As the standard of living spiraled dramatically downward over the next generation, fewer and fewer American voters shared the anti-regulation views of Congress when it came to human reproduction. But Congress’ ability to rule the majority with minority positions was empowered by shrewd gerrymandering and bolstered by enormous campaign contributions from the corporate empires whose profits relied on continued population growth and the increasing scarcity of resources. So, thanks to the power wielded by business conglomerates and the politicians whom they owned, this nation’s environmental conditions, water supply, and quality of life continued deteriorating while American legislators claimed that if God hadn’t wanted people to have lots of children, then He wouldn’t have invented marriage. (The fact that marriage was (a) invented by humans and (b) is not required for procreation did not alter this platform.)
There was, of course, some hope that a bout of sanity would overcome Congress during the long summer debate that came to be known as the Sudan Moment. That was when the Sudanese government, nominally in charge of a starving society plagued by generations of civil war, signed the Population Control Agreement.
At that moment, even the US House of Representatives paused in its usual daily flow of irrational vitriol to discuss the fact that Sudan was on the verge of becoming a more progressive, sustainable, and economically viable nation than the US. By now, so were Vanuatu, Saudi Arabia, Myanmar, Angola, and Papua New Guinea, all of which had also signed the Agreement during the previous year. Tech-rich societies like India, Egypt, Mexico, Greenland, Sri Lanka, Zambia, and the politically allied U-nations (Uruguay, Uzbekistan, Uganda, Ukraine, and United Korea) had population control measures well underway; but, of course, none of those countries was held back by the paralyzing combination of fiscal corruption, craven ignorance, and religious fundamentalism that so consistently characterized American politics. Meanwhile, China, the original population-control leader, was now the most prosperous society on the planet, followed closely by the European nations that had been regulating reproduction for over a generation by the time Sudan became the newest signatory to the Agreement.
During the Sudan Moment, the Senate entertained a motion to consider the possibility of a later motion to propose a vote on whether to someday debate population control.
It was a very exciting moment in the history of the movement. Never before had reproductive regulation come so close to being considered as a possible topic of debate at some future date in the US Senate. The discussion of whether to someday consider discussing the subject took up most of that summer—so you wouldn’t have wanted to try holding your breath during the Sudan Moment.
But then a Senator whose campaign war chest was filled to the brim by arms dealers, oil companies, and hospitals (fewer people would mean fewer profits for all of them) started a filibuster, and his recitation of Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Leviticus pushed the future of the planet right off the Senate’s agenda for the next few years.
The real breakthrough occurred when a grass roots movement overcame vociferous political objections (as well as targeted harassment, sabotage of communications, and covert military assault) and gained enough support for a law to be passed requiring every candidate for a seat in the House or the Senate to pass written and oral exams in basic logic, science, history, and ethics, as well as a test on the US Constitution. Politicians whose entire careers were built on their media-friendly gift for fact-free frenzies and on selling their votes to corporations wept openly on the steps of the Capitol the day the law was implemented.
This revolutionary measure radically changed the composition of Congress within a few years, ending more than a century of national politics being dominated by inaction, ignorance, corruption, irrational extremism, and ludicrously childish rhetoric. Decades’ worth of neglected business was finally addressed, necessary legislation passed, long-outdated customs and prohibitions dismissed, and patently absurd legislation dismantled. (For example, we are no longer required by federal law to say “patriot starch” instead of “pasta” due to some Congressman’s ire at a pope whom he mistakenly believed was Italian.)
It was in this new and virtually unprecedented climate of American legislators being required, by law, to be intelligent and informed adults that the (third) Clinton administration was able to ratify the Population Control Agreement with the majority support of Congress, and reproductive regulation was subsequently passed into law in the US.
Obviously, implementation of the new laws has been a long and complicated procedure, and it’s still a work in progress. Taking people from a longstanding tradition wherein reproduction was an innate right for any homo sapiens in possession of sex organs and transporting them to a modern reality where parenthood is a privilege earned through merit...isn’t an overnight trip. But it is the fundamental concept behind sustainable population control: Only people who are suited to parenthood can get legal authorization to have a child.
It’s a strategy that has already mitigated the overpopulation problem within a single generation in other societies, and it can eliminate the global population crisis within a century.
In the decade since the U.S. ratified the Agreement, we’ve seen a sharp decline in the birth rate here, which dramatically improves the outlook for the generations being born now and in future. American schools, which have been among the first severely overcrowded institutions to start experiencing some relief, are already reporting improvements in attendance, educational standards, and academic achievement, as well as declines in malnutrition, disease, and child abuse. Actuarial studies indicate that if we continue on our new path, there will be sufficient domestic food production and clean water supplies to sustain most of the population within 20-30 years, and substantial ecological recovery is feasible within 75 years. So although we have a long way to go, population control is already saving our society from self-annihilation.
