With a population exceeding 25 billion and a gender ratio of three men for every woman, the people of earth have nowhere else to expand but out into space. Providing much needed raw materials, the growing spacer population is the engine that helps keep society moving forward. Space is a dangerous place, a lonely place. Even within the boundaries of a solar system filled with growing industry, long months of travel can make the most stable minds feel trapped and restless. And with a ship full of men, in the darkness between the asteroid belts and Mars... trapped and restless quickly turns a ship into a graveyard.
Into this void stepped the Caregiver Corporation. Modeled on the Japanese Geisha tradition, the Caregiver Corporation helps provide spacers with talented female crew members, charged with keeping their crew functioning as a cohesive unit. In its quest to find these crew members, Caregivers developed the legendary DeCorvin Process. In addition to enhancing the abilities of the female recipients, giving them long lives and good health; it also makes use of one resource earth has in abundance - men. The men who undergo the DeCorvin Process come out young and female on the other side, ready to use the knowledge of their previous lifetime to fill a role far more important than just sexual release. These women remind the men of their crews of their part in civilization, of the society waiting for them at the end of their journey and of reasons not to give in to the animal and gnawing madness of being alone without the wind and the stars above.
This universe was created by E.E. Nalley in his story 'Professional Courtesy'.
