Michael didn’t stress out this time when someone was waiting for him after his shift on Wednesday night. This time it was Eliza, who didn’t even greet him but got to her point directly.

‘I’ve arranged for the people who will do Dorothy’s make-over that they will come get her tomorrow.’

‘Ah, I’d almost forget.’ ‘

You’re having a late shift, so we’ll get her before that. Be outside with her at nine in the morning.’

‘Ah, ok,’ was all he could say, and his baffled face seemed to amuse her.

‘And don’t you worry too much about loneliness, pretty boy, they’ll bring the replacement too. Much less advanced model, but no-one will notice the difference if they’re not into paleo-robotics.’

He shrugged. ‘So you mean I’ll never get the chance to learn how to clean and cook for myself. If you want to turn me into a new kind of husband for one of you three that’s a weird move…’ He grinned.

‘If I’d wanted a walking dishwasher I’d just get me a robot myself. Marriage is too high a price… It’s better to stay single and do your own dishes then even. But the thing is that you, young man, are legally deemed too helpless to live alone. John Manfred, “Be a man!” and all that…’

He turned a bit red again when he had repeated that slogan subconsciously.

‘So in lack of a human wife we’ll bring you another wifebot, for the time being.’

He nodded. ‘Can’t go against the orders of the central computer, can’t we.’ He said.

‘Not yet… But maybe one day…’ She smiled in an ominous way, and Michael didn’t know what to make of that. Was she planning to overthrow the Central computer, or something else that involved an actual human Wife for him, or both? He wasn’t sure anymore.

‘I better don’t even ask, do I?’

‘You wouldn’t understand now, and I’m not going to try.’ She said, winking.

Michael found that she was in a very strange mood, but he suspected she was a bit excited about the escape mission plan. And an excited Eliza was dangerous if you got in her way too much.

‘By the way, about the escape, since we’re doing everything in full daylight we could use a pretend fiancée dude too. We don’t have a vehicle at the Ghost Town currently to move them quickly so she’ll have to walk the whole thing. Do you have any double-rated boy available next Thursday evening by chance?’

‘Me? Eliza, I’ve been deleted. My male contacts are gone. Can’t you ask Joe or another black market trader or so? You have male contacts too, remember.’

Eliza nodded no. ‘I don’t want them involved. They’re not connected to the Ghost Town yet. Plus he’s older. I just need a badged boy to have a nice walk with her, anything above Epsilon will probably do.’

‘Eliza, you’re crazy! Do you think I store a stock of men in my hyperisolation fridge at home for you or so? The male world has spit me out, remember?’

‘But that one guy who came looking for you? He and Shirley seem to like each other already somehow. He’d be perfect. He doesn’t need much acting to play a shy first-date fiancée.’

‘Robert? He’s just a Gamma-3. And he’s afraid of women… They want to lure them into marriage and take away his power and so on, remember. You haven’t heard him, but shirley did. They only met once anyway.’

‘I’ve talked to him, and he seemed to be a decent human. And Shirley found him okay, except for those weird ideas then. She talked about him a lot. You can assure him that from the moment she escapes from Wife School and deletes her identity Shirley can’t even marry anyone so his fears aren’t applicable too her.’

‘His conspiracy theories and prejudices can run quite deep.’

‘Well, a mad escape experience could be good against those and bring them a bit closer. And he can get used to women who don’t want anything creepy from him.’

‘Eliza, Eliza, what are you even scheming?’

Her smile was still a bit manic. ‘Nothing, nothing… I just want to see his face in a Ghost Town… That would be interesting.’

‘Don’t play those games, his heart would explode.’

‘No-one there who’s even remotely interested in men like him. Or in men at all officially. The trenches have always been dug very deep, remember! well, until you came, that is, Loverboy. It’s dangerous for the equilibrium between the sexes if you make them too used to men, and you’re an official friend of the community now. In the end we might need more than just you to satisfy the demands of the market. Especially if you want to be a “new kind of husband” for one of us three. You’re quite ambitious for being officially unmarriable you l know, and two out of three have turned you down already. You know we all love you, but not like that…’

‘Don’t make too much of those words, please.’