In terms of procedure, the basic level of screening for reproductive regulation has been the easiest to implement, of course, since the tests to eliminate patently unsuitable people from having children are the simplest to administer and evaluate. Managing such applications for reproduction approval is an entry-level job at the National Bureau for Population Control (NBPC).
These Level 1 (L1) tests were, as usual, being administered on the first four floors of the building when I arrived at work this morning. The quantity of applicants is enormous, so the L1 process takes up much of the building. Level 2 (L2), comprised of applicants who’ve passed the L1 test, are processed on the fifth floor. Only a modest percentage of applicants register for Level 3 testing, but their applications are so complex to administer and evaluate that the additional staffing involved in these procedures ensures that the L3 process occupies two full floors of the building.
Within a year of implementation, it was discovered that the L1 process could be further simplified by administering a quick verbal quiz to applicants upon check-in at the NBPC or one of its district offices. This task was being handled by six separate reception stations when I entered the building this morning.
“Enter your name here, please,” I heard a staffer saying to an applicant as I arrived. “Yes, here. And then please answer the questions I’m going to ask you now. Yes, this is a test. Just answer to the best of your ability.”
As I walked through the lobby, passing each station in turn, I could hear the standard entry-level questions being posed, the ones which enable the NBPC to save time and money by eliminating the most unsuitable applicants at the very start of the process:
“Have you ever been convicted of a violent felony?”
“Who is the current President of the United States?”
“Do you keep loaded firearms in accessible areas of your home?”
“What year is this?”
“Is there any history of criminal insanity in your family?”
“How many fingers am I holding up?”
“Do you support killing, deporting, or elimination of civil rig
hts for any particular ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender?”
On the basis of their answers to these questions, about 25% of applicants are denied legal authorization to reproduce.
“Enter your name here, madam. And we’ll need you to enter your name, too, sir,” said a staffer. “Yes, your name. Your full legal name. No, we don’t need your nickname. No, we don’t need to know the baby names you’re thinking about. Just your own legal name. Here... here. Enter it here, please. Yes, your name here.”
Although the job of administering this application is simple enough, there’s a high burnout rate among these staffers, since dealing with people who don’t even get as far as the actual application process before being turned down can be very stressful.
This morning, for example, a young woman with dyed black hair, heavy eye make-up, ghostly white face powder, and black fingernails was weeping at Station No. 2, begging, “Wait, wait! Gimme one more chance to guess right. I mean, I just don’t usually need to know what year this is, you know?”
The staffer was a new employee, and she clearly hadn’t expected tears. Seeing me passing her station, she caught my eye, silently asking me how to handle this. I shook my head sternly, indicating that authorization to add to the population of the overburdened planet must be denied to someone who couldn’t even keep track of what year we were living in.
At Station No. 4, a much more experienced staffer was saying to a couple, “No, I’m afraid that ‘all gay people should be killed and Jews should be sent back to Jew-land’ is the wrong answer. Authorization to procreate is denied.” She turned on her intercom and prudently added, “Security, please escort two applicants from Station No. 4 to the front exit immediately!”
The applicant at Station No. 5, whom the staffer addressed as “Mr. Anselm,” was approved to pass through the security system and commence the L1 application process. As a solo applicant, Anselm might be seeking conditional approval in preparation for meeting a potential parental partner (one who’d be more interested in a man who’d already gone through pre-approval for a procreation permit); or he might have a partner who’d already been authorized and was now waiting for him to get legal permission to father her child.
In his haste to move on to the next stage of the process, Anselm bumped into me as I was passing the station where he’d been admitted. He shoved past me without apologizing, patted his pockets as if checking to make sure I hadn’t lifted his wallet, and stopped at security. Meanwhile, the applicant at Station No. 6 was being dismissed without answering a single question. She was smoking despite the large “No Smoking” sign displayed prominently nearby—and despite the smoking prohibition which had been in effect in federal buildings since decades before her (or my) birth. She might as well have come here with the words “Do Not Let Me Replicate” stamped on her forehead.
Shaking my head over the mystery of human folly, I passed through the security monitors. Ahead of me, I saw Anselm presenting his identification to an L1 staffer.
“Your name here, sir,” said the staffer. “And also here, please. Yes, I know, but we need you to enter it again. Thank you, Mr...Anselm? Right. Please follow me.”
Anselm was escorted to the assigned booth in which he would take the L1 test. This written test employs a series of multiple-choice questions designed to weed out people who are as unsuitable as the applicants who’ve been turned away at the reception stations but who are more socially adapted to concealing their tendencies toward violence, insanity, bigotry, and dysfunctional ignorance.
