It is 2500. In Eurafrica, every child gets the same optimal start in life. Shira, who lives in the hyper-dense city of New Jozi, investigates old birthing traditions and is conducting an unorthodox experiment. On the other side of the planet, midwife Lucot struggles to access technology appropriate for the less evolved American context. They collaborate with shared curiosity and compassion to explore the balance between useful social norms and individual freedom.

Judy Backhouse writes optimistic science fiction to explore better futures for humankind and planet Earth.

Before we can bring about better futures they have to be imagined, to enter the domain of the possible. Stories are a way to adjust the possibility horizon, expand our minds.

Judy is retired from a long career in which she designed and built information systems and researched electronic governance at the United Nations University.

Having earnestly pursued truth and explored the limits of evidence-based knowledge, she now (in the words of the immortal Le Guin) makes stuff up.