The Cage of Zeus by Sayuri Ueda, Takami Nieda Read Free Book Online Page A

centuries in an environment without solar energy was no easy feat. Space was an endlessly unforgiving place.
    But every time Tei thought about it, ey felt something like intoxication welling up from within. What lay beyond the solar system? Just how far could we go? How many generations will it be before we’re able to see the countless galaxies and black holes firsthand, as we see Jupiter today? There were times Tei desperately wished for immortality. Rather than entrust the dream to someone else, Tei wanted to see everything with eir own eyes. Tei wanted to see and appreciate galaxies colliding, the birth of stars, hot Jupiters expelling bright gases near the stars from a distance close enough to touch. It was because of this desire that Tei could bear living here.
    Tei continued to shower, caressing eir body with both hands. The roundness of eir breasts, though not glamorous by Monaural standards. The smooth and supple skin. The subtle curve of eir waist. The visibly bony figure. The firmness of eir joints. The tautness of eir muscles. Tei’s fingers slid from the swell of eir breasts down past the torso to between eir legs where both genitalia were tucked away. Ey fondled the soft flesh.
    A moist slit and a copulatory organ protected by a thin sensitive skin. A Round possessed both sexual organs similar to those that female and male Monaurals had. Tei was no different. The twenty-third chromosome pair of Rounds like Tei, known as the sex chromosome, was neither XX nor XY, but a synthetic chromosome, double-I—a pair of I chromosomes resembling two sticks. The remaining twenty-two chromosome pairs contained the genetic sequencing making the Rounds perfect hermaphrodites and produced peptides that sent commands to the subcerebral lobe, an organ unique to Rounds located next to the pituitary gland.
    Back when Tei still spent the majority of eir time in the special district, ey had no doubts about the way eir body was formed. They had been told that all of the Rounds in the special district were built the same way, though different from the humans that lived outside the special district. Tei had entered adolescence suspecting nothing. When ey had tried to make love with another Round—more as a way of communicating than for the purpose of procreating—ey had realized that ey was built a bit differently from the others.
    It was a trivial distinction, posing no problem to engaging in the sex act itself. Rounds were capable of impregnating and being impregnated at the same time. Tei possessed the reproductive organs to do just that. There was, however, one difference. This distinction alone had saddled Tei with a deep feeling of alienation.
    The Rounds were a special existence to those living outside the special district. Tei was an even more special case among the Rounds. Naïve as Tei was in her adolescence, ey had been assailed with unbearable doubt and feelings of inferiority.
    Why am I different from the others?
    I am not a Monaural. But I’m also not a Round.
    Then what am I?
    Tei had rushed to the infirmary, where the station’s supervisor, Kline, gently informed em that such things happened all the time. Dr. Wagi, the chief of medicine, pulled up piles of data to logically explain to Tei how ey had come to be this way.
    Dr. Wagi’s explanation had been a persuasive one. He had ended by telling Tei that a simple operation would solve the problem.
    But Tei had refused. Tei didn’t want to think of eir own body as so peculiar that ey required surgery. Doing so would have denied how ey had lived up until now. Doing so would also mean condemning the children who would come into this world built like Tei. Deformed. That was unacceptable to Tei.
    Tei simply learned to accept that ey was different from the other Rounds and resolved to live an exemplary life that would blaze a trail for the next generation.
    That was when Kline had asked Tei to serve as an intermediary. “If you focus on a job with responsibilities,