Eliza was deep in thought when she crossed Square Plaza with all the things Lady Martha had been saying the evening before running through her head. She was so lost in her thoughts that she didn’t see the boy who approached her, an unimpressive Gamma-3 with short dark hair and eyes that didn’t want to look at hers.

‘You are Eliza, the Eliza, aren’t you? The friend of Michael and Shirley?’ He said, clearly a bit uncertain. Her heart was pounding in her chest from the surprise, but she smiled at him with a cute grin and looked him up and down.

‘That was still my name the last time I checked, yes. They call me the man-hater too by the way, but I’ve never chosen that name either. And I presume you are Robert, the brave man who fears women and their great power in marriage.’

She looked him straight in his eyes. He looked away, but apart from that didn’t seem too impressed somehow.

‘I was only hoping to finally get some answers…’

Her eyes flickered. ‘Answers from me, dear boy? Aren’t you the one who’s afraid of women because we want to overpower you and bind you into marriage and stuff like that? Shirley was quite amazed at that whole story. You’re brave then, seeking contact with the infamous Eliza herself.’

He sighed. ‘Don’t think anything weird of me, Miss Eliza. I was only hoping you could help me find Michael.’

She looked at him, still disapprovingly and waited uncomfortably long before she answered. ‘Looking for Michael? Already? So his male classmates have finally noticed his great disappearance trick? Maybe there are more men with brains in this country?’ Robert became irritated with her attitude.

‘Stop playing around, Miss Eliza. I’m not here for those games. I know you don’t like me, and I don’t need you to like me, but I need answers and I need to find him. I’ve tried everything but no-one seemed to know about it, and a lot of people completely deny that he ever existed now. It’s freaky. He’s literally deleted and no-one else but girls can help me it seems. And you were good friends with him.’

She relaxed a bit.

‘Correction. I still am good friends with him. He’s only a bit traumatised and depressed at the moment and hiding away from human contact in either the kitchen of the Square bar, or else in his new fancy apartment.’

‘So you know where he lives then? No-one else could help me yet.’

‘Where he lives and where he works. He’s still working in the bar over there, but not today it seems. And he mostly does kitchen shifts anyway so he’s out of reach, doesn’t even want to see customers.’

‘So much I know, Tom the waiter told me, but he didn’t have the address himself.’ ‘Ah, yes, Mister Tom is cute and all, but not really good at espionage, is he?’

‘He said I should ask you. He expected that you could help me.’ Robert said, visually irritated by all her playing around.

‘Ah, yes. He was right about that. I know his address. Not a place I’d recommend my friends walking around though. They put him in a Zeroville state apartment, and married him off to a robot.’

‘Eh, what?’

‘Yes, they took away his badge, so he’s legally unmarriable now. And because a man living alone needs a wife for all kinds of reasons that I won’t get into here they delivered him a nice vintage housewife-o-matic 2.1. Pretty thing, you’d almost forget she isn’t human but a soulless entity older than The Nation.’

‘But, Michael can’t…’

‘My dear boy. You still don’t understand much of this world. Michael cannot say no, especially if he wants to get a re-rating. The robot is there to observe him and see if he’s relationshipworthy. There’s more fun to be had with those old vintages if you know your paleo-robotics, and there’s the whole anti-assault program, but since Michael refuses to touch her that wouldn’t do much, even if I would activate it in the strictest mode. But I don’t think he’d let me experiment with her. He’s being a bit boring at the moment.’

‘But if you’ve seen the robot, that means you’ve actually visited his new place? In a building full of unrated zeros? Half-deleted men?’ Robert asked.

She shrugged. ‘I had to check up on him. I’m glad I did.’ ‘But you say it’s dangerous. And you’re a girl.’

‘Oh, yes, it’s a Zeroville residence, full of creepy unmarriable men and wifebots probably, and I’m a young person of the female persuasion indeed. But he’s definitely worth taking some risks for.’

‘Taking risks for…’ Robert looked incredulously at the young woman in front of him.

