However, when her father, a scientist, tells her that they found a vaccine for the disease, and can vaccinate frozen fetuses that have been stored for IVF before the disease spread, Jessie decides to volunteer to get implanted with such a fetus - which would mean her certain death, and the potential survival of a baby. Her parents are not happy, and even her father, who lauded the volunteers as heroines, is, suddenly, not so happy that his own daughter wants to sacrifice her life.
Tropes present in this work:
- Cool Aunt: Jessie's aunt is one of those at the beginning; a single woman who works in theatre, and encourages Jessie to try out the lighting equipment herself.
- Cozy Catastrophe: There is the theoretical possibility that mankind will cease to exist, but it is not very threatening for women who can avoid getting pregnant, and not at all threatening for men.
- Heroic Sacrifice: What Jessie thinks she is intending to do. One could also consider it a Too Dumb to Live, though.
- Hypocrite: Jessie's father lauds volunteers as heroes but refuses to let his daughter become one.
- The Kindnapper: Jessie's father kidnaps her so that she cannot get herself killed.
- Medical Rape and Impregnate: Mentioned as something that happens "in China", or someplace far away.
- Messianic Archetype: Jessie Lamb ... interesting name, is it not? And she intends to sacrifice her life so that mankind can live. (She is just one of many, but the only one we get to see who has a life worth living.)
- Out with a Bang: A very likely scenario. Jessie's aunt removes her contraceptive implant and commits what is essentially suicide by having vaginal intercourse with a man.
- Sympathetic Adulterer: Jessie's mother has an affair. It is hinted at that she feels "invisible" to her husband. He also had an affair of his own in the past, so she's not even the one who started it.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: The feminist extremist group FLAME are extremist only in theory (they believe MDS to be an intentionally engineered disease with which misogynists intend to kill women), but in practice just stand around in front of clinics, either protecting the researchers from other extremist groups (there are religious extremists who are against science), or preventing girls from going inside to get themselves killed by letting the scientists implant a fetus into their womb. The fights against other extremists occasionally get violent, but when Jessie wants to get past the FLAME activists guarding the clinic, she gets past them with a lie, and they even wish her a nice day.
