Bacteria

"So, you are CIA?" - Callie Lawson dreaded this moment, ever since she had let her boss convince her to "cultivate" Xhanthippe Xeyos, the lone Beta member of the Anipos delegation on Earth.

Callie was a thrill-seeker, and the relationship with the immensely dangerous alien beauty had more than satisfied that aspect of her. Still, "thrilled" still rhymed with "killed".

Now, her name was probably going to enter the list of intelligence operatives that had tried to do the same things, done the same woman, and had vanished once their natures had been discovered.

Callie didn't even think about running... she knew enough, about this much beloved neoprene-clad monster, to realize that there was no place - in the whole solar system, really - that was safe from her wrath.

"It was fun, till it last" - not a great epitaph, but a fitting one for a 27 year old black girl from Nebraska.

"How did you know?"

"Oh, those gentle guys in the FSB managed to let the info slip through their back channels, so that our monitoring 'bots could intercept it" - a scroll of shoulders - "the usual shit your people likes so much to play".

Pretty much the same had happened to Irina Kolskarova, the predecessor of Callie in Xhanthippe's bed, only that time the info had been "slipped" through the British MI6.

Earth's various countries' intelligence agencies were all taking turns, to say so, sending gorgeous agents to ensnare this alien bon vivante, each time managing to burn out the agents of the previous .

Callie was waiting for some alien tool to enter the room and arrest her - she was sure that Xanthi had never, would never kill anyone, but all those other women had disappeared, shortly after they had been unmasked.

What she didn't expect, was seeing the alien woman decide to sit on the sofa, while inviting her to join in. A scene so familiar, and so comfortable, that Callie was there before her rational brain could scream "no!".

"Of course, I knew you were something: to date, no civilian woman has ever dated me. it was just a question of which agency, which country, really."

"So, you knew... from the start? Then,why? Why did you end up with me?"

"I am not really ready to live a caste life and, as I said, no civilian really comes close to me. So, let me ride the dragon - till it is this sexy, I am not going to complain."

A long, uncomfortable pause, while Callie considers all the implications - if that was the truth, who seduced who? All the information that she had passed to her superiors, how much was it true and how much was doctored? Her job, the risks she ran... all for nothing?

Not for the first time, Callie thought that she wasn't really cut for this stuff - something that, truth be told, could be said for most of Xhanthippe's marks, all young beauties at the star of their career in intelligence.

"So, you are not angry? With me?"

"No, how could I? Why should I? Your nations look silly, to me, and the whole paraphernalia of agencies protecting each country's interests is just a senseless waste of energies, but I respect a woman that honestly tries to do her job to the best of her abilities."

Callie feels relieved, a tiny bit - her predecessors must have heard these same words, and have all vanished nonetheless.

"Leaving these childish questions aside, I fear that, no matter the fact that I already knew that you were an agent, the FSB plot has worked. I cannot keep our relationship."

A pain went through Callie's heart, unexpectedly. She always told herself that the sole reason she continued the charade was her sense of duty, bur the ache that she felt told her otherwise. Xanthippe had played her too well. She was the one who had fallen in love with the enemy, and didn't even realize it.

"Before you go, though, I have some information that you need to know. Stuff that is important, for you to decide what to do with your life, now that you will not have to devote your energies to keep me happy."

Callie wanted to retort that it had been her pleasure, keeping Xanthippe happy... but she knew it didn't matter any more.

"You know, there are some holes, in the info on the web, bout the relationship between my culture and the Anipos" - of course, Callie had no idea... she had surfed the 'net  looking for information, before and since she was assigned to "handle" Xanthi,  but she had no other sources but what trickled through the FTL data-stream.

"None of us is admitted inside the Anipos home system, none."

Callie was even more perplexed, now, though she could imagine why.  For all their technological might, the Anipos where remarkably human, one of the less mutated of the offspring of the Cro-Magnon expansion. 

The Betans are, for all intent and purposes, super men and superwomen. Not so unstoppable, for a civilization with the kind of weaponry the Anipos showed during the conquest of Earth, but still some mean heavy-hitters. 

"And we do not really enjoy going to other planets either, as the rule of thumb is that we go not only covered in latex, like I am now..." - Callie thought that Xanthi simply liked the stuff, pervert fetishist as she was - "but we also have to wear masks and air filters, every time we step outside our air conditioned, sterile compounds."

This was news to Callie, that thought - an agent is an agent is an agent - that her chiefs would have been mightily interested to it. 

"Unless, there are good reasons not to obsess over the dangers."

"Which dangers? Your people is, as strong as physically possible. Nothing can damage one of you!"

"Plenty can damage me: rejection, fear in  the eye of a person that I like, any of a host of infectious illnesses that still roam through the various humanities, for which my sub-species has no immunity nor any knowledge" - Xanthippe makes a pause, to sip a bit of water from the glass in the table in front of the sofa - "but no, I was not talking about danger for us."

"I was talking about dangers for the society that we are visiting."

A terrible uneasiness suddenly gripped Callie.

