With the headliner of today’s broadcast, such common prejudices could now incorporate not just failsafes but all heterosexual people, including heterosteriles and carriers. They were, as of Monday morning, Sydney time, no longer necessary.
Dex adjusted the camera as Lyle Winston and John Electra primped themselves. This report would first run live, then loop as filler for at least the next two days.
Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
“We’re headlining today with a new development from the NRO Summit taking place in Sydney,” Electra began, “where members of the Intercontinental Bureau of Genetic Regulation have made a historical vote to further standardize reproduction methods around the world. This comes close on the heels of a straight rights demonstration in New Zealand having turned deadly four days ago, as Antarctic Sanctuary protestors killed four policemen with illegal automatic weapons before being gassed and incarcerated in Canterbury Regional Prison. Today, Chair of the IBGR Nolan Beauvais issued a statement saying that Mandate 43, the first addition to the Rainbow Charter to be passed under that prestigious title since Mandate 42 two years ago, is an even larger social restructuring than has been rumored amongst the general public.”
Electra flashed his teeth at Winston. The holo and standard dimension cameras recorded them without judgment or pretext, but their glee was barefaced and unabashed. Anyone watching Twin Cities Com News would see it within seconds.
“That’s right, John,” Winston said. “To be phased in over the next ten years, Mandate 43 has piggybacked on nearly a century of research and development work for a potential system of nonbiological gestation. Well, that potential is now a reality, and IBGR members have presented a plan and budget for the construction of nearly three thousand gestation clinics across the entire span of the Recovered Territories. Also ruled under the new mandate, expanses still under reconstruction from the Bio Wars, particularly the East and West Coasts of the old United States, western Europe, the Ganges Delta, and the Sichuan basin of old China, will eventually host the development of further clinics in what is to be a hundred-year effort to rebuild once and for all the society that was all but obliterated by God’s Army in the twenty-second century.”
Dex’s gut tightened, sending a burst of worry to his throat.
“Again under the umbrella of Mandate 43 comes news that not only will the NRO oversee construction of these new gestation clinics, but they will also bring the concept of the Wilkes Land Antarctic Sanctuary mainstream by rehabilitating a number of old civilian work camps not used since the period of martial law following the Bio Wars. The camps will be refurbished into self-sufficient reserves in isolated but accessible areas of the Unrecoverable Territories around the world, and as clinical reproduction slowly takes over, ex-carriers, heterosteriles, and failsafes will be given their own sections of society to live in. These reserves will be fully functional and funded by the NRO as long as they are needed, then integrated into regular society once the recovery effort catches up with them.”
Once we all die, Dex thought.
Carrier or not, Diana Kring had disappeared without a trace. Was the government already clearing the way for its new utopia? Actively deleting this residual class of people from its perfect system and rebuilding a new, pure world?
Electra took the reporting reins once again. “Mandate 43 is to be the second of two steps in the NRO’s effort to re-energize and repopulate the regions of the world most challenged since the Bio Wars,” he said. “The first, being Mandate 39, successfully began the process of cleanup and recovery for these key regions they are hoping to repopulate. Thus far, nine years of effort have barely been enough to set the stage for recovery, but the Queen says the goal is reachable, step by step. Critics of the effort have not been silent, however, and concern over whether cities like Los Angeles, New York, London, Shanghai, and Tokyo will ever thrive again is rampant. Even so, NRO leaders are confident support for Mandate 43 will be widespread, despite the issues that are sure to be raised by straight rights activists and underground remnants of God’s Army, who have, according to the Queen, been difficult to weed out. An attempt to do so will be phased in as early as February, when all registered heterosexuals and carriers will be called to their nearest Bio Police field office for social assessment.”
Dex’s chest was hot. Social assessment. He felt as if all eyes were suddenly on him. He was the only failsafe in the studio.
Just do your job. Record the report. Worry later.
“Furthermore,” Electra continued, “as an addendum to the mandate, heterosexual males and females will no longer be able to display affection for one another in public. Those who resist this law will see immediate arrest. Secretary General Metzer explained himself that, and I quote, ‘We cannot show the younger generations that it is okay to accept such flagrant disregard for the proper structure of love, sex, and family. Tolerance is destruction.’”
The heat in Dex’s chest boiled into a rage. Human life in its most natural form of conception was already a thing of the past, and soon, even birth would be an extinct concept, at least in civilized society. But the construction of new sanctuaries? They would be nothing more than death camps, just like those European dictators built during the twentieth century.
How much time did heterosexuals really have left? If Grace did decide to fight the New Rainbow Order by letting her pregnancy continue, and if Dex followed her, did they or their unborn child really stand a chance?
Doubt clawed at his throat, like a serrated whisper saying no, no, no.
CHAPTER 13 (HER)
FINALLY, MANDATE 43 GAVE Devon Shemple the permission to discriminate openly.
“Your funding request for the Obesaland overhaul has been denied, Ms. Jarvis, but don’t you pretend for one second that it was just the committee’s decision. Mandate 43 changed everything, particularly NRO funding allotments, and there’s just no money now to forward the project.”
