Time dilation was an absolute bitch. You would think with his job as a spaceship captain for the past, almost decade that the concept would be familiar to him but honestly, that wasn't the case. Once warp drives were created the need for E=MC ^2 Calculations in the context of spaceships was discarded almost completely. Of course, it had to be taken into consideration when calculating for satellite movement yes yes, but on a large scale it was mostly ignored. Not to mention that all his favorite science fiction films and movies practically ignored the issue of time dilation all together. Star Trek, and Star Wars never mentioned it. Neither did Firefly. There were a few notable exceptions, Interstellar and Project Hail Mary.
However, when science fiction did bother to include time dilation, there was one thing that everyone could agree on.
Time dilation sucks.
Everything had changed. Only two years and he felt like he was walking into a whole new world. Two years and somehow, he was a man out of time. What made it worse is that his experience of time dilation was stupid anyway, since the math didn't even add up. The mass of the creature that caused the time dilation was not proportional to the amount of gravitational time dilation that he experienced .
Not only was time dilation stupid, but he had experienced stupid time dilation.
He sat in the hospital waiting room, and tried to keep his head over a tide of worries and stress. He had left and come back the same man, but when he came back everything else was different, and he was sort of just expected to adjust. The politics on his planet were different, and he didn't understand them at all. They had alliances and friendships that he knew nothing about and had no control over. There were laws passed that he hadn't heard of incidents that he wasn't involved in. They had a burgeoning intelligence agency and a spy network.
They were a legitimate government now, not just his fun little playground where he could house all of his cool animal friends.
He turned his head slightly, discretely.
His planet wasn't the only thing that had changed.
Sunny sat next to him, flipping through a weapons catalogue which had been left sitting on one of the waiting room side tables.
Ok, perhaps she hadn't changed a lot, but it had certainly been noticeable. Not like he was complaining, obviously, he couldn't expect her to be the same person but there was a part of him that felt like.... A child in comparison to her. Two years she had slowly come to terms with the idea of having a child of her own, learned and grown with the idea, matured with the idea. She had a well of patience that he just could not fathom that she certainly hadn't had before, and she had a side of her that was...
A responsible adult?
It was strange.
And now here he was, thrown into the deep end, a father on day one learning as he went, and struggling to figure it out. While also trying to catch up with everything in the universe that had decided to change while he was away.
Leave things alone for five minutes and it all falls to pieces.
He leaned over to see what Sunny was looking at, some kind of rotating plasma cannon with Kelvin cooling rings.
"Is this what I'm getting you for Christmas?"
"Who said there needed to be a holiday for you to spoil me." She turned the page.
On his lap Kay squirmed and growled deep in his throat. The sound was oddly disconcerting coming from a baby, or a toddler? Adam wasn't sure when the cutoff was, Kay was a year and three months old, and Adam was duly informed that he was reaching all of the required developmental milestones. Kay could walk quite well for his age, though Sunny informed him Drev babies walk earlier than humans so that might have soemthing to do with it. He loved talking even though it was mostly just random noise with the occasional attempted parroting of words back at them, rather unsuccessful at this point but getting there. There was no evidence of developmental delays which was good, but they were also mostly guessing at this point since he was the first natural born hybrid of his kind.
'Adam, Sunny."
He looked up to find Katie standing at the front of the room. She hadn't changed much since Adam last saw her, other than the new frames on her glasses. He stood, supporting Kay on one hip and walked over.
She smiled, "Good to see you back, and good to see this little one finally has his dad."
She playfully reached out to wiggle Kay's foot.
Kay smiled past the hand in his mouth.
"So how's being absolutely tossed into the deep end."
Adam gave a rueful smile, "It's a bit crazy, but luckily Kay sleeps through the night so at least I have sleep."
Sunny snorted, "I almost hope we have another one just so I can guilt you into getting up every night for a year."
"As of right now, absolutely not."
The three of them laughed, and Kay copied them, seeming confused as to what was supposed to be funny.
Katie lead them back into a back room and sat down with them, Krill appearing a few minutes later.
"So, you probably want to know how your kid is even alive." Krill began.
Kay made a loud gurgling noise.
"Exactly." Krill responded, "An astute observation."
Katie laughed, "Well, so this is a special circumstance considering we had to learn an entirely new and unique set of anatomy to understand how Kay works. The sheer amount of imaging this little guy has suffered through is probably unfair but we thing we understand mostly how he works." She turned to look at krill, "You love being a lecturing know it all, so I leave this to you."
"Thank you for humoring my need to be superior." Krill stepped forward examining Kay as best he could while he spoke, "From what we understand, Kay is somewhere along a 70/30 split leaning towards primarily human. We believe his immune system is mostly human as well as his nervous system, not that there are too many differences between human and Drev systems but it should be noted. His unique coloring is the Adaptid DNA merging the rigid structure of Drev carapace with Keratin found I the human body. That's what gives him that gold color. His Nails and hair is actually more similar to Chitin than it is to actual human hair or nails, which I find rather interesting. Any questions so far?"