‘Yes, friends are worth taking risks for. I know boy friendships are not so touchy-feely and less emotional and so, but I would hope that even a boy would agree with me that friends are worth taking risks for. Like overcoming your fear for women to talk to a dangerous woman like me and such… Talking to Eliza the Man-hater is probably quite a step too for you.’ ‘Ah, eh, yes, I suppose,’ he said, and he looked away again.

‘And anyway, being a girl is already a constant risk in The Nation, so one walk in a Zeroville more or less won’t make the big difference. Did you hear that that Alpha-2 creep thought he could just do with me what he wanted because I was a girl out at the wrong moment, without a male partner around that could claim her as his property? It’s good that I know some self-defence and that those idiots believe that girls are stupid and easy to take advantage of. Well, I think he learnt his lesson now. Pity that they had to throw Michael’s rating under the bus for that.’

‘Say that again?’ Robert said. He had heard some allusions from Don and John, but not the whole story.

‘No-one told you what happened? I was just minding my business, returning to the good old SCWF with Megan and Loverboy. It was a bit on the late side maybe, and for a shortcut we had to pass those dark apartments, shady Epsilonville blocks, where suddenly those two creeps appeared. They shouldn’t even have been there as an Alpha and a Beta, and they just demanded Michael to have us. I’m not going into details about what they wanted for your poor virgin ears, but he refused and they grabbed him by the throat. Two against one is rather cowardly, so I had to help him a bit myself with my knee, when they forgot us girls for a second and focused on him. Luckily men can be quite vulnerable indeed if you know where to kick them… We ran off to the SCWF, but one of those creeps seems to have used a wireless phone to alert the police, and you know the rest of the story. They locked him up, and in the end he got punished for going against the male hierarchy and got deleted by his own father, and they kicked Megan and me out of Wife School; damaged goods they said. No marriage material.’

‘But that’s completely unfair. He didn’t even do a thing, and he only wanted to defend you.’ Robert said.

‘Good thinking, smart boy. But legally a girl cannot hurt an Alpha they said, so he got all the blame and most of the punishment. His father made sure of that, and called mine and Megan’s too. And that was the end of that most famous engagement…’

‘It was actually his father who deleted him? That’s why his parents completely ignored me.’ ‘Yup, it definitely was him. Men are rather dangerous, my friend. You’ll find out when you see more of them. They’re cold and calculating and still completely irrational, one mistake and they’ll destroy you. Just stick to your girl friends and the few good men in this world, like Michael.’

‘I am a man myself and I have no girl friends.’

‘You’re missing out on the fun then. But you approaching me without running away means there’s still hope. I’ve heard interesting things about you when I was still in Wife School.’ Robert shuffled with his feet, as he didn’t like the idea of Wife School students gossipping about him, but then he remembered who the girl most likely to talk about him was.

‘So how’s the other girl doing? The blond one I mean. Shirley?’

‘I don’t know. She’s still in Wife School and like I said, me and Megan were kicked out three weeks ago after the incident. We didn’t have much time for goodbyes. I Suppose she feels worse about Megan and me now than you do about Michael. You might not have noticed, but our girl friendships are slightly deeper.’

‘Ah.’ He just said. He didn’t feel like having that discussion, and jumped back to his earlier subject. ‘But you really didn’t mind the danger of a Zeroville block. I don’t know if I could just go there.’

She nodded. ‘It isn’t dangerous for a Gamma-boy like you, you’re quite high up in the hierarchy for them to touch… And least if I defend myself against an unrated baboon I can’t get in trouble for hurting the fragile ego of a high-ranked man. They’re almost toddlers sometimes, those entitled dudes. I don’t see why anyone would ever look up to a high-rated Alpha or Beta. The only thing they have is that power is on their side, but they have no personality, take no responsibility, nothing. Empty shells that you can’t talk to.’ Robert Frowned.

‘I thought women wanted Alphas, to marry them and share in their power?’ She shrugged. ‘Well, sure, some do, I think. But most A and B girls in Wife School are too brainwashed to do such a power takeover, and Alphas certainly don’t bother with lowly E-girls like me.’ She grabbed at the badge on her chest, remembering she had lost her E-rating recently. ‘Wait, make that unrated Free Woman.’

She paused and took a paper and a pencil out of her side bag.

