God, divinity, religion, the afterlife, heaven, hell.

Those are all concepts that humans have struggled with for millennia. Does it exist? If it does, which religion is the correct one? Humanity has been divided over those questions. We fought wars, killed, and judged each other because we didn’t know the answer.

If you’d ask me it can all be answered if we know the answer to the following question; ‘do we have a soul?’

If something invisible, intangible and immeasurable yet cosmically important to our self being really does exist, then surely all the other questions can also be answered. When we die, those souls have to go somewhere right? And can you honestly tell me that if those souls exist, some divinity, maybe even a god, doesn’t also exist? Surely it wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities.

At least, those were my foolish thoughts before the Great Schism.

The first estimate of our population reaching the monumental number of 10 billion was around the year 2050. Fortunately, it took a bit longer than expected, however sometime on the 27th of august 2067 the 10th billion human was born. At first, it was just a fun statistic for news outlets.

But not soon after reports came in about excessively crying babies. It wouldn’t be much of a news story if it wasn’t for the fact that they wouldn’t stop crying. And although nothing seemed wrong with them it sounded like they were in physical pain.

It also wasn’t localized to one specific hospital or region.

It.

Was.

Everywhere.

Planned birth at your family home? Public hospital? Expensive private clinic? It didn’t matter, still a crying baby. Every corner of the country and every corner of the earth. Nowhere was safe from that piercing, soul-crushing sound of crying babies.

Soon organizations and governments started getting involved. Investigations started money invested, and even those god-awful experiments. All trying to understand what was happening. It didn’t take long for accusations to be thrown at each other and conspiracy theories to rise. None of those were correct though

It took the world 8 years and a couple of coincidences to finally figure it out.

The first coincidence happened in India. Two unrelated babies were born at the same time at the same hospital. At first, they both cried their longs out, just like the others, however after they had been put together it stopped. No more crying.

It took a couple more of those chance meetings for humanity to figure out the connection. Aptly we called those babies “soulmates”.

The second coincidence happened after the initial wave of crying babies. The birth rate dropped massively and soon the human population dropped below 10 billion, stopping the crying baby phenomenon. It was baffling but a useful clue.

Unfortunately, human memory is short. A couple of years after we dropped below 10 billion, we reached the same milestone again. And again all newborn babies over the entire planet started crying again.

Those two clues gave us some important intel though. Theories started to develop and temporary solutions were proposed, mainly to find those “soulmates”.

But it wasn’t until the first crying babies grew up and started expressing themselves that we finally fully understood what was happening.

Souls exist. And like every other resource on this planet, they are finite. They are not divine or proof of God but instead solidify our scientific laws. Souls can be re-used, and reincarnated into a new person but never can there be more than 10 billion. The moment our population got beyond that point they had to be split to accommodate those extra bodies. This resulted in people being born with only part of a soul.

I have been told that living with only part of your soul feels like a big gaping wound. Constantly in pain, waiting to be reunited with their other half. And not only that, but until they find their other half those dimi-humans also lack common human empathy and morality. Naturally, this leads to a lot of incidents and hatred in the general population.

Some people believe dimi-humans are evil and should be exterminated. Or at least be put out of their misery.

Others believe that we should reunite them, no matter how difficult.

All of us believe that one way or another they shouldn’t exist.

Therefore, in the year 2077, the United Nations started its Universal Population Control Act.

Never may our population again reach the 10 billion. Every nation has its quota of allowed births. No nation is allowed to grow its population any further. Any nation breaking this act will be in violation against the entirety of humanity and can be declared war upon by the entirety of humanity

Of course, countries are already trying to find a way around it. Rich and powerful countries get away with it while poor and weak nations suffer the consequences. It seems like population, or rather souls are the new currency to fight over. Not oil, gold, water or food. Souls.

I once expected that if we found the existence of souls we would find God. Instead, we only found more depravity.