IT'S NOT PERMANENT

"Look," I said to my wife, "it's not permanent. The worst that can happen is that the fertility crisis will not rebound as fast as we need. Then it might be a five years, but no more."

She said, "Then back to normal?"

I assured her, "then back to normal."

She served my my dinner, went back to the kitchen to get hers as well as the baby's. I waited for her to brings hers, then sit. I offered the proscribed grace, a grace that the Sons of Jacob had mandated for econo-houses.

My day at the holding centre had been hard. So it was I looked forward to an evening of family. Just playing with the baby, nothing more stressful than that. I looked forward to a lack of drama.

She waited for me to finish mine, so that I would not have an excuse not to reply. She then started in.

"Honey," she said in a low voice, "five years from now our baby will be in school." She asked me if the policy in relation to girls would change by then. "Regardless," she said, "she'll be in school!"

"How would I know?" The thing which really bugged me about this societal return to 'biblical values', was that me, the male head of the house, did not have all the answers. Answers were in short supply everywhere, especially at work - at the holding centre. We just did what we were told, kept our heads down, made it through the day, tried our best to keep blood off of our uniforms - shoes were the worst - none of that routine included many answers.

Me, I'd been employed there long enough that I now avoided mandatory overtime. I had a bit of seniority. It had been a month since I'd even had an evening shift, much less a graveyard. These days I got Sundays off, so that I could go to church with my family.

Church. About the only place where we out here in the econo-burbs got an idea how things were going. Each Sunday, a different Commander on the screen above the altar - news of the fertility crisis, news of 'the front', news of the insurrection in far-off Chicago. Then a sermon. Then being told we used to have 'freedom to', but now we had 'freedom from'.

As the head of my own house, all I could do was parrot what we both had heard at church. Still, this stuff could not go more than five years. Tops.

"Honey," I said as she got up to collect the dirty dishes. "From what I've seen, I think Gilead just wants to restore the birthrate, then it will stand aside." I looked at our baby, still enjoying rubbing her dinner into the table in-front of her, giggling the whole time.

"School?" I said. "My advice? Don't be teaching her how to read. Not until she needs it." I got up and fetched a garbage bag from the closet. "In fact, I should have done this a long time ago."

My wife didn't try to stop me. I went to every corner of our small apartment collecting the books our daughter had been given as baby-shower presents. That had only been 18 months ago.

I made a stop at our bed. My wife still had a few books and magazines on the table on her side.

"What are you doing?" she protested, as I shifted some to my side, then tossed the ones with a clear female-perspective into the bag. She did not wait for an answer, because she knew full well what was going on.

I said, "in the meantime, our house will comply." I then repeated to her that I had, for the fifth time, put my name in for Guardians Academy. I said, "I'll be damned if they inspect our home and find sedition right beside our bed."

THE CAGES

It truly was pitiful, but one's mind could not dwell on it. We had a job to do. A truck filled with women had arrived early, before we could even get our marching orders. So we did as best we could given that most of us had done this before.

Strictly speaking, it was the makeshift 'infirmary' which should be doing the triage. But once trucks of women started to arrive, too many of them, the bottleneck didn't take long. There we were, the grunts, eye-balling a woman's condition and/or status, well before they could even join the line to the infirmary.

How does one 'eye-ball' fertility? Months ago we would just ask, but that had been useless. Most women had just said 'yes', because the word had gotten around that that was the way to beat our system. We'd caught hell from the various Red Centres that we'd sent non-fertile women to them. The Red Centres in turn, had caught hell from Commanders. Such was the problems in managing this supply chain.

Me, I had stumbled upon a better way. Every once in a while a woman would try to grab at me through the chain-link, begging to be told the location of one of her children. I'd quiet them, but then would make sure that that woman had got on a truck destined for the Red Centre. Young women with kids were always fertile.

I'd got a commendation for that - but truth be told, the whole thing was chaos on a stick.

Going home for dinner, my wife would ask how the day had gone. I made stuff up. She was smart enough to recognize the 'triage' part of what we did. She was also smart enough not to press.

Except one night when she asked, "You've heard of 'marthas' haven't you?" Of course I had. Marthas were the women sent to domestic service in the homes of Commanders. That one was tricky. What subterfuge could one dream up to trick a woman into admitting that she could cook or clean?

My wife said, "I'll tell you what. If you could spare a martha or two, send them over here." I laughed. The very first laugh I'd had concerning my work.

