The worst thing about the job, was the realisation that we could never know whether it was all worthwhile. If no change occurred, it could indicate that the work was successful, though it could equally mean we were entirely misguided, and the changes we made - these little atrocities we daily committed - were as unnecessary as they were inhumane. The counter-argument of course was that, if it was right - if we really were preventing catastrophe - the only sure way to prove it would be to bring it to a halt. It was too big a gamble. Even if it failed, and the very effects we were striving to prevent were too far in motion to be stopped, those of us on the front lines, guilt weighing heavy on us, would never see the realisation within our lifetime. It was an enduring test of the conscience - carrying out a thankless, controversial job; hated by near everyone, for different reasons, dependent on their individual beliefs and biases; and yet never truly knowing whether you were more hero or terrorist.
Obtaining access to the equipment would not present a problem, since it was the same kit with which I worked every day. It wasn’t uncommon for the day’s route to be planned such that the last stop would leave you closer to home than to the recharge bay - the intention being that you would simply go straight home and recharge the pod via your state-supplied energy source. The state covered all costs for power, as one of the perks of what was otherwise a largely undesirable job. With fuel prices so high, people would do pretty much anything in return for a reliable supply. So yes, the equipment was no problem. Using it in the house without her knowing, or suspecting what I was doing, would be the challenging part. I'd told her she'd passed the test. That she wouldn’t be required to have the procedure. She didn't have to bear the shame of being unfit for purpose.
The knowledge would have crushed her. The damage done by the buffer serum would pale in comparison to the psychological damage of knowing she wasn't good enough, that there was something wrong with her that couldn't be fixed. They called it a buffer, to make it sound like a kind of protection, and I suppose in a perverse way it was. But to me, a buffer had only ever really meant the end of the line.
"Bad day?”.
“Quite the opposite - today I was a hero”.
"You always are to me”.
The glint of love in her eye was as a sliver of lead through my stomach as the guilt hit me. She meant it, there was no irony, yet if she only knew the macabre task that lay ahead of me, she'd understand why I felt anything but a hero tonight. Some days you felt the shame of a murderer, other days you realised how essential you were to every human the world over. Today had been a good day: I'd seen it all for the best. "I am making a brighter future with each candle I snuff out" I would tell myself, "The prophylactic nature of my job is just and honourable", as I'd been trained to rationalise it, and today I believed it. I believed right up to the point when I got back to the office and picked up her results.
According to standard procedure they would usually be sent by mail, though since the testing lab was in the same building as my department, I'd arranged to pick them up myself. It was still a relatively new procedure at this point, so the protocols and processes weren't yet so rigid that everything had to be done by the book. It wasn't yet such a universally loathed concept that everything had to be done to the letter for fear of the consequences, so it had not been seen as untoward, that I was picking up my wife's results rather than have her receive them at home, on her own. Particularly as they would arrive while I was out at work - delivering the very service she feared was her doom.
I had already by this point acquired a faked success report, in preparation for the worst - whatever the outcome, she had to always believe that she passed, and so this was just for her peace of mind. I'd seen and delivered enough of the forms to undeserving, arrogant cretins, to have had plenty of opportunity to scan, and subsequently amend a copy. The facsimile was good; convincing. It would convince no one who had actually worked in the department, nor a judge, but it would be enough for her.
It looked starkly different to the form I pulled out of the envelope though: the simple, plain form - so plain it almost mocked the cruelty of the news it delivered. She had failed the test. Mentally there were no major concerns outside a tendency to depression; her aptitude test scored markedly higher than the average. In terms of physical wellbeing, she was no Olympian but was in sufficiently robust health to be able to carry a viable pregnancy to term. The problem was a single dormant gene. She was a carrier of an obscure degenerative disease.
She might in theory have developed the condition herself at any time, but had so far been fortunate enough to avoid it. So much has happened since I read that damning result, I don't even remember what the disease was. Now I wish I'd paid more attention - it gnaws at me sometimes, trying to remember what it was. Knowing would change nothing, but it felt like something I should remember. Back then it didn't seem important what she had, the only important thing was that she would never be allowed children, and that not only would I be the one to have to tell her, but that I would inevitably be the one to perform the procedure.
* * *
Following the release of frankly alarming data on climate change, it became devastatingly apparent to the governments of the world, that the capitalist-centric steps they had taken thus far to combat the changes, had been almost laughably insufficient. Cleaner, more sustainable fuel sources did not counter the simple fact that there were too many people. We were no longer affecting the climate simply by our actions or inactions any more, but rather affecting it by our very presence. The scientific community had warned of this for decades, and had eventually pressured the governments into encouraging vegetarianism and self sufficiency, hoping against hope that they could reduce the number of other animals, to prevent having to curtail the numbers of the animals causing the most damage. Humans.
