Chapter 1

Brooke glanced up once more at the ads on the bus. They had caused no end of mirth when they first came out, but people snuck glances at them now, and the smiles had gone. You could see some people getting quiet and thoughtful when they stopped to take them in.

One showed an attractive woman looking at a pretty schlumpy-looking middle-aged guy. "You wouldn't want to marry him, but he might be the one!" The thought bubble in her mind showed a picture of her holding a gorgeous infant, showing the age-old bond of love between mother and child. Brooke felt a pang in her heart looking at that baby.

Another showed a handsome man looking at a kind of pudgy woman with glasses, an average face and a studious expression. This one showed in the man's mind a picture in the gray of a dim room with her laid out on a bed, looking hungrily and expectantly at him. Her breast showed and she had her hands between her legs, presumably holding her pussy open for him to stick his dick in. It was pretty explicit, thought Brooke, but at least her pussy and the guy's dick didn't actually show. The caption read, "Remember this part? She wants it! No strings attached! Ask her!"

Another showed a smiling but plain-looking woman examining her palm pilot as a not-very-attractive guy looked on. "Make that one-night stand count! Choose the right time of month!"

Another showed a woman lying back with her legs crossed in an opulent room. She was holding up a little girl's dress and looking at it with a smile. "No worries about money again! Free childcare!"

The one that had caused the most controversy showed a woman in a dimly lit room with her butt up in the air. A man behind had his hands on her hips, obviously doing her doggy style. She held a vibrator up between her legs and was obviously in the throes of orgasm. In abstract view it showed another man with a smile, his hand surrounding his erect dick so you couldn't quite see it, getting ready for his turn. Another showed a man on his back with a vague grin on his face, a man who had presumably just done her. The caption read: "Forget what your mother said. It's what your body was meant to do! Become a connoisseur of men's organs! Of the different sounds they make when they give you their gift! It feels really good! Choose the reasons you like, but when that time of month comes, be a heroine!" And in another panel it showed the woman with a cute baby, surrounded by fawning, happy men and women.

To be a slut was now patriotic.

She had always assumed she would get married, but her dating life had not been promising lately. She enjoyed the times she spent with her current boyfriend Hal, but she thought of it as a pleasant interlude only.

She also knew she wanted a baby. And those posters showed how to get a baby -- if you were lucky. The sooner she started, the better her chances.

Stan was a little nervous when he knocked on Brooke's cubicle door. They worked together in the call center. He had asked her out a year before, and she had politely put him off. But this was different.

"Hey, Brooke."

"Hi, Stan."

"Ummm. I was wondering. You know all those ads on the buses?"

A little surge of fear and excitement raced through Brooke. He was probably going to be the first one to ask to fuck her. Not date her, fuck her. That was the right term. It's what she really ought to be doing, letting him fuck her. So she gave him an uncertain smile. "Yes..."

He blurted out, "I'll do you if you'd like. Just sex, nothing more." After a pause, "It's patriotic!" he added nervously.

He was crude and could be sarcastic. But his body made sperm cells. They might be the right ones. He was actually decent looking, so the physical act might be exciting.

"Sure," she said. Listening to herself she realized she didn't sound enthusiastic, and she noted she would have to work on that in the future. She didn't want to hurt a guy's feelings when he was being patriotic.

"Great! How would next Wednesday be?"

"Ummm. It's got to be a particular time of month, right?"

"Right, damn, I forgot. This whole thing is weird."

On a whim she decided to be a bit playful. "If we do it some other time, then it's not the new kind of 'just sex', it's the old kind of 'just sex'."

He smiled a little.

"It will be about two weeks," she said as Stan was walking away with a grin on his face. Brooke reflected that if he bothered to do subtraction Stan now knew that she was having her period. Oh great. Well, in two weeks he would learn about her reproductive system in a much more intimate way. She figured she would buy one of those thermometers to track ovulation. Might as well get the timing right if she was going to start spreading her legs.

As long as she was in slut mode, she figured she would use the momentum to ask a guy. She felt almost numb with nervousness when she went around the corner to Bob's cube. Despite herself, she couldn't help coloring when she said, "Hey Bob, will you fuck me in two weeks? Do your duty to humanity?"

Bob stammered. "Oh, Gee."

Was it surprise, or did he not want to do her? It would be really humiliating to think a guy didn't want to fuck her.

"Umm, sure! You just took me by surprise."

