Chapter 2

At the time of the alien intervention, all the children had been infected with the same agent that their parents were, the one that made them docile and peaceful for life.

But Derek’s work resulted in the birth of many children, and they were not docile and peaceful in the same way as their parents and older siblings. They informally began calling each other “new people” and then it became an official designation. They squabbled and fought and had tantrums. Their parents never had firm rules for them that they applied consistently, and there was some upheaval in society from children running their own lives a bit too soon. But as the oldest of the new people came to the age of abstract thinking, around 13 or 14, they recognized the problem, and in the interest of the common good they arranged regular visits by adolescent new people like themselves to re-establish order in households where it had weakened.

New people learned to read, of course, and some of them liked learning a lot. Educated men and women who had led pleasant, docile lives without exertion for a decade or two suddenly found themselves being questioned by young men and women who wanted to know more -- who wanted to learn. All of human knowledge was preserved, mostly in electronic form, during the age of the docile. It was ready to be rediscovered by the inquisitive new people, who had ambitions and plans.

Some old traditions came again but with slight changes. In the high schools, old rivalries were re-awakened between adjoining towns. But instead of frenetic pep rallies and fierce emotions, people just watched the two teams play, and were happy for their team if they won, and admired the skill of the other team if they lost.

As the new people started to come into positions of responsibility, it was immediately clear that everyone needed to reduce their energy consumption. People traveled far less, made sure to insulate their homes, put up with warmer temperatures than they used to in the summer. They used caves for temperature regulation where feasible. The older generation was often disappointed to give up many of their habits, but they were docile and went along with the new people.

Recycling became a major organizing principle. Reprocessing of various waste materials to recover valuable materials was considered worthwhile by the new people, even if it was more expensive in terms of dollars. Machines were designed prioritizing a long useful life, and the ease with which components could be recycled. A new simple, safe nuclear reactor was designed, and many were built.

All the ethnic wars stopped. Non-partisan international commissions looked at each case and proposed fair settlements. The ethnic groups accepted them as fair because they trusted the international commissions, and their trust was not misplaced.

All military forces were decommissioned or converted to civilian use. Police forces and mental hospitals remained in small numbers, as people still did occasionally go crazy.

Forests were planted everywhere to do their bit to absorb carbon. Some experiments with sequestering carbon dioxide underground mines were successful, and they were widely implemented.

All the new people understood the vital need to cut world population. The retired elderly people outnumbered productive youngsters for many generations. The youngsters spent considerable resources giving their elders comfortable retirements. Entertainment in its virtual forms came to the fore for them as for everyone else, instead of forms that required energy or travel.

Over time, the docile generation died off, and in turn new people were aging and dying, like any other humans. They understood the need to reduce the percentage of world resources that went into health care. The expensive care that in the West had previously been lavished on patients in the last year of life was severely reduced. Some interventions were cost-effective, and some were not. Not a single elder bridled at his or her life being shortened for lack of expensive care -- it was for the common good. Though it was entirely up to them, many elders diagnosed with degenerative mental diseases such as Alzheimer’s chose suicide. High-quality care was cheerfully provided for those who chose to live. It was a borderline case of whether it was a suitable use of society’s resources.

The new people decided that two children to replace ten adults was about the right rate of reproduction to get world populations to a sustainable level. It took 40 years to get the population down to 8 billion, but then the decline was more rapid. The population dropped by 90% every 50 years. When population went below 800 million, people everywhere were delighted. Forests were planted on the abandoned land. When it went below 200 million voices spoke up to note that they were aiming for a stable target population, 100 million was a good candidate, and it was perhaps time to adjust reproduction correspondingly. A stable population required 10 children born for every 10 adults. Birth rates rose to 5 children for every 10 adults -- but then they stopped rising.

The problem became how to stop the population from shrinking away to nothing at all.

All of the new people were dedicated to the common interest -- making society work harmoniously for the benefit of all.

But a curious divide between the sexes took shape. Men felt that they should father just a single child. After this was done, they would obtain a vasectomy to make sure they fathered no more. When they learned of men who had fathered more than one, they treated them as mentally ill. They were sterilized, of course, but only a mental illness could keep a man from understanding the need to father no more than one child, and new people never went against the common good. There were very few men who required such intervention.

It would have been much simpler to limit reproduction by attending to women, not men. Sterilizing a woman after she gives birth to a single child requires far less work to ensure compliance. But the men strongly believed that limiting reproduction was the responsibility of men, not that of the women. The old days held a major injustice, to the extent that men ruled women’s lives. The ‘new men’ would not force anything on women, who as a group somehow did not share their commitment to a single child. They would enforce their convictions on other men only.

In debates, the women pointed out that with the limits on reproduction that the men had set, the species would go extinct. They noted that the aliens had deliberately suggested a low steady-state population, not completely vanishing. The men noted this, but thought there must have been some misunderstanding. The obligation for a man to never father more than one child was more important. If it led to extinction, that was an unfortunate consequence, and must be what the aliens actually intended.

Never before had thinking between the sexes been more rigidly divided. Every single person born with testicles felt the limitation was obviously more important, and every single person born with ovaries felt the need to not go extinct was by far the more important priority.