Same-Sex Worlds: Enigma-2 & 3

[oldgringo2001]

Enigma-2 and Enigma-3

These are a couple of complementary parallels that diverged from events that occurred on July 12, 1982, the same day the entire human population vanished from Enigma-1 in Quantum Seven. To make them even scarier, they have the same Local Now as Homeline, Centrum, and Shikaku-Mon, so Parachronic Projectors should work on either of them.

On Enigma-2, in Quantum Three, every male human on Earth vanished. Women pregnant at the time all either miscarried or gave birth to girls, even if their fetuses had been identified as male. Reproduction continued using sperm banks until supplies ran out; none of the successfully completed pregnancies produced male children. All recorded information on the human Y-chromosome also vanished.

Genetic engineering has become quite sophisticated, and a reliable (but expensive) process has been developed to integrate the genes from one egg cell with the genes of an egg cell from a different woman to conceive offspring with two genetic parents, saving humanity from the dangers of replicative failure from relying on cloning for reproduction.

Enigma-2 is not an Eden where Peace and Compromise reign forever supreme under the benevolent protection of a world of women unmolested by men, but it does have a more peaceful post-1982 history.

Enigma-3 didn't. Infinity doesn't know very much at all about this Quantum Nine world except that Centrum's Military Service took it over less than a year after it was discovered, and that the native population is 100% male.

No one has discovered yet that conveyors can jump between any of the Enigma worlds without projectors.

I'm tempted to propose restricting further posts here to women, but I fear that the GURPS Forum resembles Enigma-3 much more than Enigma-2.

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Update: 10-31-2011

For those of you just beginning to look at this thread, Enigma-3 is pretty much on hold, and the OP's (that is, my) current writeup for Enigma-2 is this:

Enigma-2

This Quantum Four world appears to have the same history as Enigma in Quantum Seven up until July 12, 1982, – 42 years ago. On Enigma-2, all human males disappeared on or after that date. The timing is inexact because no human female alive at that time has any memory of what happened from July 12 at 21:16:05 GMT until November 2 at 07:11:07 GMT. No automated recordings have ever been recovered from that time.

Since the blackout, about 1 in 4 “women” born into this apparently single-sex world have been functional hermaphrodites. The Y-chromosome appears to have been replaced in these individuals by a so-called “Z” chromosome. So far the analysis by Homeline scientists can be summed up with: “It's different and it seems to work.”

Since its discovery, about 1 in 4 misjumps in Quantum Four have been to this line, so its Z1 classification is not as effective as Infinity would like.

The timeline has no other known parachronic issues (it no longer offers easy access to other Enigma lines). The world has made a lot of progress in biotech compared to other areas, but hasn't achieved human cloning or the recreation of "normal" males.

[mtowle]

The Disappearance (http://www.amazon.com/Disappearance-.../dp/0803298412) is a book about such worlds and the aftereffects.

[oldgringo2001]

I didn't know Philip Wylie wrote anything like that. The only works I've ever read are his old duet with Balmer When Worlds Collide and After Worlds Collide, and a 1963 novel, Triumph, where eight people in a deep shelter are the only people left alive in Earth's northern hemisphere at the end of a nuclear war. I've never read his most famous work, Generation of Vipers.

This isn't a port of a novel or a movie. I started it as a challenge to build up an original one-sex world. One really excellent recent example is part of Jennifer Bujold's Vorkosigan stories, Ethan of Athos. I haven't gotten around to reading Poul Anderson's Virgin Planet yet (all women), but I had a copy of A. Bertram Chandler's Spartan Planet, another all-male human colony world where only the very top leaders know that another sex exists. The local animals reproduce by budding, thought they do exchange genetic material in a manner resembling the way of men with men. And Frank Herbert, the creator of Dune, wrote a book called The White Plague where a genetically-engineered infectious disease threatens to make women extinct on a contemporary Earth. And a few years back, before Borders went bankrupt and the US market for manga collapsed, I read a short series set on a world without real women, only men and robots who look like women. No, it wasn't Chobits, it was Saber Marionnete.

