And time was running out.
Chapter Two
June 18, 2087
This is your 9AM wake up call. Good morning, Abigail. The high today will be 84 degrees with a 37% chance of showers. Raising shades.
The distinctive clack of the blinds lifting from the windows drew Abi from sleep. Most of the dorms on campus had been fitted with the new visi-shades, tinted windows infused with microscopic panels of carbon that could change their orientation to temper the light that passed through. The carbon was drawn directly from the atmosphere, across the country acting as billions of sponges to absorb excess emissions. Too little, too late. Climate change had already turned half of the US into a humid sauna and the other half into a sterile desert.
Abi's dorm was in the back of the campus, out of sight from the road and thus last in line for refurbishment. The college had a limited green budget so its technology always reached the visible buildings first. Abi's dorm still had old fashioned air con that dripped puddles of brackish water, water heaters that clanked and gurgled through the night, and the water itself was simply fresh, unequipped with nano-shavers and sanitizer. It felt like she was living in the old west.
The old fashioned shades were just one of the things Abi liked about the old structure. Windows fitted with visi-shades couldn't be opened. An open window disrupted the temperature variance the glass needed to fix carbon from the air, so they'd all been painted shut with an epoxy that generated solar energy but reflected far too much light into the rooms. Students in the new buildings always complained of headaches. The ceaseless march of technology always had its missteps.
Abi smiled as she did every morning when that first breath of light breeze caressed her skin the moment she opened the window. It was never quite strong enough and always too humid, but it was a joy to breathe fresh air. The residents of the other dorms - and most people in the US, come to that - had forgotten the simple pleasure of natural air flowing through a room. Most people lived their entire lives in a conditioned bubble, passing from their antibiotic-infused homes to their smog damping cars to their sterile, climate controlled offices, never breathing real air for more than a few moments at a time.
There was a reason for that, of course. Real air had flavor and taste. It carried countless particles of carcinogens, lung-choking pollutants and the rich tang of ozone when rain was on the way. It was unpleasant, Abi knew, but it was also real. She always preferred the real thing over the sanitized fake.
She turned away from the window when she heard the shower switch on with a soft tone. Abi was loathe to leave the cool breeze, but she knew she only had four minutes before the stream would stop. The economical showers were the latest refit to be installed, and the one she hated most. Four minutes just wasn't long enough to feel clean, and for the hundredth time she cursed the name of the unhygienic fool who set the timer on her bathroom.
Abi had just stepped into the shower when she heard the echo of the Tannoy announcing the call for group 53. She knew another 500 young women would be weeping right now. 500 women hadn't slept last night.
Many had been in other's beds, desperately trying one last time to become pregnant even though they knew it was unlikely a test would detect success so soon. They'd go through their days never knowing if the seed of life had existed, if only for a brief few hours, in their bodies before the medical techs cruelly scraped it out of them.
Abi's tears mingled with the mist of water, her shower forgotten as she prayed for the girls she'd soon follow. She prayed that at least one would emerge joyful from the medical center, clutching in her hands the precious white slip that exempted her from sterilization
The program was cruel, of course, but not that cruel. Even in the midst of this crisis the government wouldn't stoop so low as to abort a fetus If they tried they'd soon learn the true meaning of revolution. It had been hard enough to push through the legislation for the sterilization program itself. The idea of enacting a law to forcibly render over 200 million women infertile had just a dozen years ago seemed inconceivable. Who would even propose such an evil, draconian measure? Indeed, the first to raise the suggestion soon found themselves out of a job.
The public backlash had been terrible, and it wasn't until the food shortages stretched into their second year that people started to listen. The breadbasket of the US had become a dust bowl, and all across the world each nation began to realize that, as the old saying went, you can't eat money. Regimes fell and economies crumbled, and the US couldn't escape the carnage.
Almost overnight the US economy collapsed as its creditors called in their loans. Without the money to pay for imports or the ability to feed its own population the States became a third world country. The government fell, the victim of partisan bickering that went on long after the people took to rioting in the streets.
The new regime formed from those on the political fringes; lunatics who promised a return to prosperity on the condition of absolute obedience. Follow us without question, they said, and we'll bring back the American Dream. We'll rise again. And they were right. In just a decade the US had clawed its way back from the brink. The economy was growing once more, and while times were still tough there was at last hope.
But it came at a price. The sterilization program rolled out across the country had taken its toll, damning those who had decided to wait for better times to a childless life. First it was the convicts, then those from low income families. The unemployed were treated, sparking protests that the program targeted racial minorities. The protests were stamped out with force. Even newborn babies were sterilized at birth, right after the cord was cut.
Every sector of society had eventually been hit, and now the only fertile women left in the country - saving a carefully selected breeding stock tasked with producing a smaller, more manageable new generation - were the young.
And Abi was one of the last. Wherever she turned it seemed everyone knew she could still bear children. Whether she was on campus, where her face had become a symbol of hope, or outside the walls of the college where people just seemed to sense that her body was ripe and fertile, she couldn't escape the reputation she had earned by accident of birth.
Everyone expected her to conceive, to yell out a final fuck you to the tyrannical government whose cruel, callous methods had both saved and cursed them all. A baby was almost demanded of her, and even the college administrators themselves had visited her dorm to encourage her to conceive.
There was only one problem: Abi was on the pill. She didn't want to be a mother.
Begging For It: The Breeding Trilogy (Impregnation Erotica Book 4) Page 6
