy, smart, and happy.”

Dad had me pass him April so that I could get back home to ensure that Bart and Bambi got registered into high school tomorrow. I would take Tee and Dee over in the afternoon. As I headed out, the man that stopped the discussion on the girl’s parents caught up to me a minute later.

“Steve and I go a very long way back. He has trusted me with things you wouldn’t believe if I told them to you. My wife had a bad fall when she was a teenager that damaged her ovaries and uterus. We wanted children so badly,” he explained. “I didn’t even stop to ask my wife when Steve said he had a set of triplet girl newborns that needed someone to adopt them. Their mother was unable to care for them, so they were put up for adoption. I’m also a professional bullshit detector, and you are one of the most honest people I’ve ever met. Whenever anyone got you talking about if the girls might be sextuplets or octuplets, you seemed sure that girls weren’t. When the girls are around each other, they act how they do around other kids their age. They are pulled to April like a magnet whenever April shows up, even if they aren’t in the same room. She is clearly an alpha female, with a birthday the same as the twins. If she didn’t look different from the others, I suspect they are all sisters born from the same mother, with April being born first. That wouldn’t make them octuplets.”

I looked him in the eyes from a foot away. I watched him see whatever happened in my eyes that was different from everyone else. The realization came to his face as he began putting the pieces together.

I told him, “It would make them identical nontuplets. All clones of their mother used to pull the embryonic stem cells into their mother’s body to rebuild it from the inside out. What is altering a few genes? There were three sets of triplets, but one wouldn’t stay like the others. These three groups of girls weren’t ever supposed to meet each other. Things happen, questions get asked, and assumptions get made. Since they aren’t octuplets, then I don’t have to worry about being caught trying to lie.”

A few seconds later, his eyes went wide. He grabbed his phone start thumbing through who knows how many gigabytes of pictures. After he found the one he wanted, he turned his phone to me. The girl looked like the octuplets, except for eye and hair color. Another picture looked like April.

“I never even thought about why Steve was bypassing all the usual processes to get our adoption of the three girls fast-tracked. Paula didn’t survive the accident, did she?” he asked.

I smiled and said, “It depends on how you define survival or when life ends.”

“Now I feel even more like shit for not stopping Steve’s wife when she went off the rails. I never knew it got that bad until after she was gone. Don’t ever tell Steve or Paula, but it was remotely Paula’s fault. She kept telling her mom that she was going to have your children way before that birthday party. It crushed Paula when she thought you didn’t give her a present. Her mother overheard part of a phone call where your mom tried to find something special for Paula. No matter what her mom did, Paula kept saying that one day you would give her children, and she loved you,” he told me. “I heard Steve’s wife talking about how she was getting even with this woman and her kid for showing how Steve didn’t make enough money in front of everyone. If I had known that she would make it her life goal to cause you to suffer for her misplaced sense of revenge, I would have told her to knock it off. She would have.”

I put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You know, even with all that, I think I coped ok and turned out pretty well. I found out quickly who is my real friend and who is just using me as a means to an end. Back to our original discussion, the best thing is that the girls aren’t in any danger, and no doctor in the world could find any signs of Paula ever being pregnant. She knows she gave birth to April but can’t understand how that could be. April has always known in her way. We have an extraordinary bond and communicate on an entirely different level. Always remember this, not a threat, but a way to ensure that your daughters are protected. Paula’s skull got crushed, her brain turned into mush, and she was decapitated. Her mind is turning back on slowly, much too slowly for Paula, it seems. Except for specific memories, they are all there again. It wouldn’t take anything to ensure that we never had this conversation as far as you are concerned. I take care of all my friends, even the three most powerful women in the world. Since I woke up in the hospital from my coma, I have made many powerful friends without doing anything other than being myself. I wouldn’t have told you anything if I hadn’t seen it in your eyes when pieces of a bigger puzzle dropped into place.”

“I’ve not had a lot of luck with religion in my life, but I have to ask. Are you what those from Ancient Greece and Rome would have thought of as a god?” he asked.

Seeing as no one was around, and I made sure we were in a complete dead zone, I put my fingertips touching the same finger on each hand and then pulled them apart as I used the place in my head to shoot sparks of crackling energy between the fingertips.

I stopped and laughed before I said, “I’ve been asking that question a lot lately. If I ever get a definitive answer, I will let you know. However, I do have a life-altering question for you. If your wife could conceive a child, or children, to term, what would you want? A boy, girl, one of each, twins, more triplets?”

I thought he was going to ask if I was joking and then thought the better of it.

He did give it some thought before he said, “My wife has been saying how easy it has been with the girls now that they are mostly potty trained. The girls need brothers. I want triplet boys. Two identical and one fraternal.”

I closed my eyes briefly to let the place in my head look to see what was wrong with his wife. It turns out that it was something the right doctors could have fixed without too much trouble. Both her fallopian tubes had been damaged and healed up closed. Whatever connections her ovaries needed to give her brain weren’t there. Her uterus was pretty scared, but it was all on the area inside her body cavity, not the inside where the babies grew. As her womb stretched, that scan tissue would break up anyway. I ensured that I healed parts of the scars to ensure that all she had left were tiny places. She was due to ovulate in a week, but I sped that up a bit so that she would ovulate now. I found they had sex right before coming to the birthday party. I zapped all the X sperm and super-charged the Y. When she ovulated, they were off racing for the eggs.

“Well, if you want to get started on that, I suggest you go have sex again, just to be sure you have enough sperm around to do the job,” I teased.

I got a hug, and he said, “I would be a bit offended by someone like you playing God, but in this case, I will let it slide. With all the newborns earlier, all the women are pretty horny to give to try for their own. I won’t have any problems convincing my wife to slip off somewhere quickly to work through her needs. The girls won’t be popping in to interrupt things.”

He headed back the way he came, and I went to my car to drive home. When I buckled up, his wife had the eggs fertilized. The spot in my head already forced one egg to split into twin boys. I got zoomed in on where I had subconsciously fixed some of the chromosomes. Some of them would have caused the babies to abort.

That would have sucked.

I found out on the way home that Skylar, Mary, and Corwin were picked up separately by the ultra-fast jets along with the babies. They would arrive home within the hour. I didn’t need to rush back, so I enjoyed the Maserati on some of the old winding highways. The GPS had gotten a significant upgrade. I had markers for every form of law enforcement anywhere around me. It was nice to open the car up on some stretches but go cruising by slowly on others.

Walking into this monstrous mansion is weird, only to find no one here, not even any of the staff. Why isn’t the door locked?

“Welcome, David,” a female voice said as I walked in from the garage. “Is there something you require presently? I can contact the staff to return to your home if you need them. They were not expecting anyone here today.”