Extracts from The Diaries of 'Professor' Cornelius Crane
October 14th, 1966

Today wasLabor Day again!

Well, for my mother, that is. She went intolabor at around 04h00 and at 14h20 the new family member arrived - four dayslater than expected – and sans a very special piece of equipment.

Yep, to my(and mine alone) shock and surprise, and to my father’s clearly discernabledisappointment, Claude has turned out to be Claudia. The brother I wasexpecting is, in fact, a sister.

My unintentionalpun of October 10 has come to pass. When I said, ‘I hope nothing is amiss,’ itshould, in fact, have been, ‘I hope nothing is a miss.’

It didn’ttake me long to figure out the reason for Claude’s unforeseen sex change.

In retrospectit all makes crystal clear sense, yet was still something totally unexpected.

The adultmale ejaculates, on average, about 5ml of semen during copulation and each mlcontains about 60 million sperm cells. Yet, only a single one of these iscapable of fertilizing the female egg cell. Once fertilization takes place, achemical reaction is produced that automatically prevents any other sperm cellsfrom entering the egg or ovum.

Think of itas winning the biggest lottery ever. Each and every human upon the face of theearth is only here because the single sperm that initially caused them tobecome what they are today beat 300 million others in a dash to fertilize theirmother’s egg cell.

So, next timeyou think that you’re unlucky when it comes to having your number picked, justremember that you won the greatest and most important race of your life beforeyou were even born.

Every humanon this planet is a big, big winner.

I havesomehow damned Claude to some sort of strange oblivion by my presence back inthe past. Who knows what happened the night my mother was fertilized. Did myfather get into bed earlier or later that night because of me? Whatever thereason, it was inevitable that this time round Claude’s little sperm cell wouldlose the race. This time, it was Claudia who reached the finish line first, andnow I have a sister that I have never known. A female now exists in thistimeline where previously there had not. What consequences, dire or beneficial,will this cause?

Only Time will tell!!!

Perhaps it isalso better that it happened this way, for if my mother had given birth to aboy, it would most likely not have been the same Claude anyway, and it may havebeen some time before I even realized it.

I never had asister before. This will take some getting used to.

Being Claude’s elder brother, I taught himmany of the guy things he needed to know.

What the hell do I know about girly stuff?

And girlymagazines ain’t gonna help squat!!!