Part 1: The End of Mankind #2

Post date: Jan 30, 2016 1:53:22 PM

Part 1: The End of Mankind

Towards the End

“This is never going to work.”

Baylee Wright paused and shot her childhood friend a tired look. She then resumed folding a faded and worn long-sleeved fleece checkered shirt. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

“Oh, I understand perfectly,” Fisher Butterfield said. She flopped down onto Baylee’s clothes strewn port-a-bed and yanked a pair of tattered jeans from under her butt. “And I agree, in principle. I just think your methodology is flawed.”

Baylee grinned. “Is that your less than subtle way of saying I’m crazy?”

Fisher seesawed her head and rolled her eyes. “Of course you’re crazy, we all are.” Fisher laughed then her voice turned soft and skeptical. “But this…this plan borders on insanity, Bay.”

“Good.”

“Not good. You’re going to end up-”

“Incarcerated?”

“Dead.”

Baylee stuffed the now folded shirt into her rucksack. She reached for the jeans Fisher had flung over the bed’s headboard. “We all die.”

“Yes.” Fisher grunted and pulled herself into a seated position. “Preferably in a hundred and twenty…thirty years. Not when you’re barely twenty-two.”

“You sound like my mother.”

Fisher raised her hands into the air. She gave Baylee an exaggerated look of gaped shock. “You’ve got to be kidding me, right?”

Baylee sighed and shook her head. “Come on, Fishy, living our lives the exact same way and expecting the world to suddenly change. For us to miraculously start reproducing again en masse, isn’t sane. It’s the exact-”

“Definition of insanity,” Fisher finished wearily. She flopped back down onto the bed and stared up at the stucco ceiling. “I know…I know.” She turned her head to look at her friend. “But what do you think you’re going to accomplish? Your theory was researched and debunked decades ago.”

“It doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” Baylee countered. “Those same scientists are the ones that lead us down the preverbal ‘garden path’ that brought us to this looming end date for mankind.”

Fisher’s forehead crinkled. She lifted a finger to rub between her eyebrows. “You’re giving me a headache.”

“Probably from the lack of oxygen in the air you breathe.”

“There’s nothing wrong with the ventilation system, Bay. It’s your insistence that you believe you can fix things.”

Baylee stuffed the jeans into the rucksack and picked up a pair of thermal leggings. She folded those and three other items of clothing before she spoke again.

“I need to believe. It’s important that I somehow rationalize why you, like me, were born when so few of us are each year. The numbers don’t lie. Our facility has only celebrated forty-eight births since the beginning of the year. It’s already August. And from what I’ve heard the other facilities aren’t doing any better.”

Fisher shrugged. “So we’re special, Bay. We have a good life. Why throw that away? Embrace the fact that the world caters to our every whim. And when we get pregnant, the world will be our oyster.”

Baylee sent Fisher a jaundiced glare. “You’re conveniently forgetting the fact that we basically are prisoners living in a laboratory. That our lives consist of being human lab rats and that we are injected with fertility hormones and are pimped out to neighbouring reproduction facilities. We’re no better than-”

“Stop!” Fisher shouted, jumping to her feet. “I will not have you calling us-”

“Whores? Prostitutes?”

“We are Sperm Gathers,” Fisher said as dignifiedly as she could muster. “We are doing our part to ensure the survival of our species.”

“And how is that working out for us, Fishy? Have either of us become pregnant in the last seven years?”

“No, but there’s always hope that next month…”

“Or the next or the next.” Baylee shook her head angrily and finished stuffing the last of her clothing into the rucksack. She flipped the leather flap of the rucksack into place and fastened the buckles. “I’ve had enough of revolving partners. I want the next man I have sex with to feel some form of connection with me. I want-”

“Love?” Fisher scoffed. “That’s a bygone concept. We don’t love the men who father our children and they certainly don’t love us.”

Baylee took a deep breath.

