“Yes, sir,” replied the flight engineer. “There is a small time-lag, but we’ve been watching the news.”
“So you are aware of what has happened to the men in every country on every continent?”
“We are … Have you checked the Pygmies in Africa?”
“Every variety of man on the planet has been checked!” the NASA administrator stated. “Including the Pygmies.”
“And none of them have … Everyone’s …?”
“Absolutely.”
“What about animals?”
“Fruitful and multiplying! Now please show me your genitalia.”
The whole shocked world held its breath in preparation for watching a critical outer-space striptease. The astronaut, however, refused to remove his suit, since his instruments supposedly showed that his sexual organ was intact.
“What instruments, Mr. Culkin?” the administrator asked indignantly. “What are you up to?”
“Um …” Culkin replied. “An instrument …” And he swam into another room like Ichtyandr—a room with no video cameras. It was time for the commander of the Russian space agency’s mission control center, Butcherov, to try.
“Bovinov, show me your prick!” he commanded crudely.
They managed to bleep out the last word in Russia, where it could have brought astronomical fines on the networks. Bovinov, without a second’s hesitation, pulled down his track bottoms, and the world gasped. Bovinov had his tool.
“Boom!” the Russian cosmonaut exclaimed. “How do you like that?” The connection was unexpectedly terminated when he asked that question, but the world lit up with hope.
NASA and the leadership of Russia’s space industry both analyzed the footage independently and came to the conclusion that Bovinov had mocked up his genitalia with Mold-It-Yourself-brand modeling clay, which was always kept on the station to make sure the astronauts’ fine motor skills didn’t deteriorate. Upon magnification, the specialists spotted the tub in the corner of the frame. Analysts in both countries noted the quality of the clay forgery attached to Bovinov’s body by a thread tied in clever little knots. He had nailed both the color and the texture, but had significantly increased its size. On the other hand, who was to say what he was packing before this global drama? His fine motor skills hadn’t deteriorated, no doubt about that … The entire global community soon found out about his lowly deception, while hundreds of millions of women who had been yearning to meet Bovinov simultaneously sank into despair, realizing that they would have to content themselves with marital aids. The lesbian community was the least disappointed, however; they had begun to lay claim to the right to govern all of humanity. There was a certain logic to it, since they were the only group whose sexual orientation had the potential to be fulfilled. Nearly all of the women on the planet soon joined that sexual minority, turning it into a majority of almost 100 percent. Their sex lives were still a source of delight, that hadn’t changed … The president of the United States, a woman elected as a Democrat, proclaimed the hegemony of feminism, dug Monica Lewinsky out of obscurity, and made the dumb, fat broad the secretary of state. The American leader also called for global elections, in which only women would participate. She also sorrowfully stated that humanity had no more than one hundred and twenty years left, if one counted the infants born that day. FYI, all of the newborn boys lacked sexual organs and already looked a lot like girls … The good news was that the planet had abundant resources, and, given these circumstances—just a measly hundred years to account for!—every inhabitant would be set for life. The markets nearly doubled in response to this announcement, while retail prices plummeted …
The only opponents to this female hegemony were the leaders of the world religions, most of whom hadn’t been using their male assets because of monastic vows or celibacy requirements. These hierarchs insisted that power be transferred to the Church, and specifically to untainted men.
The women guffawed in response and used the newspapers to lampoon the religious leaders who were knee-deep in the sins of homosexuality and pedophilia. One especially zealous lesbian argued that religious institutions were unnecessary, since the Lord had clearly indicated that it was His will to nullify the human race. Her position was challenged by a woman researcher who held that a hundred years was enough for women to learn to have children without male spermatozoa playing any role in the process.
The situation was calmer in the Third World, and in Russia. Aside from the lesbian groups, women here did not raise a storm. Despite what Lenin said, they had historically chosen the role of kitchen maid over president. They were already satisfied with their husbands coming home on time now that they had lost their desire to play dominos and watch limp, homosexual soccer. They used to say there was no sex in the Soviet Union, but now there really was no sex, not that it had been that great to begin with. The ballet was theirs, too!