Thanks to sexual selection, China is suffering a severe shortage of girls. The prospect of too many "empty branches" (sons who will never find wives) is beginning to alarm the Beijing government, although not enough to send tanks in to force the production of more girls. It's a trend in India too, but not enough Indians are far enough above the poverty line to afford the prenatal test and the subsequent abortions to affect the population as a whole.

And there is some real concern that the male sex is on the road to extinction, at least among humans. There's not much left of the poor human Y-chromosome. Eventually there may be nothing left.

[RyanW]

Originally Posted by oldgringo2001

And there is some real concern that the male sex is on the road to extinction, at least among humans. There's not much left of the poor human Y-chromosome. Eventually there may be nothing left.

I've heard similar things, but from what I've heard, there seems to have been little change in the human Y-chromosome in the last few million years. The chimp Y has dwindled, to the point that in a few million years (assuming chimps are still around at that point) there may be little on that specific chromosome aside from sperm production. In any event, it simply means more sex-linked defects (only one copy of genes on the X), not the extinction of males.

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by oldgringo2001

Enigma-2 is not an Eden where Peace and Compromise reign forever supreme under the benevolent protection of a world of women unmolested by men, but it does have a more peaceful post-1982 history.

And I assume that the more irreverant Scouts in Infinity refer to the place as Paradise Island? ;)

[oldgringo2001]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

And I assume that the more irreverant Scouts in Infinity refer to the place as Paradise Island? ;)

Men Scouts? Or Women Scouts? :D

[Flyndaran]

Why would massive negative population growth and fear of extinction reduce conflict?
I can't imagine players all agreeing on the realism of the "present" situation no matter how a GM builds it. Nature/nurture as it applies to cultural ideas of femininity/masculinity is a serious hot button for many.

[Nosforontu]

I can think of a few reasons, though they could also potentially be a reason for increased conflict as well.

1: Few trained professionals back in 1982 women were still barred from combat roles in the U.S. military as well as being barred from serving on warships. This is going to mean that countries are going to take a very big hit on their ability to project force and would likely loose a large percentage of their fleets that were at sea during the disappearance. This can of course be corrected over time but it is going to take time to rebuild any reasonable ability to project force outside of their borders/

2: Low population densities, with approximately half the population suddenly gone reclamation of internal space within a country is probably going to be a higher priority than feeling any serious pressure to expand the borders, especially with a much smaller population to work with and a initially reduced military force.

3: Potentially higher standards of living. This one could easily float either way, but potentially the survivors are inheriting the infrastructure and material possessions of the other half of the population this could result in a short term boost in wealth.

4: Unequal population growth. Its likely since the genetic engineering tech to sustain the human population is expensive that it is going to be much more common in the first world than the third world. I suspect that large sections of Africa and the Middle East are becoming painfully depopulated and that they are managing a much slower recovery than the rest of the world.

For that matter because reproduction is expensive life preservation might very well become a much more important cultural meme since people are increasingly difficult to replace in a population that was already heavily reduced to begin with.

[nondescript handle]

Originally Posted by Nosforontu

[...] Few trained professionals back in 1982 women were still barred from combat roles in the U.S. military as well as being barred from serving on warships. This is going to mean that countries are going to take a very big hit on their ability to project force [...]

In the comic series Y - The Last Man, which has basically the same premise, Israel is the supreme (although it isn't a superpower with global reach) military power because they were the only ones with enough females in the armed forces to keep it functional.

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by oldgringo2001

And there is some real concern that the male sex is on the road to extinction, at least among humans. There's not much left of the poor human Y-chromosome. Eventually there may be nothing left.

Lack of a Y chromosone doesn't cause lack of males. There's a few mamalian species where sex determination is purely whether you have one X or two Xs - no "Y" necessary. (the male version is written as Xo, where the little o represents the absence of a pair).

Most reptiles and fish do just fine without special chromosomes for sex determination - there is no "X" or "Y" weirdness, and thus less problems with one-gender recessive genetic defects. Sex is determined by temperature while incubating. This appears to be the "original" sex determination system, others (like most mammals and some insects with Xs and Ys or Xs and nothings, Platipuses with TEN Xs or FIVE Xs and FIVE Ys, birds and some insects with ZW...) seem to be later variations, and the fact that there are at least three different systems in the mammals (XY, Xo, and XYXYXYXYXY) shows that you can have a different system from your ancestors without going extinct.