“No money, meaning it’s not a priority,” Grace said. The world seemed to be falling down around her, and here she sat, in Devon Shemple’s office, listening to the incongruous sounds of his cheap coffee table fountain running over the low but incessant dance track playing through his desk com speakers.
Shemple studied his fingernails, holding his bottom lip tight. “Truth be told, it isn’t a priority and never has been, Ms. Jarvis. These fatties make no effort to curb their problems and be of use to society. They’ve been a lost cause for centuries now, but there have always been people like you trying not to make it so. As lovely as such idealism is, it was never realistic. Not to mention heterosteriles just aren’t taken seriously anymore. A woman like you in charge of a project to save the fat people? Minneapolis would be a laughing stock.”
“Then why string me along all this time? It seems silly that the Neighborhood Development Council would have promoted me last year just to give me something to do.”
Shemple waved his wrist, then looked out the bright windows. “You had your supporters. Suffice it to say, most of them only wanted to keep in good standing with your parents, because they host some of the most fabulous soirées in the metro.”
It was a lost cause, but anger rose in Grace nonetheless. It was akin to that primal, defensive feeling with which she had faced her father. “I had more than just my supporters. I had the NRDA branch already approving forced closure of all stores that sell junk food in the area, not to mention Allied Fitness’s cooperation in sponsoring an energizing program for those who need an extra boost. Obesaland needed only sixty thousand dollars to help pay for the project’s peripheral costs. Sixty thousand dollars. Not much, considering the new heated sex cubes the city just installed outside last month. And what the NRO will be spending on their concentration camps.”
It was not a joke, but Shemple smiled anyway. “Mandate 43 is forcing realignment with all NRO local and intercontinental government bodies, and Obesaland just needs to find its place.”
Grace’s fingernails were digging into her
palms. “You don’t even question the morality of this,” she said. “It’s astounding. You’re just following along with the new mandate, no questions asked.”
“And aren’t you?”
Shemple’s accusatory question hit Grace square in the chest, but instead of making her afraid, it ignited an ember of pride in her growing womb. But she had to curb the feeling and curb it now, or he would report her as a probable resistor.
“Of course. I have to go along with it.”
“Then you’ll understand why I’m going to have to eliminate your position with the Neighborhood Development Council, effective immediately. We’ve already taken a vote and decided you are not a person who can adequately help deliver this branch of Minneapolis into the new era.”
“The new era,” Grace repeated. Through the window, her civilization’s rainbow-striped flag caught the wind, as if on cue. She chuckled. “You’ve wanted me out of here ever since you met me, because I was heterosterile. How long do you think it’s going to be, Devon Shemple, until all of this crumbles? Until your men in power move this suppression onto lesbians too and use them only for eggs? How long do you think humanity will be able to sustain itself?”
“Sustainability is not the question here, Ms. Jarvis. You are. See to it your office is cleared by the end of the day.”
“It’ll be done in ten minutes, sir.”
Leaving City Hall and seeing the rainbow flags surrounding the fountain in its courtyard, Grace’s throat constricted. Here it was, the storm people had once, long ago, called the gay agenda: rainbow flags, homosexual male dominance, and nothing to check and balance it. History was repeating itself, as if new social orders, attempts at restructuring social psyches, and genocide were somehow new and improved methods of fixing a broken planet. It had been hundreds of years since the last major dictators of the world had succumbed to the factions willing to fight them. Where now, in this rainbow-flagging, wrist-waving global state, were the dissenters? God’s Army had failed. Who now would rise?
Grace stood on the City Hall steps, hand on her abdomen, holding her secret.
This is it, she thought. The time when I have to make a choice. My ideal world is burning alive, and I’ve been given a gift to put out those flames, at least in a small way.
She walked across the courtyard to the train platform, where three transparent sex cubes for waiting train passengers were blasting their usual dance tracks. Inside them were nearly two dozen businessmen, some kissing each other, others giving and receiving fellatio. Their suit jackets were thrown on the ground, near their feet. Grace averted her gaze as she always did, and by the time her train sped away three minutes later, most of the men were too busy to catch their ride home.
A MEMORY (HIM)
THE NEW NEIGHBOR GIRL is peeing in the dirt, out in the woods behind their houses. Dexter is watching from behind his bedroom window, fascinated, hoping desperately his mother and mom won’t see. He has very few friends, because he doesn’t enjoy playing house and dress-up like all the other first grade boys he knows. Summer vacation is lonely.
The girl is beautiful. Dexter watched from his yard two days ago as the two dads, the boy, and the girl moved in. The boy is older, and he spent the day complaining at having to help haul things into the house. Obviously they aren’t that rich. Only one family on their street has ever hired movers—the people in the big house at the end—but Dexter is curious, because he saw one of the dads push the other out of his way when the boy and girl weren’t in the yard. Neither one looked very happy to be moving.
The girl pulls up her shorts and darts off into the woods. Her brown hair is long, curly, wild—like Sally Mushroom, the cartoon character.
Five seconds later, she emerges from the woods and runs straight through the yard to Dexter’s back door, then pounds on it.
He freezes.
“What on earth is that?” comes his mother Karen’s voice from the kitchen. “Dexter, did you lock yourself out?”
