Scientists in the Sheep Nation believe that Earth’s ecosystem can largely recover in three hundred years, while humanity, already on the brink of extinction, will be almost completely wiped out in about two hundred. By then, the people of the Sheep Nation will return to Earth, and the world will belong to pure-blooded Sheep Nation citizens. What the scientists never expected was that humans would undergo a mutation, shrinking in size and becoming more capable of enduring hunger to cope with food shortages. Their lifespans would shorten and they would reach sexual maturity far earlier, sustaining their population through rapid generational turnover. This made the prospect of establishing a world on Earth populated solely by Sheep Nation citizens even more remote.
Meanwhile, after living in space for so long, the people of the Sheep Nation also changed in unexpected ways. Their bones grew fragile, like crunchy sticks that crumble at the slightest bite, and their muscles weakened. This made childbirth far more dangerous for women. Unlike humans, Sheep Nation citizens reached sexual maturity later and later, at an average age of fifty, which also meant they could live longer than humans. Women’s pregnancies grew longer too, reaching an astonishing three years. Even so, very few babies survived. The Sheep Nation’s population inevitably began to decline. By Earth year 2273, the population of the space cities had fallen by nearly two million. Of the remaining 3.5 million people, fewer than 600,000 were the new off-world humans. Everyone else was an original, veteran resident of the space cities who had come from Earth. Although the Sheep Nation president issued new marriage and childbearing regulations that made refusing to marry and have children a crime punishable by up to ten years in prison, the measures had little effect. For long-lived creatures, ten years was no more than a blink. Young women would rather go to prison than risk pregnancy.