Once the momentum grew, for a time things looked positive: A reduction in the beasts of the fields; An increase in food being grown locally and delivered to people's homes to save them all having individual transport, a visible change had taken place: things were improving. But it was all too quickly apparent that the rate of change was too slow. We had only postponed, not prevented our fate. Action needed to be taken, drastic action, but without causing a panic. A delicately balanced amount of information was strategically introduced into the public domain, pressure applied to the press and the broadcasters to editorialise in favour of more careful family planning and smaller families. Make them more desirable, more socially acceptable.
The delivery of this persuasion campaign was subtle and elegant - When new TV shows were being planned, care was taken to keep the fictitious families small, in the hope that life would inevitably mirror art. In children's programming, protagonists were rarely shown to have more than one sibling, and often they would serve the narrative purely as an antagonist and make the idea of a brother or sister almost repulsive.
Planting the seed to prepare people for the next phase. Feeding the collective consciousness subliminally, nourishing their biases until they could digest the premise that large families are bad, and wasteful. The one real benefit that reducing the animals had given, was in providing empirical proof that reducing the number of beings on the planet, would have a positive effect on the rate of climate change. However bitter the pill would be to swallow, it would be difficult for anyone to deny that, of a set of distasteful solutions, it was the most viable. As long as the majority of the public debate was focused on hope for a favourable outcome, that should be enough to carry the legislation through with little public resistance.
Through successfully engineering the perspective of the world at large, the introduction of means-tested sterilisation, was met with little resistance from a large proportion of the populace. It was not a difficult case to make, that the new legislation would be in everyone's best interests. Even the most beige and incompetent of politicians had become fluent with the talking points in favour of the change. The process was accelerated too, by the volume of people who volunteered for the procedure before being tested.
For months, debates had raged between parliaments, to establish how the selection process would be determined. The virtues of a lottery system were touted by many, who argued that means testing, though more beneficial for the species as a whole, was in itself a genetic lottery - someone who was intelligent, healthy and strong would be more likely to pass on those traits to their offspring than someone less exercised and mentally engaged, but how did that make them more worthy or deserving of that right? Someone who had contributed to society's greater good for years, yet carried a dormant defective gene, would become less valuable “breeding stock”, than someone who was an absolute tyrant, but had so such congenital defects.
And so came the question of selecting who would be sterilised. The UN tentatively agreed that individual governments would be responsible for determining their own criteria, rather than abiding by global consensus. It was honoured little further than the initial planning stage though, as it became apparent that it would be unsustainable to no consistency between countries. In the ensuing chaos of people trying to emigrate based on whose system they agreed with, only seven nations were able to find a solution which their population accepted.
Inevitably different faiths argued different standpoints, according to their own specific interpretations of morality, but they were soon quieted by the scientific community, who made the case that the clerics by this point spoke for such a small percentage of the population as to render meaningless any opposition to the process on religious grounds.
After the squabbling had progressed to reasonable debate, and rational heads had assessed the benefits and drawbacks of proposed solutions, the tests were decided upon. As the whole point of the exercise was the survival of the species, it seemed most logical to the majority of debaters, that the process should be a kind of orchestrated natural selection - survival of the potentially fittest. If someone was up to a certain standard, against a list of desirable criteria, they were allowed to reproduce. If they failed any one of the tests, they would be the end of their line.
As a means to ensure that mandatory sterilisation was adhered to, the buffer serum was developed, to “painlessly render the subject infertile and unable to reproduce”. Though as we have come to learn, painless referred only to the absence of physical pain.
- * *
As long as we had known each other, there had been no question of us growing old without bringing new lives into the world. Unswerved by the negative light that society now shone on large families, we still had dreams of nurseries and playrooms, and small voices filling the air with laughter. We both wanted children, lots of them, but had slowly resigned ourselves to the reality that one or two would be all we were allowed. Not being able to have any at all would be heartbreaking, and I knew that the guilt of having been the one to prevent it, could prove be too much for either one of us to bear. So I knew that telling her she had been denied the right the reproduce would feel like an accusation to her - an open declaration of failure - it would be too big a thing for us to have between us. Quite simply, I reasoned, she could never know. I could never tell her the truth. I would tell her she had passed the test.
The only remaining crease in my otherwise smooth strategy, was that just telling her she had passed would not be enough - she had to truly believe she was ok, and in the clear, yet must never conceive a child, lest the company find out that I had failed in my duty. She still had to undergo the procedure, or our offspring would end up orphaned, as both parents spent the rest of their days incarcerated for violating the Mandatory Sterilisation Act.
I knew what I had to do, and the night I gave her the results, I brought the pod home to charge. We celebrated until we were hoarse, and even heavy with the weight of the lie, my heart nonetheless soared to see her so happy and relieved. She grew sleepy before I did, as was generally the case when we drank, so I tucked her into bed, content and at peace with the world.
As I sat in the garage later, so soon as I was certain she was asleep, her peaceful smile from earlier, once again filled my head. Distracted by that thought, administering the buffer serum to myself felt like a small sacrifice, if I could make it instead of her.
Where would you like to go next?
