Chapter 1

When the situation is as nutty as a squirrel turd, you make the best of it.

Classy Conversions

Not a factory experience, but a custom one

No forced early departure. It is your time, and your trip.

Every possible entertainment allowed by law

Why wait in long lines to be graded and embarrassed in a crowd?

Do you want to pick how you go, from painless to a spectacle?

You should have your choice on how you leave. And from a wide selection

Come to Classy Conversions.

Where you are Human for as long as you are alive.

(Permanent) Cast:

David and Margaret Findlay

David 42 A Small business owner specializing in Human Protein Processing

Margaret 40

Housewife Degree in English Literature and some culinary studies

Mark and Helen Gester

Mark 41

Manager at Brighton Construction

Helen 39

Housewife Degree in psychology and a Minor in Art

James and Carol Burns

James 42

Managing Executive for Walker Investments

Carol 38

Senior Attorney at Dewey Cheatem and Howe

Peter and Elizabeth Carter

Peter 45

Director Marketing for UMC Financial

Elizabeth 37

Senior Manager, Marketing UMC Financial

Nancy Abbot Ph.D. 34

Associate professor of women’s studies at U of Chicago

Christina Louise (Candy) Mitchell 19

Graduate Parkland High School (New Apprentice - Meatpackers Union 23)

History:

By 2060, there had been a large number of far reaching economic and social changes both nationally and internationally. Issues like Gay Marriage were far in the past. Most societies looked upon marriage as a commitment between individuals of any sex or creed. Gay relationships had gone the way of Racial relationships. Much of this was due to evolving acceptance. Other events had also influenced some of this tolerance.

There are many theories of how this state of affairs came about. Most experts agree that a large portion of this started in China. With their 1 child per family rule, the second children were often aborted in an attempt to minimize China’s population problem. With the focus on single male children to support the family, a generation of poorly educated men grew to imbalance China’s population with a 60/40 shift to male over female.

Chinese political theorists felt that this would cause an unstable and dangerous situation. Chinese medical researchers discovered a means of offsetting sperm to force higher activity in female sperm than in male sperm. This short-term medical treatment was to have global consequences when it was made into an aerosol compound.

In 2017, the composition of the “Mai-Luni” drug was smuggled into the Internet. Where a few very interested fundamental ministers of Islam, Catholicism and fundamentalist Christianity, all of whom felt they could make a greater and more peaceful impact in the world if most of the world’s population were manageable women.

This did have an effect -- with some unintended consequences. In 2019, 80 percent of the live childbirths in the western world were female. In 2020, it was 90 percent.

Meanwhile, in the developing world in 2017, it was far greater (almost 100 percent).

With the Eugenic blight attacking most beef, goat and sheep, the larger world was left with eating pork (Not allowable to the Muslim community) or other vegetable substitutes.

The Chinese led the way in a practical sense. Owning most of the western world (because of the economic transition of the early 21st century) their solution to a complex problem was quietly assimilated across the rest of the world.

In 2060, after almost 15 years of female-only childbirths, China instituted a lottery for the purpose of minimizing the population imbalance and to also reduce pressure on the food supply. Eligible females were between the ages of 16 and 50 were entered into the database. Exceptions were granted to women who had male children younger than 18, as were women who presented exceptional potential in education achievement. The selectees of this lottery were “converted” to the status of meat animals and treated to prepare them for the table.

In 2070, this same sort of gender imbalance pressure forced other countries – those in Latin America and Africa -- to look into this sort of solution.

The World Court found this practice acceptable (because of the fact that the World Court was owned by China by this time) and as such, the United States found this lottery to be a state issue, not federal. Because lotteries were allowed for cases of financial gain, they should also be allowed for cases of loss, so long as they were to be strictly administered without any bias to race, creed, or economic status. (Discrimination was disallowed with respect to the Chinese model after the 2045 Supreme Court decision of Fergusson v. New York Meat Selection board, The difference being a upper age limit of 40 was to be used in the United States. )

By 2100, the cultural acceptance of female humans as meat and as a population management measure was global. Although the ratio of male to female births had improved to 20/80 from an earlier 5/95, the process of human females had become culturally accepted. Enforcement in the United States tended to be economic and used confinement of the adult males as a mechanism. (Large fines and jail terms for the adult males, immediate selection for females attempting to assist in hiding selectees from the assignment board)

Not that there were not some cultural challenges. There were still some strong arguments around the handling of human blood (both from a religious and a public health aspect). The strangest upshot was the establishment of a kosher board established for finding the better methods of slaughter for prospective meat sources.