The Smeet

The Motherless

At five years old, Ilk already showed signs of her father's intellect and prowess in combat.

By that age, birthed smeets have learned how to walk and talk fully and you could say they are the equivalent of a ten year old human child. When she turned ten (Irken) years old she would start attending the Academy, be given a PAK and train to become a soldier.

Given her unique circumstances, though, she was pretty far behind in the skill department compared to the students she would find there, who were all made in the smeeterie and had already been given the basic knowledge and programming in their PAKs, plus they spent their first ten years training and not lunging round in the Massive with a parental figure.

Well, she didn't really lounge around.

She understood the expectations everybody, her father included, had for her precisely because she was the daughter of one of the Tallest, who was also considered a prodigy back in his Elite days; sometimes she wasn't sure of that, though, given how nowadays he and uncle Purple didn't do much other than eat snacks and order the shortest ones around, but they had simply mellowed out due to their positions.

Most of her time was spent training the basics of combat, warfare and many other things with some of the best crew members in the Massive, and she learned everything with exquisite skill. The 'general knowledge about Irk-thingy (yup, she had as much trouble with words as daddy)' would be downloaded unto her brain when her PAK was inserted, so they left that aside for later.

But nevertheless she liked to read and learn on her own account.

It was then that she realized something peculiar.

Where was her mother?

In the beginning she didn't even know what the word meant. She found it casually after studying several species, and finding the word 'mother' in most of the articles and information. Curious, she looked for the definition.

'A female of any species in relation to her child or children'.

That got Ilk thinking. Her dad was around, but she had never met any female who to call mother. Turns out you usually need twoIrkens to make smeets. Even in the smeeteries, one needed both male and female DNA to create embryos, which in turn became smeets.

This meant she simply had to have a mother, otherwise where would she have come from?

Ilk found it odd her dad had never talked about a motherly figure or even touched the topic at all, and she had never brought the topic up because she hadn't known. Uncle Purple hadn't mentioned her mom either.

"Is something on your mind, sweetie?" Red asked her that night, slurping on a soft drink with one hand while holding a doughnut in the other.

"I'm okay, dad." Ilk died, taking a bite from her own doughnut. She was still doubting whether she should ask him or not, not sure of how he'd react.

"Come now, Ilk. You know you can ask me anything, sweetie." Red insisted, bending down a bit to pat his daughter's head gently.

Okay, if he put it that way, here it comes. "Do I have a mom?"

Red did a perfect spit of soda that ended up on the floor and coughed a few times, even dropping his doughnut (which Bob quickly grabbed and ate before the Tallest could notice). "W-What?" he asked.

"Well, I've been doing some research and I found that you need a male and a female to make... smeets. You are here, but I have never seen my mom around here and you never talk about her. I mean, I haveone, right?"