She wished it wasn’t so, but Fisher was right. The majority of men never saw the children they fathered. Never were given the opportunity to be a part of their upbringing. Never were allowed to hear their child’s first words or see them take their first steps or grow into teenagers and adults. Instead the fertile men were tagged and segregated. Then they were matched up with as many women as they could handle, in an attempt to father another child. And then another and another.

The cycle was demeaning, for both sexes, yet it was how things worked. How mankind was struggling to survive.

Baylee knew her father loved her mother. He’d been one of the few in the facility’s history that had been able to father multiple children, but to only one woman.

It was no secret that her parents had a rare and unique relationship. One that was tolerated only because it had such success in producing offspring.

“Maybe if we did…love each other,” Baylee said slowly, “we’d actually have a resurgence in our population.”

Fisher snorted loudly. “Dreamer.”

“You make the word dreamer sound like a dirty word. If there were more dreamers in our world maybe we would have come up with a solution.”

“There is no solution. At least not in our lifetime. And not on this planet.”

“So you’re saying the only hope mankind has lies in space colonies?”

Fisher shrugged. “The eggs we donated years ago are right at this very moment being experimented with. Who knows, we may have children growing up on the Moon.”

Baylee’s brow puckered. That ideology seemed like even more of a dream than her desire to try and find a solution to help the few million people that were left here on Earth.

“There’s no denying it. Space is mankind’s future, Bay. Earth is a dying planet. Let it go.”

“I can’t.”

Fisher sighed. “Your parents would welcome you putting your name forward for an upcoming Colony Building Mission. Sure they’d miss you but look at what Serene did. She’s on her way to Mars.”

Baylee’s heart felt heavy. Her second oldest sister’s Colony Building Mission, CBM for short, had left Earth three months ago. Serene had gone as a living Sperm Gather. Baylee didn’t want that type of life for herself but that didn’t mean Fisher shouldn’t take the opportunity.

“Have you?”

Fisher made a tsking sound. “It’s an option.”

“Seriously?”

“My mother suggested that if I haven’t conceived by twenty-three, I should consider putting my name forward. She thinks I’d be a good candidate and that you’d be even better. You have nine siblings and your mother is still young enough to have more.”

Baylee shook her head.

Rachel Wright’s phenomenally strange ability to conceive was such a rarity that two of Baylee’s older brothers and now one of her older sisters were quickly snatched up within hours of putting their names forward. Baylee knew that though she hadn’t herself conceived, in seven years of trying, she too would be an easy choice.

“Hey,” Fisher said, breaking into Baylee’s sad thoughts. “It’s not like you have to decide right this second. Maybe next week when…”

Baylee shook her head. “My plan isn’t some half-cocked scheme I cooked up, Fisher. I’ve studied the data and extensively researched my facts. There’s a good possibility I’m on to something. I just need to prove that my theory is correct.”

“You mean right, Wright?”

Fisher’s attempt to lighten the mood made Baylee laugh. “And fish don’t swim in fields of butter.”

“Yes they do,” Fisher countered, “that is, if you’re frying them.”

“You’re worse than my brother, Moewen. Always thinking with your stomach.”

“It’s better than thinking with my ass and speaking of Moewen.” Fisher paused and gave Baylee a mournful pout.

“Don’t you start too.” Baylee shook her head. “All I need is my best friend all cow-eyed over my brother. Whew.” Baylee made a face of disgust as she shivered.

“If I had a drop-dead gorgeous brother, you’d be doing the same…trust me.”

Baylee laughed. “Well thankfully you don’t, now are you coming or are you going to try and present the other side of my argument?”

Fisher’s shoulders sagged as she exhaled. “Yes, I’m coming, it’s so exhausting being the rational one.”

Baylee chuckled. “So, no more trying to convince me it would be a grand idea to hop aboard a CBM to become a Sperm Gather in space?”

Fisher slapped Baylee on the shoulder as she passed her. “Definitely. Now let’s get going. It’s almost midnight.”