‘Or was Samantha part of the three?’

‘Ew. No, I can’t stand flirty women. She scares me.’

Eliza took a step backwards and gave him a weird look.

‘You can’t stand flirty women. And you’re not afraid of me?’

‘Why would I?’

‘Oh, nothing…’ She said, and she suddenly gave him a hug.

‘Please stay who you are, Michael, and don’t change. You’re way too precious to lose for all of us. But I have to go now. We’ll see you tomorrow at nine. Bring the robot outside and we’ll take her and you can take the new one. The make-over will be complete in a few days, and next Thursday we’ll do it. Let me know if Robert wants to help…’

‘Eh, okay’ he said, and she was gone before he realised what had happened.

*

Miss Hunter never felt comfortable with men, and even less with other men than with her husband, but sometimes she needed to have professional consultation for her job with official Greystone, like after ceremony night when she had to go through the paperwork. She’d got used to him over time, but even if he was the most asexual person she knew it still felt a little bit like adultery to talk to him. The old ways of Nation faithfulness for wives were drilled deep in her subconsciousness.

‘No problems on the E-floor?’ She asked.

‘No, I only have my doubts about that guy who took Shirley. She expressed concerns herself and she might be right. He doesn’t look like husband material.’

‘She already told me. But the man is always right, official Greystone.’

‘That’s what we always say. But shouldn’t we think of our girls too. I mean, if they really are unsuitable for one of our girls.’

‘What’s gotten into you, Greystone? The young man is a man, he will do whatever he deems good, and she has to follow. That’s how a marriage works. And who cares anyway, she’s an E-girl.’

‘Do you remember young Eliza’s last words, Miss Hunter?’

She looked at him. ‘Why on Earth would you ever mention her again. She’s gone. She’s deleted. She’s utterly unmarriable, and we’ll never see her again. Thank the Man on the Throne for that!’

‘Didn’t they tell you she’s come back already? She came to the visitation room to visit Shirley only a few days after the ceremony. She’s still keeping her eyes on us.’

Miss Hunter shook her head

‘That shameless girl still has a lot of guts to come back here. But Shirley has been taken, by a man. A low-quality Epsilon maybe, but the client is king.’

‘Don’t you think she has a point. It is part of our mission statement to take care of our girls too. And we might not have been doing that right. After all, Miss Eliza herself was innocent in the incident, and we kicked her out.’

‘You’ve gone soft, Greystone. And little Eliza can’t do us anything. Whatever the boy is, he’s a man after all. He’s always right, don’t forget that.’

‘I suppose so.’ Official Greystone looked at her and saw that the discussion would be hopeless. He was a man too, and a Gamma at that, but for some reason Miss Hunter never took him as infallible as she did with the fiancées of the girls.

‘But if something goes wrong it’s your responsibility, and you’ll explain it to Eliza. I take my hands off it; Don’t tell me I haven’t warned you.’

Miss Hunter laughed.

‘The only thing we should care about is that that boy is happy. Unless he’d be a sex traitor like that Adams boy there is no reason to not let him do whatever he wants to his fiancée. The girl will be his Wife anyway, she’d better get used to it. He cannot be wrong as a man.’

‘Aren’t you going too far, Miss Hunter? Men can be wrong too, and they do wrong things too. I can attest to that.’

‘Who is here the teacher who knows about these things and who’s just the administrative official, official Greystone?’ Her voice became more authoritative.

‘You are the teacher on those things.’ He said, and disappeared to his office. He still had bad feelings about this whole thing, but it was clear that no-one else shared them.

*

Robert was studying his textbook with quadratic equations in his room. He was extremely bored and not really focussed and almost felt like giving up completely when suddenly something flew through his open window to crash into the wall and fall onto his bed.

