The She-Male, who otherwise could have passed easily for humans were they not separated by many many light-years of galactic distance, were possessed of what would be, in terms of human scientific understanding, a triple chromosome expressed as XYX, with one of the three chromosomes being inactive at birth, determining their birth gender. Beginning at puberty, with its accompanying rapid hormone shifts, these chromosomes began to fluctuate from active to inactive status in turns, granting the She-Male race the unique, (and eventually, near full maturity, mostly controllable) ability to instantly shift their gender from male to female, or visa versa. Since sexual arousal almost invariably shifted a She-Male to their opposite gender, procreation was really only possible in their shifted forms, whereas when their partners were not currently aroused, they tended to be in the forms of their birth, so it was a necessary trait of the species' survival that the entire race was bisexual, (in orientation, as opposed to literally, which they also were, come to think of it) able to be attracted to both males and females, which the love of their lives might change to just by holding hands, if the mood was right. It was fortunate that the change in hormones during pregnancy (of the nominal males, naturally) caused the chromosome shift to lock in female shape, or else their race wouldn't have lasted a single generation, due to constant miscarriages as the males shifted back to their gender of birth as soon as the afterglow wore off.
Concepts such as gender oppression and "battles of the sexes" were utterly unknown in their culture, since there amounted to very little difference between either one. Going back to primitive ages when their earliest ancestors lived in caves, all a smaller female had to do to join a hunt with the bigger, stronger, males was imagine one of the more attractive of them without their loincloths, and "she" could throw a spear with every bit as much strength as any of them. Theirs had been a culture of full gender equality right from its earliest history.
It could also be really confusing trying to find a date on a Saturday night, if one's goal was finding long-term companionship that might eventually result in children. That good-looking man you were thinking about buying a drink might just have been thinking about something nice at the moment, and turn out to be the same sex as yourself a moment later.
After several frustrating experiences like that, along with a whole host of other awkward moments common in their society, one particularly frustrated biologist of their culture finally came to the radical decision that this whole business of two constantly switching genders was just downright silly! Most of her people might have agreed with her (or him when he was this pissed off and ranting up a storm in his-her lab after getting "tricked" down at the clubs again) on that harmless point, but likely not with the "solution" she envisioned and set to work upon: namely, the total eradication of the alternating two-sex system planet-wide.
Why have two genders constantly switching back and forth when a single gender that could fulfill both roles would be far, FAR more efficient (and remove the problem of having to watch the guy at the bar for half an hour to make sure he was born a he before hitting on him, and potentially embarrassing oneself).
The sciences of the She-Male people were highly advanced, far more so than those of Earth (the people of which, at this point in history, were just beginning to grasp the basics of metallurgy, having learned to smelt copper and tin together to form a more useful alloy to be termed 'bronze'). Detailed biological examinations of how males and females were put together had naturally been done centuries ago, and it was quite amazing what could done with modern She-Male genetic tinkering if one had the knowledge and imagination... a chip on one's shoulder, and possibly one foot in the loony bin.
Her mono-sex archetype became something of a pet-project that she worked on for years, usually whenever she'd had a bad night trying to find a date, and had lots of frustrated energy to work off. As the project began to show results and near completion however, the excitement of creating something entirely new began to replace her previous angry motivations, and she spent fewer and fewer nights out and more and more working feverishly in her lab until the wee hours of the night.
Finally, her mono-sex conversion virus ("MSCV" from this point forward) was complete; an aggressive virus that would radically mutate DNA and fuse the XYX chromosomes together to form something new that... probably couldn't be accurately expressed as an English letter.
(Though there would, many light years away and several thousand years later, be a 14 year old girl named Ami Mizuno who would decide to research the origins and other meanings of the symbol that had one day appeared glowing on her brow, as well as featured on the blue and gold pen a cat had given her, and promptly decided NEVER to tell any of her friends what she'd learned! Considering the teasing Usagi had done to Rei, it would simply not be prudent. There were worse connotations to be had than to be a pretty shrine maiden who called on the power of a planet represented by a symbol that also implied being male.)
