Adam: The last man

Chapter 3: Test

Teresa couldn't sleep well. Aside from feeling involved in a big problem, it was difficult to assimilate that she had a man downstairs on her sofa, a real one, a living fossil. How was it possible that they didn't find him before? What a careless blunder. But now, things were like this. It was useless to have found him then. An only man would not immediately change the situation, and in fact, it would not improve it. Women would all want to see him, to know him... to possess him.

Oh no.

In some strange way, that idea annoyed her, making the girl go out of bed and come downstairs in silence. She sneaked out slowly and saw him; he seemed to have his forearm on his forehead.

Adrian looked at the ceiling with sadness, then withdrew his arm and stared at her.

"You can't sleep?" she whispered.

"Would you sleep being in my place?" His voice had been soft but sad. Maybe he was not so insensitive. She sat on the couch in front of him. "We are not on twenty-one twenty-four anymore, right?"

Wow, how old he was. The girl tensed her lips.

"No." She sighed. "This is the fifty-two seventeen." And she couldn't decipher the guy's expression. Fright? Frustration? Impotence? Teresa started to count; she even used her fingers while he let out air and looked at the ceiling again. "It's been more than thirty centuries since they put you there if my calculations don't fail."

"Well, when I entered the capsule..." He smiled sadly. "Maybe I assumed that it would have been a long time when I woke up, or maybe I never would because the world couldn't save itself. It seems that it did, but not both genders." He looked at her again.

"Men... They involuted... According to what I read, they became scarce; there were disputes as the women began to demand to share them. The boys were taken away from their families and used. A little dark age if you stop to think. PW arose at that time. They began to protect them, to take care of them..." She sighed. "Then boys started to be born smaller, they developed fast, three times faster, without growing much, and they died soon."

"That couldn't be avoided?"

"A natural disaster destroyed the genetic bank. They also failed the attempts to clone them. The bank was in the building where we found you. Now we have stayed with the males. The PW has them in Eden."

"So... yes, there are men, but they are not like me?"

"No, because it is not necessary. Apparently, they are more useful to nature being this way."

Teresa briefly wondered if men were helpful for anything other than helping in reproduction. She also didn't know how they helped with that; she only understood that they could help fertilize the egg.

"I feel bad," he complained, suddenly embracing his belly.

"Do you want to throw up again?" she asked, standing up.

"No. I think it's hungry; I don't know..."

"Hungry, again?" The drone approached and presented the list of protein soups on its screen, so the girl ordered to prepare one with meat protein.

She couldn't help but feel slightly concerned about him. Seeing the chestnut-hair boy cowering on the couch with his eyes closed. What was happening to him?

Teresa took care of him until he ate the soup and went back to sleep.

She woke up suddenly after feeling Rita licking her face. It was daylight?! She should go to the PW test and her final exam!

After running in circles and feeling misplaced when she realized that she was in her living room and not in her room, she turned to see Adrian, who was sleeping on the sofa. Teresa saw his face, he looked calm, but he seemed to have traces of sadness. Again, she was distracted by his strange physiognomy with his black and bushy eyebrows, nose, and lips, especially the lower one.