Chapter 1
created: 2023-06-04T10:39 updated: 2023-06-04T10:
Chapter 1
Some time in the year 2025, researchers that were monitoring the births in the United States made a startling discovery. For the last eighty three years, various government agencies had tracked the of boys born verses the number of girls born. The number of boys born had out numbered the girls by a ratio of almost ten to one. Some time around 2015 there had been a shift and the boys were starting to gain even more traction on the girls. It was presently around thirty to one. There was no question that this data was very troubling.
"Doctor Robertson," lead researcher Dr. Quentin Jones said. He hadn't even bothered to sit down after he had entered the office of the Director of the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta Georgia. "We've triple checked this, it's not inaccurate. At the rate we're going by the year 2075 that ratio will be sixty to one. That's the trend based on the data that we have. We need to do something."
Doctor Robertson brushed some of her shoulder length blonde hair out of her face and looked at Doctor Jones from over the top of her glasses. "What do you propose we do, Quentin?"
"I don't know, Ma'am," Quentin licked his lips, he had thought of a few things, all of which would change the life of the person that sat across the desk from where he stood. "What ever we do, we need to A, do it fast and B, we need to protect the females that we do have."
"Get your teams together and see if you can come up with something that I can present to the committee..." Dr. Robertson said. "I'm going to have Sarah pull the department heads into the large conference room on the fifth floor. We're going to use that as a base of operations. When she calls, you keep doing what you're doing, I know why you're not in the meeting."
"Yes, Ma'am." Doctor Jones said before turning and leaving the office of the Director, wondering if they weren't already too late.
Doctor Robertson picked up the report and went through it again, hoping that she had missed something in her first read of the report. After reading the report for a second time she hit the button to call the phone on Sarah's desk.
"Yes, Doctor?" Sarah quiet voice came from the speaker in the phone.
"Can you come here, please?" Dr. Robertson asked, frowning.
"Yes, Ma'am." Sarah said, before there was click as she hung up the phone. A few seconds later, there was a knock on the door.
"Come in." Doctor Robertson said, not taking her eyes off the report. Cassie looked at her short twenty two year old assistant. Her normal five feet had grown to five foot four inches with the pair of boots that the girl wore. "Sarah, I need you to run me thirty copies of this document, and call all of the department heads into the conference room on five. They need to drop what they are doing and be up there in half an hour. Have IT on standby in case we need something and food services bring up coffee. I also want you there." Dr. Robertson handed the twenty page document to Sarah, who glanced at the cover and then at Cassie, her eyes wide.
"What does this mean?" Sarah asked. Cassie had known the girl since her early teen years when Cassie and Sarah's mom, Erica had worked together for a large hospital in Columbus Ohio. The two had become even closer, perhaps in what could be called almost a mother/daughter relationship, after Sarah's mom had been killed in a crash involving a drunk driver. Cassie had petitioned for custody of Sarah when she was fifteen and had helped her through a rather tough time in her life. It turned out that she was really effective at handling the affairs of a senior executive at a large hospital and subsequently, the Centers for Disease Control. When ever Cassie put in long hours, Sarah was right there with her.
"We don't know yet, Sarah," Doctor Robertson said, standing. She walked around the desk to the now pale faced girl. "Dr. Jones thinks that if we don't do something soon we may be looking at the extinction of the human race. Remember a few years ago when they tried to control the gender of the fetus and it wasn't really successful?" Sarah nodded, her brown bob bouncing. "I would expect that kind of research to pick up. If we can't figure out a way around this, who knows what's going to happen. Lets focus on right here and right now. This is going to take time to even begin to work even after we've come up with a plan. Can you go set my meeting up for me?" Sarah nodded, and turned, still wide eyed to leave the office and arrange for the meeting.
The various department heads were murmuring when Sarah and Cassie walked into the conference room on the fifth floor. Everyone quieted down and watched the Director take her place at the head of the table. Sarah quietly stood there, holding thirty copies of the document titled "Have we reached the end: The ratio of genders and the long term effects."