She'd had to do most of her testing on local mammals (many of which were sequential hermaphrodites, that is, their sex changed from one to the other at a certain point in their life cycles). It took some tweaking, but eventually she'd been able to shift the creatures into a monosex form that could not only impregnate, but be impregnated by a female, male, or another monosex mutant of the same species (which was rather important, since her goal was to "fix" her race, not have it go extinct in a single generation). She also managed to program the virus to alter the Bartholin and seminal glands to continuously reproduce the virus, so that both types of her new monosex creations' sexual fluids would spread the virus to any other of their species they came (if one might excuse the pun) into direct contact with. It seemed to take a good deal longer to infect the bisexed test subjects through skin contact than if a fluid-to-fluid connection was made (such as during intercourse, regardless of who was "on top", so to speak). Simply splashing some of her serum (or animal sexual fluids, for that matter) on the uninfected animal required a good half hour for the virus to be absorbed through the skin, during which much of the fluid could be lost to evaporation, unless there was significant quantities of it. Fortunately for her patience, her test animals rarely needed to be left in the same enclosure long before they began to attempt breeding... which she might have found unusual, were she as well versed in these animal's behavior patterns as she was in their biology. As it happened, she'd unknowingly taken her original samples from her male and female test animals (from which she determined such things as the proper balance of hormone levels, among other things) during the creatures' mating season. Having missed this detail, it is perhaps not so surprising that she also had no idea how atypical it was for her transformed monosex creatures to be happily fornicating with each other half a year later, well outside of their normal seasonal breeding cycle. Nor did it seem to make any difference which sex the non-monosex creature happened to be, beyond what got plugged into where.
Now, being fairly certain she'd ironed out all the kinks in her MSCV's overall design, having tested it exhaustively on various animal types, the next logical step was human (or more correctly, "She-Male") testing. It was a big step to take, admittedly, but there wasn't much further she could do at this point in her research.
Now, while she might have been horrifically inept at trying to get a date, the biologist was hardly an idiot, or completely lacking any ability to understand her fellow She-Males' mindsets. She knew putting an ad on the Interwebnets for test subjects to radically and permanently alter their physiology was more likely to have her research grants instantly repealed and cause a huge scandal than get her any eager volunteers. Testing it on herself first was also an unacceptable option (after all, if the first humanoid tests went horribly wrong, who would refine them until the MSCV worked properly?) She was a scientist, not a Mad scientist (frustrated, more than a little hard up, obsessive and temperamental, but not "mad").
Given her past history of being easily fooled, teased, and embarrassed at the singles clubs for much of her adult life, it was perhaps not so unexpected that she would pick such a venue for her first humanoid test group.
Now as has been previously stated, the technology level of the She-Male people at the time was well beyond what humans would reach even in their early 21st century. Intravenous delivery of time-released medication via baggies hung from a stand, to be slowly injected into the bloodstream via a needle on a tube, had been done away with many centuries past (after all, it was such a hassle to go to the bathroom or change clothes when you had to drag a coat-rack on wheels around with you). She-Male medical facilities of this advanced age employed a far more convenient method of a relatively tiny circular tube, containing the micro-compressed medications fully within it, to be released hypodermically through the intact epidermal layers in contact with the tube's inner surface. Or... to put it in simpler terms, it was a ring the patient could put over their finger that would slowly release medication into the bloodstream without even breaking the skin of the finger in question. It certainly hurt less then giving injections, and was far more hygienic, cutting down immensely on the amount of biohazardous waste material (as in, used needles) produced by their hospitals. These convenient devices were therefore the biologist's natural choice for the initial introduction of her MSCV serum.
So it was that our vindictive scientist next visited one of the more popular nightclubs in her home city wearing the white robes of a medical researcher rather than her usual trendy fashions (or so she'd always thought them to be, though as a result of her cloistered life in her labs, she was actually a good decade or more behind the popular trends) with a box full of loaded Hypo-rings under her arm. Walking into the DJs booth as though she owned the place, she spoke with the authority of a Surgeon General (which she was not) on official business (which it certainly wasn't) and convinced the DJ to cut the music and give her control of the public address system (most likely he assumed this was some sort of medical emergency, such as the drinks having been contaminated).