"Remember what it says on the poster, it still feels good even if I'm a dog," she said.

"You are not a dog!" he said, a little too loudly. There were a few suppressed giggles and snorts from nearby cubes.

They were both flustered. That comment didn't reflect well on either of them.

"About two weeks. I'll tell you exactly when."

Brooke appeared at Stan's cubicle door in just twelve days. His heart surged when he saw her.

"I guess I'm supposed to show you this," she said, handing him a little slip with the date and a stamp saying "Clean!" It was from one of the free STD kits. He smiled and said he would bring his own that evening. They agreed she would come to his place at six.

"Can I get you a Coke or something?"

"Thanks, but I don't have long." She was due at Bob's at 7:30. A slut.

"Oh, OK," he said. He led the way back to his bedroom, and seeing no other signals from each other they stripped, instinctively turning away from each other. She lay on the bed and on instinct pulled a sheet over her to hide her nakedness. Would he find her body acceptable? Odds were that since he asked her out way back when he thought she was attractive, but all women are insecure about these things deep down. As he turned she could see he was mostly erect already. An average-looking cock. Not that she really knew. She had had a total of four lovers up to this point in her life. By this evening it would be six.

An image flashed through her mind of an endless series of cocks. If she stayed with the program, her total of lovers -- or at least men who shoved their cocks into her -- would increase rapidly for years. She saw a graph with an arrow pointing up at an angle -- Ooo, very Freudian, she thought.

Brooke was on the slender side, but she thought her hips were too big. She had long dark hair, a round face with a straight nose of moderate size and warm brown eyes. As he raised the sheet to slide in next to her, Stan glimpsed what she usually kept in her bra. They were luscious, with pale pink aureoles and modest nipples that were at the moment small. He could see her nakedness trailing away beneath the sheet, but didn't want to stare. His erection got even harder.

She put her hand between her legs and started massaging to get herself ready.

After a few seconds he said, "Can I do some of that?" leering a bit. Or was it just honest desire?

"OK, you can try," she said. She hadn't really been planning on letting him do that, but the boundaries of 'just sex' were unclear.

He was good. It wasn't the way she usually did it, but in less than a minute her body caught onto his rhythm and she felt really good.

"Am I allowed to, uh, suck your nipples?" he asked.

She hadn't been planning on allowing that either, but now she had to admit she was excited by the idea. He used a technique she had never experienced before, sucking in little bursts, resting between. Something about it felt profoundly right. The juices flowed freely in and all around her pussy, the entire area engorged and quivering.

"OK, I'm ready," she said, trying not to sound quite as hungry as she felt.

He rose above her and he let her guide him into her. His body was quite impressive, with rippling arm muscles and a six-pack that was now in evidence as he started in and out at a very nice pace. He had a grin more of conquest than tenderness, but ... well, she didn't need tenderness, not for this.

His cock was apparently longer than any of her other lovers', because she felt it bump something way in deep, and it felt good. The bumping against her swollen clit and the spot deep inside were like stereo.

This was 'just sex', but it was feeling terrific and she let herself go, panting and moaning. She was on the edge. "A little faster," she gasped. He sped up. Her girl animal took in the boy animal's muscled body and deep-throated grunts and face slack with pleasure. She felt his throbbing member filling her and pressing that newly discovered inner part of herself. All that combined with the clit bumping and labial tugging was enough. Her body convulsed with pleasure and release as she gasped. A second later she felt his cock get even bigger and then felt it twitch and knew that at that moment his sperm was shooting into her. Stan's convulsion inside her extended her orgasm. He stayed inside her until she was on firm ground again, then pulled out and lay panting beside her.

It had been the best sex of her life. By far.

No protocol existed in the new regime of 'just sex' to calculate the appropriate duration of afterglow, but she decided not to worry about it. She let herself relax snuggled up against him.

She started awake as Stan whispered, "Did you say you were meeting a guy at 7:30?" The clock showed 7:25. Stan was considerate to remind her of her commitments. Maybe she had misjudged him.

She didn't want to go -- she wanted Stan again. So maybe she would be a little late to Bob's. She slid her hand down to Stan's cock, and within a few seconds he was fully hard again, and his body language confirmed that he was eager to do it again. She was still pretty wet from before, but his fingers did their magic to juice her fully.

She said, "I guess this is the old kind of 'just sex' now, not the new kind, but it's still 'just sex', OK?"