A transfer could not happen soon enough. The cages were depressing work. But you got used to it.

THE CULLING

A first for everything. I had slept in. The bus down to the industrial area was predictably full. Usually my uniform parted the line and I could always get on. Not that day.

But no matter. The marching orders as I arrived were straightforward. There were also newly minted overalls as well as automatic weapons. The latter concerned me a bit, because I had never been schooled in the rifle, as I was sure none of my mates had either. As I left my locker I stopped a mate, pointed to the rifle and shrugged my shoulders. He shrugged his shoulders back, and we went to the cages for 'crowd control', prepared to make shit up, on the fly.

The makeshift signs on the various cages today had a conspicuous lack of variety to them. The second largest cage had the sign, 'Colonies' on it.

The largest cage had 'Culling'. Really!? The largest? It wasn't so much that the actual kill was stressful, there was also the disposition of the bodies. That one was answered by one of our former bosses who had ordered the women in other cages to be the ones to load trucks to the places the bodies went. May as well put them to work.

Proof that God was merciful? When I wandered over to the 'Colonies' cage, no supervisor said different. I spent that day loading trucks which would be on the road for days. (Rather than dispatch women who would only take a short jaunt to a crematorium or a mass graveyard.)

HOW LONG ARE YOU GOING TO DO THIS?

I'll be the first to admit that my mood suffered because of work.

At dinner that night, I had literally forgotten how that day had gone, other than that it had been long. I'd been at work 11 hours including the commute, and now at 8:30 pm I was sitting down with family for dinner, having just completed the required Sons of Jacob grace. It must have been obvious that I was ready to burst.

This time, my wife did not put a portion at her place, she just began with questions. "How long are you going to do this?" was the first.

I exploded, loud and sharp enough to make the baby cry. I shouted, "I'm working on it, get off of my back!" My real worry, though, was that neighbours had heard it, and our house would be reported.

So I counted to ten, and apologized. When my mind finally cleared enough, I saw my wife in tears, holding our crying baby.

"Honey," she said, "I know your work is tough, I really do. I'm trying my best, I really am, to support you. To have a calm home to come back to, I really am."

I put down the knife and fork, and apologized once again. I repeated the words that I had spoken during the mass re-marriage that Commanders had organized for econo-families. For those families like ours which had not had a Sons of Jacob wedding.

I recited as I had with 500 other men that day, "In the same way, you husbands must give honor to your wives. Treat your wife with understanding as you live together. She may be weaker than you are, but she is your equal partner in God's gift of new life. Treat her as you should, so your prayers will not be hindered."

My wife dried her tears and then put the baby back into her seat, where she started again playing with and smearing her food.

My wife said softly, "It's been a long time since you said that."

"I apologize," I repeated. "I shouldn't take it out on you." I told her I was going to turn in, it would be good, I told her, if I was to be early to work tomorrow.

Even though we'd completed all the trucks headed for the Colonies, we'd not finished the culling. As ironic as it sounds, the graveyard shift never culled. Unless something big changed tomorrow, it was going to be all hands on deck.

I was to find out why we'd been given better weapons.

THE SMOKE

I had caught an early bus. I had thought that I would be able to sit at my locker for an extra fifteen minutes before culling duty. I was not so lucky.

The smoke rising from the industrial area could be seen from miles away, it could not be good. Getting off the bus, I ran to the gate. I was stopped, showed my pass. The guard there radio'ed to a supervisor inside. The reply, "Have him take the B-route to the lockers. Have him radio-in if he gets pinned down."

Wait a minute, "if"!?

A first for everything. I'd taken live-fire running all the way to the lockers. Inside must have been the whole graveyard-shift of men. And then some.

Opening my locker and securing my weapon, I grabbed a guy who had blood on his face. I said, "What the hell?"

This is what he said. "I don't know how, but they got a couple of crates of rifles, the new automatic ones. Worse still, they got magazines. An unlimited number."

He turned to me and said, "But that's not the bad part. Someone in there has military training. They know how to concentrate fire. They have flanked us badly, all night. I have a dozen of my boys in there dying - maybe more."

I asked him how had it begun. His answer?

"I don't know, but they're winning. Fucking bitches."

He picked up a radio, told whoever it was at the other end, "we need armor."

How was I going to tell my wife about this day? As days passed into weeks, which passed into months, we were getting farther and farther away from 'normal'.