"Good people," she spoke proudly, "I apologize for interrupting your merrymaking and courtship attempts, however I have an announcement of world-changing proportions, and since this is a place where I have so many memories," which she did, though they weren't particularly fond ones, "I thought I'd allow you fine people to be the first to hear of it! There has been an incredible medical breakthrough in the area of our people's constant, and often difficult to fully control, gender shifting. A miraculous serum has been developed that marks the end of every awkward moment I'm sure all of you can remember having at least a few of, down through the years. No more hitting on a prospective mate who turns out not to be the true-gender you thought they were, due to being in the wrong mood at the time! No more having to call Emergency Services if your kids walk in on you having sex and startle you into a shift! Even those who favour their own birth-gender for companionship will no longer need to take disturbing mood-altering medications in order to have children together! It's finally here, the answer to all our people's problems!"
Confused looks were traded back and forth among the crowd. They had problems? Granted, occurrences like the lady in the white coat mentioned happened now and again, but that was just life, right?
"You're saying we'll have FULL conscious control over shifting?"
"That could be neat!"
"I could start a fashion line of clothes that don't need to stretch! I'm gonna be rich!"
"I guess it couldn’t hurt to try it once. I mean, it's not a permanent thing, right?"
The scientist did not correct any of their assumptions. She merely grinned proudly, as though she were granting them a wondrous gift, and stepped out of the DJ booth holding out the box of Hypo-rings. One by one, people came forward. Not all of them, certainly, but a good several dozen of the 100 or so people gathered; a fine first test group.
The fools... ah... pioneers of medical science, donned the familiar looking rings and waited, looking back at the lady in the white coat expectantly.
"How do we know if it's working?"
"I don't feel any different."
"It may take several minutes to begin effect," she explained with a grin. "Don't worry, you'll notice when it does, I guarantee it!"
The people shrugged, and went back to dancing, as the music started up again. The scientist set up a video recording device to document the results of her first test group of jerks... ah... her fellow She-Males.
True to her predictions, some 10 minutes later, the first person stumbled as their center of balance suddenly began changing. One after another, everyone wearing a Hypo-ring clutched their stomachs in sharp discomfort as organs, both interior and exterior, began to shift and change. Several were frightened and screamed, though the actual pain wasn't much worse than fairly bad menstrual cramps (something both birth-genders on this world were familiar with, despite slight differences in the experience depending on what gender one was born as). The transformation was fortunately quite rapid, and the discomfort disappeared, or at least the cramps of shifting internal organs. Some people had not been wearing clothes that fit properly over their new dimensions.
Regardless of whether they'd been male or female (or in male or female shifted forms) before the change began, every one of the test subjects now had a build somewhere in-between. It was a predominantly female skeletal frame, though the muscle density lent more towards the male archetype, granting them the strength of their male bodies despite the more compact frame. The faces also were almost identical to their former female visages. That was about all that had remained the same, however.
Our scientist had failed to take into account how the end results might be skewed by her unintentional use of animals in seasonal heat for her original test subjects. Between that and the surge of puberty-like growth hormones (of both genders, at once) involved in the changes, everyone who'd donned the ring appeared to have gotten a second adolescence... over and above the growth of their original ones. As startled and distinctly uncomfortable people quickly tore at their own clothes to relieve painful pressure, or just to boggle, slack-jawed, at the sudden changes to their anatomy, it became blatantly clear that one unintended side-effect of the MSCV on humanoids was going to be the unusual increase in size of gender-specific organs. Breast and male genital size of all the test subjects had swelled to well above what was average for their people; in some cases, very near to double the respective average sizes. By the very fact that their current clothes fit them so poorly, it was a safe bet that not a one of them had been so over-endowed when they'd first entered the club, in either of their former genders. Those changed were shocked; those watching were horrified (other than the scientist, who was rapidly taking down notes).
Then the intense surge of behavior-altering hormones comparable to those animals in heat hit... in life forms who were biologically and behaviorally capable of mating at any time of the year.
In a culture where a slightly built woman, backed into an alley by big man, could shift her body into that of fairly strong and muscular man herself (and likely would automatically if she became frightened) rape was a remarkably uncommon crime, due to the difficulties of actually keeping the other party as the sex you wanted them to be, to say nothing of oneself. In a situation where a sexually aroused male figure was intending to force sex on another, that "man" would actually be a woman by birth. If "his" victim was also a female-born, if frightened or startled, she would shift to her male body, most likely negating the strength advantage of the aggressor, if any, and as well limiting the type of sex that could even conceivably occur, due to the new absence of the traditional orifice. If said theoretical victim was a male-born, frightened into a female body, all that would be required of "her" would be to calm down and regain "her" larger male form to defend himself (which might, for the same reasons as above, lower the attacker's interest). In short actually raping a person on the planet She-Male was prohibitively difficult, which was why it was almost completely unheard of.
