Chapter 6: News Break

WHY AREN’T YOU PREGNANT?

That’s right, you aren’t pregnant. No one is. Investigations have uncovered what appears to be a global sterilization of human males. No babies are being born and the world population clock is counting backwards.

Of course, you can check with your doctor and even go to a fertility clinic. But they will all show the same. No matter how much semen a man produces in an ejaculation, it will contain no living sperm.

It appears this has affected only the production of spermatozoa. Many sperm banks have run tests and indicate the banked sperm seems not to have been affected by whatever it is that has caused this sterilization. However, they are not currently accepting applications for in vitro fertilization by order of the Department of Health.

“What we are seeing is nothing more than a typical cycle in the system,” said Mary Rand, Communications Director of the Centers for Disease Control. “There is no evidence that this is anything more than a temporary reset. We do not see it spreading any further.”

Dr. Levi Ulman of Orlando General Hospital had this to say about the development.

“We began to see births start trailing off just over two months ago. As births do go in cycles, we were not concerned until the birth rate sharply declined. As of two weeks ago, Orlando General has not had a single birth. We checked with counterparts all over the State of Florida and they have concurred that there are no new births being recorded at this time,” said Dr. Ulman.

Reports began filtering in from around the world that the birthrate had dropped to zero when the world population clock at worldpop.io stopped and began running backward. Secretary of Health Ralph Alexander responded as soon as information filtered out on the internet that world population was decreasing for the first time since the Bubonic Plague.

“We have launched an investigation into the specious allegations brought forward by the owners of worldpop.io and have demanded that they fix their application or take it down. No other counter of human population has reversed itself and we are certain that advanced fertility drugs will soon be made available at a reasonable price,” Alexander said.

“We have good people, the very best people, working on the problem of the retreating world population clock,” President Muffley stated from Merryweather Golf Course in Santa Barbara. “Human technology—isn’t technology great? I probably know more about technology than anyone else and I know that sometimes it fails. Incompetence among scientists and doctors has led to a failure to identify new births. They are a waste of time. An engineer who has a glitch in his programming is causing panic around the world. That is a failure of technology. Very bad. Don’t believe what they are saying. We need more people in technical and trade school who can learn how to put a nut on a bolt and not depend on these college graduate types.”

While denial of the problem seemed to be the most common response in the United States, the story is quite different in other parts of the world. Willy Williamson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, was solemn in his pronouncements.

“This is a grave day for the United Kingdom,” said Williamson. “For the first time in our history, a threat to our national security has come from within. We need the people of our country to stand together against this threat once again, as we did against the Germans in World War II. Today, we need more babies to repopulate our country.”

“Even though large tracts of Europe and many old and famous States suffer in the grip of infertility and lack of babies, we shall not flag or fail,” the Prime Minister continued in his speech in the House of Commons. “We shall copulate to the end. We shall copulate in France, we shall copulate on the seas and oceans, we shall copulate with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall copulate, whatever the cost may be. We shall copulate on the beaches, we shall copulate on the landing grounds, we shall copulate in the fields and in the streets, we shall copulate in the hills; we shall never give up!”

The Prime Minister’s rousing speech has been greeted with active participation all over Britain.

President Val Pukin of Russia was quick and succinct in his comments. “Europeans are dying out. Don’t you understand that? And same-sex marriages don’t produce children. Do you want to survive by drawing migrants? But society cannot adapt so many migrants. If a woman wants a baby, give her one. It’s better not to argue with a woman.”

When questioned on how he suggested that was possible, his response was simply, “The usual way.”

Much of Asia has breathed a sigh of relief as the possibility of reducing overcrowded populations comes to the fore. No concrete numbers have been released from the Republic of China, but satellite photos reveal seasonal reductions in smog and emission levels throughout the country may be here to stay as the population decreases.

As developments continue to unfold, stories will be reported in this newspaper. Keep informed by visiting our Orlando News website.

I was pretty pleased with my front-page story. I’d made the front page every day this week and I was still collecting new material a week after I broke the original story. Every national leader in the world seemed intent on getting their press release to me first. I was swamped with email and that coveted Pulitzer nomination for Breaking News Reporting was on the horizon.

My latest story documented a run on pregnancy test kits as people began stockpiling them to check every few days, just in case. Pharmacies had also reported a drastic decline in the sale of contraceptive pills and devices, including condoms.