Wow, did she have a time of it! Lavidia tirelessly squeezed every ounce out of her new husband. The guy would come home worn out from work, and there she was, almost daily, waiting for him to fulfil herself as a woman. They even did it during times in her cycle when conception was unlikely; “just in case spontaneous ovulation occurred,” she’d say. But it never seemed to happen.
Meanwhile, Lavidia continued her education and helped her mother and community with all sorts of tasks.
“How was your day at work?” asked Bashia, her friend and sister-in-law twice over. After all, Lavidia had married Bashia’s brother, Batro, and Bashia had married Labro, the pianist’s brother. In fact, that kind of cohabitation was quite common in their society. Friends could live together, but their husbands didn’t covet the other woman living with them. Despite their brutality, men still maintained the instinctive taboo of not desiring their sisters.
“Work? Fine,” she casually replied while changing her niece’s diapers. Her sister-in-law and housemate had just given birth to a beautiful girl.
“Just fine?”
“As fine as one can be in such a... tedious place.”
“Tedious?”
“Oh, Bashia! How I envy you! Here at home, enjoying your baby... And me out there, wasting time.”
“Well, dear, you’ll be just like me soon, I’m sure. Besides, someone must do the work, right? If it weren’t for you working women, the rest of us would have much harder living conditions.”
“Yeah, I suppose,” she said, while cooing at the baby.
Both women were naked and had even removed their skirts, the only piece of clothing in those warm latitudes. In fact, they only wore them when men were around.
“Are you still in the earthquake zone?”
“Yeah, there’s a lot to do there. Men do what they can, but without a woman to lead them... well, you know.”
“Don’t you use machines for the heavier tasks?”
“Yeah, of course. No other choice. Although this morning, we had an interesting debate on that topic, a colleague and I.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. Let me hear your thoughts.”
Bashia was finishing dinner for one of her younger brothers and, without turning around, responded, “It’s so hot! Hopefully, this season will end soon, and the rains will start next week.”
“Yeah, hopefully. I think I saw on TV that they’re expected.”
“At least that will cool things down a bit. I envy your grandmother! She’s in the north, right?”
“Yes, but it’s too cold there. Women wear several layers of clothing, head to toe.”
“No middle ground. Okay, tell me about this interesting debate.”
“We were talking about getting rid of men and doing all the work with machines.”
“Well, I’d love that, honestly. I think it would be ideal. If machines did everything, we could focus on what really matters: having daughters.”
“Yeah, but what would we do with the men?”
“That’s the problem. You have to keep men busy all the time, Lavi. Otherwise, they’d be fighting each other. Plus, work tires them out and moderates their sexual desires. If it were up to them, they’d be intimating all day.”
“Fortunately,” Lavidia said with a smile.
“Fortunately for you, dear, who aren’t a mother yet. They don’t understand that a woman has rest cycles after childbirth, infertility cycles... And not just that. We have to make it clear to them that a man can only do it with his wife. And that... they find it hard to understand.”
Bashia was right. The law prohibited having more than one husband due to past abuses. Many irresponsible women abandoned them for being too violent or even sterile, and many had nowhere to go if their mothers had passed away. Similarly, the offspring had to be controlled, and cases of bigamy were not allowed to prevent consanguinity.
Similarly, the big social community that was Humanity, with large and stable family units, somehow prevented illegal motherhood, meaning when the mother was under fifteen. However, sometimes you’d hear about girls getting pregnant before that age, either because of the innate desire for motherhood, trying to mimic their mothers or older sisters, or just not wanting or not knowing how to hold back the instincts of the surrounding boys, who were always ready to go with anyone willing.
“Yeah,” Lavidia continued, “but we can’t just treat men like they’re a mere sperm bank, right? Extracting it whenever we need it...”
“Well, I’d love that, honestly. Then, we wouldn’t have to deal with them almost every day.”
“My brother is...”
“You have no idea, Lavi! Sometimes he wakes up in the middle of the night and asks for action. And that’s coming from someone dead tired. He spends the whole day collecting worms, all day! And he’s so energetic.”
