The Omega is a Novelist

Prologue

Actions, results and consequences, for every action there will be both results and consequences. Advances in medical treatment, farming techniques, sciences, these resulted in an rapidly increasing population with increased life spans, consequenting in a burden to the planet. Increased urbanisation, demand for food, technology and entertainment; it was small wonder that no one thought to investigate when the planetary population decreased by one billion that year, likely instead breathing a sigh of relief. The subsequent year's fall was blamed on a series of 'natural' disasters; there was some debate on just how 'natural' they were in a few cases, after all tsunamis like the one that year do not come from nowhere with absolutely no warning.

Seeing as the third and fourth years population decline were relatively minor, a few thousand or so, it was not until the fifth year of decline that someone thought to take it seriously. Fertility rates had been on the decline for over a century and science had slowly taken a hand in overcoming these to a degree, but there was only so much that these advancements could accomplish as procedural costs and low success rates marred the IVF industry. And it was abundantly clear that there were now a higher percentage of people suffering with fertility problems than those blessed without. By this time, the clear divide between these people had resulted in previously unused labels to identify which group a person belonged to. If you were born with a high sperm or healthy egg count, you were marked as an Alpha. Those with low sperm or poor egg counts were known as Beta's.

However, it was not just fertility rates that had caused the population decline. War, natural disasters, terrorism, even an outbreak of famine, something which was completely unexpected at that time, these caused spikes in death rates, aiding the fall. Yet social factors likely became the other reason for it. Increased demand for IVF treatment aided a boom in unscrupulous practices, several individuals would happily attempt to provide the embryos of choice in return for money. Sons, intelligent, handsome sons. After all, if you were likely to have just one child to carry on your name and bloodline, why not pay a little extra to get the offspring you truly desire. There was still much importance placed on boys over girls in many religions and lands fuelling this illegal practice of 'designer' babies and would only take a generation to notice the foolish results. By the first year of decline, for a group of five men, there were just three women. By the fifth year of decline, this had worsened to 4 women to 7 men. Seeing as male births were still much higher at this point, it was clear the disproportionate percentage of men to women would get much worse for the foreseeable future.

Unsurprisingly, there was a shift amongst the elites of society when it came to expectations and wants for potential brides and grooms for their offspring. Looks, intelligence, wealth and influence had always been considered important, but a new requirement had been added; Alpha. Alpha men were pushed to have the best education in the best schools to attract an Alpha woman, who was likely to be protected by her family and also have the pick of the best potential husbands to choose from.

Beta women were also in high demand, but perhaps were not treated as well as they should have been, it became dangerous to be a woman alone, no matter the laws protecting them.

An unexpected development, perhaps, was an increased tolerance for gay relations between men as if people's tolerance of such was simply due to pity; after all it wasn't as if there were enough women to 'go around' anymore. This ignorant viewpoint unfortunately worked in reverse for gay relations between women, as if these females were selfish, nasty creatures who did not care for the crisis humanity currently faced. It was also considered wrong for an Alpha couple to choose not to have children, after all, they were clearly able to have them.

Science did not sit still, even after gathering the statistics as if it was in it's nature to try and fix things (even though if left alone, there was a chance of it fixing itself). Experiments began on a few frozen Beta embryo boys, there were surplus of these (any embryo Alpha or girls had been thawed, donated to childless couples, bought by the black market or implanted into their blood parents in feeble attempts to reverse the populations decline). Most of the experiments failed, but for one scientist, a genetics genius, tampered with the embryo just enough to create the world's first Omega; a boy capable of falling pregnant.

When this was revealed, during this child's adulthood, it was also revealed that not only was the experiment a success (the man had given birth to a healthy Alpha child by then), a number of other Omega embryos had already been implanted freely into desperate Beta women, some were already in school. Society as a whole was horrified. Details of the experiment had been released to show that the boy, who still retained the ability to impregnate, though the chances were low as with a Beta, went into 'heats' a handful of times a year when he was capable of becoming pregnant. Not only that, it seemed Alpha's in his presence became aware of his fertile periods and experienced their own kind of 'heat'. More came known several years later, that an Alpha could 'pair' with an Omega and make it impossible for that Omega to become pregnant by another man or even have relations with another. For this reason, Omega's began to wear collars about their neck as a protection from being forced into becoming a pair unwillingly, though this in turn identified their gender more easily.

This strangeness, a human going into heat like an animal, a human pairing for life, a man having babies, was perhaps too much for society to accept and 'Omega' became a dirty word. It also effected gay male couples as there would be questions to whether one was an Omega or not. It would never be known when the first Omega female was born, but as scientists discovered, Omega's produced a special sort of egg that was guaranteed to be fertilised successfully and create a strong, healthy baby, but for some reason this egg had a 50-50 chance of producing another Omega. And so slowly, Omega's became an unwanted, but clear existence in the human populace.