Agony
With a Purpose
by Sterling Excerpted from Genetic Performance Art, published 2315.
In
the early 2200s there was little personal liberty and communication was
restricted. This allowed the social planning elite to perform genetic
experiments at the level of societies, changing the genes slightly and
seeing what happened not with the individuals but with the society
populated with such individuals. By that time humanity was expanding to
dozens of different planets, and each needed to be seeded to create new
societies. The scientists could experiment with a single isolated human
society rather than the whole of humanity.
Ethical standards in
that era were far lower than today and far lower than they had been
around the turn of the millennium. A minority in that era argued for
experiments that could benefit humanity at the expense of freedom and
independence for experimental subjects. But only in the 2200s was it
acceptable to perform such experiments not for a concrete benefit to
humanity but in the name of art. Albrecht Smith was the unquestioned
master in sexual performance art. His manipulations changed human
sexuality in major or minor ways, and he had a knack for knowing what
manipulations would lead to interesting developments.
A
substantial segment of today's society feels that due to the horrible
ethical violations his work entailed, accounts of the results of
Albrecht's experiments should be suppressed, if not totally destroyed.
We stand with the majority who hold that we should learn and draw
inspiration from all parts of our history, however repugnant we may
find the morality that allowed such developments.
Albrecht Smith faced more condemnation for this piece of his genetic performance art than any other, and it is no wonder why.
Bill
stopped by the mating house on his way home from work. He looked
forward to sex with the women and found he was good for about twice a
day, usually on his way to work and his way home. He loved the
pleasure, the buildup, the orgasm, and the woman's writhing and
screaming that affirmed his manhood. He liked the bit of extra income
he could earn too. Today about 15 of the 40 rooms had green lights, and
one other man was looking them over. To keep his cash flow positive he
would skip the lovely girl he would have to pay $2 for. The next one
was kind of average with big boobs, and she was free. $4 for a kind of
scrawny older woman. Then $8 for a fat woman by the name of Mary. He
felt up for a challenge and really wanted the $8. He entered her stall.
She started swearing at him "Oh God, no". But he put his card in the
wall, and her bonds started tightening. She was gently but firmly
pulled down on the horse, which started vibrating against her pubic
bone area. He pushed a button to start his favorite pornographic movie
running against the wall. These movies were from a happier day,
especially this one with the woman on top of the man, engulfing him,
ecstatic with her pleasure. Bill pulled his pants down and idly fondled
himself, and got an erection easily enough. Now the problem was to find
Mary's vagina in all that flesh. He shoved one large buttock in one
direction, the other in the other, and found it. He could just barely
reach. "I have razor blades up my cunt, and if you go in you'll be
sliced to pieces", she growled. Of course she didn't. So he put the tip
of his penis right where her opening was, and slid in. "It's acid,
you'll have holes in your dick where the pus boils bleed". No wonder
she was worth $8. He spit on her neck and said, "Shut up, cunt, you'll
be screaming soon enough." He started thrusting. She fell silent,
defeated. Fucking a woman was satisfying at a primal level, even if it
got a little nasty sometimes. She was hot and wet inside; no matter how
much she dreaded this, her body was still welcoming. He speeded up and
then lunged inside and came. The instant his semen shot into her, she
tensed up, straining against her bonds, her face in pain. A sensor
picked up her agony. His card indicated he had received the $8 credit.
The bonds loosened a little but still kept her pretty tight so she
wouldn't hurt herself as she thrashed around. They would loosen fully
after fifteen minutes or so. Bill was panting a little, having enjoyed
his little mating venture, and he pulled his pants up. As he left he
saw above her door on the outside the red light, and the readout at
29:23, the time remaining until someone could mate with her again. Her
posted payout had fallen from $8 to $7.
