Shepherds
J Drew BrumbaughWhen there is a significant decrease in the world’s food supply, the situation leads inevitably to turmoil and conflict. In one possible future, this shortage has left millions of people without enough food to survive. Those without sustenance, the poor and the dis-advantaged, have rioted in protest and their violent search for food spills across international borders. Marauding bands have pillaged through the countryside, hungry for even meager foodstuffs. Old hatreds have resurfaced, border skirmishes have increased, and world stability is threatened.
The oceans, once an abundant source of food, have been over-fished and now only the wealthy can afford seafood. But mankind, ever ingenious, has resorted to radical science to solve the food supply problem and return the oceans to productive aquaculture. Bio-engineered mermen and merwomen, known as shepherds, aided by trained dolphins, herd huge schools of re-engineered tuna at the whim of multinational seafood corporations. Held by those companies in indentured servitude, these much-maligned “cowboys” live aboard submersible rafts in areas of the open ocean allocated to them by international agreements. Further complicating matters, the partitioning of the oceans into ranches has severely limited the ability of independent fishermen to make a living. Those that continue to fish legally have banded together to fight for their rights utilizing the world courts. Other fishermen have found more lucrative though less honorable work.
Desperate men do desperate things and the oceans are now filled with treachery, pirating, and worse.