"Good morning," Doctor Robertson said. "I'm sure that you are all wondering why I called this meeting on such short notice, and I'm glad you are here. Perhaps with our collective wisdom, we can come up with an answer to a situation that is rather perplexing." The last time that a meeting of department heads had been called before this was when there was a E. Coli outbreak in southern Los Angles that ended up killing four and causing four hundred more to become seriously ill. The source was eventually traced back to some bad beef that had been served in several schools in the area. "I'm going to have Sarah pass out a report that I only saw about an hour ago. It was written by Dr. Quentin Jones from the Division of Vital Statistics and contains some troubling news for our species. I would have prepared some slides, but I didn't have time and I wanted to get our collective brain trust in on this one." Doctor Robertson nodded at Sarah, who in her short pink and black plaid skirt started to pass the report out, giving two to every department head. "I'm giving everyone a second copy so you can give it to your deputies when you get back in your offices."
"Doctor Robertson," Doctor Jim Smithfield of the Noncommunicable Diseases office said. "What is going on?"
Every ones eyes went from Doctor Smithfield back to Doctor Robertson."Essentially, the ratio of births is supposed to be around ten to one. That is ten girls for every boy. The trend has changed. Doctor Jones, using data going back eighty three years, has determined that this ratio will grow to one in sixty. In case you haven't figured out what this means, and why it's bad, there will be one girl born for every sixty boys born."
"I thought that girls out numbered boys on a global scale..." Doctor Robert Gaffin said.
The door opened and Doctor Jones walked in, looking harried and carrying more paper into the room than Sarah had carried. Sarah rushed to take the papers from Doctor Jones, and sat them next to Cassie on the large oval shaped table. Cassie glanced at the papers and knew exactly what the issue was.
"Doctor Robertson, May I?" Doctor Quentin Jones asked. Cassie nodded and yielded the floor to Doctor Jones.
"I just got done conferring with my colleagues at the ECDC, HPA, The Hellenic Center, The Public Health Agency, The Australian Department of Health and the WHO[^fn1]. From the information I've gathered from those that could just give it to me, the worldwide numbers are even more troubling than the numbers in the US. Worldwide, the ratio is already closer to forty to one and projections indicate that that by the year 2075, the ratio will be closer to one twenty five to one. Dr. Robertson, I told you in your office that we need to take action quickly and it's even more apparent now... Action is needed otherwise we run the risk of our species becoming extinct."
"It's even worse on a global scale?" Cassie asked, slowly lowering herself into the chair that was behind her.
"Yes, Ma'am," Dr. Jones took a breath before continuing. "For the first time since we started recording this type of information, the boys out number the girls by a ratio of twenty to one in the United States." Dr. Jones looked at his colleagues. "Ladies and Gentlemen, I do have a suggestion, but the ladies in the room aren't going to like it..." Dr. Jones looked from Dr. Robertson to Sarah and then at Dr. Rebecca O'Brien. They were the only three females in the room. In almost all of the various departments, female staff members made up the deputy directors.
"I think we are all mature enough to handle what ever it is that you may suggest, Doctor. At the moment it will be the only suggestion on the table."
"Ma'am, I believe that we need to protect the women that we do have at all costs." Dr. Jones said. To his surprise, everyone in the room nodded, but he wasn't finished yet. "We are not talking about some kind of disease that we can contain, we are talking about the extinction of our species. I would like to throw out on the table that we, as the august body that we are, in the interest of public health and survival recommend to the Senate subcommittee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions the following proposal: that we immediately begin a program to track the whereabouts of all females ages twelve and up, that we use what some may call a medieval torture device to protect these same girls from being raped and murdered, and that we use this to assist DHS in rolling out their national ID program." Sarah looked from Dr. Jones to Cassie and back her eyes wide.
"And what would this device be, Doctor?" Dr. Robertson asked,
[^fn1]: The ECDC is the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control located in the European Union; The HPA is the Health Protection Agency, A division of the Department of Health in the United Kingdom; The Hellenic Center is located in Greece and is the Greek equivalent of the CDC; The Public Health Agency is the Canadian equivalent of the CDC, and the WHO is the World Health Organization.