The world’s men had lost their testosterone. Their blood was water, their brains were fatty nodules. The entire male population of Europe spent most of their time in movie theaters, where they ate popcorn by the ton and marveled at how passionate the men on the screen were. Why kiss someone’s breast or grab someone by the ass? That was as uninteresting as it was unhygienic. The porn industry collapsed within months, despite the lesbian market.
Radical Muslims blamed the way the world had changed on Jews, Christians, Taoists, and Hindus. Basically, everyone except themselves. This declaration was nothing more than that, however, because of the loss of martial spirit and desire for self-sacrifice. The last shahid snuck into Paris, planning to blow himself up on the Champs-Élysées, but when he heard a speech at a rally there about the superiority of women, he decided not just to embrace their ideas, but also to remake his body into a female one. He still did wind up exploding that evening, in the garage where he lived, when he started trying on women’s underwear.
Gender reassignment surgery became widespread, especially in the developed countries. Men everywhere voluntarily subjected themselves to vaginoplasties, while The Vagina Monologues, once a hit, was no longer viewed as relevant and soon disappeared from the stages of the world. Alcohol sales remained at their previous level, however; people of all genders still needed endorphins, so they continued to drink prodigiously. Plus, spending on food products tripled. After just a few months, men were up to 30 percent heavier, and some ballooned to twice their original size. Uncounted talents were discovered among the plump male herd. Two out of ten developed magical singing voices and lined up for auditions at all the world’s opera houses, but opera was soon abolished entirely. What the hell good was it, when there were dozens of countertenors on every street, driving their neighbors into blinkered hatred? Baritones vanished into oblivion, to say nothing of basses … Ballet didn’t last long either, obviously. The newly flabby male dancers could no longer jump around and do grand battements. Art degenerated. Museums were deserted. Nobody wanted to look at meaty, varicose-vein-riddled women like the ones Rubens painted. The world was unisex, and medieval-style street theater was revived—fat women and former men enacting scenes of bygone days so the audience could get some yuks at the expense of the characters’ attempts to couple. Men’s sports disappeared. The fate of soccer has already been described, but one could also recount the disappearance of hockey, all combat sports, etc. The new vacancies were filled by women, who were now rooting and playing for Real Madrid and Barcelona, lifting weights, and doing mixed martial arts. Many other human achievements vanished into oblivion, but the greatest loss was scientific thought, which had always been steered by sheer genius, multiplied by testosterone. The world community just didn’t give a damn about that, to put it mildly. What on earth did they need science for, if there were only three generations left? Everyone was perfectly satisfied with the gadgets they had; they didn’t need the newest iPhone! And studying the universe was just a waste of time …
On the other hand, war practically came to an end. A couple of lesbian gangs started duking it out
among themselves, but the police soon lowered the temperature by imposing long prison sentences on the offenders so they would not prevent humanity from living out its last century in peace and friendship. Surprisingly enough, there was not even a hint of anarchy. Nearly the entire population of the earth became law-abiding citizens and supported the planet’s peaceful order. The hospitals and banks were still operating, the trains ran on time, the planes were flying, and the restaurants and saunas were open … True, there was a revolution in the world of religion. Priests, rabbis, church fathers, muftis, and Brahmans of every stripe were dramatically drummed out, but it was done with the clear and recognized goal of building a new, ecumenical religion in their place. But without all those churches! It was clear to the entire population that there was one Lord for all of them, since He had not spared a single denomination.
So things settled down and life went back to normal. People worked and earned money. Petya Savushkin, the newly obese trauma specialist, had kept his old job, while Lilia Zolotova had become an activist, elected herself to the sexual majority, and begun riding around on a Harley with other bellicose lady motorcyclists. The club elected her as their leader, while the Therapist, former president of the Daylight Dragons, was removed from office. He went to work at the botanical garden, where he’d gotten a job as a nightingale—he’d really gotten lucky in the voice department!
