The Cutoff

“Have they called you yet?" Adom asked Em in a low, but urgent voice. "A data cop stopped me on my way home and questioned me for ten minutes.” The steel door slid shut behind him. He pressed a single black button on a white plastic box bolted to the doorframe. Extra locks could be heard clicking into place inside the door. A small green light appeared on the box indicating that all signals coming into the room were now being blocked and all outgoing signals disguised as something else. “It’s time. We can’t hide it anymore.”

“What?! No, no one has called me!” Em whispered loudly, trying not to wake the baby as she received the most consequential information of her entire life, "We've been so, so careful! And how are you still alive if they know?” Fear and worry looked out of place on her angular, erudite features and piercing, light green eyes.

Adom crossed the tiny apartment in five quick and quiet strides and scanned the scene outside the three large window panes that made up the the majority of the external wall. He scanned the scattered lights across the expanse of the once-shining spectacle of New Seattle, 60 stories below. The windows were one-way, but he had to be extra careful now. He stepped over to a small metal panel with a numeric pad on the strip of wall on the left side of the windows and entered a code that activated the solid steel storm & fallout shields.

"They don't know, but they're suspicious. A lot of little things. Changes in our trackable behaviors. It was the food, mostly. People who start buying extra non-perishable foods at regular intervals are usually up to something, I guess…”

Em put her hands over her face in despair, trying not to cry as she instinctively went over and stood in front of the door of the narrow, thoroughly sound-proofed coat closet that hid their infant son. She turned around and dropped her hands.

Her eyes slipped into one of those infinite stares, like she was looking at something a thousand miles away and something inside her own head at the same time. “I guess no matter how hard you try, it just…changes you.” she sighed in defeat.

Adom wondered for the thousandth time how he, of all people, had ended up like this.

He had been a zealous supporter of The Cutoff. One of the first in line for the pills. And now here he was, a loving father trying to protect his child from the government he had served and supported so dutifully—and still theoretically agreed with. Exactly the kind of person doing exactly the kind of thing he had once called unfathomably foolish and disgustingly selfish.

But something had changed that night on the rooftop when he met Em. They’d known each other less than an hour when they found themselves intertwined on the cold concrete 100 stories above the city. It was hardly anything new for either of them, but this time a feeling that shouldn’t have been possible anymore came back and got stronger and stronger. Then when he saw that little boy’s perfect, purple face as he lifted him from the bloody bathtub water…he finally understood all the people he had once demonized. And there was no going back.

It felt like a lifetime or two, but it was less than 5 years ago that every remaining citizen of the Earth, The Uniterra Collective, had participated in a worldwide vote on an unprecedented and uncompromising set of measures to stop and reverse the unnecessary destruction of our planet and end the mistake that was humankind forever: The Cutoff.

It passed with near unanimity.

First, every person over the age of 18 would take a pill that would render them permanently sterile. No more new people. There weren't enough resources left to support even one more. And we’d no longer have time to care for needy newborns as we worked tirelessly to undo whatever planetary damage we could before the end.

Those children already born, every human being from zero to seventeen, would be "Youthanized". Euthanasia for kids. A warm, chemically-induced, blissful feeling of love and safety that culminated in a quick and painless death. Just a generation ago this may have been considered pure evil, but by that point it was clearly the best fate these innocent souls could hope for.

Many of them fought it, of course. Bright, idealistic spirits. And that was why it had to be done. They didn't think it was fair, it wasn't their fault, maybe they could do better than every other generation that had come before them for 14 million years. But they couldn't, or wouldn't, of course. There was no curing the human condition, and the rest of the world had all but reached consensus on that.

And then there was the other pill.

Even though most of the remaining people on Earth (not nearly as many as there used to be—climate change accelerated by a world war made sure of that) knew it was the right thing to do, there was a certain "chemical inhibitor" that needed to be removed before we could bear to go through with it: Oxytocin. The "Love Chemical". The hormone responsible for feelings of bonding, empathy, compassion, and trust. Makes a mother's milk come in and a father more protective of his offspring. Once it was gone, nobody had a problem doing what needed to be done.

