Free Paradise Tales by Geoff Ryman

understand that you are still working for Lumière Laboratories. According to this week’s LegitSci News they’re the people that are doing a cure for homosexuality that will work on adults. Can this possibly be true? If so could you give me some more details? I am assuming that you personally have absolutely nothing to do with such a project. To be direct, we need to know about this treatment: how it works, how long a test regime it’s on, when it might be available. Otherwise it could be the last straw for an orientation that has produced oh, … and listen to this, virtue by association, the same old tired list … Shakespeare, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Melville, James, Wittgenstein, Turing … still no women, I see.
    I mean, this guy is asking me to spy on my own company. Right? He hasn’t got in touch since high school, how exploitative is that? And then he says, and this is the best bit, or are you just being a good little boy again?
    No, I’m being a brilliant scientist, and I could just as easily produce a list of great heterosexuals, but thanks for getting in a personal dig right at the end of the letter. Very effective, Billy, a timely reminder of why I didn’t even like you by the end and why we haven’t been in touch.
    And why you are not going to get even a glimmer of a reply. Why in fact, I’m going to turn this letter in to my mentor. Just to show I don’t do this shit and that somebody else has blabbed to the media.
    Happy effin birthday.
    And now I’m back here, sitting on my bed, talking to my diary, wondering who it’s for. Who I am accountable to? Why do I read other people’s letters to it?
    And why do I feel that when this project is finished I’m going to do something to give something back. To whom?
    To, and this is a bit of a surprise for me, to my people.
    I’m about to go to sleep, and I’m lying here, hugging the shape of João’s absence.

    Today’s my birthday and we all went to the beach.
    You haven’t lived until you bodysurf freshwater waves, on a river that’s so wide that you can’t see the other bank, with an island in the middle that’s the size of Belgium and Switzerland combined.
    We went to Mosquerio, lounged on hammocks, drank beer, and had cupu-açu ice cream. You don’t get cupu-açu fruit anywhere else, and it makes the best ice cream in the world.
    Because of the babies I had to drink coconut milk straight from the coconut … what a penance … and I lay on my tummy on the sand. I still wore my sexy green trunks.
    Nilson spiked me. “João! Our husband’s got an arse like a baboon!”
    It is kind of ballooning out. My whole lower bowel is stretched like an oversized condom, which actually feels surprisingly sexy. I roll over to show off my packet. That always inspires comment. This time from Guillerme. “João! Nilson, his dick is as big as you are! Where do you put it?”
    “I don’t love him for his dick,” says João. Which can have a multitude of meanings if you’re the first pregnant man in history and your bottom is the seat of both desire and rebirth.
    Like João told me before I came out here, I have rarity value on the Amazon. A tall branco in Brazil … I keep getting dragged by guys, and if I’m not actually being dragged, then all I have to do is follow people’s eye lines to see what’s snagged their attention. It’s flattering and depersonalizing all at one and the same time.
    The only person who doesn’t do this is João. He just looks into my eyes. I look away, and when I look back, he’s still looking into my eyes.
    He’s proud of me.
    In fact, all those guys, they’re all proud of me. They all feel I’ve done something for them.
    What I did was grow a thick pad in Flat Man’s bowel. Thick enough for the hooks of a placenta to attach to safely.
    I found a way to overcome the resistance in sperm to being penetrated by other sperm. The half pairs of chromosomes line up and join.
    The project-plan people insisted we test it on