Stan grinned. She rolled onto her back and he slid in and pounded away. This time he gently lifted her legs up and she held his head between her calves. She had a slightly different but equally magnificent orgasm.

She liked the idea of Stan's sperm up inside her on her fertile day when they just might make a baby, however unlikely that was.

But the other man waited, so she sighed wearily as she got up and dressed. As for Hal, her boyfriend, she couldn't see any point in their staying together any more. It felt like an afterthought.

"Any chance you'd like to do it again some time?" Stan asked. She couldn't help giving him a flirty smile. She had this sneaking suspicion she would want to do it again with Stan. Maybe a lot.

For now, on to the next dose of sperm.

Obstetric practices noticed it first. Starting in April of 2028 women stopped calling. They stopped calling because they weren't getting pregnant. Even in parts of the world that do not have obstetric practices the same phenomenon was clear -- women didn't miss their periods.

It was obvious that without pregnancies the human species was doomed, but there were reasons not to panic. Science was very good at solving medical problems, and the pregnancies might just resume on their own.

What scientists found was essentially nothing. There were no detectable changes in the reproductive process, whether looking at men's bodies, women's bodies, their tissues, or their cells. The problem was simply that the sperm wiggled against the eggs, but the eggs never let them in.

One hopeful sign was that there still were occasionally women who got pregnant. There was fewer than one pregnancy for every 100 there had been before, but there were still a few.

In contrast, no one observed a single fertilized egg in a test tube, and artificial insemination produced a grand total of zero pregnancies.

Investigation focused on what factors were responsible for the very few pregnancies that did occur.

As expected, the more often a woman had sexual intercourse during her fertile period, the more likely she was to become pregnant.

They also found that a variety of different partners led to a much higher pregnancy rate. The effect was far larger than could be explained as compensating for occasional male infertility.

An unexpected and disturbing finding was that rape was slightly more likely to lead to a pregnancy than an ordinary act of intercourse. It was a small effect, and government reports always equivocated. The authorities said that different and unusual acts of intercourse were more likely to result in pregnancy, and that rape was just a special case of an unusual and different act of intercourse.

As time went on and there was no medical solution and few promising avenues of research, the gravity of the situation began to sink in. Anger and fear were loud, while despair and resignation were quiet but just as powerful.

Before six months had passed there was a noticeable increase in pregnancy which the scientists determined was simply the result of couples shifting from trying to prevent pregnancies to trying to achieve them. Contraception use plummeted, more couples had sex, and there was an effort to time the intercourse to the woman's fertile period. But the increase was small. Extrapolating the observed trends, the scientists estimated that pregnancies might reach one and a half percent of the pre-crisis levels. Just trying harder to make babies in the usual manner was not going to solve the problem.

The most promising opportunity for increased fertility was in increasing the variety of sexual partners. Promiscuity. There was a bit more sleeping around when people learned that it helped, but not very much. Promiscuity within a committed relationship when trying to achieve pregnancy is very unusual.

The government set in motion a number of initiatives to encourage more sleeping around, especially by women during their fertile period.

The production capacity for ovulation-detection kits was increased. Better and easier-to-use models were developed, and they were offered for free. If a woman was going to take another sexual partner outside of her relationship, it ought to be done at a time when it might matter.

Sexually transmitted diseases promised to be a huge problem. Condoms were of no use because the idea was to deliver semen into vaginas, not keep it carefully confined and drag it back out.

There was a huge effort put into STD detection. Better kits were invented, ones that did not require lab work, and they were made available everywhere, for free.

But by far the best solution to the STD problem was the Sykes polymer. When applied monthly to the penis it completely prevented female to male STD transmission, and unlike the condom it enhanced male sexual pleasure instead of diminishing it.

There was some indignation that this solution protected men but not women. But most people came to understand that when men were not getting re-infected and were then aggressively treated, women stopped getting re-infected too. The polymer was of course made available for free and its use encouraged.

A great many people have no interest in making babies and are content to remain childless. To encourage them to get involved, financial incentives were offered. The government could easily afford to offer $50,000 per live birth.

It took two years before the ads that Brooke saw on the bus were created. Despite a huge controversy, the decision was made to push them heavily. They showed up everywhere: buses, magazines, websites, billboards, and TV shows.

