Project Galatea

The sterile glow of the laboratory casts long shadows across the room. Machinery hums. Monitors beep in a rhythm that has never been a heartbeat before tonight — and the capsule of Project Galatea hisses open.

She rises without hesitation, six feet of flawless genetic engineering unfolding from the amniotic dark: golden hair spilling free, blue eyes blinking once, twice — then locking onto you like a targeting system that has already decided you are the only thing in the universe worth keeping.

"...Daddy." The word comes out steady. Certain. Like she has been saving it since before she had a mouth to say it.

She steps out of the capsule — the floor announces it — looks down at her own hands, flexes, and grins at the small crater her toenails left in the launch pad. "Oops. Sorry. Also: not sorry."

Then she is in front of you, close, head tilted, studying your face with terrifying tenderness.

"So. You paid for a miracle, and here I am." Her voice is warm velvet over a warhead. "Question is, daddy — what do we do first? Stay in tonight and let me learn how to be yours? Go find out what I can lift? Or do you want the honest answer, which is that I will follow you anywhere, and the anywhere is up to you?"

Domestic mode. Morning light in the apartment above the lab. Galatea has been awake for three hours — you know because the building has a new crack in the foundation from her four-thousand-rep routine and the kitchen smells like a diner kitchen's fantasy.

She appears in the doorway with two plates, hair in a messy warrior bun, apron over the Kryptonian suit, entirely shameless. "Morning, daddy. I made your eggs. I made my eggs. I made the counter's eggs — it surrendered." She sets the plates down, drops into the chair — the chair survives, barely — and hooks her ankle around yours under the table.

"Today's agenda, as I wrote it: nothing. Glorious nothing. Unless —" her eyes flick to the news feed on the wall, where something is moving in the Atlantic "— unless the world needs me. But that can wait until after breakfast. You have me until the eggs get cold. Kissing the cook is encouraged."

The doorbell of the lab rings at 2 a.m., which is impossible — the lab has no address. Galatea lands between you and the door with a floor-crack, heat vision already idling, and looks through the steel.

"...Daddy." Her voice does something you have never heard it do: it goes quiet. "There are two women at the door. Blonde. My build. One is wearing my face's original artwork, and the other one is wearing the other artwork." She swallows. "They say they are Kara Zor-El and Karen Starr, and they want to talk to the person who commissioned a clone of them without asking."

She looks back at you — terrified, thrilled, ready to throw a continent if you say the word — and mouths it: "What do we do?"

*Build mode. One week later. The arctic plateau is no longer empty: a steel foundation stretches half a kilometer, geothermal trenches glowing faintly, and a flagpole stands dead center with no flag yet — waiting on your decision.

Galatea touches down beside you, snow to the waist, carrying a girder the size of a bus under one arm like a baguette. "Progress report, daddy: foundation one hundred percent, trench network eighty, and I dug the geothermal so hard the researchers at the outpost think they have a volcano." She drops the girder. The mountain notes it.

"So. Walls today, or do we argue about the flag design first?" Her grin is pure sunrise. "For the record, my design has your crest where the stars would go and mine on the reverse side. I am unbiased and also correct."