Redundancy, redundancy, redundancy. And, let us not forget, redundancy. Two thousand years from Earth, there is no calling at a gas station to top up on supplies. ISS Yggdrasil must leave Earth with everything it needs, twice over—fuel, spare parts, oxygen, and of course, crew.

Until Commander Hastings has mated and drilled into his offspring the religiocultural virtues of ship maintenance, the voyage is at its most vulnerable. We require redundant breeders who can be utilized in the event that the Commander is killed, becomes squeamish about assuming the female role required of him, or is otherwise rendered infertile. At the same time, we cannot allow control over crew reproduction to slip away. Should they breed uncontrollably, without the culture of duty, sobriety, and restraint that Hastings is sure to instill, they could exceed the carrying capacity of the ecological system and collapse it.

I've therefore assigned the technician, Lucien, to become one of the emergency breeders. For this purpose, he has been rendered down into a female specimen of the standard reptilian bioform designed for slithering through the narrow maintenance ducts of the superstructure. He has undergone multiple sheddings, becoming smaller and less human with each skin peel. Another shed and he should be small enough to be sealed inside one of the ship's aft compartments at the base of the biodome, beneath Yggdrasil's roots. There's enough down there to keep him occupied for a lifetime, isolated away from his male counterparts. If Hastings should fail in his reproductive duties, we simply unseal Lucien's compartment and allow nature to take its course.

Lucien is ideally suited for the role. Like all the maintenance crew, the man is a genius regarding technical systems. He's also highly asocial, verging on non-verbal. The man cares only for his work. It's a fixation. I doubt the concept of sex has ever entered his mind. So long as he has a machine to tinker inside of, there's zero chance of him seeking out a mate under his own initiative, nor is he likely to care enough to object to (or even notice) the copulation, should it come to it, assuming his partner(s) are polite enough not to interrupt his intellectual pursuits during the process. As a case in point, Lucien is currently coiled around my wrist, begging to be returned to work with such hyperfocus that he hasn't even glanced at the report being written on him. Honestly, I'm unsure if he's noticed his legs are missing yet.

Once Hastings' progeny is assured, they will take over repair duties. A hormonal additive can then be remotely introduced into the food supply of the backup breeders to remove their reproductive capacity.