Adam had most certainly noticed that. Little kay looked like king Midas had gotten a little too close, "Dietary restrictions?"
Krill seemed pleased Adam asked, "Ah digestion, now we are getting a bit complicated. At first we thought digestion was primarily human in nature, though with some testing and imaging we have determined that what kay has is like nothing else we have seen. The systems that he uses for digestion is similar to humans, the stomach and the intestines including all of those other filtration systems, but when doing our imaging we also noted a smaller secondary stomach primarily dedicated to the breakdown of plant fiber seen in drev. Now of course we thought this might mean that he'd be herbivorous like Drev, but that is not the case. Testing out different foods, we find that he can digest animal proteins just as well including dairy products. He is entirely capable of regurgitating food as most humans can as poor Sunny well knows. The extra stomach just gives him more value from fibrous fruits and vegetables. Now the interesting thing here is that, like the Drev his digestion includes some kind of partial fermentation process . It is a bit complicated to get into now, but basically what I am saying is you will never have to worry about your son becoming and alcoholic."
Adam laughed, "Well that's good for a father to hear I suppose. No drunken mistakes either."
"Yep." Sunny announced, "He can make all his stupid decisions sober, just like his father."
Adam grimaced, "Well not ALL my stupid decisions were made sober."
"Ok you got a tattoo of a cartoon alien that one time. I would hardly consider that the mark of a party animal."
Katie snorted, "If it makes you feel any better, there is nothing precluding your son from snorting copious amounts of cocaine."
Sunny laughed.
"Ah yes, that really makes me feel better."
"Speaking of snorting cocaine." Krill mused, "I find that our son's respiratory system to be absolutely fascinating. Also another thing that should put you at ease is that your son is physically incapable of choking to death, and it is highly unlikely that he will ever be suffocated."
"That is actually very comforting." Adam admitted.
"yes, he has three primary breathing pathways. He has the human esophagus and nose combination, but he also has the extraesophageal breathing holes that you see in Drev. Now this is where it gets interesting. Drev, as you well know tend to have deeper voices, and the typical Drev battle cry can reach higher than 130db for short duration, which is louder than the loudest human scream I might add."
Adam winced, "I see he inherited that ability from his mother."
Krill laughed, "Perhaps, right now we think those pathways are actually underdeveloped. You see Drev can make noise the way they do through sinus cavities that exist throughout their entire head neck and chest. These hollow tubes act as echo chambers that amplify sound. Kay has an interconnected system of both Drev and human nasal cavity, and the thicker vocal cords of a drev to match, so yes his voice will be relatively deep and he will be capable of being very loud, Luckily for you he probably won't reach that potential until puberty, However, I have told Sunny this before, but this leaves him extremely susceptible to upper respiratory infection. The common cold is going to be an absolute bitch for the poor kid."
Sunny leaned over, "Basically what Krill is saying is that he is going to have a runny nose in his face and in his chest, and he is going to have plenty of places to store snot."
"What a lovely image, thank you for that."
Katie took Kay from Adam to finish the rest of his checkup while Krill continued to speak, "His eyes have more in common with Drev eyes than human eyes, though they look relatively human. From what we can gather he can detect visible and Ultraviolet arrays, including seeing magnetic fields. Teching him his colors is going to be a bitch for you." He said to Adam
Sunny hummed softly. Adam knew she was pleased that Kay could see UV. For Drev the ability to detect color was a great source of pleasure. Over the past two years Drev artwork had absolutely taken off in the galaxy due to their superior command of color theory in comparison to the other species.
"How does his.... Skeleton work?"
Krill sighed, "If I were to grade whoever designed your poor son's skeleton, I would give them a C. Basically we are trying to add an extra set of arms to a human skeleton. That means essentially giving him another set of shoulder blades in the back and the requisite muscles. In the end what ou get is a very complicated set of back muscles and an extra band of muscles that runs around the front just under the natural chest. Like the Drev, these arms are smaller. They are also shifted towards the back so most of the muscle is going to be I the back. I will let you know now that pulling muscles, knots, soreness, and pinched nerves might be quite common for your son, so its best we keep an eye on that. Other basic things is reproduction is mostly human, taste is mostly human, though he can and WILL eat flowers like his mother. You will need to take him to a dentist. His blood is definitely human as far as we can tell, iron based, and he even has a predictable blood type. Type A. It seemed as if the adaptid DNA didn't want to mess with that.
Kay whimpered and Sunny leaned forward into his line of sight so he knew that she was there.
He quieted down.
Kay was a mostly happy child, with well adjusted attachment, said Riss. He could definitely scream like a banshee, but it didn't tend to last long. Tantrums were short lived, as was his anger, and he was pretty easy to soothe all things considered, which was good news for Adam.
Kay's biggest problem
He touched everything.
Sunny blamed Adam for that fact, and it wasn't even something he could reasonably deny.
Kay was definitely his father's son,
Now since they didn't have to worry about him drinking, all they had to do was warn him off of snorting copious amounts of cocaine.