In a message dated 10/20/98 1:16:22 PM US Mountain Standard Time,
pmak@cs.dal.ca writes:

So anyway, my bottom line is, I don't see how having only 4% of the
 original male population being fertile would cause enough of a problem
 that the governments start kidnapping fertile males against their will.
 While the role of the male is a vital part in the creation of a fetus,
 after the egg is fertilized he doesn't have to do anything more. Now if
 that virus had left only 4% of the FEMALE population fertile, then there
 would be a future population problem. I could see the governments heavily
 encouraging and paying a lot to fertile males in order to get them to
 participate in artificial insemination programs and the like, but all that
 talk about body shops, government agents stalking a single male, etc. just
 isn't justified here, not with the numbers we have been given.
 

you're overlooking a few things, and taking this idea way more serious than
it needed to be, but since you're going there anyway...

first off, not all guys really want to pump away on a constant basis. i
realize that
the media portrays all males as sex-crazed power-tool-toting idiots who solve
everything in violent terms or have their all-knowing wives solve the
problems,
but it just ain't so. Some guys will be very very against assembly lines or 
donating large amounts of their loin products, a case of where the
individual's
wants are against those of the powers that be. When this happens,
traditionally,
including in our supposedly free society, the individual is deemed criminal
and
forced to comply with the wishes of the powers that be. Just like paying for
the
Diamondbacks Baseball Stadium...a back lobby tax, not paying the tax gets
you in serious stuff. The government (ANY government) is very good at
justifying
anything they've decided to do anyway. (you can tell i've been on the phone
with
Medicaid & Medical most of the day, can't you?)

two, sports and aberrations are mentioned. there's also accidents, false
positives,
gays, guys who just plain don't trust Big Brother, etc. Not every one of this
4%
(i'm NOT going to check your math) is going to be running on all cylinders
sexually,
all they have to be is test positive for having functional sperm cells. 

If your religion is of the Left and you genuinely feel that big government is
solely
there to be of service to you, and that they can do no wrong, i'm sorry. i do
not
share those views. They wouldn't be trying to get just ANY single male by the
way. Just the ones with the really GOOD genes. Remember the hidden enemy?
Lotsa possibilities for X-files conspiracies, etc.

A final point, and that is that if the math doesn't work for you. Change it.
Make it
one in a hundred, eliminate Hiroshi and some of the others from the Stud Pool,
and write the story. Make it one in five hundred, eliminate Kuno's fertility
(though
he paid to have himself marked fertile as he could not accept that the mighty
Kuno
blade was less than potent) if you like. i went with one in twenty-five males
as
surviving and fertile simply because it seemed bad enough to be bad without
being
bad enough that the next generation would all be related to each other.

ah well, thanks for reading!

ja ne,

gregg