A few typical L1 questions are, for example:
A woman is more likely than a man to ______
(a) base important decisions on emotion rather than reason
(b) mismanage money
(c) menstruate
(d) all of the above
It’s a good idea to look both ways before you cross the street because ______
(a) traffic comes from both directions
(b) people are out to get you
(c) the government has planted sleeper assassins behind the wheels of cars in order to wipe out its own citizens
(d) all of the above
A key event in 1939 that triggered the outbreak of World War II was when ______
(a) Pontius Pilate had Jesus Christ crucified
(b) Hitler invaded Poland
(c) Napoleon invaded Egypt
(d) the U.S. elected its first African-American president
There are one hundred questions per test, randomly drawn from the computer’s database of over five thousand questions of this level of difficulty (so to speak). Anyone who scores below 70% is denied permission to procreate. Anyone who scores 71-85% may apply to take the L1 test again. People with scores of 86% and above can move on to Level 2, which is more complex.
L2 testing involves a set of verbal as well as written exams, and the tests cover a range of subjects, including exploring the actual or proposed household arrangements and fiscal plans for raising a child, the ethical implications of producing a child in an overpopulated world, and the Responsibility Quotient (RQ) of the potential parent(s). The L2 tests seek to determine if the applicant is someone likely, for example, to leave an unsupervised toddler home alone, to spend money on a speedboat rather than a college fund, or to not realize until after arriving home with the groceries that the child has been left at the supermarket.
Someone who scores high on both the L1 and L2 tests becomes legally authorized to have a child. A poor score on L2 testing ensures denial of a procreation permit, regardless of how good the applicant’s L1 score may have been. An applicant whose scores on one or both tests are marginally acceptable rather than uniformly good is considered an ambivalent enough case to be directed to Level 3 for further testing. L3 testing is also available to applicants who’ve been denied a procreation permit and have chosen to appeal that decision. And, of course, L3 is where applicants are examined when they’re applying to have a second child—a privilege only granted to the most outstanding applicants.
For obvious reasons, L3 testing needs to be much more sophisticated and tailored to the individual than the previous levels. The process takes longer, and the evaluation can involve a variety of methods, depending on the specifics of the case. There may be in-home observation of the applicants, psychiatric analysis, fiscal background checks, role-playing scenarios, medical exams, and/or supplementary interviews with friends, family, or neighbors.
Today, like most days, we had a full house on the two floors of the NBPC building where we evaluate L3 cases.
A Wall Street hedge fund manager and his wife, who had parlayed her indictment as a corrupt politician into a starring role in a reality-TV show, were appealing the denial of their application on the basis that their immense wealth gave them a right to reproduce despite their low test scores. I was extremely skeptical that any amount of money could compensate for the abundance of destructive narcissism and absence of compassion or ethics consistently demonstrated in every draft of their L2 tests; but federal law required that we process their appeal and give them a fair hearing.
A borderline applicant couple whose testing had revealed multiple previous break-ups were currently being evaluated in a role-playing scenario to explore how they would handle a subsequent break-up in order to cause the least stress and trauma possible to their proposed child. Another couple was having their third interview in the long road to secure authorization to have a second child. They’re successful parents and seem well-suited to having another baby, but authorizing a second child is a complicated and controversial decision under the protocols of the international Population Control Agreement.
I was about halfway through reviewing progress reports on our various current L3 cases when the security alarm went off, blaring through the building. A moment later, I heard angry shouts and frightened screams coming from the direction of the elevators. I ran down the hall, past various testing rooms, and toward that spot—where I found a terrified staffer be
ing held at gunpoint by an enraged applicant who, after a stunned moment, I recognized as Mr. Anselm.
“What’s going on?” I demanded, frightened by the sight of a gun—and horrified by the way Anselm was pressing its snout against the head of the NBPC staffer.
“I demand a procreation permit!” Anselm shouted, sweating in agitation. “Approve me for fatherhood!”
This wasn’t the first time an applicant had smuggled a weapon through our security system and then assaulted an employee. Gun manufacturers, still influential in Congress despite drastic improvements to the system, kept creating weapons that new security systems couldn’t detect.
“Okay, let’s just try to—to—to calm down,” I stuttered, feeling my heart pounding with fear.
The employee being held hostage at gunpoint looked ready to vomit. She said weakly, “This is Mr. Anselm. He’s just scored 47% on the L1 test, so I explained to him—”
“I don’t give a shit about your fucking test!” Anselm shrieked. “I want to pass on my genes! I want the immortality of fatherhood! Approve me!”
If people would just put half the effort into preparing for reproductive evaluation as they put into launching attacks on NBPC employees, they could become parents. I was once again mystified by human folly.
“Mr. Anselm,” I said gently, not wanting to agitate him further, “this is not the way to convince anyone that you deserve to reproduce. Put down the gun and let’s talk about this.”
Fiction River: How to Save the World Page 8