He has some uses yet

There is the single largely-looming fact that you can't drive that hangs above all other things. This male might be of limited use in other ways, but even a single specialized skill leaves the world weaker for the loss. Either path leads to subjugation, best to have an army.

As his body empties another load into Mary, you seize the process mid-action. Your form takes complete control of the sperm, overwriting it in your image but leaving it biologically recognizable as his seed. Inside the spray, the gene-seed of your own kind is placed. From there, the cilium inside the faux womb bundles the sperm and places it back inside the male. He gasps at the sensation of the liquid being pumped back inside of him, his fingers twitching as they grapple Mary's skin. He makes a sort of choked noise, like he's trying to **** protests out of a mouth whose muscles no longer respond to his commands. In seconds, even these noises stop. The body re-absorbs the now foreign seed, the core commands leaving his chemistry fundamentally unchanged but rewriting the outward-facing behaviors. It takes a moment, but eventually, he gets the same glazed expression that Mary now walks around with. A sort of spacy and distant look to the eyes, slow and considered movements, a face numb and expressionless aside from the tight and considering purse of his lips, and a slow gaze that turns the whole body to look at things around him, not just the neck.

It's odd to look through two bodies at once. You are not one of your kind trained in this skill, so it's best to leave one as a sort of backburner consciousness. In time, you may become more comfortable with it, but for now, it is still very alien. You shift from Mary to the male, Joseph. Inside his head, there is also a person in a box. It does not bang and protest so much as Mary does. Especially still in the blissful post-coital state.

There are fundamental pieces each has that the other lacks, but they are more similarly composed than you might have initially thought. Perhaps on the most basic and unshakable level, the differences are in skeletal shape and density. The male is denser in bone and brain, with wider shoulders and narrower hips. The female is leaner in both, with wider hips and narrower shoulders. The difference in density does not affect anything other than responses to outside trauma, but it suggests a societal stratum. The biology of the two creates an implication of males as the sturdier and dominant and females as the protected in the hierarchy. Of course, this is merely this pair. A sample size this small may provide the basis for hypothesis, but it is fundamentally bad at providing proof of these ideals. The base shape implies rules. The hormonal features and development then goes to reaffirm them. Whether the hormones created the implication or the implication influenced the evolution of the hormones is harder to say.

You extend the male's hand, feeling the nerves of both while watching through the male's eyes. The size of the hand, the sinew of the muscle, the hair on the back of the knuckles, all of these the result of the hormonal composition. This model features a high level of his sex hormones. The result is oily skin, excess bodily hair, a deep voice, and predication of a bald skull by the end of his prime breeding years. In time, the aspects that the female found initially attractive, all symbols of this hormone's presence, will be atrophied or shifted by them into something she would find repulsive. A lower baseline would have produced far less defined "masculine" features, but would have sustained them far longer into life. He is riding a brief peak, one that foretells a harsh lesson in humility. Looking at the female in comparison, her composition is far more muted. She lacks the "feminine features" of the examples she admires, but likely dodges the detriments as a result. This worship of hormonal ideals both of them represent displays fundamental shortsightedness, a misunderstanding of their own endocrinology that likely exists on a societal level.

With a push, you thrust the male's hips against the females, feeling the sensations of both partners. The number of nerve endings both keep stored in their sex organs also implies a special disposition to breeding. One far more developed than most others you've encountered. It's not out of the realm of reasonability. Once an organism reaches a certain level of baseline intelligence, it becomes necessary to motivate sex for the prolonged survival of the species. A lower animal can function on primal instinct, even ones that will motivate the males to mass ****. Any species smart enough to conceptualize consent then needs to create a biological motivation to desire sex. As a result, many develop away from cycles of heat and estrus, instead developing a conditioning of sexual gratification and desire. It's almost a form of biological self-harm. As much as it rewards the act of procreation, it can punish the avoidance of it. As a result, even the high minded are **** at times to think with their genitals. It's an animal behavior played out in the dress clothes of polite society. Courtship and ceremony, all decoration to measure qualities which have no bearing on fertility. Keep it and you keep the performance going at the detriment to some of the members and limit the population. Do away with it and much of the societal autonomy of the participants is lost. The species becomes shaped by a short of genetic despotism. Certain trait lines played out exponentially as to risk drift and inbreeding. All other children the product of the return to mass animal ****. Courtship and the pretense surrounding breeding is a tiresome charade, but it exists for many important reasons.

Perhaps better then to play within the rules of the rituals, but try to maneuver and manipulate the society into one of a breeding farm. Control the animals, mix them as you want exclusively, bring the best traits out.

Unfortunately, a eugenic approach plays out with far lesser success in the case of complex beasts. These beings, currently acting out animal sex in the back of a primitive transportation device, are still orders of magnitude more complex than any other animal on the planet. They develop negative traits no matter how perfect the breeding stock. Two fast parents may give birth to a slow child through no fault of their own. The net of sperm is thrown so wide, the gestation so long, the environment played on by so many factors. A single mutation at the wrong moment in gestation is the difference between the superman and the stillborn. Imperfect stock cannot make a perfect child, at least not reliably. Some species lay large broods, some more brutal ones cull the errors, neither of these are realistic options with humans. The gestation is too long to simply throw away errors, you have a limit of female and male fertile periods. The female body also develops too minorly from birth form to reliably carry a brood and not a singular.

This, of course, is where you come in.

Joseph climaxes again, you shudder as the feeling of it washes through you. You could get used to this... for purely professional reasons, of course. Sperm made as much of your DNA as his enters Mary's womb, meeting an egg as much of yours as it is hers. Where they fuse, you put the most desirable parts of him and her, but it isn't enough to put together the whole thing. You'll need both of them to go out and partner with a multitude. Mary, for now, is the chosen. However, the more you take into your fold, the better males and females you may find. Your goal is not perfection. Perfection is likely impossible. You just need a best. When you feel satisfied with what you have, birthing them will be quick. That new being will be both you, the superior being, but also unmistakably and provably human.

You untangle the two bodies and steer them both wordlessly back into the front seat of the vehicle. It's easy to surrender just the right amount of control to the male to allow him to drive off of muscle memory. Even if you had to give him more control, he is far more open to the ideas you have for his future than Mary is with hers. It's not fair, certainly. She has a potentially harder role to play. However, her disposition to sex compared to his openness makes her attitude the biggest setback. Perhaps, for the male, this is a sort of dream come true. For her, it is still at least partial nightmare.

The car rolls on uneventfully until the signs of a larger city loom on the horizon.