‘Anyway, here’s his address. I don’t think he’s at home often, his hours at the bar are long and irregular, and he’s usually locked up in the kitchen. He refuses to show himself most of the time. And he doesn’t really believe anyone wants to see him. Good luck convincing him that anyone on the boy side still cares about him.’ She bowed for him. ‘I have to try.’ He said. ‘Respect, man! And I mean that now. I’m not always nice to boys that I don’t know well, but I appreciate you looking out for him. He needs all the friendship he can get, and he’s quite hurt by the male side. Maybe you can show him that not all men suck, just like he did with me.’

‘Eh, how do I say it. If you say it like this, some men do suck I’m afraid. Some classmates really don’t want to see him again. I don’t get it.’

‘You are a good friend.’ She said, and unexpectedly she hugged him. He froze, and quickly she let go of him. Had she gone too far again? Boys were so fragile and complicated…

‘Bye, I have things to do,’ she said, and she left him motionlessly standing there with the paper still in his hand. It was a good thing that at least some people on the male world were looking for him, it would be good for his depression too. But why did this one have to be so nervous around girls; he basically was a decent person, if he just would forget all the rules of segregation…

*

Michael looked at the mysterious envelope in his ugly metal mailbox in the front door. It had his name on it, but it didn’t have a post stamp, only a vague PP mark that indicated that his new address was included in the Pen Pal system already. That was probably the work of Eliza, who had been able to find his address quite soon after he’d moved here, but who would want to write to him? He’d seen Angela enough lately and she didn’t seem the letter-writing type; So probably it was from Megan.

Wait, he looked again at the name on the envelope, which said ‘Michael Michaels (formerly Adams)’ in handwritten cursive. That was a weird way of addressing him, and not something Megan would write, or Angela or any of the girls, and certainly none of the boys he had ever known. He opened the envelope and saw a handwritten paper. In a curly cursive script bordering on calligraphy he read the following letter:

Dear Michael,

Through mutual friends we have heard a lot of good about you, about your friendships with several women, and about your involvement in recent revolutionary developments like the Pen Pal system, the unification of both black markets, and the unsegregation movement. We have been impressed with those things, and have been following your story. It seems that more contact between both sides will be unavoidable in the future now. That is why we want to invite you to Seventh City Ghost town, to talk about a new future in which there will be better relations between our Ghost Town women and at least some men.

We will also invite your friends Eliza and Angela to join you. You can send your answer through the Pen Pal system or through your friends and we will provide further instructions.

Lady Martha Ruths,

First elder of Seventh City Ghost Town

He stared at the handwritten letters for a while. Sure, he had heard the name of Lady Martha before. The girls talked about her as some kind mighty leader, good for her community that she protected with an iron fist against everything male. The boys had told him other stories that were more scary and weird, about how she would castrate and enslave every man who would come close to the squat village that she called her Ghost Town, or even that she held a whole legion of kidnapped boys that were used as sex-slaves and for creating energy in treadmills. Those last two things were certainly nonsense, since he knew from people who actually knew her like Angela and Eliza that it was nonviolent community that consisted of only women, and that’s she’d certainly be against slavery, but he still shuddered when he read her name. It was a very normal reaction for a Nation male to the name of a Ghost Town leader.

And now she had invited him, to talk with her? About his involvement in recent revolutionary developments? She must have been mistaken. He was nothing in the male word, just an underpaid waiter. Okay, he probably still had his connections to the black market and the pen pal system was his work, but apart from that he was completely deleted from society. What sense would it make for a powerful female outlaw leader lto use him as a first contact in the male world? He was a complete outlier himself.

He took the letter and walked all the stairs to his apartment, and then fell on his couch. He’d have to think about this! But first he needed the strongest beer in his fridge!

*

Sweaty and nervous Shirley held up her cardboard sign with a big number 13 on it. She was the thirteenth girl in a line of 25 bikini-clad girls that just stood there in the ugly hall of the E-floor for the bi-weekly ceremony of partner choice. She really wasn’t in the mood for this nonsense today, even if she was hopeful not to be chosen this time. The turn-out was rather low again, and only five young men were now looking at the line of girls with their unpleasant looks. All of them were quite uninteresting, but they seemed quite full of themselves nonetheless. Boys really were a stupid mess if you saw them like this. How had she ever taken men seriously at all?

