45 minutes after masturbating into the special receptacle condom (reputedly lamb's skin) I was still sitting in a chilly waiting area with about a dozen other men. Nobody looked at one another or said anything. Everyone wore the same dour expression as they played with their phones.
Finally my name was called and I was led down the hall again to another, even chillier "exam" room. There I waited another 15 minutes until an unsmiling female technical assistant (everyone who worked at the clinic seemed to be female) entered and asked me to stand. She carried a tablet and a long sheet of paper which she placed on the padded, but unpapered, exam table. She said:
"The analysis is back and the results were negative. Which is to say," glancing to her left at me, "you qualify to be a contributor."
At the top of the paper spread out in front of us, in perhaps 120 point Arial bold black type, was the alpha-numeric designation 1B. She continued:
"Your sperm is completely healthy, your count falls in the normal range and the volume was likewise normal. This means that you are now legally required to come to this clinic for as long as you live at your current address, and for as long as your services are needed, and make contributions, such as you did today only not for mere analysis, on a precise schedule. Any questions so far?"
I still wore the same dour, hopeless expression, reflective of the emotions I was keeping bottled up inside. "No, ma'am."
"Good. You are now required by both human law and Super Law to make sperm contributions at this clinic every four days." The technician glanced at her smart watch. "Today is Saturday. So your next contribution will be required on...Wednesday. Then after that, since the clinic is closed on Sunday, your next designated day will be Monday. And so on. Understand?"
I nodded. "Yes, ma'am."
"I recommend to all our contributors that they go out and buy one of those big, old-fashioned hardcopy desk calendars with the giant squares—you can get one at an office supply store—and sit down and mark out every fourth day so that there's never any question about when your next appointment is. I would post it on your wall at home."
"I have to make an appointment?"
"No. I use the term loosely. Just show up. The whole process, depending on patient volume that day and other factors," glancing over at me again, perhaps implying sexual stamina I decided, "should take about a half hour. Make no mistake, failure to show up on your designated days will result in severe consequences. For a first missed appointment," she continued, again using the misnomer, "you might just receive a reprimand. But after that, for other misses, you can expect to receive large fines, jail time or even death."
My entire length of body clenched as she added, "You have a nice, normal 1B designation at the moment. You do not want to receive a 5D designation. Ever. Understand?"
I swallowed—my saliva thick and gluey as fresh semen in my wife's vagina. "Yes, ma'am."
The technician was firing up her tablet. "Any questions about anything we've discussed here?"
It had not been a discussion, exactly, but... "No, ma'am."
"Good. Sign here. Oh!" withdrawing her stylus at the last second. "I should have mentioned...This is very important. Your sperm will be weighed after every contribution, including, of course, today's. Early on a baseline will be established. Failure to meet this baseline weight will have severe consequences." The technician lowered her voice and, if I'm not mistaken, exhaled a little sigh: "This means no ejaculations between your contributions at the clinic. No masturbating, understand?"
I nodded.
"Are you married?"
"Yes."
"From this moment on," she said, "intercourse with your wife is forbidden. You may, if you have sufficient self-control, pull out...but..." The technician, apparently uncomfortable with the subject matter, cleared her throat. "I wouldn't recommend this for the reasons already stated. It's essential that your contribution match or preferably exceed the baseline we've already established for you," again contradicting what she earlier said. She smiled for the first time. "Understand that if your contribution consistently—this is the good news—consistently exceeds your baseline you might possibly be bumped up to 1A status, which pays a little more."
I stood there at the exam table thinking: Am I supposed to be impressed by this? Incentivized? The rate of payment for contributions, required by our Super Government's recently enacted, and liberalized, Humane Treatment of Humanity laws, so-called, was so close to nothing that it was a little like saying they would multiply zero by some new integer and that would be my revised reward. Fuck it. Fuck THEM.
"Not that you probably have much control over such things," the technician added, "aside from a healthy diet and abstinence. If you have no further questions," collecting her tablet, her sheet of paper, "we're done here and you can go. See you...What day did we say?"
This was a test, I was sure. "Wednesday," I replied.
"Good. Oh!" her exclamation halting me at the door, hand on the cold, silver, unturned knob. "I forgot to ask. Your wife. Is she promiscuous?"
I hesitated, swallowed thickly again, thinking all the while of our friend Gil. "You mean...?"
"Does she sleep around? At all as far as you know? Because," shifting her weight, "any promiscuity by one's sexual partners, even though non-ejaculatory as we've discussed, by you that is, must be reported to this clinic at once. In such cases one must be tested again and deemed fit as a contributor. Understand?"
Adding even before I could nod, "Because supplying unhealthy sperm is considered a crime against our Masters, our Super Government, and such crimes are capital offenses. And, as I understand it," paper and tablet pressed against the technician's smallish, white-coated breasts, below her ambiguous smile, "their punishments are slow, and...quite exacting."
I nodded. Left the exam room. I felt vaguely nauseated.
When I arrived home, around three, having stopped off first for a couple of drinks, Gil's truck was in our driveway. And when I entered my house Ellen, my wife, jumped off the couch as if shot out of nuclear weapon's silo. She'd been seated next to Gil on the center cushions, and I imagined he'd been feeling her up as they necked.
Ellen pushed thick dark hair from her pretty, if lined, face, her lipstick smeared. She forced a smile. "How'd it go?"
I waved the copy of my Contributor's Report as if Neville Chamberlain after Munich in the mid-20th century. It was believed as many a hundred million human lives had been lost in the resulting, barbaric war, and now it was said—rumored—that an amount perhaps equal to that worldwide had been lost since the alien invasion of our planet ten earth-years before. It was as if we now lived in Vichy France, a tenuous truce-like equilibrium having been attained. We remaining humans lived on tenderhooks, true; but at least things had more-or-less normalized. At least we were still alive, living in relative peace. Our alien Masters having not yet discovered their epicurean fetish for male human testicles, in a cream broth.
"I got a 1B," I announced. Gil, too, stood up, a visible hard-on in his slacks.
"That's great!" my rival crowed. I'd slapped the sheet of paper down on the pinkish kitchen counter.
"What's great about it?"
"You're in, man!" Gil practically shouted. "Congrats!"
Fuck you, I thought. He'd come around and put his arm around my wife's waist, and now, uneasily, at a distance of about three meters, they faced me together. At the watering hole I'd stopped at after draining my balls into the special lambskin condom at the clinic I'd sat and refreshed my memory about the Contributors designations. I was now an expert. I was now one of them. At least we had the internet back up again. And smart phones and tablets and computers were legal. Again.
A 1A designation was the highest. It meant you and your semen were not only healthy; but that you had, possessed, an unusually high and potent sperm count.
1B—my designation—meant that you were down a rung. But that your sperm-count fell within the "normal" range.
1C meant you were borderline. That your sperm was acceptable, as deemed by our Masters, at their restaurants and clubs, but that you were teetering on the edge. There was no 1D.
