To begin with, there was much to celebrate. For all the idiosyncrasies of our children, the Doctor had succeeded in preserving the species. The precious fragment of humanity that had traversed the Hollow Sands, that had survived THAT WAR, that had undergone the excruciation of the ANSEX process, would survive, nestled in the rusted cradle of the Empty Bowl.

Raising our children was a communal effort—each of us took time to educate them in the ways of the world, taking great pains to teach them of THAT WAR and the events that led up to it, for none of them remembered a war ever taking place. Much had to be corrected and chief amongst these corrections was their mode of speech—with their speech centres reversed, the children of ANSEX reproduction spoke backwards and it was a long time before the first of them grasped the normal way of doing things.

In that time, some of us—myself and Deezle, in particular—made the effort to learn their backwards speech, knowing this would ease our children's future development. Others, such as the Doctor, refused to do so, maintaining that there was a right and wrong way of speaking. This refusal would be our undoing.

The first problems arose amongst those of the original colonists that saw their ANSEX status as a curse, rather than a blessing. ANSEX was a product of necessity, they said, it was a burden we bore in order to save the future and if they had a choice, ANSEX would not exist. This self-derogation passed to their children and, in transition, it became a prejudice; what love was conveyed by the misguided followers of the Doctor was twisted and turned into hate instead. It was, I think, no coincidence that these were the same colonists that refused to learn kaepskcaB—the incipient lingua franca of the new generation.

We who embraced ANSEX and our offspring's language thought differently. We spoke to them in kaepskcaB of the necessity, yes, but also of the all those things destroyed or jeopardised by THAT WAR—of free and fluid identities from which the myriad configurations of humanity sprung, bearing love and fruit through the neuronic gardens of the psyche. Though we did not know it at the time, in choosing to communicate in kaepskcaB, we ensured our message would not be misinterpreted; flipped in transition into a message of hate and intolerance.

In those first months, there emerged two among the new generation who would come to shape the future of the Empty Bowl. The first was Rotcod, son of the Doctor. The second was Elzeed, child of Deezle. My child, for their part, did not involve themselves in politics—they were too preoccupied deciding what they should be called, for I had not presumed to name them, leaving the decision in their capable hands.

Elzeed was fierce and focused—a prowling lion/ess who could stop hearts with a glare of their emerald eyes. They were, as to be expected, unlike their parent, who dreamt in octopine flow-states of wild futures and crafted sprawling dioramas from flakes of rust-eaten steel to illustrate them. Through Deezle’s teachings, vocalised in kaepskcaB, however, Elzeed learned of their parent, their flesh and blood, and so the two came to understand one another perfectly—though Deezle was chaotic and Elzeed, orderly, each shaped the other and so became alike in goals and motives, if not in temperament.

Rotcod, by contrast, was a savage brute of a creature. For all of the Doctor’s pains in educating their wayward child, Rotcod seemed to learn nothing from his parent—each lesson was twisted and reversed within his brain, cemented in the wrong neuronic soil. He was violent, ill-tempered and stupid, where the Doctor was mild-mannered and intelligent—in this, they shared only one quality; that of impatience, though it manifested differently between parent and child. In the Doctor it was a subtle irritability, in Rotcod, it was a towering rage.

I should emphasise here that the Doctor was not a bad person, merely misguided—I am sure they loved Rotcod as Deezle loved Elzeed and I loved my own child, but there is no denying their methods made a monster of their son. By failing to communicate with Rotcod in his own language, by failing to recognise the reversal at work within our offspring, by failing to fully embrace the very process they had invented, the Doctor ensured their son would never understand our generation, nor the circumstances that drove us to the Empty Bowl in the first place.

In time, Rotcod grew elusive, shunning the dwellings we had fashioned from the rust of the Empty Bowl. He ceased his lessons with the Doctor and refused to speak anything other than kaepskcaB. Eventually, he withdrew into the lower levels of the Empty Bowl, buried beneath the sand and the detritus of the old world in an uncanny emulation of the mole-people—though what motivated his retreat into the bosom of the earth was nothing as noble as mere survival.

The Doctor’s failure caused them much shame—it burdened them terribly, and though they would never admit their mistake in their handling of Rotcod, it was clear they regretted the outcome. For our part, we did as much as we could to assuage their guilt—we spoke often, the Doctor, Deezle and I—but it was to no avail; the Doctor, stung by the rejection of their son spoke only of fetching him back to the surface to resume his education. Soon after Rotcod’s withdrawal from society, the Doctor disappeared—gone, it was rumoured, to entreat with Rotcod in the bowels of the earth.

At this time, my child was continuing to play with names, trying them on as though they were new winter coats. None truly fitted and each was discarded in turn. To someone like the Doctor, this might have been more than they could bear, but I did not allow it to concern me—the children of ANSEX would find their own way; it was their birthright to build anew what we had destroyed. My only goal was to ensure they were as well equipped as possible, in knowledge, in intellect, in emotional resilience and sensitivity—to ensure they would not repeat our mistakes and drag with them into the new world, the baggage of the old.