Tall and short cities
Space is always at a premium when living underground. A solution to the problem which some cities and settlements have arrived at is to mandate the manipulation of the population to create short people. Those which have not taken this step are known as tall people.
History[edit | edit source]
When underground habitats were first being built, nanotechnological mining techniques were still in their infancy; they were only used to "soften" rock, while large excavation machinery was used to displace what was left. This kind of mining was a long and difficult process, and it was obvious that people who were more compact wouldn't need as much space - making it possible to expand the habitable areas more quickly. Smaller people would additionally consume fewer resources, which was appealing at a time when the techniques for underground living were still being developed.
The idea of shortening has been developed numerous times in diverse communities. In the United States genes from the Aka, a pygmy people whose last few members had their genomes sequenced and then published in the 2060s, were introduced into the children of the founder populations, making them part Aka. Genes from Andamanese tribes have been used in the same fashion in Dimapur, India and likely in parts of China and ASEAN. Other methods include growth hormone-prohibiting drugs given to children in Ljubljana and selective breeding in Palmares.
Legality[edit | edit source]
Africa[edit | edit source]
There are social taboos against many forms of genetic engineering in the African cities, and these taboos are especially strong in the case of shortening due to the perception that it will turn people into pygmies, who were considered to be subhuman when they still existed.
Europe[edit | edit source]
The European Constitution forbids genetic engineering for social purposes. Austria, Portugal, and Slovenia have argued that shortening is a health measure, which is specifically permitted in that same constitution.
North America[edit | edit source]
Shortening populations is a legally gray subject in the United States. While the 30th amendment prohibited genetic modification of fetuses except to prevent "grave errors in the human form [or] debilitating illnesses," the question of whether or not being naturally tall is sufficient is an open one. The Supreme Court ruled in Kurtwell v. San Francisco Department of Public Health (2114) that health authorities had the right to prohibit shortening, but left unanswered the question of whether it should be regulated on a national level.
South America[edit | edit source]
Genetic modification has been widely practiced in South America since the 2020s, which is why Novo Brasilia and Buenos Aires are among the blondest cities in the world, being 96% and 99% blonde respectively. While shortening is not mandatory, few accommodations are made for tall people in Brazil and Argentina has imposed a nationwide moratorium on construction intended for people over 170 centimeters (around five feet and six inches in height) in height. Colombia, the only other surviving state on the continent, is also the only one which forbids shortening.