‘What on Earth?’ he said when he saw it was a stone, with a paper attached to it. Such things only happened in fiction holo-movies. He untied the paper, and unfolded it. It had one sentence: “SEE ME IN THE LITTLE PARK UNDER THE EUROPEAN OAK IN 10 MINUTES” and was signed with MM. He didn’t know who that was supposed to be, but it was clear what European oak was implied. There was a tiny park in the next street with an enormous old European oak and a bench under it. But who would want to talk to him there and use such a weird style of communication? He didn’t know anyone who was named MM.

He ran to the park..

On the bench under the enormous but rather sickly old oak he saw a boy reading a book. It was Michael.

‘Hi, Robert, I see you got my message.’

‘Michael? You are MM? And why did you throw a stone?’

‘I needed to see you, but I didn’t want to alarm your parents. They might not like to have deleted persons with no rating over remember. And I have an urgent request from you that is much crazier than my improvised new method of communication. It’s about Shirley and it’s important.’

‘What about her? I wrote to her through the Pen Pal network, but she didn’t answer yet. Anything wrong with that?’

‘Technically, yes, because she’s engaged now and probably shouldn’t be writing letters to other boys, her taker might not like that, and that’s exactly the problem.’

His expression changed. ‘She’s taken?’

‘Yes, and that’s the big problem. He’s worse than the usual baboons on the E-floor. And she’s going to run away, but we’ll replace her first with the Wifebot. And we you could use you as a fake fiancé to get her away discreetly.’

‘What? You cannot be real’

‘Eliza has everything planned out. They’re giving Dorothy a make-over to be her doppelganger. But they also need a rated young man to walk her from the SCWF to the Ghost Town, and act like her fiancée when needed. And, eh, we don’t have any other candidates right now and you two know each other. Are you free next Thursday evening? We need to get the robot in and her out the day before her first date with him.’

‘Wait. Are you serious? You say she can’t write to me because she’s taken, and now I need to play her man to let her escape. Are you crazy?’

‘It’s not my idea. You need to convince Eliza, who’s now at this moment giving a robot a new face that she’s going too far. But just getting her out without the whole replacement operation would be more risky, and the original features of the robot are good to teach the bad boy a lesson or something.’

‘What original features are you even talking about? It’s just a stupid fake woman, not? Good at chores, but not very smart.’

‘No, no, it’s a pre-Nation fake girlfriend that was originally made to re-educate men who were too aggressive with women, and it can defend itself in different ways, and react to every wrong touch or even remark with an electric shock for example. Eliza has by now reprogrammed exactly to do that, I think.’

‘They gave you an old re-education bot as a wife?’

‘Vintage Wifebot is how they called it. It’s not bad at doing chores but I keep my door locked at night, you never know…’

‘Wow man, married life with a robot sounds even worse than with a woman.’

‘You get used to it… But I don’t have much time now. I want to know if you want to do it. You’ll make the girls very happy.’

‘And I have to act like her taker?’

‘Yup, just a walk from the SCWF to the Ghost Town as if she’s your fiancée and you’re on a date. I and Eliza will follow from a distance. And then you’re free again.’

‘Just walk up to a place where they bewitch men who just come close? Man, you’re crazy.’

‘I promise you no-one will be bewitched. You only need to swear the free person pledge and wear the badge and no-one will touch you with one finger. Lady Martha herself is okay with it.’

‘You can’t mean that. Lady Martha is a dangerous powerful witch who hates all men. She can kill just with one look. You know what they say.’

‘Whow, Robert, you’re surely superstitious for a STEM-field brainie. She might be impressive but she was quite reasonable with me when I met her.’ Robert sat down.

‘Everything okay Robert?’

‘Eh, yes. I think. This is just all a bit too much for me.’

‘Here’s a can of Nation-coke extra strong, brings even a corpse back to life.’

