Insomnia

26: Yunli

Outer Mongolia, September 2125

Overpopulation had always seemed a strange disease. Humanity's greatest problem is its great success, its proliferation, and yet that problem was a grave one. Death from too much life, or from too little death. It was almost paradoxical, but too much of a good thing was often bad: pure oxygen would suffocate a man, although the smog here offered the opposing peril. Cancer had been similar, a disease in which human cells grew too much, too well, as had the high blood pressure and thicker, more rapidly beating heart which had led to coronary disease and strokes.

The removal of the latter ironies had intensified the former, creating a fresh peculiarity: a cure which works too well. Other countries had struggled to adapt to the threat that good health posed, but we had long been used this counter-intuitive foe; our government had used extreme measures to fight growth in the past, one-child and two-child policies, but even those strict programmes would be useless now. This growth was in depth, not breadth: an increased number of generations, not just of siblings. One child has one child has one child. It was a shift from linear to exponential growth, from additions to indices, and our old way of thinking had struggled to keep up.

I had given birth to a son, he'd became the father to a daughter, she'd had a daughter of her own, and she had just been blessed with a newborn son. Five generations: each of us had only had one or two children, but our family had swelled regardless, growing unrelentingly as I lived far beyond my natural years. It was too many. The new policy rewarded three-generation families, who held back from great-grandchildren until their great-grandparents had died, and tolerated chains of four. That was the boundary of permitted life. Five generations aren't allowed.

When my great-great-grandson was conceived, I knew I had no choice but to head north. Targeted by the state, my whole family would suffer; they would be last on the list of provisions, cut off from our dwindling amenities, and might not see another generation born. It would have been immoral to do anything else. I have lived a long, full life, or maybe even two. I had enjoyed my time in the sun, but now it was time for younger, greener shoots to grow and fill my place.

It was not a wholly selfless sacrifice. I took my fair share of rations with me, with nobody willing to refuse me anything I requested, and didn't go to drown myself or hang my body from a tree. I had grown up in our city, and lived most of my extensive life in the slum it had become. I want to see the world beyond. I had always dreamt of travelling, but had to stay to care for my son, or for his daughter when he left to work. Familial obligations had trapped me in this one town, repeating the same role over generations, but now the same duty had set me free.

The world beyond didn't disappoint. The forests I had dreamt of had been diminished by a hunger for timber, but deserts had grown at their expense, and the majesty of the horizon's mountains had not been touched by human hands. I had nobody to share the grandeur of the landscapes with, but I savoured my sudden solitude: inside the city, quiet had been as rare as views like these, and now I found it just as beautiful. I am at one with nature, I reflected blissfully. Or as close to it as I can be with robots in my veins.

Everything was lovelier in the knowledge that my time was running out. The injection had initially removed all barriers to growth, reinforcing our hearts and minds so that we could live longer than ever before, but some limitations couldn't be overcome. We still lost mobility, and no technology had made us resistant to hunger, thirst, or even more mundane ailments. They keep us alive forever; even before the government's new policy had taken effect, scarcity of food, drink, and space had come to replace the traditional scarcity of years. 

We may no longer run out of time, but eternity means we run out of everything else. Our population pyramid had added upper tiers, and now stood taller than any of the skyline's mountains, but in places it still wasted thin. I would not have lived for too much longer had I stayed, and my final years would have been the shadow following a healthy life: I would have become useless, immobile and miserable long before death finally came to collect what she was due. It was better for my family to remember me this way, and better for my great-great-grandson to not remember me at all.