Wonder was sixty-three when the Adapted Singulars faced their crisis.
The crisis was simple, biological, devastating: they weren't having children.
Three centuries had passed since the three communities split. The Purist Singulars had stable population through deliberate reproduction. The Experimental Singulars had declining population but accepted that as consequence of exploration—they were testing boundaries that sometimes failed.
But the Adapted Singulars—now three million strong, largest of the three communities—had reproduction rates approaching zero.
Not because they couldn't reproduce biologically. They could. Their optimized biology made reproduction easier than it had been for original humans. But they weren't choosing to reproduce. Weren't having children. Weren't creating next generation.