He took a softdrink out of his backpack, which Robert took. They looked at the sparrows together while he drank and it was silent for a while.

‘You’ll do it?’ Michael asked.

‘Ah, why not. If it’s the only way to see her again…’

‘So you want to see her again? You’ve only seen her once, and then you told her how dangerous women were. They’re still talking about that in the SCWF..’

He shrugged. ‘I’m a sex traitor already just by talking to you, at least that’s what Henry would say. Dude, I’ve had to endure Eliza herself to find you, and her explosion of suspicion, sarcasm and dismissive remarks if she doesn’t trust you. I can handle girls now.’

‘Shirley isn’t Eliza. Eliza needs more, eh, warm-up time before she trusts someone. She’s scared most of the boys we’ve met away in her chaperone days too.’

‘She’s infamous as Eliza the man-hater, even more so after the incident…’

‘she doesn’t… Well nevermind. She can be reasonable too. She even apologised to Rafael…’

‘I’ve heard the whole story from him. She went into full demon girl mode the first time he met her. Completely unmarriable indeed. And even without marriage, would anyone ever fall in love with someone her? I can’t believe that.’

Michael looked at him with a bit of unease, feeling he had to defend her but not knowing how.

‘If you don’t get on her bad side she’s quite fun. But it’s time to go. Thank you. You’ll get your instructions later. And Shirley will be relieved.’

Michael took his book and disappeared from the park. Robert stood there for a while, wondering why he had said yes. He didn’t know if there was a penalty for faking an engagement, but if the whole thing were found out he would probably be in trouble. Where did Eliza get all that weird confidence, wasn’t she just an E, the female equivalent of an Epsilon. Or no, originally she’d been a C, a Gamma girl. But she was more like the descriptions of an Alpha he had learnt in primary school. Which was certainly not the same thing as an A-Wife though… Had Shirley been a Gamma girl too? She didn’t seem like an Epsilon either.

*

Lady Martha was reading a pre-Nation book about organisation structures in animal societies at her desk after a day of work when an angry woman barged in. She was approximately her age with half-long grey hair and wild brown eyes and wore an old-fashioned green-with-brown dress that had been popular in the first days of the Ghost Towns.

‘Martha, I need to talk to you.’

Lady Martha looked up from her book, unfazed by the rude entree.

‘Good evening, elder Mildred! Want some green tea? I probably have enough for one more cup in my pot. It’s ancient Camellia tea from Third City Ghost Town. They’re doing good work there with…’

‘I don’t need a lecture on tea. You have let a man inside of the walls of this community, and he’s been coming back!’

The calmth of the Ghost Town leader seemed to anger her even more.

‘Yes, Michael Michaels is an official friend of the community now even, the other elders agreed on that. And every contact with him has been positive. He is free to move around freely in our community.’

Mildred was almost yelling now.

‘It’s atrocious. A MAN walking around here, in our safe place for women. He has even desecrated our chapel too!’

‘He was just meditating, apparently he felt a deep peace there, and Eliza even said that it helps him with his depression. Ruth found it very interesting. Who are we to reject him if the Angel herself has accepted him?’ Lady Martha said, matter-of-factly.

‘Don’t be superstitious. Everyone knows that the whole lightning shaft story is just a fairy tale. And no matter if he gets quiet from sitting there, he’s a man, Martha. A masculine male. Nothing good can ever come from them. They built the system, and every woman here has had their life destroyed by them. They are monsters, and have always been.’

‘The same has happened to him, as you know. He was deleted himself, as they call it, for defending girls against other men who were in the category you just described.’

‘These stupid girls were just sex traitors. It’s their fault for befriending a boy.’

‘You’re babbling utter twaddle, Mildred, and I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t insult our friends. He was forced to choose a Wife in the SCWF, and then he chose very consciously to be a friend, and not a monster. He’s a proven friend over the divide of the sexes again and again afterwards too.’