She reminded herself that men weren’t necessarily that bad. Megan’s Michael had been a decent person, even if he was deleted now. Even his shy friend Robert had been okay in a way, in spite of his strange theories about women she hadn’t felt bad around him. It was his weird outlook that mirrored and opposed everything she’d been taught that had made her question her own certainties too. And okay, apart from those two she mostly knew horrible men, but maybe that was a stupid coincidence, and they might be more decent males around, not?

Her thoughts were broken off when she noted how one of the men looked at her. An Epsilon, probably a 7 or so but she couldn’t see his badge very well from were she stood, and a tall muscled boy, with short blond hair, gawking at the girls and almost drooling. No, not him, Father on the throne, please not him! Everything but him! Luckily he turned his unfocussed gaze to another girl, Emma with the number six, but it seemed that was already taking her document to hand it to another boy who had just chosen her. Shirley looked at the line with other girls and realised that she was the first other blond girl in line. Which was a problem, since that was the only thing she and Emma had in common, and his gaze had been resting on her again. Shit! The boy was talking to official Greystone now, and pointing at her. And then, he suddenly made an uncoordinated movement, as if he was drunk, and yelled for all to hear.

‘Just give me a blond girl. Doesn’t matter which one. Just a sexy little Wife to make me happy!’ He was pointing at her now.

Shit, shit, shit, everything said inside of Shirley, and time began to go slower. She saw Greystone take his micro-megaphone.

‘Number 13, Shirley, would you be so kind as to bring your paper to this young man, please.’ As in a trance she walked up to the boy, who looked at her with a very hungry look. He was a bit like a mad fox looking at a tasty pet rabbit that hadn’t learnt how to deal with predators. On autopilot she went forward, and gave her her paper to Greystone, keeping her distance from the boy.

‘Yeah, baby! Let’s call your dad and arrange things, sweetie. I’m looking forward to getting to know you better. You seem good enough, hmmm!’

He looked her up and down with that creepy look again. Woman, she hated that bikini and wished she was wearing seven sweaters and oversized blue cotton pants now.

‘I’m Dave Johnson by the way. See you later, wife-to-be!’

She could smell the alcohol in the air. And then he was gone to fill in his paperwork. She watched him wiggle away and wondered if he was even capable of writing in this state.

As soon as it had happened she was alone again, but for Shirley it was as if her whole world had fallen apart in only a few minutes. She must have left the ceremonial hall somehow and gone to the showers and then to the dorm, and had fallen on her bed. She hadn’t cried since she was five or so, but that night she fell asleep weeping silently, hoping that no-one would notice. But even if someone would have noticed she wouldn’t have cared anymore.

*

Shirley woke up early, while the other girls were still sleeping, and everything from last night came back. So this was it. The creepy boy with the nasty stare had chosen her to be his wife. She was a taken woman now. There was no turning back now. She had been thinking about this moment all her teenage life, and now it was finally there it felt like hell. And if you really listened to everything Miss Hunter said about marriage, especially the things in between the lines, the worst was still to come even. Even if there were other men, bot Mister Hunter and her future husband completely fitted into the Nation expectations of men. Which meant that her life was over.

In her head she recalled her last and only conversation with men that she had had, the ones that had given her hope, in vain. Michael and that weird Robert dude. Sure, that boy had had issues with the other sex, but he hadn’t looked at her like that, even if he had been a bit afraid of her, and of Marriage iyself. At least that was something she both had in common. She’d given everything now to be chosen by a boy like him and not by Dave Johnson, even with all the weirdness she would be able to talk to him, and with this Dave dude no conversation would be possible at all. She had seen that in his eyes. And he was supposed to be her husband for life now. She was supposed to obey him from now on and never go against his will. And his will would be nothing good for her at all.

No! She couldn’t let this happen. She had to reach Eliza, and the Pen Pal network was the best way to do that. The three of them had made their solemn vow of friendship, and Eliza could do anything, not? On the other hand, not even Eliza could annul an engagement or stop a marriage, could she?

She didn’t know what to hope for anymore and was all alone.