Flight 118: A Woman’s Future
Prologue

It’s the year 2025, and everyone knows the world will never be the same.

It has officially been one year since the decline in the birthrate of female children was confirmed across the world.

So much so that many are frantically speculating on the outcomes.

Of course, when scientists first began to realize what was happening, no one was listening.

The news channels were all about political debates, celebrity stories, and weather issues. Though, maybe the environmental changes could have had something to do with what happened.

No one really knows what brought about the pandemic which would change the world.

When awareness finally began to spread, it spread like wildfire. Of course, even then many people did not understand the gravity of the situation or just how quickly it was all happening.

There wasn’t much time after that.

Scientists, biologists, and many of the world’s smartest minds came together in a panic. They were trying to figure out why, how to stop it, or even what was happening. They should have just been figuring out what was going to happen once they failed at those things.

But they didn’t.

Unbeknownst to the world, there were even more changes taking place. Well, at least, as far as they could tell. These other beings may have always been around, hidden from view.

Once the world began to fall apart, though, they became known. Shifters. Beings that could shift from man to creature, and back. Mainly wolves were known; at least in the United States.

Maybe this happened because they were being affected by the strange epidemic of females becoming few and far between. Maybe whatever unknown change in the world that created the epidemic also created them.

This is yet another thing most of the world never got an answer to.

What many did find out, way too quickly, was that the world fell apart fast. Faster than any of them prepared for.

Between widespread panic, the natural death rate, and how long it took people to either become aware or care- certain towns and cities began to crumble.

The first-world countries seemed to be hit first. Maybe it just seemed that way because they were the main places with media coverage.

Everyone took it a different way. Some people moved further away from society while many others moved together, congregating in cities. At least at first.

Then, the shifters were discovered.

Media outlets were constantly focusing on shifters. Some people blamed them, some people said they were a threat because they could take females from them. So, most shifters around the world left any semblance of civilization and chose to live in areas that they would claim as their territory.

It seemed as if humans chose to focus on the different circumstances they could see and forget about the one they could not.

Around the year 2044, the majority of the smaller cities were being abandoned.

Many people still seemed to live in the larger, more well-known cities; perhaps hoping that being around as many people as possible could help them increase their chances of finding a wife. Maybe they just wanted any semblance of normalcy they could still find.

There were still outposts in certain places around the world, like the CDC in the States, where people held out hope for finding anything to make this better.

But more and more people were realizing that their world would never be the same and was choosing to begin their new lives as best they could.

It still somewhat resembled a world many were used to. By then, though, the number of females being born had decreased by a quarter of the amount worldwide.

It became significantly worse once it got to the year 2095. The decrease in women had caused many bloodlines to die off. Civilization began to disappear in certain areas of the world while different ways of life became the new normal.

Modern things that had once been taken for granted were quickly being discarded. Resources were becoming limited, along with manpower. So, many people were being trained and given jobs for things deemed necessary to this new way of life.

Many men became farmers, some took to doing things that would give society gas and oil. Some trained as medics and even teachers, hoping to still provide some civilized future to the newer generations. Many just took care of themselves.

There was still a military- significantly smaller obviously. Its main objectives were communication with other countries, piloting the few planes left when the need was highly necessary, and providing help or safety when the need arose. The latter was important when law and order got extremely out of control. They were run by the little government left and seemed to become more and more used only in bigger populated areas.

Smaller, more rural areas seemed to have their own forms of law. Many men would, for the most part, follow the laws like before. But, like any law, it only worked when the people followed it. As things got progressively worse, it seemed things became more where laws were lines that were there. If someone crossed it, they either got away with it or an individual would have to dole out their own justice.

Something else happened this year that no one had an explanation for. There was a plane crash outside of Chicago. Planes were never really used anymore, unless absolutely necessary, because of how much fuel they use.

But what was even stranger, was the fact that everyone that survived the crash said the year was 2012. Inexplicably, the plane came from the past and carried a total of 53 survivors. 30 of those were women.

It seemed to provide such a significant relief to the struggling population rate, that many societal issues around the country were at a temporary lull as many men were given a new sense of hope.

Shifters, having been living in packs with their internal sense of hierarchy, seemed to become more civilized as humans became less as the years passed.

Each pack was led by an Alpha, Beta, and Delta. There were, of course, different positions in each pack. They would protect each other and their territory; many even forming shaky alliances with humans around them.

Essentially, they would follow society’s rules when out of their territory unless they were threatened. No one would harm their territory or them without repercussions. It worked, for the most part, because everyone knew they were no match for the shifters.

Some packs even had agreements that, whenever a female was found, they would be allowed to see if she was one of their pack’s mates first.

However, this rule was followed less and less because things increasingly became worse.

Around 50 years later, in the year 2134, the population issue finally became so bad that it was believed that the birth of a female baby had decreased by over three quarters worldwide since 2024.

Many more bloodlines had died out. Everyone was scattered at this point, living further and further from each other. Very few men had ever seen a woman, let alone found one to have a family with, so most men had become increasingly uncivilized. It was a “me vs them” world. There was an increasing number of men who no longer even saw women as the prized possession, their saviors, they had been viewed as in previous years. More and more women were not even being seen as human beings, but as simple breeders.

Though many human men and shifters did not agree with this way of thinking, in the new world they lived in, they knew they had to choose their battles carefully.

This was the year of the first Gathering.

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