‘You’ll never be able to trust him. His masculinity can take over every moment when you just don’t look.’

‘Eliza trusts him. I trust him, that’s enough. All the elders agreed on that except for you, and the other Ghost Town leaders are also contemplating how to anticipate the changes that he’s brought to The Nation now that the black markets are connected and have a message system to connect boys to girls.’

Mildred’s eyes widened. ‘They can’t be so naive. We’re talking about men here.’

Lady Martha looked at her book again.

‘Are we ants, Mildred?’

Mildred’s look was even more confused now, but she seemed to be forgetting her anger for the moment being.

‘What on Earth, Martha. Why would you compare us with stupid insects.’

‘They’re not so that stupid, at least not for insects, Mildred. They accomplish great things for such tiny animals, they are great builders and organisers. But they have societies in which most ants are asexual female workers, very collectivist, and no intimacy. Completely mechanical in a way.’

‘They’re pests, Martha. Why are you interested in pests?’

‘They have a very complicated society. Only the queen procreates usually, and the males die and disappear out of the story after mating, and then she only gets babies for years. Sometimes they live for thirty years, much longer than the workers.’

‘Ah, and? We’re not insects. We’re women.’

‘We’re humans. And our Ghost Town is a monosexual colony depending on refugees from male society. Without them we’ll die out. And in male society our sisters suffer, as well as the men who are unable to conform to Manfred’s toxic fantasies. Did I tell you that the boy is helping in the next Wife School escape? He might even bring a friend.’

‘Abominable. How can a girl escape from Wife School and still hang out with males.’

‘Oh, they’re just humans, like I said. Not all men are evil, just as not all women are good. And in the end we’ll need each other’

‘Blasphemy! We don’t need men for anything. Our sisters on the island have no men at all.’ ‘They were extremists, and we’re not in contact with them anymore, as you know. They rejected us and left us here.’

‘But they have an all-female society, even with children.’

‘That’s what’s said. I suppose they must have some kind of sperm bank, or otherwise they must still have men somewhere. We’re not insects that reproduce parthenogenetically.’

‘What does that even mean? Those long words aren’t good for you, Martha!’

‘Literally virginal procreation. No sex, no sperm cell needed. Some insects can do that, and even a few lizard species. But it usually gives perfect clones of the mother. Or in the case of ants, males with half the genetic material. Fascinating stuff, but as far as I know humans need both sexes to reproduce, and a world of clones wouldn’t be healthy either. And don’t you forget that every woman here has half of their genetic material of their father, a man.’

‘Enough with the lectures on the genetic parthenon, Martha. We need to protect this place against evil, and you’re letting men in.’

‘I am protecting my community against evil, Mildred. But I’m also looking forward to a better future. The future is happening, Mildred. The unification of the black markets and such, and we’ll need to adapt to that in the best way possible.’

‘Block every one of them, they’re men.’

Lady Martha frowned, and took her last sip of camellia tea.

‘And the main question here and now is also this: If you weren’t living here already, would we be able to let you in in this new future?’

‘What do you mean?’ said Mildred, who had found her anger back.

‘Would you be willing to do the pledge and wear the badge?’

‘Who wouldn’t wear a stupid badge if the protocol says so?’

‘But do you pledge your allegiance to all friendly people, regardless of sex, rating or identity status? Yes, including carefully vetted men wearing that same badge. There’s only one now, but there will be more in the future. If indeed one in a hundred is a decent person we’ll still be talking about hundreds of men for this city of ten thousands of people.’

‘You can’t be meaning this, Martha.’

‘Let me ask you something else, do you feel calmness and peace in the presence of The Angel? Ruth says it is an indication of…’

‘That doesn’t make sense.’

She walked away angrily and slammed the door behind her. Lady Martha kept looking at the door for a while, and then returned to her book. Monosexual colonies in humans were not sustainable, she knew. And right now Mildred was more of a danger for her community than one or two shy boys. She needed to watch out for her influence.