“Well, enjoy it while you can. With time, he’ll lose interest, you know.”
“Yeah, thankfully, they have a lifespan half of ours. I can’t imagine your grandmother, who can’t have daughters anymore, with a husband demanding action all the time.”
“Nature is wise, Bashia, and they die off when we hit menopause.”
“Thank goodness.”
“Well, thank goodness... I love Batro and my brothers... my father...”
“Yeah, yeah, all that’s fine, but I don’t know what to tell you if this artificial insemination or gender selection thing spreads.”
“The latter hasn’t been invented yet.”
“I know. But geneticists say it’s close.”
“Well, well,” she objected, “they’ve been saying that for a long time, but it never happens. Besides, I’d prefer to have daughters, logically, but if sons come, we can also develop our maternal instincts with them, don’t you think?”
“That makes sense, Lavidia,” she reconsidered. “It’s just that I’m a bit tired today,” she concluded.
“Do you want to go to bed? I’ll take care of the baby.”
“No, it’s nothing. Just a bit of a headache. Come on, tell me what you’re doing in the earthquake zone. Maybe I’ll distract myself while the heat goes down a bit.”
The two women poured some drinks and sat on a sofa. The men were on their way and put on their skirts. The last thing Bashia needed that night was to fool around.
“We’re rebuilding houses, and I think we’ll finish before the rainy season comes. Those people are practically living outdoors, and they’ll need to find shelter sooner rather than later.”
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“Can’t you use the materials from the barracks for the new houses?”
“That’s what we’re doing. It just has to be done gradually. As we finish the houses, we move families and reuse the materials left behind to build new walls. Men are mesmerised when they see cranes moving cement blocks.”
“Aren’t they used to construction?”
“The crews with us now used to be in agriculture. They’d never worked in this.”
“Yeah, I get it. People had to be taken from wherever they could.”
“Exactly. It’s an emergency. When we’re done, they’ll go back to vegetables.”
“Men are versatile. They can carry materials, spread seeds, collect worms... Do you think machines could do all that?”
“You can’t expect one machine to do it all. But many specialized ones, yes.”
“Well, men wouldn’t be necessary. If we had more machines, we could focus on family, on daughters... And not waste time on useless tasks.”
“Something you don’t do, by the way. I do it.” Lavidia was somewhat envious of her friend.
“You’ll stop soon. Does my brother... not treat you well?”
“He treats me wonderfully, Bashia.”
“Well then, you’ll see how my little one will soon have a cousin. A red-haired cousin, like her aunt.”
Lavidia smiled and sighed, looking up. Then she said:
“Hey, maybe you’ll have a girl like that too.”
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not, Bashia? If Batro is a redhead, and you’re his sister, and my brother is your husband, well...”
“It’s unlikely to have a red-haired girl if neither the father nor the mother is one, even if we have the gene.”
“Yeah, because it’s a recessive gene.”
“Exactly. It’s even more challenging if only one of them is. Look at my family, Lavi. My father is a redhead, and out of all the daughters they’ve had —we’re a bunch of sisters— only Batro turned out that way.”
“Right. That’s because your mother has the standard gene, the dominant one.”
“Exactly. But in your case, that won’t happen. You’re a redhead, and my brother is too, so your offspring will be red-haired, no doubt.”
“Oh, Bashia!” she exclaimed, “I can’t wait to finally have a girl!” she shouted impatiently. “You know what? I’m going to let her hair grow, really long... super long! And I’ll make two braids. Two red braids that will make her the liveliest girl ever.”
“I can’t wait to see it, Lavi.”
“And I can’t wait to finally quit working and dedicate myself to making braids, breastfeeding, and pinching my little girl’s cheeks.”
“I can imagine how bored you must be there.”
“Well, it’s not that I’m bored... It’s just that, naturally, I’d rather be in your situation.”
“Well, that’s what I was saying, Lavidia. If men didn’t exist, no one would have to take care of them, and if we had more machines, they would do the work.”
