My friend Linda and I arrived at school one morning during our last semester before graduation to finding a large piece of paper posted on the door. Several other students were there reading it as the Principal stood by watching them.
Special Order 77.
The following is effective immediately. Due to the drastic population losses we have already experienced and those expected in the coming years all females age 18 and older not afflicted by the Hebola plague are ordered to make all efforts to have at least 3 children in the next 10 years. Failure to comply may cause forced confinement and impregnation. All laws regarding public lewdness, nudity, adultery, and incest are revoked. Additional details to be provided.
The plague was first noticed almost 15 years ago and spread rapidly. It seemed fairly innocuous at the time people first started noticing it. People started to develop what looked to be bad cases of pink eye and it spread rapidly from person to person. By the time they realized it was not normal pink eye many people were already infected.
The pink eye cleared up in less than two week of the initial outbreak in a person but then the other changes started. First all their hair started to fall out and never grew back. After that they developed a gray complexion. Somewhere along the line they became sterile as well.
It wasn't until a few years after it was first identified that those infected started to just suddenly die for no reason. Not everyone infected did at the same time but it seemed random. Some lasted only a couple of years and some lasted longer. Now it was know that once infected the person had no more than 10 years left before their bodies just ceased to work suddenly.
They have never been able to determine why they died. They would be going along as normal and just stop and fall into a sleep they never woke from. Once they fell into this sleep they were usually dead within minutes. No attempts to prevent this had worked to date.
It was determined that a person was only infectious for a short time when they had what looked to be pink eye. After that they were safe to be around but the damage to their bodies had already been done and there was no way to reverse it.
The method of transmission turned out to be through contact with any bodily fluid. The plague only survived a short period of time after leaving the body but that was enough for some terrorists groups to figure out how to easily spread it. Through use of contacts or sunglasses someone that was currently infectious could move though a crowd and though the simple act of spitting, coughing, or sneezing would infect scores of people around them.
All sunglasses and contacts were immediately banned. People were told to not group together and avoid contact with anyone you didn't know. The spread slowed but didn't stop.
Fortunately two years ago a vaccine was found that stopped the spread. Now almost everyone left had been inoculated through a worldwide effort. The world had suffered though. It was estimated that over 50% of developed nations, and 75% of undeveloped nation's, had been infected and were either dead or would be in a few years. There was now a race on for the developed nations to repopulate as quickly as possible to avoid being overtaken by this crippling disease. This appeared to be the latest step.
Last year when the remains of the government finally announced that the spread had been stopped they enacted the "Rothschild Act" in the name of national security. It outlawed any form of birth controls and abortion and made things like Viagra all but free. The death penalty was also outlawed. Anyone that would normally get the death penalty was kept in prison for the rest of their life and "harvested" if they were not sterile. Men were milked and woman's eggs were taken for insemination into others. Some women could get better treatment and reduced sentences by being baby factories while locked up.
Six months later the "Load Act" was enacted. Gay males were required to either submit to having sex with females, to attempt to make them pregnant, or make monthly deposits at sperm banks. Likewise lesbian females were either required to have sex with males in an attempt to get pregnant or go through artificial insemination at least twice a year unless they were already pregnant. Also when heterosexuals were having sex the only place a male was allowed to ejaculate was in a vagina. I am not sure how all this was verifiable though.
There were a slew of special orders also. It seemed about one a month lately. They ranged from "encouraging" anyone from 25 to 40 to have as many kids as they could to providing free insemination treatments to any female wishing it.
Government reproduction centers sprung up all over the place. Anyone could go there to get free fertility treatments and they doubled as sperm banks and egg harvesting locations. Most of the special orders didn't impact high school students but they did some of the teachers. There was always talk on what the next change would be.
All of this was done to boost birth rates and slow the population decline. Evidently it was not enough though. If this latest order failed to improve the issue, there were rumors that they would either lower the age limit or require any fertile females to report to a government center be inseminated and not rely on voluntary sex.
At least it appeared the rape laws were still somewhat in force. Females still had somewhat of a choice with whom she had sex with as long as she was having sex and trying to get pregnant. Although with this latest change I was beginning to doubt that would remain much longer.
Not all the religious groups were happy with these changes. Some of the early changes like the "Rothschild Act" gave them things that they had been wanting for a long time. But some of the latest special orders were starting to cause friction. I am sure this Special Order 77 actually went against several things they held most dear to them.
There was one girl in my class last year that had dropped out because her family had married her off to some boy they knew. Her family was extremely religious and didn't want the chance that she would be subjected to any of this. They thought, that by having her married she would be safe.
On top of all this what remained of the healthcare industry that was not devoted to solving the plague had been taken over by the government to be rationed out because of the severe population losses. Now it seemed that unless it was related to you being healthy enough to get pregnant or producing a child it was almost impossible to get proper medical assistance.
One positive side effect of the work on the cure was that pretty much all sexual transmitted dieses were also cured. When people received their injection for the plague cure they were also inoculated for all other known sexual transmitted dieses as well.
But here we were. Being told I had to have three kids in the next ten years. I guess that meant college was out of the question for me. Still I suppose that being alive and pregnant is better than the 72 people in my class of 150 that we have lost to the plague so far. Not all of them had died yet that I know of, but if you have only a couple of years left would you want to spend them in school? They just tended to just drop out of site.
As Linda and I took our seats in homeroom she turned to me, "Well I guess I know what I am doing this semester instead of trying to get into a good college." I am sure she was referring to her boyfriend of late Mark. I know she has had sex with him a couple of times already but she had wanted to wait until after college to have kids the same as me. The only difference was that I didn't have a boyfriend and had yet to have sex.
She had been my friend for a long time and is an only child. She lost both of her parents to the plague and had been living with her grandmother since her parents came down with it.
I have been somewhat lucky that neither my father nor my two older brothers had been infected. My mother did not get the plague but had been killed in a car wreck three years ago when a plague victim had died at the wheel and crashed into her.
Since then I had not seen my father attempt to go out with anyone. He worked long hours and came home exhausted most nights. My brothers have gotten him to go to a bar with them a couple of times but could not get him to even try to pick up a woman from what they have told me.
