JN-Postive, I learned, was a gene that would result in infant death.

A baby would grow to full term, and then it would die during birth or right after birth due to a genetic issue, which is exactly what happened with my sister Joy. It was just a genetic hiccup that happened occasionally, and one of the purposes of the colony was to breed as many sapiens that didn’t possess that hiccup, which is why a pairing that was likely to result in JN positive babies was not allowed to occur.

And so ever single prenatal test that showed the JN-Positive error message had resulted in the death of the baby at birth.

Even though I worked at the testing unit, I had been put on compatibility testing only after Marybeth resigned to focus on her health, and so while Marybeth knew what was happening pretty much as soon as she saw those error messages, I didn’t learn until the rest of the colony found out three months later when so many babies started dying.

Most women that had that error message pop up were given medication to ensure that there wouldn’t be another pregnancy like it, like my mother was given after Joy had died, but something had happened with the most recent batch of medicine this time and so…

A lot of babies died at birth.

We were such a small town, but in our town alone, we buried thirty babies that year, including my baby brother, Roy. Two of my mother’s sisters lost sons as well. One of my mother’s cousin’s lost a son in childbirth and passed a few hours later from blood loss trying to deliver him as many hundreds of other women died as well.

Riverside lost just under four hundred babies, and the colony as a whole lost something like twelve thousand over six months.

There was so much death, and it never seemed to stop, and the colony nearly buckled under it.

Family after family kept losing babies like it was a chapter out of the fucking bible, the Angel of Death sweeping over our towns and villages and taking babies and mothers, left and right.

We weren’t even allowed to bring the babies home because they were contagious and could kill healthy babies, which I didn’t understand – I knew how viruses worked, I knew about the immune system and all that, but I didn’t understand how a genetic issue could be spread.

And no one would explain it to me or anyone that asked to try and better understand what was going on.

They said that was the government’s concern, not mine.

They just took the dead babies and burned them in the clinics. Sometimes the mothers that died with the babies were cremated on sight as well.

We got their ashes, and that was that.

The mothers that survived were put on the pills again to prevent another JN pregnancy.

The entire colony as a whole was given a five year pause in pregnancy and marriages to recover from the loss, to focus on the children they had, and for the colony to ensure that everyone that needed to be treated was treated.

And so we were in kind of a weird time of growth, where people could focus on other things that having babies and providing support for couples that had new babies.

That part was great.

Losing so many babies was traumatic for everyone, and it was much appreciated that we could deal with that grieving, but as we were finding out now, something else had changed now that the dust was settling.

Marriages were harder to secure now.

Before, if you tested one percent, you’d fail, but now? I was told that if a pair tested anymore than half of a percent, your match would be denied, and that had really caused a lot of issues, a lot of drama, a lot of angry people.

So it was good that we got a five year pause so people could take their time. Most people were getting tested on the second date to see if there was even a possibility of a match.

So I was busy at the clinic, and my aunt – my Dad’s sister- was crazy busy as a matchmaker – she was training Simone and Wendy the trade now because she was just so overloaded with people that wanted to be checked early for compatibility.

It was a weird time.

Everyone had lost someone – either a child, a sibling, a cousin, or a grandchild.

A mother.

No family was spared by this strange plague, and so the colony entered a period of intense grieving. How they grieved really depending on the family and the town, but most of the colony entered a year of mourning that meant giving up something precious in solidarity with the parents that lost their babies as well as the babies themselves.

Some people gave up alcohol or tobacco.

Others gave up all technology of any sorts, not even using the refrigerator.

Our town, as well as most south of Riverside and Riverside itself, collectively gave up talking.

So starting one month after the last baby was cremated and it was announced that the crisis was over as long as everyone took their pills, all noise stopped.

And it was fucking hard.

But soon it would be over – I could actually count the hours now, and I was so ready for it. Things helped pass the time so we weren’t all obsessing with the silence though, and for me, it had been writing.

I wrote a lot over the past year and a half, sending a lot of stuff out.

A couple of my short stories got picked up my the radio, and it was a great satisfaction getting to hear someone else reading my work.

I didn’t get to hear it happen for the first time though, because on the same night my story was being read, Roy had been born, dying shortly after.

I had managed to catch the second one before I went to visit my mom at the clinic, where she had been staying for the month after Roy passed, but the third one we all listened to together in our family home. There was a party, we had a good time.

I hoped we could do that again for my next story in a week, which was just two days before I had to leave for the city to start the process of adding myself to the records.

But as for right now, we were separated again.

I sat on my bed and looked over to where my sisters’ bed was empty, neatly made with a cat laying on their pillows as it watched me. I slowly got up, stretching as I went to quietly pull open the curtains to look out at the late spring morning.

They said it was going to be a very hot summer this year, so everyone was trying to get work done to make the most out of our pleasant spring as it was drawing to an end, which meant there would be no lazy mornings in bed.

I’d save those for the city.

I pulled on a pair of jeans, pausing when I tried to button them up but seeing the button was gone. I chewed on my bottom lip to keep from loudly sighing – which was to much noise – and instead rolled my eyes hard, reaching up to find a hairpin in my hair to fasten my pants. There. Done.

