The Children Shelter

When I came home on this Saturday morning, it was cold like hell outside. My hands frozen by the November wind, I turned to Jesse as I closed the door and the words tumbled out of my mouth: “Darling, I want a child.” He was cooking and he paused, the knife in his hand had very slightly trembled, too slightly for anybody else to notice, maybe even him. But I saw it, and regretted having declared it this way, without having prepared him beforehand. I should have been more sensitive.

“Are you sure?” He talked very slowly, saying the words carefully, without looking at me.“Yes. I know we have talked  a lot about it, and decided that not having any was best, and all that, but I realised I most decisively want one. I am not sure how or why, it is just the obvious thing to do. I want a child.” “You know we do not have the paper work, and even if we had...” He did not finish his sentence. He didn't need to. I had been with him for over six years by that point, long enough to know that, at the age of 15, he had had a vasectomy. Long enough to know that he never ever regretted this choice. Long enough not to blame him.

“Paperwork or not, we can always adopt”, I said. He nodded. “Where would we put it?” “I don't know. In the study, I guess”. “I see. And my work?” “We could reorganise the living room, no?” I heard myself plead, my voice more desperate that I wanted it to be. “Guess we could,” he agreed “but do you have any idea of what you are doing?”

I hadn't. I couldn't have. But I wanted to try it all the same, and I said so. What's the worse than can happen? I thought. The words were rolling in my mouth, almost on my tongue, almost out in the open air, but I knew better than to say them. Of course I knew what the worst was. It had already happened 20 years before. I needn't have a reminder of that - and neither did Jesse.

“Will you come with me to the shelter?” “When?” “This afternoon.” “So soon? Don't you want to think it over, Tania? To give it some more thought?” “Oh, honey, of course I do, I am not saying we have to bring one home today! But we could go and have a chat with the people responsible for their care, and see what they look like, if they are well treated, well-behaved, you know... that kind of thing. What do you think?”

“Sure. Why not. If that's what you want.”

His lack of enthusiasm might be surprising for those who would be too young to remember, but not for me – I was lucky to have been born just after the war. But Jesse... He was born during it, and it will always be a wonder for me that he could have survived the first five years of his life, let alone the ones that came afterwards.

The Children War – that is how we referred to it, because there was no other way to talk about it.

30 years ago, the world shifted. It had been more and more modernised, and children were more and more left to take care of themselves, as parents where to busy working and enjoying themselves. Some of them started to think that they didn't need adults. Worse, that adults, their parents and teachers and all, were holding them back. So little groups started to organise themselves into rebellion. At first, it was nothing, so adults, who always looked down at children at that time, did not take heed, putting it all on early teenage crisis. They were coming home late. They were not listening. Talking back. They would not go to school. They would shoplift, well, then down right steal, anything they could put their hand on, including cars, money, drugs... even weapons. They would be smoking in the streets, drinking heavily, not even hiding it because no one would care enough to say anything. Most people would just ignore it, not wanting the bother of having to argue with unruly children. They had started to act like adults, and not the good kind of adults. And then, strangely unforeseen by any grown-up at the time, the killing started.

At first, it would be isolated incidents. They would mainly involve teenagers and strangers, at worst teachers, and would be blamed on video games, on films, on the system. But within a few weeks, months at the most, younger and younger kids started to kill. And sooner rather than later, they would kill their own parents, or older brothers and sisters. After that, hell started to break loose. How could it not? What would one do if their own children wanted them dead? If it was their children, or themselves? So the ones that were not killed by their parents, in order to survive, fled home to join children gangs, or were abandoned. They started to wander in the street, killing to survive. The news started to stop counting the dead people, adults and children alike. The bodies would jounce the streets, more and more of them. What could a country at war with his children do? How could it survive?

By the time the government decided to take matters in their own hands, the horror was beyond words. They sent the army into the main cities, they arrested the chiefs of 15 of the main gangs, and without any kind of trial they hung them – children as young as 8, and none older than 13. They thought that without the heads of the movement the disorganised children would have no choice but to go home to their parents. They did not see that it was already beyond that. For over 5 years, the country lived in fear of its own children. Until the children that had started the killing in the first place became adults. For all children have to grow up, eventually, that is the sad rule of existence. Lost between adults and children, rejected by all, they started to work towards peace – they had, after all no choice, they could not fight against both camps at the same time.

It is them who managed to reinstall peace eventually – Though the details are quite fuzzy. There were a lot of conditions, on both sides, but the most important one, the one that was to have the most dreadful consequences, was that, from now on, only parents deserving of a child would be allowed to have one. So children would have a special chip implemented on the day of their 7^th birthday, that would prevent their future fertility, and a new government agency was founded, called The Children Protection Society, who would be responsible for dealing with children at any stage of their life and any couple wanting a child would have to go through them. The Children Protection Society would be the first government agency to include children as members. They would analyse everything – from the couple relationship and bank accounts to their genes compatibility, and eventually would decide to give them a PT - Permit to Reproduce... Or not. If such a permit was received, the chips would be removed for a certain amount of years, allowing them to have children in the mean time. If not, they could reapply later, though only had a limited amount of times where it was possible.

People that wanted a child and could not get a PT had only one choice – The children Shelters, where the children in want of a family would wait. For children that had decided that their genetic parents where not giving them what they needed could, from the age of 5, ask to be relocated in other families. And of course there were always orphans and the ones that had been abandoned by their parents (for the system was not foolproof, of course), or who had been taken away by the CPS if they didn't receive sufficient care. Shelters were there to receive them until they could find a new family, and, in order to make it more appealing to potential parents, the regulation was less strict for adoption than for conceiving.
Such places however had a terrible reputation, from both parents and children side, and potential parents as well as potential adoptees would have to be pretty desperate to choose to go there. While children going there willingly would have the upper hand in the selection process, they could not refuse more than 3 families or they would have to go back to their genetic one. There was, of course, a lot of other rules that I would be trying to grasp for a long time, but these were the basic ones.

So the first time I step foot in a shelter, at the arm of a shivering Jesse, I have to admit that I had no idea what we would find... Or who.