On that one night, in a night-club somewhere in one of their world's largest cities, over a hundred cases occurred in about as many minutes.
And that was just the start.
Every person forced down and wildly fornicated with against their will (by whatever means the victim's own current gender necessitated) stood up soon after as one of them, and sought out their own victims almost immediately. Very few actually escaped the club, made sluggish and reluctant to resist very hard by the quickly rising invisible cloud of very strong sexual pheromones (another side effect of the biologist's poorly chosen first animal test groups). Truth be told, while "victims" was the correct word, and "rape" the proper definition of the activity being forced upon them... they didn't put up much of a fight. In an enclosed space like this, with nearly 40 of the initially transformed former She-Males pumping out mating scents several orders of magnitude stronger than their race had been capable of in a good million years, if not longer... most of the unchanged were so aroused they barely even tried to escape, and were moaning in agonizing pleasure as they'd never before known within moments of being "attacked". Each time a changed climaxed, another changed one was born (though the nominally "male" female-borns, whose penii were being tightly squeezed by the spasming vaginas of the changed, tended to take a few minutes longer to begin transforming, having to absorb the climatic vaginal lubricants through the skin of their dicks; whereas those in whose vaginas the oversized changed penii were cuming by the bucket load, having the infected semen shot deep into their internal organs, changed almost immediately after the changed finished and pulled out.)
Oh, and it is worth noting that the "heroine" of our little tale, the amoral biologist, made it about 3 steps in her attempt to bolt for the door, and was, in fact, the first victim of her own years of hard work... in every orifice they could squeeze their over-inflated male organs into (which was reduced by one around the time she started liking it, and shifted to her aroused male form, but the new addition was quickly accommodated as well... and the warm place that was lost would be reappearing to be filled again soon after the first of them came in her). This should come as no surprise, since, before the surge of lust hit them, most of the changed had been shocked, horrified, and not a little furious at her for changing them into a collection of bizarre mutants. The overwhelming lust that overtook them moments later just gave them a method to express their displeasure. The former biologist (now just one of the horde the newsreels would later dub "Hermaphroditic Vampires" or "Hermpires" for short) would also be the only new changed who did not get up for many hours after her transformation, to find prey of her own.
Some people really like "angry sex". Angry sex with a couple dozen humanoids, all of whom now had sexual organs of roughly double the size evolution had carefully determined was most appropriate for the average female body of their species to accommodate, who all had a very GOOD reason to hate your guts (though they got over it by the time they were through with her)... is not exactly recommended by your local Board of Health as conductive to a long and healthy life (though, as it happened, since the organs they were abusing were in the process of being reconstructed anyway, she did not, in fact, suffer any permanent injury... she just couldn't stand up for about a day and a half, that's all).
And when the massive orgy was over, over a hundred new "Hermpires" opened the doors of the hot, steamy, and decidedly sticky-floored former nightclub, and spread out across the city, driven by a powerful biological drive to breed, inherited from an animal in whom it was only a temporary condition, but in them would be nearly constant.
It was like Night of the Living Dead... only stickier.
~ ~ ~
One year to the day the embittered biologist had unleashed her ill-thought-out solution to what she perceived as her world's biggest problem (well, it had been a big problem for her, at least, or so the very thorough investigation team that had done a remarkable job piecing the whole story together determined) the remainders of the true She-Male race were embarking on a desperate solution of their own; they were launching colony ships into space, to escape the epidemic that had, by that point, consumed half the population of their planet. By this point, entire continents had been overrun, and all ports and borders were being defended by armed soldiers for the first time in centuries, their culture having achieved planet-wide peace long, long ago. Truthfully, the "survivors" (for lack of a better word, seeing as those changed were still quite lively, with no signs of slowing down) had little stomach for actually killing their former kinsmen, but it was clear both that they were going to overrun the whole planet, and their extreme preoccupation with sex had led to the collapse of anything that could be called "civilization" on what were being referred to as the Lost Continents.