"I think that you spent your time learning what you could about the history of  my home, Beta Canis Minor as you call it..." - Callie didn't need to nod, both knew that she did - "... but, the history on the 'net ignores a lot of wild guesses and hypothesis that have been made along the years, and have always been rejected for being unsubstantiated."

"What are you trying to say, Xanthi?"

 "OK, always impatient, my little tortillera? OK. Our planet, was colonized by a bunch of idealistic university types, that is known. Very idealistic, because there was no way back. What gives us our 'powers' are 'extraterrestrial mitochondria'."

 "that is known - I found that much on the web, too. It is not a secret, no?"  

"Well, but these mitochondria, in a way, had the same genesis as the ones in standard humans and all other 'first wave' life forms, like most of the ones on this planet: aggressive bacteria that infected a species in the past, and managed to integrate themselves into it, as a for of symbiotic relationship."

"OK, this is high school biology. Still, I do not get what you are trying to say."

"My mitochondria are aggressive, alien, nuclear-reaction powered extraterrestrial bacteria that learned how to live symbiotically with humanity, by making humans their carriers, integrating said humans in a planet-wide collaborative ecology that eschew the tenets of competitive evolution."

Callie wasn't an expert in biology, but the logical concatenations were simple to follow... aggressive bacteria. Infections. And, from the dawn of time, sexual intercourse of any kind have always been among the preferred infection routes, for every kind of bacteria, viruses, fungi and God only knows what.
     
"Am I... infected?"

"Undoubtedly, Callie."

The news struck the black girl... she couldn't believe it. And Xanthi didn't say anything about it, she just let her run into the danger - OK, she would have run into it anyway, but still, knowing it before would have been nice.

"With what?" - the face of Xanthi didn't look very serious, so, maybe, it was not going to be anything fatal or serious like HIV, or any of the other hundred bothersome chronic illnesses. Something easily curable, maybe?

"How do they call it, in your country? Ah, yes, I know the word." - pause - "Superpowers - you have been infected with superpowers."

Callie's face went blank with stupor, while Xanthippe kept her best poker face. The, the laugh started. 

"Hahahahahah -What? Really?" - tears from the corners of her eyes, Callie can't help herself... what an anti-climax - "I am infected with... superpowers? OK, I earned the joke. I am sorry, Xanthi. I really loved these months with you, I will miss you"

"Callie, this is not a joke - you are infected, with alien bacteria that will replace some if not all of your mitochondria, over time."

"Sorry? No, wh, what?"

"You are too old to really learn how to use them, so you'll get only the 'passive' ones, and super-strength" - another pause - "but your sons and daughters will have the complete deal; super-strength, near-invulnerability, anti-gravity and magnetic fields manipulation" - another pause, and a smile - "yes, flight. They will fly."

They sat there in silence for a couple of minutes, while Callie tried to bend her head around the idea.

"That is, if you will be allowed to have children" - Callie's was puzzled, again - "if your bosses, or their bosses, do not stick you in a lab for tests, if they do not sterilize you to avoid the risk, and if they do not kill you right now, till they still can do it with a minimum effort."

Callie analyzed these words, at length. It all made sense, but for "Why should they kill me?"

"How would you describe Beta's society?" - that was an easy question, after so much reading on the argument.

"Chaos, tempered by laziness and an absolute incapacity to take authority seriously."  

"Yes, that sums it nicely... the first colonists were a bunch of academics, it is true, but many of them were in administrative duties. It started as a pretty, run of the mill - if somewhat laid-back - human society. Not different than Anipos-Prime, really... much smaller, but with almost as much technical skill and support."

"By the time their children had grown up, they lacked almost any reason to keep it running - the bacteria were filling them with energy, so they did not really need to eat more than once every fortnight, they did not really needed shelters... and they didn't really enjoy most of what their fathers did anyway. They let it all rot, as it was useless to them."

"A structured society is kept together, really, by the necessity of the singles to satisfy their needs, and by the fact that the force and abilities of one person, alone, are hardly enough to do most of the needed jobs. Those of a normal human person, that is."

Callie's mood grew colder, while she listened to this.

"The bacteria removed most of those basic needs that bring persons together, and allowed everybody a degree of absent-minded, ruthless selfishness that most human societies allows only to a very small handful of  somewhat despised alpha-males, at the very top of their hierarchies.  So, you see, your offspring will be an unstoppable engine of social disruption, showing to the masses that your 'authorities' lacks the power to manage, really, anything."

"I am sorry, I think that... this surpasses me."

"There are two reasons why I can go around this planet with just a low protection suit, and screw with the natives."

"Two?"

"One: it is already too late to stop the tide. Bridget became famous, but she had three sisters... all of whom are still on this planet, all of whom is at least as infectious as me, all of whom have developed a prickly personality and have had far too many lovers to ever recount them."


"Two: the Anipos invaded the planet because they feared that your 'superiors' would have managed to launch some kind of interstellar crusade, to justify the need of their authority in front of the already growing shift to widespread asocial behavior. A shift fostered by the belated, but inevitable, arrival of hyper-automation, a time that is critical in most civilizations."

