by Lindsey Butters

Created on: June 30, 2008

It's been eighteen years and a few days since the last baby was born to a woman named Helen Aster. At the time, she was unwed and poverty stricken with no one to help her with the stringent demands of motherhood. She would cry herself to sleep every night not knowing how she would support herself or her baby. One night in desperation she tried to abort the baby and the bloody deed caused her to spend a night in the emergency room. She was both relieved and saddened by the fact that her attempt to kill her unborn baby was unsuccessful. On the one hand, she didn't want to doom herself to an eternity of hell-bound servitude because of her murderous ways. But on the other hand, she still found herself in the precarious situation that countless women have found themselves in knocked up with nobody to love them.

As time went on throughout Helen's pregnancy, she would watch the news occasionally and listen to the alarming news that no woman had reported being pregnant in some time. Helen started to gain some notoriety in her ninth month when reporters noticed hers was the last due date on the books anywhere. It was she who would give birth to a baby who, it seemed at the time, would be the last one for a while. A woman named Becky Brown, a leading news journalist at the time, was hot on this story's trail and asked Helen for exclusive rights to videotape the last month of the pregnancy.
"I don't know, Becky. I have to work all the time and I don't think it will be very interesting."
"Don't sell yourself short, Helen. This is the story of the decade. You are the mother of a very special child a child who very well may be the last one ever born! You owe it to the world to tell your story."
"I don't want to make everybody panic. I'm sure more babies will be born you'll see.
"Helen, listen to me very carefully. There have been no pregnancies in over eight months anywhere in the world. Believe me, my crew and I have traveled to Africa and Asia and everywhere in between and no woman or animal has become pregnant. It's like the whole planet is dying slowly I mean, seeds aren't even sprouting anymore. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"Yes, I understand but it doesn't make any sense. If what your saying is true, maybe we shouldn't be making news stories out of it. Maybe we should be talking to our priests and preparing for the end of the world."

"Honey, don't touch that!" Helen screams at the supermarket as her four-year-old opens a box of lab-grown sugary cereal.
"But

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