Ten years have passed since artificial wombs became so widespread that babies can be raised even in PET bottles. They passed. It couldn't be helped.
"Another fetus?"
Another fetus had appeared in the cat-repelling PET bottle in front of my house. This is the third time. Since they have human rights, I can't just throw them away like mosquito larvae. Japan's current population: 50 quadrillion...
Recently, humans have been genetically modified to be easier to raise in artificial wombs.
What that means is that there is now a plankton stage.
For example, sea squirts are known to be able to swim immediately after birth but then fix themselves to a good spot and lose their mobility; humans have become like that. It happened, so it can't be helped.
Human fertilized eggs develop into a tadpole-like state after a while and leave the mother's body. This used sea squirt genes.
They can swim at that point, but if the environment isn't good, they grow legs and crawl around. Apparently, they tried putting in genes from the Mexican salamander, commonly known as the axolotl. "Tried putting in," my foot.
So, human babies turn into newt-like creatures and crawl around looking for water, but if they can't find any, they dry out and form dormant cysts.
The cysts crack open, and a massive number of seed-like clones come out. The clones resist drying and fly on the wind like fluff. What genes are those?
Whatever. Anyway, if you dry them, they multiply.
So, as long as there's water, babies will grow for now. It's great that the declining birthrate problem was solved, but it was solved too much. If you leave water out anywhere, it immediately turns into an artificial womb. It's common to find triplets growing inside a hyacinth water culture. Since they have human rights, you just have to give up on the hyacinth.
Mosquitoes were once the "creatures that troubled humanity the most," but now most are endangered. This is because the ecological niche of larvae (wrigglers) was taken over by babies. If larvae and babies grow in the same water, the larvae lose. Now there are even mosquito conservation efforts.
And so, babies are appearing in massive numbers. Social problems are occurring, like 20,000 fetuses appearing in a dam and clogging it. In that case, they apparently installed a sieve to keep the babies out of the water supply. They were born safely, becoming roughly 20,000-tuplets. It's beyond a population explosion.
However, those social problems will soon end. Because the Earth is at its limit. An asteroid is approaching Earth. In this world full of babies, no one can stop it anymore. Earth will likely be destroyed, but a small portion of human spores should be scattered into space. Perhaps on a planet with water, they will—
