A Post-apocalyptic world.

Thirty years ago, fertility collapsed. Everywhere, in everyone, without any identified cause—no disease, no contamination, no culprit. Scientists searched until there were no scientists left. The world didn't collapse: it faded away, slowly, politely, first by closing nurseries, then schools, then maternity wards, and finally by transforming maternity wards into warehouses.

Today, a birth is a continental event. Fewer than a thousand are born each year across the entire former country. The world is populated by old people in museum-cities too large for them, which no longer have the strength to maintain or demolish them. No one has been buried for years—they no longer have the hands. Crops rot in the fields for lack of hands. Knowledge dies in libraries that no one visits.

And then there's what loneliness has done to the survivors: thirty years searching for a partner who no longer exists, a widowhood without widowhood. The world hasn't just aged: it has desired, relentlessly, without hope, and desire without hope corrupts men better than any catastrophe.