I went down stairs then, going in the kitchen to see Grandpa Earnest there, pouring eggs and what smelt like green and purple peppers onto two plates.

He gave me a friendly wave in greeting and I gave him a little smile, going over to silently starting pulling the cloth napkins out of the drawer.

It was so quiet.

Normally my sisters would be bustling about, my Mom yelling whatever was needed to be done as the morning rush got underway – dressed were being pressed, hair was being curled, lunches were being packed, pets were being fed and Dad was nosily trying to choke down his coffee to hurry up and wake up so he could join in the rush.

But there was nothing but silence and stillness.

Mom was back at the clinic.

Since we lost Little Roy, she’d spend a few weeks at home, moving slow, but then one day she’d stop moving and just lay in bed. Sometimes she’d just needed a few days in bed before she recovered, but once a week past and she couldn’t get out of bed, she’d have to go back to the clinic for a few days. The times that had to happen were happening further and further apart and she was having to stay at the clinic for less time, and hopefully soon she wouldn’t have to go back at all.

When she was there, however, Dad would sleep there as well so she wouldn’t be alone, since a lot of the more extended family was stretched thin with support. Everyone was helping someone. Back when we lost Joy, Mom’s Grandma or mother would come down and be with Mom, but Mom’s sisters were in far worse shape them Mom – instead of going to the clinic, they went to the woods and slept out there for weeks on end, which was a whole different level of -

It wasn’t crazy.

I wouldn’t say crazy about something like this.

I guess the right thing to say was it was an entirely different level of grief, like a wounded animal that couldn’t process what they had done wrong for their newborn to die. Mom was very into her spiritual stuff, but my aunts were even deeper into it. They were convinced they would lose their babies months before it happened because they did ‘retina readings’, which they claimed said they would be having ‘woodland children’, which…

It was just really, really bad.

And a lot of the family were trying to get them back on track, so it was mostly my Dad and his mom supporting my mom.

My sisters were all with my Dad’s sisters at their houses further up the road, where they’d stay when Mom was in the clinic.

Grandpa was here just for me to help run the house while everyone was gone.

‘I had the weirdest dream last night,’ I wrote on the notepad between us as we ate at the kitchen table, ‘I dreamt that I was chasing someone in the woods, climbing a tree and jumping out of it to tackle someone.’

I watched as Grandpa wrote, asking if that was something in one of my stories, and I shook my head and wrote back that it would be something good to write about though.

There was no deafness in the colony – it was considered one of the ‘unfavorable’ traits, and if someone was born deaf enough that they had to use sign language to communicate, they were removed from the colony. Sometimes entire families were pulled.

I had never seen it happen, but Mama said it had happened to her best friend when she was a little girl, so I guess it still happened.

But grandpa wasn’t deaf. His issue wasn’t genetic.

When they removed my uncle Lawrence from the colony for being a homosexual, grandpa was injured by the nightwalker that came to get him and it resulted in a jaw injury so substantial they couldn't rebuild it, so they had to replace the entire bone, leaving him with just the ability to write if he wanted to communicate.

And because his writing was ‘to beautiful for us to fully realize’, as Mom liked to say, he had to relearn to write with my sisters in letters the rest of us could easily read.

We sat in silence, writing back and forth as we finished our quick breakfast, going out then to do the chores that my family usually did. Grandpa Earnest’s own ranch was being taken care of my uncle Madison, who married my aunty Clara, both of which lived with my grandparents as they raised six kids under five.

Once we were all done, I washed up and went inside to take care of the cats, chasing Mr. Problems around until I caught him and, as I promised to do, gave him a once over with the comb. He resisted at first, thrashing around in my arms, but by the time I was done, he chased after me until I knelt down and gave him some more brushing.

I went down and helped Grandpa open up the windows in the house to let the air in before I went and grabbed the list Wendy, Fiona and Dad put together to make sure Grandpa and I didn’t forget everything.

When I was sure everything was clear for me to start heading toward work, I went and showed Grandpa, making sure he knew that if the dog’s started to go crazy, that meant that the Aquashore dog was probably at our gate looking for a fight, and to just call the Aquashore house, snap his finger twice, and they’d know what that meant.

He gave me a thumbs up and I handed him the list before I headed toward the front door, pulling it open-

I stilled.

Mom was coming up the porch with a smile on her face, Dad not far behind her.

She hurried over and I grinned wide, throwing my arms around her as she hugged me tightly, holding me as Dad came over and ruffled my hair. He squeezed by to give his Dad a quick hug before he brought Mom’s bag’s upstairs, but Mom and I stayed like that for a long few minutes before I helped her in. She immediately sat heavily down on the couch, staring at where the countdown to the end of our shared silence was.

Tonight at six pm.

She suddenly stood, clapping her hands with a smile before she pointed to the kitchen and marched toward. I followed her and she wrote on the notepad that she was going to start cooking for the celebration. I wrote down that I probably wouldn’t be back form work until after nine pm, which was about three hours after the silent ended, but she wrote that she would save me some treats and do a cleansing on me when I cane home.

I nodded and smiled, kissing her cheek and giving her a big hug that she returned in full force.