Hear No More by Melsa M. Manton

Author:Melsa M. Manton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: espionage thriller, psychological thriller, futuristic science fiction, cloning, genetic engineering, future techno thriller
Publisher: Evolved Publishing LLC
Published: 2022-10-10T00:00:00+00:00

Spade first rose and refilled his water glass. I didn’t know if he was stalling, but he was definitely nervous, that much I could tell. The slightest tremor moved through his hands, and I reflected on how unusual his behavior had been in the last few days. In the five years I’d known him, I’d never seen him like this. He’d always been so even-keeled.

He sat back down and turned his chair to face me, then leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “There are two parts to this.”

“Pick one,” I enunciated a little too clearly.

Spade stared at me icily. “I’m getting to that. Are you going to be quiet and let me talk?”

Fine. I glared at him.

Spade looked from me to Vail, and back again. He took a deep breath, blew it out, and his hands stilled. “Population control... it’s all about population control. War, I mean. Few wars occur naturally. Yes, it’s part of the human condition to fight, but most war is contrived, in order to reduce our planet’s population and to gain control over our most valuable resource. The reasons are all just propaganda.”

“As in natural resources? Oil? Natural gas?” I thought of all those crazy million-dollar-cowboys out there fracking—modern day gold mining.

“No, you’re thinking a little too literally. Think about what really keeps the system running. The most important current resource on this planet has very little to do with what was already on it. In this day and age, our most valuable natural resource is....” He paused here to let me fill in the blank.

I narrowed my eyes at him, in no mood for being treated like a student.

“Us,” he said plainly. “Humans. Our most valuable natural resource is human life. There are now over nine billion humans on Earth, and the world is multiplying, and multiplying fast.”

And then suddenly, Spade gave me a history lesson. I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t that.

“In 1350, at the end of the Great Famine and Black Death, world population was 370 million. It has continued to grow since then, picking up speed like a runaway freight train. It wasn’t until 1804 that the world population reached one billion. It was another one hundred and twenty-three years before it reached two billion in 1927, but it took only thirty-three years to reach three billion in 1960. Four billion a mere fourteen years later in 1974, five billion in 1987, six billion in 1999, seven billion in 2011, eight billion in 2024, nine billion in 2037. We’re now roughly a decade past that and we haven’t slowed down.”

I had to admit that did seem like an accelerated world growth rate, but failed to see the point.

Spade continued. “Now, it used to be that the days of divide and conquer kept the population down, but we’ve become a bit too civilized.” He said this last part with a trace of an English accent, and I wondered if Spade might actually be British. My eyes again fell on his faux wedding band.

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