Parallel Lives
Before we get started, a brief introduction to set the scene...
The year is 2025, and in a parallel universe to our own, men have become endangered. A virus - commonly known as Anderson-Swift's Disease, after the Victorian scientist who originally identified it - that attacks the male immune system, has resulted in a world where only one in five boys survive into adulthood. Those that are fortunate to live to the "survival milestone" of eighteen years of age find themselves living in a world where they are greatly outnumbered by women. As an unfortunate side effect of the virus, men who survive to adulthood also find themselves rendered infertile by the effects of the disease. However, a small percentage of men experience a temporary window of fertility - an opportunity for procreation that simply cannot be allowed to be wasted.
With so relatively few adult men to go around, it is no wonder that the sexual marketplace has changed beyond recognition. Sex-starved women hound and pursue men for sex, causing men to have to take measures to protect themselves from unwanted advances, and in some cases, being raped. Men now find themselves in what has become a woman's world.
This story follows a group of young people living in this parallel universe where women greatly outnumber adult men.
Part One focuses on two young men, Rupert and Kevin, who find themselves unwillingly being drafted into the Global Repopulation Program.
In Part Two, we get to know two young women, Claire and Kat, as they embark on a journey to volunteer for the Repopulation Program, but not before enjoying an afternoon of indulgence with a couple of handsome "masseurs".
Finally, in Part Three we meet Johnny, a young and enthusiastic personal assistant to a junior executive at an interactive media company in London, who is tasked with entertaining an important investor from across the pond, and discovering that she has more than just a trip to the theatre in mind.
It goes without saying that all the characters portrayed in this story are over 18 years of age, and any resemblance of any character or any company, or any thing for that matter, to anyone living or dead is entirely unintentional and totally coincidental. So there!
Right then, on with the story...
PART ONE - Rupert and Kevin
You are invited to attend...
Rupert Stephens, or "Roo" to all his close friends and colleagues, arrived at work at his usual time on a chilly Monday morning wearing his usual attire of a smart three piece suit (charcoal grey today), a crisp white shirt complete with silver and black onyx cuff links, a vibrant pink silk tie that matched the back panel of his waistcoat, smart black shoes that were polished to an almost mirror-like shine, all finished off with his favourite pocket watch on a silver chain tucked into his waistcoat pocket. He was the very vision of smart male business efficiency, even though his position at the insurance company he worked for was a lowly one. His mother only wanted the best for her son and encouraged him to always do his best in order to compete with his female contemporaries, who due to the virtue of being born female automatically gave them a head start in life.
"Always dress smartly,"
she had repeatedly told him as a young boy.
"Look your best, smell your best, and do your best, and you will rise above the others."
So he'd taken his mother's advice to heart and always dressed smartly whatever the occasion. Appearances were everything for a young man wanting to make a name for himself in a woman's world - the right clothes, the right hairstyle, the right body, the right smell - all were vitally important. He was just as fastidious about his personal hygiene, routinely taking three showers a day: one in the morning before setting out to work, another after his daily lunchtime gym session, and a third in the evening before relaxing in front of the TV. He wore only the best aftershave his junior level salary could afford, and had a plethora of body washes, shower gels and all manner of bath time products tucked away in his bathroom cabinet.
Rupert did his absolute utmost to work hard at his job, and his prospects were good for a young man despite his rather dubious past, and one day he knew he'd make it to senior management level at least. His life now was a far cry from what it had been as a young man, a time during which he'd done many things he was now rather ashamed of in order to pay his way through university.
The world had changed dramatically since the first cases of Anderson-Swift's Disease had been discovered in the latter half of the nineteenth century - a disease that only affected boys. Today, over one hundred and seventy years later, the disease was still responsible for causing most boys to die before reaching adulthood.
In July of 1852, several boys in a remote Nepalese village started dying inexplicably of a mysterious ailment. In contrast, the girls of the village, for whatever reason, were largely unaffected by it, exhibiting only very mild symptoms that passed after a couple of days. In only a matter of weeks, almost every single boy in the village had died from the mysterious ailment, leaving just a single survivor. Rather shockingly, it wasn't long before boys in a neighbouring village also displayed symptoms of the disease. Whatever the mysterious pathogen was, it was highly contagious, fatal to most young boys, and spreading fast.
The disease came to the attention of Professor Charles Anderson-Swift, a renowned epidemiologist from Oxford University who was at the time working with a team of missionaries in a hospital in Kathmandu. After several months of tireless work from Armstrong-Swift and his small team to identify the nature of the infection and why it only seemed to be fatal in boys, the disease continued to spread throughout the country. However, their efforts to try and contain the disease were in vain, and within months it had decimated the population - over eighty-five percent of boys in Nepal died within the space of six months. The disease came to be known as Anderson-Swift's disease, or simply "Swift's" for short.