It had been no easy matter for Brooke to get herself to sleep with Stan and Bob. As Brooke arranged her liaisons, much of the anxiety of the human mating dance remained. Did Bob find Brooke attractive? He had accepted, but was he just saving her the pain of rejection? Stan had also asked Melissa if she wanted to sleep with him. Although she did her best to be polite, she turned him down, to Stan's dismay. And ideally Brooke should have had sex with five men during her fertile phase, not just two. For best results, while she repeated the exhausting ordeal the next month it should be with five different men, not the same five.

Brooke was attractive and reasonably self-assured. It was far, far harder for many others.

Sabrina was at the supermarket looking over the fish when her cell phone rang.

"Yes?" she said.

"We have a mate for you." A little twinge of fear surged through Sabrina. She had notified the switchboard that morning when her ovulation test was positive. Last month five men had come to her house in the evening and she had had sex with all of them. It was a surreal memory, and she was preparing herself for the same sort of evening. But why was she being called in the grocery store?

"Now?"

"Yes. Remember, we're trying to shake things up. Try to spice things up to get that rape effect without the rape.

"When he shows up, go into the back and find some place to have sex, OK?"

"Are you kidding?"

"No." She knew this sort of thing was possible. They had discussed it during orientation. But the back of a grocery store?

Just then someone tapped her on the shoulder and she turned to find a man, maybe 5'8" tall, with a shaved head, an ample belly, and a number of tattoos on his bare arms. At least his smile was friendly. Sabrina was 5'6", 38 years old, and not physically remarkable. She had shoulder-length brown hair and brown eyes.

She tried to hide her dismay. Perhaps sensing it, he recited the mantra of the program, the first line of defense against awkwardness: "We're just trying to make a baby."

"We're just trying to make a baby," she repeated, managing a smile.

"In the back of the store," he said, heading towards the hanging plastic strips that defined the border that customers were not supposed to cross. She followed.

"How are we supposed to find any privacy back here?" she asked.

He was looking around actively. He found the employee bathroom, and looked uncertainly into it. She only needed one glance before saying, "I don't think so," and they continued their search.

He pointed to the back of an aisle that was out of the way and motioned her to follow.

"Not in public," she said. The program encouraged couples to not worry about being seen, figuring that a little exhibitionism might help with pregnancies too. But she wasn't ready for that.

"Hold on," he said. He took down a few cartons holding breakfast cereal boxes and built a sort of makeshift wall they could go behind. At least no one would see them unless they actually went down the aisle to investigate. But how would they actually do it? The floor was not appealing, nor was doing it against the wall. He brought down one more box, this one holding Wheaties, an odd fact that stuck with her. He placed it behind their little wall. "Bend over?" he said.

He was proposing to take her from behind as she leaned over a cardboard box, behind a makeshift wall of cardboard boxes behind the scenes in a grocery store. "I want a baby," she said to herself. The unusual was supposed to help. She took a deep breath and said, "OK."

He pulled pants and underpants down to reveal a cock which was not flaccid but not hard either. He started stroking it. Sabrina decided she could keep her skirt on if she stepped out of her panties. She opened her purse and took out the vibrator, then reached up under her skirt and applied it. She felt her vulva swelling, her pussy lengthening, and felt herself getting wet.

He was stroking away, but his erection wasn't there yet. She smiled at him in encouragement. Procedure here encouraged her to give him some head, but there were other things to try first. She gently took the end of his cock in one hand and with the other applied her own vibrator not directly to his cock but to her hand as it cradled his tip. That did the trick and soon she had a hard member in her hand. He smiled and said, "Thanks."

Sabrina leaned over the box and flipped her skirt up. He came up behind her and spread her pussy lips -- too hard, it hurt a little -- and plunged in. She wasn't terribly wet, but it wasn't going to hurt. He thrust back and forth fast and hard. She heard footsteps coming down the aisle, and said "Shit!" but he didn't stop and she didn't want to fight with him. "I want a baby," she said to herself.

In about 30 seconds he dug his fingernails into her butt (ouch!), slowed his pace just a touch and did a couple really deep strokes with a big grunt. That was what the whole thing was about, getting his sperm up her pussy. Just as he pulled out she heard snickering and quickly flipped her skirt down, feeling mortified. A young guy had come to see why the boxes weren't on the shelves any more and had watched the end of their coupling. The guy with the tattoo gave him the finger along with a menacing look and the kid quickly disappeared. She felt hot from shame and embarrassment, but repeated to herself, "I want a baby." When they had both dressed he started putting the boxes up on the shelves where they had come from. She did one herself.