Organo-Topia by Scott Michael Decker

a Petrie dish far exceeded their worth, their production too ecocostly.
    The long pause alerted him to deep thought or creative evasion.
    “Profile, Raihman,” he murmured on his trake, not caring if the other man knew.
    Doctor Juris Raihman, lead researcher at the biofirm, Valmiera Nanobotics, was forty-five years old, infertile, married to an Ifem, no children, graduate of the Riga Stradins University Medical School, triple board-certified in nanobiology, fertility, and endocrinology. Previous position as head at the Department of Reproductive Barriers, Division of Vaginitis, Bureau of Testicular Reticulitis.
    Of course, Peterson thought. Why do they put such obvious information in these profiles? An Imale married to an Ifem won't produce anything together but sighs in the night!
    Raihman looked left then right.
    Sensing the need to head off obfuscation, Maris asked, “What'd you do over at Testicular?”
    “Scrotum assessments,” the Doctor said. “Look, Detective, I know you're just doing your job, but don't you think the decline in fertility is best left to—”
    “Experts like you? And let you jerk us all over again? Probably the reason we're in this mess. Get an orange wardrobe or answer the question. Which is it, Doctor?”
    “You get the jerk out of my office, you officious little dick.”
    Peterson leaped across the desk and pinned him against the bookcase. “Jerk me once, shame on you, jerk me twice, shame on me. I won't get jerked again.” He pulled his fist back.
    “All right, all right.” He held his hands up in surrender, as if a blasma pistol were pointed at his face.
    Maris lowered his fist.
    “Yes, if. But that's a gigantic ass 'if,' Detective.”
    “What would be required?” He backed away and dropped into the chair, seeing he'd cleared the Doctor's desk, its contents strewn about the office.
    Raihman cleared his throat and adjusted his smock. “You really are a jerking prick, you know.”
    “Save the compliments and answer the question.” He was tempted to arrest him just for his obstinacy, but being obnoxious was a constitutional right.
    “Victim to victim transmission requires a vector, Detective, some means to carry the nanochine from one polyhydrocarbonate-rich environment to another. You know why they're called nanochines?”
    “They're small.”
    “Ludicrously small. A nanometer is ten-to-the-negative nine meters. Nanochines are comprised of carbonanotubes maybe five hundred nanometers across, the size of mycoplasma bacteria.”
    “Lacking cell walls, they're resistant to beta-lactam antibiotics that target cell wall synthesis.”
    “Braggart. Their programs are encoded in ionic imbalances. They power their locomotion from their polyhydrocarbonate environments, their respiration producing carbon dioxide and water, using the excess carbon to reproduce. They have to live on something.”
    “What if they hibernated?”
    “And waited for the polyhydrocarbonate environment? Unlikely, Detective.”
    “What's in sperm?”
    Moon-wide eyes stared at him.
    If he'd been looking the other direction, Maris thought, he'd have broken his neck.
    “Spurious question. Ridiculous! You're implying Valdi Muceniek wasn't an isolated incident.”
    “I'm not implying it at all. I'm stating it as fact, Doctor.”

Chapter 7
    The moon rose, an evil eye across a blighted land, cursing any who dared procreate, leaving wombs barren and parents' hearts despairing, nanochine-induced infertility spreading like a venereal disease, the engines of creation disseminating their own destruction.
    Maris stood on the steps of the Fertility Ministry and looked out over that blighted landscape. Magnacars whined in perpetual servitude on the avenue below him. Wires slashed apart the sky. Buildings moped in the gloaming, lighted windows hinting at suspicious activity within, darkened windows declaring it. Isolated trees punctured holes in the urban landscape, eked out nutrients from earth devoid of nurture, leaves