But even in their greatest attempt to be humble before nature, humans had been too arrogant. To think we could undo with a little pill what evolution had willed into being against all odds over millennia. A sensation strong enough to convince humans to help keep other humans alive and safe.

Whether by the failure of science or the power of biology, that potent hormone had found its way back into bloodstreams of at least two people, and it was stronger than ever.

They would do anything to keep that child alive and be able to watch him grow.

Were they the only ones? They couldn’t wait around to find out. Regardless, they’d surely be executed for having tried to keep it a secret. They just had to find a way to keep it secret for as long as possible and plan for what to do once they couldn't.

***

Part of the human race’s final penance to the planet was to collect as much man-made stuff as possible, load it onto waste capsules the size of skyscrapers and alternate between launching them into Earth's closest stars: Alpha Centauri A and B. Both about the size of our sun, big enough to absorb all of our sins.

The transit would take approximately 100 years.

Plenty of time for one little human to live some semblance of a life, albeit an unusual one, if they made it aboard and had the things they needed.

“Load A382 ready to go.” Adom said into the radio on his shoulder, a little quieter than usual. Mouth dry and throat tight from a week of constant anxiety and paranoia. Trying to act as “normal” as possible; no more anomalies in the data.

He took an oversized black marker out of his pocket and drew a single line on the wall of the container, like he’d been doing with every other one of his containers for the last few months, in preparation for this inevitable day. They were filled with the endless packets of ForeverFood™ and water, boxes of soil and seeds and sun lamps, and datapads filled with all the entertainment and education still available in cyberspace. Anything else they could ever want could surely be found among the rest of the containers on their shuttle.

In a few minutes an industrial cargo loader would come by to pick up one of the many car-sized plastic containers of human junk that had been filled that day and take it to the next massive, unadorned metal shuttles all lined up on a miles-long peninsula of earth turned black from the unceremonious liftoffs every six months.

He looked down at a heart-shaped locket he’d absent-mindedly picked up from the endless sea of junk. His first thought was to toss it back, but then he had another thought:

It was a symbol of love.

One you take with you when you’re going far away. To remember.

It would be the last thing he took from this place. He’d probably forget all about it by tomorrow (if there was one), but maybe one day they’d find it and he’d remember this moment, and the things he did for love.

He tossed it in.

Time to go.

***

Adom turned off the big work lights. That was the signal. Em was waiting for it a quarter mile away in an abandoned building with their boy in a messenger bag, heavily sedated so there was no chance he would wake up before they were safely on the shuttle, and hopefully not until after they had left the atmosphere.

Weeks ago, Adom had found the back seat of an old car with a baby seat still attached to it and waited until today to load it. It was the only thing in the container, suspended in the middle by couch cushions, mattresses, carpet rolls, etc. It was either a cockpit or a coffin. Within hours they would find out.

He waited in the dark with his hand on the edge of the containers ready to help Em over the top and then jump in himself and close the lid.

Em was there within the minute. Cradling the messenger bag tightly against her chest as she sprinted across the uneven ground, her sharp jaw clenched, her eyes bright with an adrenalized focus. She barely slowed down as she closed in on the container and planted her right boot into Adom’s waiting interlaced fingers. She let go of the baby with one hand and used it to hop over the edge.

By the time Adom climbed in, closed the lid and turned on his flashlight, she had already removed the boy from his hiding place and buckled him into the baby seat in the middle of the row.

They said nothing as they buckled themselves in on either side.

Their eyes met, glistening in the upside-down shadows from the flashlight resting on Adom’s shaking knee.

Adom held out his hand, resting it on the baby’s little legs. She took it in hers.

He clicked off the flashlight.

And they waited.

In the dark. In love. In fear.