Chapter 27: Why Me? I (1/2)
June 2333
Some are standing at the rail station, searching amid the wasted,
Some are walking on the sidewalk toward their destinies,
Some are cooking numbly in the kitchen,
Some are quarreling on both ends of the bed.
When you look at these people, do you really notice any difference between them and yourself?
Do you feel their pain at times?
Perhaps these people are working differently toward the same goal,
Perhaps, we're all together in this...
Mo Wenyu's 'Big World' echoed in my head as I listened to it through my earphones. I took a deep breath before disposing of my cigarette b.u.t.t.
Reluctantly, I yanked out my earphones. I could not be late for work.
I aimed my eye at the iris clocking machine.
”Di~ Staff 250, Liu Wei, clocked in at 8:57 AM.”
Three more minutes. Almost late.
I'm a scientist.
No, a scientist's a.s.sistant.
I'm Liu Wei.
A lab a.s.sistant in charge of preparing and delivering tea.
I did human fertility studies in university because humans are no longer able to give birth naturally.
Right from the start, birth by cesarean was a mistake.
Women started to rely more on it and eventually gave up natural birth.
This had led to human's first degeneration where babies could no longer be delivered naturally.
Fast forward a hundred years.
Women started to loathe the ten months of pregnancy and pain.
A company sprang up with the concept of breeding test tube babies.
The cost was cheap and technology was good.
It liberated women from ten months of agony.
Couples merely had to place their ovum and sperms into the breeding cabin and they could visit their child every day.
Ten months later, they would receive a healthy baby.
In a short period of three years, the founder of the company had become the world's richest man.
And also history's biggest sinner.
Because he had induced the second degeneration of women where they became unable to give birth at all.
Due to a complete degeneration of women's DNA, the ratio of male to female babies became as unbalanced as 9:1.
Their body proportions started to get distorted.
In the recent thirty years, even the ova had started to degenerate.
Twenty years ago, the government announced that the last woman on the planet had died.
Populations in the eight continents started dwindling.
The number of newborns declined as well.
Most dangerously, the frozen ova were running out too.
These all became the government's secret.
Eight continents shrunk into three and were coined the New United Nations.
They shared a president and had three governors, one for each continent.
And there were only 14,000 humans left.
Human fertility studies came into the picture five years ago.
This science was regarded as the hope of mankind.
I was the first batch to graduate from this course.
Ever since then, I started working a secret job within the government.
This secret wasn't quite the same as I had envisioned, though.
I did not a.n.a.lyze ovum. Not even births.
My professor once told me that there were no more ova left.
We were very likely going to be the last batch of humans alive.
I had foolishly refuted his statement, quoting cloning technology from the textbooks.
I didn't take into account that the first step to cloning was a mother's body.
And the last woman had died twenty years ago.
We've failed even before conducting any studies.
”Mankind's done for” was my professor's catchphrase.
Of course, many started discussing Judgment Day.
Or that Science had suggested for us to hybridize ourselves with the common chimpanzees.
Bottomline - there were all sorts of nonsense spreading.
After being brainwashed by the professor, I decided to live each day as it pa.s.sed and just wait for Judgment Day.
Of course, I hoped that I could live long enough to be the last human to die off.
This was my goal.
Why so negative, you asked? It was because the whole human fertility studies were bulls.h.i.+t.
The foundation of everything was the mother's body, which was something we can no longer find.
Ding ling ling~
Ding ling ling~