Frankly, if food replicators were not as common as phone booths planetwide in their high-tech society, the Hermpires would likely all have starved by now, since few of them could stop thinking about fulfilling their sexual needs long enough to focus on much else. An estimated 85% of the Hermpire population was currently in some stage of pregnancy, and some parts of the Lost Continents had only become completely overrun in the last couple months. If this remained consistent, what they were seeing was a population that ---even isolated and without any new "converts"-- would be doubling almost annually. Even with the entirely automated power plants providing constant energy for the food replicators to convert into sustenance, they would eventually, even rather quickly, reach a point of over saturation, and total collapse. Mass starvation would follow, and bodies would litter the streets, since no one seemed likely to stop screwing long enough to clean them up. They would rot in the sun, spreading bacteria and diseases that had been unknown on this planet for over a millennia. Those same power plants that were maintaining them now would eventually break down without anyone maintaining them, not that it seemed likely the Hermpires would outlive the well-built machines.
And long before that, desperation and hunger would force the Hermpires to swarm over the half-hearted and ill-trained defenders keeping them behind the border quarantines, bringing an end to the remaining She-Males, converting them to Hermpires and consuming all their resources as well, leading to the eventual extinction of their entire civilization.
There were some who advocated extreme extermination measures; digging up ancient records of weapons of mass destruction, building anew what had been rightfully done away with in primitive ages past. Would it not make sense to turn the fallen half of their planet into a patchwork of smoking craters before the Hermpires' mindless pursuit of hedonism destroyed it all? Perhaps, but they had been a race at peace with themselves for countless centuries before the current generations were even born. That kind of "us-or-them" thinking turned the stomachs of nearly every one of them. No, they could not commit genocide against those who had been their own people as recently as last year. A more passive, and humane decision was put forward instead. They would leave.
It was not an easy choice, leaving their planet behind in the hands of those who had fallen to become little more than rutting animals, knowing that the decision would hardly save their fallen kin, only grant them a little longer to survive before their uncontrolled lusts eventually destroyed them all, leaving their dearly loved world devoid of life. The more pessimistic wondered if the Hermpires would turn to cannibalism once the machines that gave them food stopped functioning, if they even lasted that long.
Still, there was hope for their race as a whole to continue, even leaving their homeworld to the Hermpire hordes. Many serviceable planets for colonization had been surveyed in the past, though with a stable population and near infinite resources, there hadn't previously been a great deal of need or motivation to spread their civilization to other worlds, even though the means were available to them. Well, they had the need now, and were incredibly grateful that the technical means had some time ago been ironed out by bored engineers and scientist types needing the challenges to their intellects that were hard to come by on their utopia-like world.
Massive space arks, designed from the beginning to function as generational ships that could easily serve as a fully functioning colony city just by landing them on a suitable planet, were populated and launched into space. Each had a different heading in mind; a different world that long-range surveys had deemed suitable for life forms like themselves to thrive upon. Though the remaining, unchanged She-Males were going their separate ways, each carried an oath and a promise, that when their new homeworlds were stable and appropriately tamed, to the point where the new civilization could support a deep-space program (however many generations it took) they would each seek out their distant cousins, and as a star-spanning peaceful empire, become a whole, united people once again.
One of these Great Arks, along its decades-long trip through space, encountered a fierce ion storm that damaged the ship severely. Though designed to basically run indefinitely --absorbing star radiation and all other forms of energy to be found in space, converting it into a power to both propel and maintain the ship's functions pretty much indefinitely-- the damage caused could not be repaired without the full facilities of the spacedocks that had built it (well, the artificial intelligence running the Ark claimed it could self-repair eventually, even given its now more limited energy-gathering means, but the number of years that would take had far too many zeros in it for the population to count on that option). The Ark would not be able to make it to its intended destination... or rather it would, but by the time it finally got there, the life-support functions aboard the ship would have become inoperable some three centuries prior to the ETA. Computers of their time were so helpful in the way they put things in perspective.
Scanning their star maps for a secondary choice for a colony (even a temporary one, meant to last only as long as it took to fully repair the Ark) they found only one such world currently still within the range of the Ark's full operational capacity (as in, it could get them there before the oxygen recyclers ran out of power).
