Imagine a world where every conspiracy theory turns out to be true...
In an alternate reality where mankind never recovered from the Great Recession, Eric Samson is a washed up hockey player turned jaded journalist. Used to covering organized crime, he's been dumped to the science beat. The work is dull, until a groundbreaking discovery involving genetics falls in his lap.
But the technology involved has dark implications, and the geneticist responsible, Dr. Michael Waters, has vanished.
Eric's investigation attracts the attention of a mysterious hit squad, as well as Dr. Waters' former patient, Alison. She claims he cured her of a fatal virus, and that he's hiding out in Nicaragua.
One step ahead of the assassins, Eric and Alison pick up the doctor's trail. They discover that Waters' reckless experiment flirts with humanity's extinction. In a race against time, Eric will have to make a fateful choice: sell himself out, keep the peace and build a life with Alison, or go public and release the ultimate conspiracy theory to the world.
Imagine a world where every conspiracy theory turns out to be true...
In an alternate reality where mankind never recovered from the Great Recession, Eric Samson is a washed up hockey player turned jaded journalist. Used to covering organized crime, he's been dumped to the science beat. The work is dull, until a groundbreaking discovery involving genetics falls in his lap.
But the technology involved has dark implications, and the geneticist responsible, Dr. Michael Waters, has vanished.
Eric's investigation attracts the attention of a mysterious hit squad, as well as Dr. Waters' former patient, Alison. She claims he cured her of a fatal virus, and that he's hiding out in Nicaragua.
One step ahead of the assassins, Eric and Alison pick up the doctor's trail. They discover that Waters' reckless experiment flirts with humanity's extinction. In a race against time, Eric will have to make a fateful choice: sell himself out, keep the peace and build a life with Alison, or go public and release the ultimate conspiracy theory to the world.
Dr. Michael Waters is giving me a tour of his laboratory. I think he thinks I need the customary walk-around to acclimatize myself to the current surroundings. I’ve got my notepad out and my recorder’s on, but I don’t have a clue why I was given an “exclusive interview” with this normally reclusive scientist.
We’re behind a wall of windows to the most picturesque of scenes.
Waters’ lab is half-hidden between a group of thick, robust Ponderosa pines on campus. University of British Columbia Department of Medical Genetics. My brain is full of questions, but I’m being polite and simply following this man as he meanders from station to station. He’s trying to break the ice, I can tell, but he’s a scientist so his social skills are nominal, at best.
He’s been rambling off on a variety of subjects—Mars and climate change, and after a while I start to signal my confusion with odd looks. I stop talking, drop my pen and notepad. I’m definitely here on invite, but not really into spending oodles of time beating around the bush.
“You brought me here to show me something?” I ask with a sense of polite urgency.
He snaps to, nods like he got off track. Walks over to the laboratory side of his office.
Dr. Waters shows me the cage.
White wires, quarter inch spacing, mesh roof. Aspen shavings, strips of Kleenex used as a nesting area. Solid surface wheel and a tiny wooden box.
Gravity-fed water bottle, brown pellets in a circular dish.
Mus musculus, or as they’re more commonly known: lab mice. Two albino-looking creatures dotted with devilishly red eyes. Little cranberries void of focus or exact orientation.
He looks at me, smiling.
Adjusts his semi-rimless glasses, quiet blue eyes hidden behind the refraction. Hair starting to ash as he walks from middle age.
“This is Adam and Eve,” he says, motioning towards the cage. Adam spinning in his wheel, Eve suckling from the water bottle.
I look at Dr. Waters, unclear of how this everyday display is something I should be extremely excited about. I’m just praying he doesn’t tell me the mice used to inhabit Mars, or Venus, or whatever.
“Okay…”
Walks around the table, facing the cage and myself.
“Eve isn’t pregnant,” he says. Looks across. My facial expression matches my response.
“So?” He’s still looking at me.
“Both of them fertile,” he says, “and they’ve been in here for over six months.”
Piecing together the jigsaw puzzle, one by one. Handed to me by a mischievous looking geneticist.
“So, no babies?” I say slowly.
“Yes!” Excited at my conclusion. “So, Eve’s on the pill?”
Dr. Waters wags his finger at me.
“You’re smart, Eric, very smart.”
My face scrunches.
“So that’s it—Eve’s on the pill? I don’t get it.” Shakes his head. “No… Eve’s not on the pill…”
Looks down at the cage.
“—Adam is.”
Eric Samson is a former hockey player turned journalist who lives with a one-eyed, beer-licking cat and covers health and science news for a Vancouver daily paper. Moved off the crime beat after too many death threats as a result of the many gang members and corrupt police officers he helped expose with his articles, his career seems to take one unlikely turn after the next.
In an alternate reality not too unlike our own, the world is in an even greater financial crisis, even more nations are at war with each other and some of them completely sink into bankruptcy.
The world's attention turns to the healthcare industry when the brilliant (and possibly slightly mad) geneticist Dr. Michael Waters springs his latest discovery on the world: a male contraceptive pill. He chooses Eric Samson as the journalist who helps him make the discovery public, and an already turbulent world descends further into chaos. An even greater divide between the genders sparks vicious debates between leftists and conservatives, the number of STDs spikes unchecked, and dire prognoses about the decline of the human population flood the media. Is handing the ultimate control over birth to 100% of the population the cure we've always needed, or has humanity played god in a horrific way that will signal the end times?
In the midst of the chaos, Dr. Waters' laboratory burns down, and the man himself vanishes, leaving one last message to Eric in which he implores him to seek him out for the sake of all humanity. Eric seems to be the last person connected to Waters that the scientist can trust to protect his most valuable asset: a young woman he needs to be reunited with at all costs. The timid and frightened Alison seems to trust Eric, but she refuses to reveal what her importance to Waters is and why she's so special.
After several dramatic attempts on Eric's life, he realizes his home and former life aren't safe anymore, and decides he might as well do his best to bring Alison to Waters and find some answers. The two embark on a thrilling trip with a relentless team of assassins hot on their heels and an uncertain goal before them.
Eric's voice is so entertaining and compelling, it's impossible not to laugh at his blunt remarks and deadpan delivery as circumstances force him to become an action hero and Alison's only protector. Bullets fly and the world burns as we're shown snippets of what society is becoming and the ethical dilemmas that plague any challenge to the status quo. Alison also undergoes a satisfying transformation arc as she tries to come to terms with her faith after her religious community shunned her for choosing her own self-preservation over their teachings.
As Eric and Alison reveal the true nature of Dr. Waters' discoveries, they have to decide what the implications mean for them personally and for the world at large. Is humanity better off knowing the truth, or is it wiser to keep the peace and let everyone live in blissful ignorance?
The Death of Birth masterfully wraps thrills, social commentary, ethics, speculative fiction and hilarious one-liners in one ultimate, irresistible package.