The workday had been exhausting. Social norms required women without offspring or those with grown daughters, but who still didn’t have granddaughters, to contribute to the social well-being of the community. Some specialized in teaching, medicine, or machine manufacturing... Lavidia’s family had always chosen construction as their way of making those contributions. Laba no longer had young daughters to care for, and while waiting for her granddaughters —her youngest daughter, Ladia, was already pregnant— she collaborated with her other daughter in building barricades to prevent soil erosion on the hillsides exposed by the recent earthquake.

“Maybe we should consult someone about all these strange things,” Lavidia suggested, pointing to some curious rock formations. The hillside had exposed what seemed to be a fossil deposit.

“They’re schists, Lavidia. Underground waters have shaped the rocks for centuries, giving them those whimsical forms.”

“Yeah, but don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that they all look alike?”

“Well, not all of them. Besides, I think it’s you, wanting to see patterns where I don’t think there are any.”

“It’s as if a kind of giant insects were covered in mud, and then it petrified. See it there,” she pointed, “and there, and in that one over there.”

The mother observed what her daughter indicated, and after a moment, she shrugged and said:

“Come on, Lavi. We can’t waste more time. The men have been idle for too long. We should be filling these moulds with cement before they start fighting among themselves.”

“And cover all this forever?”

“Yeah, and what do you propose instead? We can’t call any specialists now. The work would stop, and the rainy season will arrive soon. If it’s as intense as last year, the hillside could collapse onto the road and cause serious damage.”

Lavidia understood that her mother was right and simply took some photos.

“Come on,” Laba requested. “Don’t get distracted anymore. Have your men hold the palisade while I make sure mine start pouring the cement.”

“This could be done much faster with the help of machines, Mom,” she protested.

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“No doubt. In fact, I’ve already requested it, but those who operate them are busy building houses,” she pointed out. “People keep being born, you know. Besides, if machines did the work, what would we do with the men?”

“Yeah, the eternal dilemma,” Lavidia whispered, and she was not wrong. They had to keep them busy doing something. It was a pity they couldn’t be utilised more. She had tried to teach some rudimentary things to Labro, her brother, and had hardly made any progress. He couldn’t even vocalise some basic words, although at least, he and the others understood what was said to them if spoken slowly. That was more than enough.

But it was true that men had always been a burden. Their main utility lay in the fact that they were the only way to conceive daughters, although in times before scientific advancements, they had also been an excellent labour force in agricultural work and insect collection.

But those times had passed. While Lavidia worked hard to organize the team and give the necessary orders for everyone to tighten the dam at the same time, she wondered if now that society had progressed, and medicine had achieved astonishing things, perhaps it was time to take a step further and only conceive daughters. It was still far from being achieved, although television had already announced it for the next decade. Certainly, at the pace at which discoveries were progressing, it was not entirely unreasonable to think it could happen. Males would only be a few, the best, serving solely as sperm banks.

Lavidia loved her father and brothers, and she was sure she would also love her male children when she had them. Although, of course, every woman’s desire was to conceive girls, the more, the better.

But it could be that the future would see astonishing changes, such as those announced on television, as more and more people began to do research on the subject. Women were living longer and longer, and once they could no more bear daughters and their granddaughters were older, that is, once they had lived their lives to the fullest, they still had many years to spend on improving the material conditions of their offspring.

It was no longer like in the old days, she thought, back when women despaired upon entering menopause and saw their daughters and granddaughters doing what they could no longer do. At least they consoled themselves in some way with their granddaughters, despite everything, until their time came. But times had changed, and medicine had increased life expectancy. Women could continue enjoying their granddaughters, but they also had plenty of time to benefit the community and still feel fulfilled in some way.

And that was despite some advances that hinted at the possibility of even halting the aging process that causes the loss of ovarian follicular function, so women could have daughters almost indefinitely.

In fact, television was showing science fiction series where men no longer existed, all the work was done by machines, women lived beyond a hundred years, and they didn’t stop having daughters until they were eighty.

What a nonsense! Lavidia thought. Caliria, the star of one of those successful series, had died at the age of one hundred twenty, had had more than fifty daughters, and at the time of her death, more than five hundred descendants had gathered around her, including daughters, granddaughters, great-granddaughters, and great-great-granddaughters.

Absolutely absurd, she considered. She wished to have many daughters, like all women, but they were reluctant to come. It had been a while since she married Batro, and daughters were not coming. She had reached a point where she would have signed for even having only two... or even one...