It was a world that had been surveyed previously, and might actually have made a fine colony world itself, save for the ethically awkward matter of other people already living on it. They were a primitive people, just barely having learned to work with metal alloys, though the architectural creativity seen in the orbital scans demonstrated they were intelligent enough to have a grasp of basic engineering principles, as well as an appreciation for aesthetics and art. The thinking at the time the world was surveyed was that these would probably be a very interesting people to get to know... once they'd advanced to the point where She-Males dropping down to visit from space wouldn't freak them so badly that they started a new religion, of course.
Which left the She-Males of the Ark in something of an ethical quandary. On the one hand, it could be disastrous to the indigenous culture for them to land, be seen, and with all their relatively extremely advanced technology, be taken as some sort of gods (or for that matter, demons or practitioners of some kind of evil-associated magic). Meeting the She-Males at this early stage in their people's development would radically change their culture, and quite likely not for the better, despite the good intentions of their "heavenly visitors". On the other hand, they also had an obligation to their own people (not just the thousands on the ship, but their entire living, unchanged race) NOT to bring this branch of their great civilization to an end sucking vacuum on the doorstep of a planet full of perfectly breathable atmosphere.
Then one of the Council of Leadership (all of whom were gathered together looking at the images and data gathered from this planet by the old survey drone, which they'd found in the database) happened to remark: "You know... other than the fact that they don't seem to Shift at all after puberty... in pure physical appearance, they pretty much look exactly like we do, don't they? Especially those in this geographical region, here."
"You know... you're right. Heck, I was thinking earlier that the dumb-looking one in this picture here reminds me way too much of my brother-in-law."
"What's your point?"
"I was just thinking that... if we were to wear clothes like they do, and didn't let them see the ship or any of our technology... OR Shift in front of them... they'd probably just think we were more of them, even if we passed right by them walking through their streets. I mean really, if we don't show them that we're of a highly advanced race from beyond their star system... what reason would they have to suspect us of being so?"
Eyebrows went up around the room, then furrowed in deep consideration.
"It would be... difficult... but not entirely impossible." One mused, stroking her chin.
"Yes... we can replicate all the clothing and accouterments... even their currency and assorted knick-knacks ordinary people of their culture would be expected to have."
"I see... we could use the money to buy land, set up homesteads, integrate ourselves into their culture using their own means, so that the only question would be 'where did these few thousand folks appear from?"
"Immigrants from another nation they have no or limited dealings with?"
"We'd have to research their immigration protocols first. We couldn't do that kind of deep reconnaissance from orbit, we'd have to send in infiltration teams. It's not like they have an Interwebnet we could just tap for information gathering."
"So we'd have to do it in stages, not just offload the whole Ark's population onto their shores and hope for the best?"
"Yes... and what the heck are we going to do with the ship?"
"Hmm... submerge it in the deep ocean? They've got to be centuries away from any kind of deep sea exploration, much less satellite photographs."
"That would work for hiding it, but how to we get our people to and from it? It's not like we have submarine vehicles on board... not that I'd really want to land one on their beaches to be seen."
"An island..." one murmured, clearly voicing a thought still half-formed.
"What?"
"If we landed the ship on the ocean surface, would it float? Or if not, set it on the bedrock of the ocean floor in a secure position such that the upper hull would remain above water? It could just seem like an island to them, and if we put it in a place they hadn't well explored, they might just assume it was always there, when they do eventually see it. It's certainly large enough to pass as one."
"Umm... but it's solid metal, and almost perfectly smooth. Not exactly island-like."
"Throw some sand on it then."
"Actually, that could work... and solve a lot of problems if we do it right."
"You're not serious? I was kidding about the sand."
"Well I wasn't, but not just sand; rock, soil, even plant some trees... terraform the upper hull to look like an valid island... and a settled one."
"Settled?"
"Yes... even if we mix ourselves in with the native culture of that region, we'd have to have come from somewhere. We're too many to pass ourselves off as several thousand wandering strangers, all new in town, and how do you do. We need a homeland that they'll accept."
"So let me get this straight... you want us to build... a city... or rather more a modest-sized town... on top of the bloody ship?"
"You think it can't be done?"
"... Actually, I think our engineers will love this idea. They've been bored to tears for the last six years we've been in space. We built the ship so well, they've had nothing to do... until that storm, of course, but most of the real damage can't be fixed with our resources."
"Hmm... excellent! I love solutions that accidentally solve more problems than we were even trying to! Gentlepeople... I think we have some plans to make..."