"On Anipos Prime they  are not going to lose their sleep. Surely, not over the possibility that the civilizations of this planet crumbles to dust, and devolve into the kind of very loosely tied anarchy that is Beta. A nifty solution to a horrible problem, really."

Callie stared at her with horror.

"I am a weapon of massive social destruction, aimed at the most grave danger the Anipos influence sphere has endured in the last eight centuries." - the smile on Xanthippe lips turned bleak - "and so, now, are you. Once they realize it, your chiefs - most of whom have earnestly invested all of themselves, into the preservation of their social system - will see plenty of reasons to contain you."

"What happened, to the other women?" 

"Rita McFadden went her way... she didn't get the bug, but she wasn't exactly human when we met, either. She had her own protective shields, always up a micron from her skin, always protecting her from everything, even me. The Anipos knew more about her than what they let me investigate, and she was thick with their battle-bots."


"Suzy Chang found a nice place,  re-discovered sculpture - molding smelted iron by her bare hands, by now, I think - and is alive and well. She has two nice daughters, that  have already started to fly, the same did Linda Fiorentino and Carol Pedersen." - then, Xanthippe added - "The same reasons why no Betan males are allowed outside the planet, no matter the precautions, applies to the kids of infected humans. You will have to remember this."



"Michelle Ouellebeck disappeared, no idea where... she hit the ground running, as they say, hiding from hers and us."

"Irina went back, talked to her chiefs..." - a long pause - "... I think that she is already a collection of samples floating into vats, in some number city in the middle of Siberia. Probably, you are my last lover, on this planet."

"The last?"

"I do not think that Irina's bosses will be able to keep the information for themselves, for any long time. It is just too good not to be sold."

"My superiors... will they know?" 

"You are advised to act as they already know that you are one of the seven-ten most egregious dangers, to their power system, that actually roam this planet. They would be fools, if they didn't try to contain or destroy you, as soon and as swiftly as possible."

Callie started to cry. 

"Unfortunately, now that I 'know' that you are a spy, I cannot justify having you around. I can still help you 'disappear', if so you decide. What to do in these circumstances, has been well analyzed by Adri Rohsvabat, our chief of security."

"Disappear? How?"

"We have routes in place, and new identities prepared. Your government may want you dead - if they are not idiots - but we, the alien invasion forces, would be very glad to see you live a long, happy and lewd life. With plenty of kids."

"Plenty of daughters, you mean."

 "Oh, sons would accelerate things a bit - one of the bacteria is small enough to colonize, and power-up, spermatozoa.  Not to make them as powerful as the Kryptonian's of the legend, but still enough to run for hundred of miles before the 'zoa cell dies, and to impregnate every egg cell they may happen to sense" -  Xeyos tone was almost whimsical - "thousands of undesired pregnancies, most but not all resulting in abortions and the death of the mothers, in a radius of  three or four hundred miles. This, each time the kid had a night pollution."

Callie tried to visualize this... failing.

"And those of the unwanted kids that manage to be born... it takes more than one type of mitochondria, to make a functional cell, and more than one type of Betan bacteria, to make a functional mitochondrial replacement.  There is no way to know what would they be. Superhuman, subhuman, un-human? Nobody has any idea, really. This is why, all the others decided to abort, when the child was a male. It would be too much responsibility, to put upon a child."

"Sigh - this, didn't happen, on Beta. The bacteria were everywhere and exchanged particles with information, like all bacteria on worlds of the first wave do. The colony was relatively small, just a dozen millions bodies living in a concentrated area.When the bacteria learned how to colonize the human body, it was over in a matter of weeks."


"I don't think that I'll have children. Not after this." - Callie was crying, and she was sincere, too.

"Why not? They are going to be healthy, good looking as their mother... strong as their mother - in a couple of years, you'll know what I mean - and they will fly. Why not have daughters like that? The future will be their. Only, it will be a future that will have scarce need for states, countries, armies, or chiefs of any kind."


A buzzing sound interrupted them, as Callie's phone sprang to life. It was Callie's handler, with a message that felt both cryptic and urgent.

Her heart sank... her bosses knew, she thought. Had they knew, when they sent her in? Probably, not her chief, but someone above him, surely.

Three weeks later,  Renee Furler met Xanthippe Xeyos at a No theater representation organized by the active (however reduced from its heyday, it still had not decayed as much as the motherland's administration) Japanese consulate of New York. 

The athletic blonde, sporting a surfer tan gained on Australia's best beaches, accepted gladly the fascinating alien's proposals, and they ended the evening drinking in front of Xanthippe's flat warm fireplace. 

Some days after, Renee joined the selected ranks of those that had awakened in the voluptuous satin of Xanthippe's sheets, after a terrifyingly - and satisfactorily - sexual week-end. 

It would take some more years, before the last of Earth's authorities finally understood that Xanthippe's loves were, all of them, deliberate ruses in a social-biological warfare that they hardly understood.