Mr. Arseny Iratov stopped taking his pills, despite the fact that withdrawal had almost killed him so recently. His soul was at peace, even without his medicine, and he slept as sweetly as he had in childhood. Iratov limply attempted to continue designing his peculiar buildings, but his heart wasn’t in it anymore; it was just a habit. Nothing really came of that, and he abandoned his office and his assistant, Vitya, without regret, retiring to live on his investments and spend most of his time playing cards with Sytin. He cheated from force of habit, and the fattened-up andrologist didn’t notice. His clinic went under, since it specialized in a branch of medicine that was no longer necessary, and he had neither the energy nor the desire to go into a different one. His savings were intact, plus his friend Arseny was not tightfisted and gave him large sums of money on various occasions. Mr. Iratov would sometimes go to the floor above and visit Vera, though he acted like a relative toward her now. He provided her with funds as well, and she would serve him tea, though Eugene did not like their little get-togethers. The young man ruled the young woman as he saw fit, harshly and tyrannically, only tolerating Iratov for his money. During their sexual play, he sometimes simply flogged her tender kidskin tushy with a whip, but he was also wont to bite her breasts like a dog, and when she said he was hurting her and asked him to be gentle, Eugene would haughtily warn her that one percentage point of unexhausted patience stood between her and losing him.
“Do you know how many women in the world are yearning for me without even knowing that I exist?”
“Yes …” Vera answered submissively, but tears of misery were flowing from her eyes.
She resolved to leave Eugene several times, but only in her imagination; she was not strong enough to do it in reality. Her will was as soft as paraffin wax. The lower parts of her body always defeated her brains, and she indulged her lover’s every whim, giving him all the money from Iratov, desperately hoping she would get pregnant, even going out on to the terrace naked in the dead of winter to amuse her lover. In those moments when he was drunk with power, Eugene would smile and feel that he was growing fangs. It only felt that way, though. As the last young man who still had real, natural primary sex characteristics, he was waiting for the moment to announce himself to the world—“Behold, I am the savior of the human race, and only my seed can combat God’s decision …” He was not hungry to become a deity, though he thought he could if he wanted. What he wanted, and ferociously, was to defeat the Almighty, break His will and live according to his own!
I met him one more time. In the hope of saving my fallen Verushka, I waited for the young man outside of Iratov’s apartment building. He recognized me, even stopped and looked me up and down attentively. Then he moved with a sudden jerk and tried to grab my crotch but encountered emptiness.
“What do you want?” he inquired condescendingly.
“Let her go.”
“Go to you, you mean?” Eugene guffawed. “Your pants are empty! What would you do with her?”
“My pants have always been empty. I was born that way, and I don’t want her the way you do.”
“Oh, so you’re an angel? A sexless angel?!” He released his grip on my pants. “So what do you need her for?”
“She’s my Verushka-a-a-a …” I said, softly exaggerating the ‘a.’ “She is the fruit enjoyed illicitly, the reason the world is the way it is! Let her go!”
“I could kick your ass right here, angel, but I won’t. I’m an angel, too, I just have balls. I’ll give it to you straight—you’ll soon be able to collect your … what do you call her? ‘Verushka-a-a-a’?”
“Precisely.” I looked at him for a moment, then punched him in the face. He had no idea how powerful the blow would be, so he didn’t really try to dodge. That misjudgment left his nose jammed between the fractured bones of his face. Eugene grabbed at his ruined features, looked at me—with horror, now—and ran back inside, abundantly dripping blood on the green summer grass.
