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Content Warning(s): Mentioned transman pregnancy (mpreg), mentioned cloning, mentioned touch starvation. Let me know if I missed anything else.
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- It’s been several years since Grace has started living on Erid, and things are great. He has a fun time teaching Eridian children science five days a week. He has a comfy home and enjoys walks along the beach. His health is stable thanks to the hard work of Eridian scientists. Grace still sees Rocky regularly and gets along well with Adrian. Rocky and Adrian even asked Grace to be their platonic mate, or queer platonic partner in human terms, so. Rocky and Adrian even had a child of their own, who in English is named Star, and asked Grace to also be a parent figure to the pebble. So Grace feels very loved.
- However, Grace still longs for something more. He enjoys hugging Rocky and Adrian. Grace enjoys cuddling with his Star while reading childrens books to them on nights they and their parents sleep over. But these moments of touch aren’t enough. Grace can’t actually have direct contact with his family; a xenonite suit or barrier will always be between them.
- One day, while preparing what to teach his Eridian students for the week, Grace stumbles upon the topic of cloning. He remembers the story of Dolly the sheep, and the amazement on his Earth students’ faces when they learned about the sheep as well. Could cloning be the answer to his touch starvation? He could have a baby, a human baby. A baby he could safely hold, no barriers needed. Star would get to have a sibling, and Rocky and Adrian could have another child to love and care for.
- Of course, cloning was never used back on Earth to create a human baby, just animals. But considering how successful the Eridian scientists were at making the biodome and nursing him back to health, Grace is hopeful that this idea of his could work. Hopefully Rocky and Adrian will be open to the idea.
- Rocky and Adrian thankfully are very open to the idea of a human baby. Adrian and the other Eridian scientists use some of the laptops Grace brought down from The Hail Mary to do the necessary research into the cloning process until they feel prepared to start the procedure. Some of Grace’s DNA is taken along with an empty egg cell, the two are fused together and shocked to encourage fertilization, and once the embryo is ready the Eridian scientists place the embryo into Grace’s body.
- The pregnancy sticks and Grace is well taken care of by his platonic mates throughout the nine months. Star is very excited to be an older sibling and enjoys listening to the baby’s heart beat.
Because of how the cloning process works, Grace knows the baby will be the same sex as him, so female. Considering he ended up being a transman, Grace wants to give the baby girl a gender neutral name in case she ends up feeling differently around her gender someday. She’s a cloned baby after all, so maybe she’ll inherit some of his transness? Who knows really, but he’s looking forward to meeting her.
- Grace ends up going with the name Sol for his baby. The name is gender neutral, means peace which is what her presence will bring to his life, and the name will always remind him of the mission that brought him to space in the first place. To go along with the name, Rocky makes a little solar system mobile out of xenonite for the little nursery area that was added to Grace’s house.
- Sol ends up being born on the anniversary of Grace and Rocky meeting for the first time, adding to the specialness of the date. Sol has Grace’s blue eyes, blonde hair, and light skintone. Grace cries happy tears as he holds his daughter for the first time, finally having direct contact with another human for the first time in years. Grace finally feels like his life on Erid is perfect.
The End