It has only been four generations since a well-intentioned aggressive female President of the United States rushed to truly liberate women. Just a little gene therapy and women were free from menopause and their periods were easily controllable. The entire European world, India, China and Japan followed within ten years. Within two generations, we learned that the results were catastrophic for women and men alike.
Women are horny and fertile from puberty till death now. About half the males born are sterile with suppressed I.Q.s because of mutated "Y" chromosomes, a fourth are ok and a fourth are virile but can pass on mutated genes. Already, the ratio of fertile women to fertile un-affected men is twenty to one, in the affected areas of the world. High priced sperm banks are rampant; the market for unaffected organs is so lucrative that the underworld makes more from organs than drugs. The demand for unaffected men is quadrupling every year. Polygamy is now legal. Few people bother to get married. For a short time, some men took to wearing a government issued "AM" (all male) badge to signal that they were tested, virile and genetically pure. They could develop harems overnight. But that marked them for beatings, and worse, from the majority of men who want mates but are sterile or genetically affected.
The intelligencia are trying to decide whether women's I.Q.s are also dropping and how to save the human race. Ideas range from pregnancy permits, to only invetro pregnancies, to cloning, to required abortion of all fetuses who carry bad genes, to some really wild stuff, like mandatory sterilization of affected humans or requiring females to become baby factories for known good embryos.
The population is dropping in all expect the Latin cultured countries. Most of those countries have restricted their men from leaving and highly restrict travel into their countries. Entire cultures are extrapolating the generation of their total demise. Productivity is down, research is down and innovation is down world-wide. The best and brightest men are for sex now, not work. The best and brightest women seem to be driven to have unaffected children. Forged medical reports and documents are big business. A whole new set of legal problems have arisen. Many women have paid fortunes to sperm banks to have healthy male babies, only to be scammed and be saddled with the expenses and heartbreak of raising a dim witted, sterile male. Adopting your own healthy child out for money is now legal. Do it five times and you are set for life.
I'm Tom Carrow and I'm an unaffected male of twenty-five." Does that sound like an ancient intro at an Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting? It is much worse than that. If affected males knew that they would want to bash me and kill me. If females knew that am pure, they would hound me way beyond human capacity. So I act dim witted, depressed and stay to myself; I pretend to be one of the affected majority. Like most of my kind. I hide. I work in a tire shop, even though my I.Q. is over 130. I have moved away from home so no one knows me. I would love to go to college and have a fulfilling job. I long for a wife, or two, or three, but then word would get out. Maybe not this year, or the next, but eventually, someone would kill me. I am different. I totally understand, that the lowest common denominator is far below me. I would have to be reduced by the masses of men who also want women.
Vanna lives in my apartment building. We have had dinner together several times, always in her apartment. She has three sisters who live with their mother. She and her family all want normal children. They have all read how families used to be. How men and women worked; how children were reared; and how life was about 2020. She speaks of it as a fairy tale and glows as she keeps me up to date on her friend who has had a fully normal female baby. We both know there is only a slight chance that little girl will grow up and ever see a normal male, much less marry and have children with one.
"How about you Vanna? Have you ever thought of having children?"
"O, yes, all the time. I'm only a one-half. My family stopped the therapy of newborns after two generations. Surely, if I had three children with a whole man, one would be fully healthy."
"Would you give so much of your life to raising the other two, just for one complete one? How would you protect a normal male child? Have you decided how you will get pregnant?"
"Tom, I know my dreams are not sensible. I don't have an answer to any of that. I don't even know an un-affected male and I don't have the money for invetro and testing enough times to get a good baby. There are so few babies today. I know I would be a wonderful mother. It is just a fantasy."
Twice, Vanna had come to my apartment. I never invited her; she just knocked and came in. Today, she came again, presumably to ask me to dinner and to meet her visiting older sister. She doddled around, looked at my books and quickly checked the history and favorites log on my computer, when she thought I was not looking. She noted my electronic subscriptions to what used to be called "Newspapers" and e-zines. I knew a challenge was coming.
"Tom, you are not like the men I know. You have interests and intelligence. You are more articulate than most. Are you sterile and affected?"
"You know me. I work in a tire shop. We've talked many times. Do I seem smart like that to you? Don't make me admit to my shortcomings. You know how much I like you. Don't you think I would tell you if I could meet any of your dreams?"
"I don't know. I think you are more than you seem."
"Well for God's sakes, if that is what you think, don't say it too loud. You could get me killed."
"Tell me the truth. I'll keep your secret, whatever it is. I don't know a single male who reads the things you do, knows current events or has an intellectual side like you do."
"You're a mean woman, Vanna. I'm just a regular guy who finds you attractive and knows you rejected me long ago. I'm just a friend. Don't make me admit my lack of completeness."
"I can find out you know. I work in the records office."
"Please don't do that."
"Then tell me the truth."
She could be lying. It is not easy to get such DNA info. Even today that is not like DMV records or criminal records. "Vanna, it is time for you to leave. I will come for dinner this weekend, only if you promise not to ask such questions again."
"Ok, I'm sorry Tom. Saturday, evening about seven. Goodnight."
That was too easy. I did not sleep well that night. It was too easy. Women had become more aggressive in the last two hundred years. They knew they were in control of business, intelligence and money now. They were just very, very unfilled and unhappy now. Why didn't she pressure me?
I did not know, Vanna's mom, Marge, was visiting also. I had heard she was a nurse. Her older sister, Addie, was the administrator of the same hospital. Maybe I was affected. I didn't make the records connection until I was shaking hands with good ol' mom. At least for a few minutes, I set my fear aside, when I saw Marge; she was a mid-forties, shapely, big-breasted redhead whose green eyes sparked with the knowledge that she could fuck any man into submission.
I acted shy, avoided getting into any conversations and kept my eyes to my dinner. Into the entrée Marge challenged me. "You can stop the act now, Tom. We know your background and that you are keeping your purity under wraps."
"I have no idea what you are talking about."
