The frosted glass panel slid open silently and a striking silver haired woman entered. She looked at them and smiled as she walked around the elegant but simple glass desk to take her seat. Setting her tablet down in front of her and making sure it was straight, she looked up and gave them another smile, showing perfect teeth behind full lips.
"Welcome and congratulations on being selected. I am Freya Michelle, and I will be guiding and advising you through the whole process." She spoke in a soft, gravelly voice which brought out her accent, her green eyes studying them with interest. "You are by far the youngest to be selected for conception in this institutes existence." She smiles as they try to suppress their pride with modest downcast looks.
"But you both excel on all the levels required by the council to be considered for conception." She leans back in her chair, her bare arms defined and the skin glowing with health. "You are children of this institute, having both been conceived by using the technology created by it." She leans forward and places her arms on the desk and before she rests her chin on her hands. Both her guests notice absently mindedly the hair curling out from her arm pits. "You have decided to conceive a child together and with that decision being made it will bring a lot of responsibility for ones so young. But the institute will guide you every step of the way and assist you in raising a child fit to be part of our society. Now, I know every single one of us knows the history of how we arrived at this point in our existence as a species, but I must follow protocol and make you aware one last time. So, please, bear with me and take pride once more of what we have achieved in such a short span of time to ensure our survival."
A projection appears next to the desk of a flaxen haired woman not much older than her guests. "Welcome Andrea and Lindsay and congratulations from all of us at the institute on being selected. I am Freya Natasha. We have been following your progress ever since your birth and take pride in your exceptional skills and contributions to our society. With your valuable assistance our society today is a showcase of what can be achieved when war is not part of our existence. Of when prejudice and discrimination is nonexistent. When we are not defined to a role as part of a religious believe. When our bodies are not used as disposable vessels for another's gratification. When we, as the female of the dominant species, take our rightful place at the top of the evolutionary scale. Since childhood, you have been informed of our past and how we came about."
"Mankind brought us to the brink of destruction through greed and power mongering. Nature had been brought down to her knees in mankind's eternal hunger for resources. Those same resources were used in destroying nature, as mankind sought to feed the materialistic hunger of its ever-growing population. After the end of the Great Global War, with nearly 80% of the world's population decimated and whole countries uninhabitable due to radiation and non-existent water resources, mankind stood in front of another extinction level event. With the destruction of huge tracts of rain forests and the polar caps only a tenth the size of what they were ten years prior, new pathogens emerged which spelled the end of mankind."
"The first of these viruses, named Hydra, because of its ability to mutate almost instantly and thereby rendering any vaccines useless, first started the annihilation by attacking the respiratory system, killing hundreds of thousands of people in a matter of weeks. Then a second pathogen struck, which was aptly named the berserker virus. The virus greatly increased primarily the male population's production of testosterone, causing severe aggression which led to males and a substantial number of females having to be eliminated. The male population declined at an alarming rate, until finally only 5000 or less males were left. It was decided to collect sperm and cryogenically freeze it until such time as a vaccine could be produced and males would not be so vulnerable again. When the last male died from the berserker virus, the world population stood at approximately 4.5 million females, of which almost 1 million were older than 50 years of age."
"In the darkest hour of our species existence, when there was almost no way we could reproduce and our surviving population was ageing slowly to extinction, a group of scientists and engineers worked on tirelessly. A few of them were leaders in the field of their expertise, but most of them came from a male dominated environment, their genius stifled, until Dr Elsa Goodrich showed them that females were every part as brilliant as their extinct male counterparts. She was an exceptionally gifted leader in the field of nano engineering. Prior to the great global war, she had worked with the leading minds in the world on perfecting the budding technology. Having realized that the programming of atoms was the next step in humanity scaling the evolution ladder to becoming stronger, faster and eventually immortal, she focused all her considerable attention on attaining mastery of the technology. With the help of the remaining scientists and the fact that her original nanotechnology lab survived the war, she continued her research until the breakthrough later on." Freya Natasha pauses for dramatic effect, her eyes betraying great emotion, before she continues in a subdued voice.
"While Dr Elsa was still busy with her research on nanotechnology, the newly formed Council, which consisted of specialists in the fields needed to rebuild our society, decreed that artificial insemination had to proceed in order to counterbalance the fact that there had been no increase in the population in the last decade. The first trial runs were performed on females who were in prime physical condition and highly fertile. At the height of their fertile cycle, sperm were used which were collected from the last remaining male population prior to their demise. The incubation period went as planned and the first children were born. Being vaccinated against the respiratory pathogen which has proved deadly in the past, and having obtained antibodies from their mothers, the children flourished. But entering their pubescent stage proved fatal for the male children due to their increased testosterone production and, the berserker virus, having lain silently in wait, struck again. Every male child succumbed to the virus. The female children however survived. The impact of the loss of their children manifested itself in a great despondency, which descended on the remains of humanity and resulting in the Council decreeing that no further conceptions would be done."