But the door isn’t locked, and the girl has already let herself in. She is wandering around the living room when Dexter finally gathers the courage to go meet her.
“Excuse me, can we help you?” Karen says, swinging her wooden cooking spoon at the girl.
“I’m wondering if you have anybody here to play with!” she says, her back to Dex. “I’m Matilda Liverpool! I’m new.”
“Yes, you obviously are,” Karen says. She gestures toward Dexter, as if to shoo Matilda toward him, and the girl spins around and walks right up to his face. Dexter immediately notices a light layer of hair covering Matilda’s top lip, but for some reason, the furry quality fits her perfectly.
“What’s your name?” she asks.
“Dexter,” he says.
“Dex!” she screams, then grabs him in a hug that knocks his wind out. “I’m going to call you Dex! Let’s go play in the woods! Dex, Dexy Dex Dex!”
“Not until you eat lunch,” Karen says, giving Dexter her favorite stern look, which is to widen her eyes and squeeze her lips together so it looks as if the bottom of her face is falling in on itself. Then she turns to Matilda. “I suppose I’ll be feeding you as well?”
“My dads are at work. My brother watches me during the day.”
“And how old are you?”
“Six and a half.”
“Jesus, Mary, and drill bits,” Karen says. “I’ll have to have a talk with your dads.”
Dexter notices that when she feeds Matilda lunch, his mother smiles for the first time in over a week. Is it because she wishes Matilda were her own? He never makes her smile like that. Maybe it doesn’t matter, because Matilda will be his friend, and his mother can give her all the food she wants.
CHAPTER 14 (HIM)
NOVEMBER ROLLED TOWARD DECEMBER, and as Mandate 43 began to seep into the social psyche, Dex and Grace slowly became lights in each other’s darkened world. There were decisions to make, and none of them presented a simple or obvious path. Grace’s dad Stuart had begun the process of finding an illegal solution to his daughter’s problem, urging her to remain as invisible as possible now that she was unemployed and to stay off her feet to avoid further bleeding. He had identified and informally reached out to an ex-doctor and heterosexual rights activist named Aiden Parsons, who was heterosexual himself and a rare example of one who had risen to society’s upper echelons. Now, his nonprofit organization called Failsafe Rise was under scrutiny by the government, rendering his future uncertain. To Stuart and Grace’s relief, Parsons had agreed to join them for a discreet lunch on the fourteenth of December.
Dex welcomed Grace into his small apartment so she could avoid the prying eyes of her father, brother, and nephew. Grace’s excuse to them was simple and practical: Dex was her new boyfriend, and neither of them wanted to have sex in the guest house, under everyone’s nose. It helped that her sexuality was already offensive to certain people on the premises—namely her father James.
Dex and Grace discussed their options, but sometimes, they simply played games, read in silence, or cooked meals. Dex had not been misguided the night of the orgy. His attraction toward Grace was even stronger now, and the comfort he felt with her was as genuine as it was soothing. One cold night, as Dex held her in the darkness of his bedroom, he considered—just for a moment—that if they eventually found a way to survive together, perhaps keeping the baby would be okay. Joyful, even. It was as if they were running straight for a cliff, hands together, facing questions more significant even than the choices: Could good come out of any attempt to resist the government? Was the life growing inside Grace truly worth the fight?
They decided to let Fletch Novotny in on the secret. If his friend Sheila ever returned his calls and could somehow help, it was worth risking exposure. Dex met him at Sterile Me Susan’s for a late drink on the nineteenth of November. Fletch already seemed on edge when they sat down at one of the back tables, and as the information about Grace came out, he tightened his lips and shook his head.
“Th
ey’re not going to get her too,” Fletch whispered. “I’ve been dabbling in some resistance shit the past few weeks but haven’t done anything heavy yet. I think I just needed a motherfucking reason. Now I’ve got one.” Dex started to give him a warning look, but Fletch held up a hand. “Don’t worry, I’ll be careful as hell.”
He agreed to try contacting Sheila again. In the meantime, he would sniff around his social circles for other potential options, and he would tell no one about Grace’s condition without first getting permission.
Dex returned home to find Grace sleeping. He joined her in his bed, but sleep remained elusive as the night progressed. Two sides of him were fighting a cataclysmic battle: recklessness and complacence. Recklessness would be to join Grace and search out a way for their child to be born, even at the cost of their freedom. Complacence would be to sit back and let the New Rainbow Order unleash his future for him, whatever it might entail.
“You don’t have to choose now,” Grace told him over breakfast on the third of December, a Monday. She was dressed in a pair of his flannel pants and a large T-shirt, looking particularly rosy in the cheeks.
For the first time in his life, Dex was finding it difficult to be honest with himself. The fear that he would be too weak to face the consequences head-on showed his true colors, and they were dull and muddy. Later that day, however, Grace broke down in his arms for the first time. It came on the shoulders of terror, uncertainty, and the prospect of evaluating morality’s murky spectrum for the sake of their unborn child. It gave Dex hope for himself when he realized he wanted nothing more than to console her.
He did so in the form of strawberries and a hot bath, in tandem.
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