The girl thought for a moment about that, and then said:
“Anyway, even if men didn’t exist, and we only had girls... with artificial insemination or something, we still couldn’t fully devote ourselves to raising them. We’d get rid of taking care of boys, as they wouldn’t exist anymore, but we’d still have to work the same way. Someone would have to build houses, study medicine, study genetics, build computers...”
“Machines would do all that. Just a few women to supervise that everything goes well, and the rest of us, to our own tasks.”
“Yes, of course. That’s what my colleagues and I were talking about this morning.”
“Who are they?”
“One is fourteen, and her mother only has two girls. Since she can’t get married because she’s underage, and her mother no longer needs her with the daughters, she must work.”
“Naturally. For now, until the day machines take over, she has no choice.”
“That’s right. And the others are already grandmothers or great-grandmothers, who also have no family obligations.”
“How many of you are there in total?”
“About seven or eight. Very few to handle about fifty men, considering that three girls are with the machines.”
“Are they defiant? Men, I mean.”
“Well, some of them. But generally, they are docile and obedient. The problem is coordinating them so that they can work as a team, in relay chains.”
“Yeah. They’re such selfish beings... I don’t even want to think if they could talk and communicate with each other.”
“Then we could get more out of them. I mean, they would contribute better to society, and their own work would be more enriching for themselves. At least they would be aware that they are doing valuable work for their daughters.”
“I don’t see it that way, Lavidia. If they could talk, the first word they would say would be an insult. I’m sure.”
“Yeah, you’re in favour of their extinction, as a friend said this morning.”
“Why not? Once the machines do the work and artificial insemination is achieved, what good are they?”
“And what do we do with male daughters? Do we kill them right after birth? I would never kill a daughter, even if it were a boy.”
“If the technological leap allows gender selection, that wouldn’t be necessary anymore.”
“Yeah, but what about the fathers? If no more boys are born, where do we get the sperm from?”
“Frozen sperm banks,” suggested Bashia.
“And what if they run out?”
“Well, in this world, there are very strange women who prefer to have sons rather than daughters. Sons will never be lacking. I’m sure they would gladly accept their boys donating sperm to be the fathers of thousands of girls. Don’t you think? The ‘banks’ therefore, would never be out of stock, and women would always turn to them to get pregnant.”
“Yeah, but there would be little genetic diversity if all the daughters in the world only had a few fathers.”
“Well, wasn’t that how humanity originated? According to tradition, we all come from a few human couples.”
“Yes, but then we diversified. That’s genetic richness. If we go back now, perhaps we would make a mistake that we would regret in the long run.”
“I don’t know what would happen in the long run. But I do know that now things would be much simpler. Take your mother, for example. She had four boys until your sister, and you came along. Without female daughters to help, your cousins and aunts had to lend a hand.”
“You talk as if motherhood were a burden, Bashia. Do you really think that?”
“No, dear, of course not! But in the most critical moments, when she had many at once, wouldn’t it have been better for her to have a ten or twelve-year-old girl to take care of the little ones?”
“Well, at first, my grandmother and my aunts helped her. And besides, that girl you mentioned already existed. It was me, and then my sister. We took care of my two younger brothers. And also, the older ones, huh! In fact, we still do.”
“Sure, dear, until they get married, there’s no other way. But if you could choose the gender...”
“Everyone would have girls.”
“That’s right. Isn’t it more rewarding to see a daughter grow up? While they’re babies, boys and girls are very similar, but then...”
“Yes, of course it is. But I don’t know, Bashia,” Lavidia looked down and put a hand on her chin. “Men and women complement each other. Before machines existed, they were the ones doing the jobs no one wanted to do. Thanks to them, we could focus on parenting while they were in the fields, in agriculture, or collecting bugs. Just a few of us in charge of them, and they made life much easier for the rest of us. If men hadn’t existed, we would have had to work ourselves.”
“Okay, and what are you trying to say? That we have some kind of... historical debt or something?”
“No, it’s not that. It’s just that...”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” she weighed her words. “Anyway,” she resolved, “they are happy with little. They are generally obedient and do what is asked. They just want...”
“To intimate all the time. Yes, I already know that.”