Seven Billion

   Florian slammed his fists down on his desk, threw his mask down, and took a far too long pull from his oxygen bottle.
    “Put that back on Flo, you know as well as anyone that the main scrubbers are on their last legs” Charise admonished, not bothering to look up from her station. “Again?” she asked, rubbing her eyes as she stretched back in her chair.
    “You expect something different?” Flo replied, wheezing slightly as he strapped his ventilator back on. “Same damn thing every time. Remind me again why we do it?”
    “Boss lady tells us to” shrugged Charise.
    “And that's good enough for you? Boss lady says to do it, and we don't question it?” Flo asked, knowing the answer already.
    “Boss lady does her job, engineers do their jobs, we make a crap ton of fake people and hope one or two of them are smarter than our engineers” replied Charise, trying to convince herself it really was worth it.  “Seven billion again?”
    “Seven billion again. Same every time. They hit seven billion and their brains start turning to mush. Every damn time. Is it a computing problem? Is seven billion just too many for it to keep going?” Florian asked, not specifically to Charise, knowing full well she didn't have an answer.
    “Fucking hissing again” Charise muttered, crossing the room to bang on the housing for the scrubber. “Remember that early run? I thought we had it that time. They never even hit half a degree. I thought for sure there was something in that one. They never hit seven billion either. No brain mush in the lot”
     “I think about it every day. We did get a few ideas out of it, but the bastards were too smart. They didn't fix it, they prevented it. You know if they're still running it?” he asked, plugging his coffee into the drinking port in his respirator.
    “Last I heard, yeah. Were not getting anything out of it though, they're way beyond our guys now. I think I heard something about farming Mars and terraforming Venus. They're somewhere in the early 3000’s now, and they still haven't hit seven billion. Their tech is so far beyond our understanding that we can't pull anything useful out anymore. I think they just keep it going as some kind of symbol now” she replied, sliding back into her station. “So brain mush, but anything else? Anything remotely useful?”
    “Not really, pretty much the same as always. Petty wars, minor dictatorships, then the meltdown starts. They had a couple of big wars in the low billions, even threw a couple of nuclear bombs, and a brutal populist, but the really wacky stuff started in the seven billions and went right off the rails by eight billion.”
    “Sounds like most of the other runs “ replied Charise. “Was there anything interesting we should account for in the next run?”
    “It was all pretty standard at the end. The usual global power breakdown. Three main powers, one in Asia, one in Eurasia,   and one in North America this time.  The Asian one was the most stable, but the most routinely brutal. The Eurasian one had stable leadership, but their leader himself was psychologically unstable and was the biggest threat to the rest of the world. The North American nation was the real wildcard. Sometimes they were a stabilizing influence, and other times they were just as dangerous as the Eurasian nation. They had what they thought of as a democracy, unlike the other two. It caused a lot of instability at the end” Flo explained to Charise.
    “Were there any minds we could go back and tap into?” she asked, “Anything of value at all?”
    “There were some, but mostly before they could be any use to us. There were one or two near the end, the usual outliers once the mush starts to set in. I really think that's worth looking into, it's like the system knows its coming and tries to compensate. But they didn't listen to them. They had this strange idea that everyone should be listened to equally. Instead of paying attention to the outliers they listened to the politicians. They actually seemed to believe the answer was money. Their big idea was to make the people doing the polluting pay for the privilege”.
    “Wait, they made them pay to pollute?” Charise asked, giving her head an involuntary shake.  “Did they even manage to slow it down?”
    “Not a bit. Funny thing is, that's not what finished them. In the end those three nations I was telling you about just ended up throwing nukes at each other” Flo explained.
    “Fuck” was all Charise could manage, rubbing her temples, trying to fight off the inevitable headache that would come from presenting this to Boss lady. “You going tonight?” she finally asked. 
    “This is what, 34? I don't think so, they've lost their appeal” Flo replied.
    “It’s a sealed room with the good scrubbers, no masks required” she encouraged.
    “Yeah, that's how the kid lives all the time though, I don't want to be part of it”
    “Don't be an asshole Flo, you know he hates being called that. Besides, like you said, he's turning 34, hardly a kid anymore” Charise scolded.
    “He's the youngest person on the planet, he's the kid. Besides, I'm not using that name. Boss lady named him Hope and somehow I'm the asshole?”
    “Have it your way, I'm getting a lung full of the good stuff” she replied. “Any thoughts on the next run?”
    “I've been thinking, what if we introduced a latent gene that causes infertility in maybe a quarter of the population? We could have it triggered by some sort of virus that we could drop in at about four billion. Might buy us some time before we hit seven billion, give those outliers a shot” Flo offered.
    “What the hell, give it a shot, how long do you need to write it?”
    “Already done, just give the word”
    “Alright, shut it down, wipe this mess from the core and let's give it another go. I have to go get ready anyway” Charise said as she got up to leave.
    With that Florian turned the lights out on one world and started bringing them up on another.