The disease manifested itself with mild symptoms at first - a slight dizzyness and mild nausea, but then the infected boys' condition rapidly deteriorated and the symptoms worsened to include severe headaches, fever, and soaring blood pressure. The progress of the disease was horrifyingly quick, with infected boys experiencing excruciating eclampsia before falling into a coma after 24 hours and succumbing to the mystery disease within 48 hours of the first symptoms presenting themselves. The name "Swift's" became darkly ironic, given the rapid nature of the disease.
The disease soon spread into neighbouring parts of India and Pakistan, and then continued to spread across Tibet, China, through Afghanistan and western Asia and eventually into Europe. It took only five years for the disease to spread to every continent, killing boys in their millions, presenting nothing less than the very real threat of human extinction. The disease didn't yet have a scientific name, and with no conclusive evidence as to what manner of disease was causing boys, and
only
boys, to fall ill and die so abruptly, it was clear that drastic measures had to be taken. But it wasn't for over a hundred years before advancements in medical technology enabled the mystery virus to finally be formally identified.
After the world's best scientists (the vast majority of whom were now female) had slavishly researched for decades, Anderson-Swift's Disease was finally identified as being a mutated and highly contagious airborne immunodeficiency virus that attacked the immune systems of humans with Y chromosomes - in short, all males. But the damage it had done to the population had already been done by then - by the time it had been identified, many hundreds of millions of boys had died.
Some boys did survive the virus however, and for whatever reason never succumbed to the contagion despite being exposed to it. Eventually it was discovered that by the time a male reached eighteen years of age, the risk of him dying from the disease was massively reduced, and though it would remain in his system for the rest of his life, he would go on to lead a normal life expectancy.
The fatality of the majority of the world's boys was just one aspect of the havoc the virus had wreaked upon humanity, however. Those boys who were lucky to survive into adulthood were almost always rendered infertile. Only around one in five boys survived to adulthood, and of those who survived, only one in fifty adult men were fertile enough to be able to successfully sire children, and even then only for a limited time. The effect that the disease, a cure for which still defied the efforts of the world's best scientists, had had on the power dynamic between men and women had been monumental. But at least by the middle of the twentieth century it had a proper scientific name: Male Immunity and Fertility Deficiency Syndrome, or MIFDS for short.
By the early twenty-first century, adult men only made up around a fifth of the total human population and were vastly outnumbered by women. This disparity was reflected in virtually every aspect of society. Women dominated every profession - they made up by far the majority of politicians, power-brokers, university professors and corporate CEO's. Every career path, from the lowliest road-sweepers to the most high-flying corporate executives, was dominated by women.
The imbalance between men and women had other far-reaching social effects - young men reaching the "survival milestone" of eighteen years of age suddenly found themselves having to fend off the advances of amorous women who had become starved of sex and intimacy. With so many sex-starved women out in the world, many men resorted to locking themselves into chastity devices in order to prevent themselves from being taken advantage of by predatory women. As soon as a boy turned eighteen he was legally declared to have survived the threat of dying from Swift's, and was considered as "fair game" by any woman who wanted to bed him. For many women, taking a boy's virginity had become a badge of honour, and it wasn't unusual for women to pay a boy's mother handsomely for the honour of being the one to claim her son's virtue. This was especially troublesome for gay men like Rupert, for whom the very idea of sex with a woman was unpalatable almost to the point of revulsion.
Life for men had changed dramatically since the 1920's after the Suffragists movement, when they were finally granted the right to vote, and in the 1960's the first wave of masculinism had taken hold. By the 1970's men were fighting for equal rights and winning many hard-fought victories for social justice along the way, including equal pay and for many careers previously only open to women to finally accept men. But despite this new era of inclusion in the workplace, young men like Rupert knew that they had to put in that extra 10% of effort in order to stand out from their female colleagues.
At 6:30am, Rupert's alarm clock, tuned into his favourite local radio station, went off to rouse him from his sleep. The final stanza of a cheesy pop ballad was just coming to an end as the breakfast show disc jockey's cheery voice came over the airwaves.
"Going all the way back to 1967 there with sixties heartthrob John Lennon and his classic hit "sugar sweet baby love". And it's just been announced that he'll be playing the "legends" slot at next year's Avebury Festival,"
the jovial breakfast show disc jockey announced.
"He was such a pretty boy back then, wasn't he,"
her equally chirpy co-presenter chipped in.
"Still is, if his recent photos in WQ magazine are anything to go by!" the DJ chuckled. "Coming up within the hour we'll have all the latest news and travel, plus new music from..."
But the DJ's words were cut short as Rupert hit the snooze button. Another day was dawning, and another commute to his job in a busy London insurance office was beckoning. Rupert reluctantly got out of bed, showered, shaved, dressed, had breakfast, and then headed out to catch his train - the same as the day before, and the day before that. Still, Rupert didn't mind the routine that much - at least he could almost always get a seat on the train, which spared him from having to put up with wandering female hands.