He’d let me come a little closer to her … I sighed heavily, mourning my lost illusion, and thought that the fruit could be driven by its own will to seduce a man into tasting it, illicit as it was. That was what had happened in this case …
Back at Senescentova’s apartment, I collapsed into bed without even setting an alarm. When I closed my eyes, I thought about Major Belic and Colonel Jamin. Once the army was abolished, they collected their nice officers’ pensions and settled in a little dacha community called “the Orioles,” building their houses next to each other. They played chess and drank vodka every day. Juliet Adamian lived nearby and would pay the retired officers rare visits; she would always bring them dolmas … The ex-chess champion Estin finally realized that he had sufficient funds to be at ease for the rest of his days. He was still married to Bella Pushkina, who found that the lack of shortages more than made up for his plentiful shortcomings. She attended the small local parish of the new ecumenical church. The son Iratov had with his first love, Svetlana, was part of the same majority as all the other men on the planet. The elderly and peeling Gryazev tried to talk Svetlana into letting him live with her, saying that he still had everything. Well, not everything, but he joked lewdly that the façade was still intact, and who needs to pitch a tent when you have a façade? The pathetic old man was mercilessly exiled and instructed to fuck the hell off for the rest of his days.
Almost every day, Alice, young resident of the village of Kostino in the Vladimir Region, would go outside wearing a white dress, bearing a small bouquet of cornflowers, and stand on the dusty country road, her eyes following it through the flowering fields and the neighboring villages, waiting for her unforgettable prince with maidenly trepidation. Only the hot wind came to meet her, wrapping Alice’s unneeded wedding dress tightly around her knees …
Then they called me.
I lunged for the phone. If I’d had a human heart, it might not have been able to withstand so much tension and emotion. Hundreds of years of expectation and hopeless suffering. Crushed under the fear of complete annihilation, it might have stopped like the mechanism of a clock or exploded like a nuclear bomb.
Obviously, nobody said anything on the other end of the phone pressed to my ear, but the necessary information, a deposit of silence into my expanded consciousness, proved all-encompassing and opened all of its meanings to me.
“Thank you … thank you …” I whispered as I raced off to Belorussky Station. “Thank you …” I got in line at Window 4 to buy a ticket to Prague.
“Adimus!” I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder and turned around to see the aged Antipatros with his eternally patchy beard. “So they fina
lly called you!”
“Yes,” I managed, full of love for my kinsman who had lived in exile for so long, even longer than I had. “Yes, they did … and, unless I’m mistaken, they called you, too!”
“And do you know what to do now?”
“I have the plan in my head.”
“Excellent! We’ll get round-trip tickets with flexible return dates.”
“Oh yes,” I agreed. We had already nearly made it to the front of the line when, of all people, my former neighbor Ivanov crashed into us from behind. Can you imagine?
“Why are you here?” I asked in surprise.
“Me?” My nervous neighbor exhaled the stale scent of alcohol. “I’m, you know … going to Prague …”
“Going for the beer, Mr. Homegrown Merchant?”
“They called …” my neighbor disclosed. “They called me.”
“Welcome, Angel Ivanov!” Antipatros greeted him. “Is your brain back in working order?”
“Yeah …”
“So you really are my brother?” I spoke with difficulty, absolutely astonished.
“Kinda …” Ivanov answered shyly.
“Yeah, yeah, he’s your brother,” Antipatros explained as he approached the window and put his money down. “Three economy-class tickets to Prague! He isn’t your parole officer, though!”
“Reserve a whole luxury sleeper car,” Ivanov demanded with the grandeur of a hussar. “What good will money do me now?” he elaborated, skewing his mouth into a smile. Then we spent half the day sitting in a nearly empty café, talking and drinking vodka like regular people.
“So what are you in for?” I asked Antipatros.
“Why’d they exile me, you mean?”
“Precisely.”
“I got in a fight with Jacob, Abraham’s grandson. How about you?”
“I poked fun at the boss … tried to get a rise out of Him about Job. I said he could only be so faithful and observant because he was rich and happy.”
The Tool & the Butterflies Page 31