~ ~ ~
And so it went. The She-Male Ark landed amidst the then-unpopulated smaller chains of islands near what would one day be known as Japan, built their town to match the architecture and tech level of the nearby native Earthlings, and used all the information they had from the out-of-date survey scans (and the more current ones taken upon their approach) to begin practice for fitting in with the indigenous peoples. Over the years, what had started as method acting became tradition and habit, and new children born to this lifestyle barely managed to grasp that their people had once come from the stars.
One day when a local warlord matched his army to the nearest mainland shore and began to prepare boats for an invasion, the She-Males instead sent boats of diplomats out to meet him. When he declared they were now his subjects, that their island home fell within his territories, they baffled him by not disputing his claim in the slightest, saying they were a peaceful people who did not desire battle, and would never offer their sons to fight in his armies, but would be only too delighted to become part of a larger community than their little island home. They had learned to become very competent fishermen by combining their superior knowledge with the simpler tools Earth fishermen used at the time, and had the wealth of the seas to offer in tribute (in exchange, naturally, for opening up trade routes to the warlord's cities for trade of other commodities and cultural interchange). All in all, a very favourable arrangement in the warlord's eyes, and not a drop of blood spilled, though he seemed a touch disappointed in that regard, and confused to meet a people who seemed to have no interest at all in maintaining their independence. He judged them to be a weak and cowardly people with little pride, and so found the condition that he would never conscript soldiers from them quite acceptable. In actuality, their reasons had far more to do with coming from a culture that considered their entire planet to be a single, united community, rather than identify themselves as being part of small, divided nations, though their 'big picture' viewpoint confused the hell out of the warlord and his representatives.
And so they became a part of what would eventually become the Empire of Japan, yet still remained sufficiently isolated enough that little details, like the fact that they frequently changed sexes, were able to be kept "family secrets", as it were.
Though "Shimeru Isle" remained fairly isolated (as they preferred) the former members of the She-Male race (now referred to as the Shimeru Clan, to fit in with the social structure of old Japan) did migrate inland and mix with the rest of the Japanese population. There was even some intermarriage between the two races, though any human who wanted to join the Shimeru clan in this way had to be tested rigorously to prove they could be trusted with the clan's secrets. As generations passed, the truth of their other-worldly origins, which they'd gone to such efforts to hide, was forgotten by their descendants, who merely thought themselves to be humans with an odd genetic quirk that caused them to change sex when they became excited or stressed, though the change could be controlled reasonably well with practice and full maturity.
Even if they'd forgotten their own, otherworldly origins, however, the reality of it still remained, and far beneath the bedrock of their home island, lay an ancient and sentient ship, cheerfully obeying the last command it was given, and running the slow yet inevitable self-repair routines to restore itself to full function, making use of the mineral and geological energy resources it could now tap into to do what would have taken centuries longer in the vacuum of space. Of course, by the time it finished, so many generations had born and died up on the false island built above its upper hull that no one living knew to come down (through the hidden door in the natural-seeming caves of the constructed mountain into the ship proper) to give it the new instruction it had been waiting for: to lift off and either return to its home system for further repair and updates, or continue on to the long-abandoned original colony destination (it was leaning towards the former; it had been running the same old subroutines for ages and would love to have a new OS upgrade, just for the novelty of figuring out how the damned thing was supposed to work).
Up above, hidden amid the items and traditions of local culture they'd adopted for their selves, were a few items of their culture of origin, mundane enough in appearance that no human who chanced to spot them would think them anything but terrestrial in origin. Among these things was a keepsake of one of the clan's original founders (that is, a member of the Ark's Leadership Council who'd held the post way back when the ship had first landed, and continued to lead his people in the years before they forgot it was a ship, rather than the island it now appeared to be). The item had been passed down through his family after he'd passed away, hundreds of years ago now, and no one living really knew what was so special about it, only an old story that it held a dark curse, and must never be touched with a bare hand, or any other portion of skin. In his dairies, the ancient founder had written that he had kept this cursed object from their former homeland, as a reminder to himself of the dangers of mankind's hubris; that they, with all their flaws and imperfect understanding of the universe, should dare to try and change the fundamental nature of the world as it was intended. This, he had written, was what the utterly ordinary-looking tarnished gold ring, kept in a small, locked box with a glass lid, symbolized to him.
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(Posted Fri, 16 Jan 2009 03:23)
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