Fred
was 14. He had been going to the mating house for a couple years,
finding that he loved the sensation of thrusting into a vagina. He also
felt an orgasm, but nothing much came out. He restricted his attention
to the women who were free or had a small payment. He knew he had been
producing a little fluid for a few months now. Some of the women tensed
a little when he came, but they were mightily relieved that he wasn't
quite mature enough to send a woman into full agony. Today he was
mounted on Carly and felt his pleasure building. He came, feeling the
warm waves begin as usual. But he was startled to hear Carly scream,
and see the green light by the card reader indicating he had succeeded.
He had reached manhood. He had sent a woman into agony!
His
friends were skeptical. They went with him next time, and waited
outside as Fred went in to try to earn $1 for Sophie. After a couple
minutes they heard a scream and the red X above the door changed to a
counter, 30:00 and declining. Fred must have done it. They hoped they
would reach that point soon.
Michael
had plenty of money, so he looked first at the girl he would spend $12
for. Just gorgeous. He went in to look. Lou was crying softly, pausing
only briefly when she heard him come in. Lou was slim, with perfect
skin and perfect breasts. He fondled the breasts for a little while.
Although her hair and face were sweaty and streaked with tears, he
could see how beautiful she was underneath. The tears just added a
little spice. When he inserted his card the bonds tightened. Her rear
end was perfect too, and as she was now pressed firmly against the
horse her vulva were opened a little and were moist. The vibrator her
pubic bone was pressed against made her moister. His penis was ready
for the task. He loved that first moment when his glans touched the wet
flesh of the vulva. As she felt his tip she said softly "Please..." He
moved in very slowly, a millimeter at a time, enjoying each bit of
sensation as his penis was engulfed in her perfect silky vagina. He
reached the end, then slid back very slowly. He was in no hurry. He
liked the idea of fathering a child with her, however unlikely that
might be. And that got him going a little faster. Now he was thinking
of her as a perfect female of his species, and he the perfect male was
mating with her perfectly. His pleasure built. Very soon now nature
would take its course and his pleasure blend with the reproductive act.
He liked looking intently at the girl's face as his orgasm came, and
seeing exactly how small the delay was between his semen shooting out
and the convulsion of pain that would distort her face. So curious that
he felt pleasure and satisfaction at the exact moment she felt agony.
But it wasn't really even proven that women felt pain. Maybe they just
had that reaction as a reflex and we interpreted it as agony. In any
case, he felt fine, and casually said, "See you later, Lou", giving a
pat to her body as it still writhed in agony.
Amy
was one of the oldest girls. She had first gotten he period three years
before, that yucky monthly time when the blood flowed between her legs.
Her breasts and pubic hair had been growing, her hips and all. Her body
was that of a grown woman. She had seen the older girls say goodbye,
one by one, to go off to join the women. All the girls wondered what it
was like there. Once a girl went off she never came back. They were
excited and a little scared to go. Today was her turn. She said tearful
farewells to the other girls, and her teachers Sue and Vivian took her
to another room that was usually locked. There she met Tony, who must
have been a man. Sue and Vivian had said there were men in the world,
mysterious people who met with them now and then and had helped them
become teachers. They had grown up in this school and never left, being
trained as teachers and surrogate parents. They knew no more about the
world than Amy did.
Tony was bigger than Sue and Vivian, and his
voice when he spoke was deeper, and there were other differences. She
and Tony drove some distance in a car to what he said would be her new
home. It was the first time she had been in a car or left the school
grounds. She was surprised and thrilled with the novelty. But when he
led her into her new home, she was surprised and scared. There was no
hint of fun anywhere. There were a few men, but lots of older girls and
women like Sue and Vivian everywhere. Some didn't look up; some gave
her a dull glance. They looked weary. It was much larger than the
school she had lived in for as long as she remembered. There was a long
corridor lined with bedrooms, all the same, and Tony showed her to her
room. It had two beds, one occupied by a woman who was lying on her
back with her arm over her face. She gave a look when Amy came in, but
didn't say anything, and put her arm back over her face. Tony pointed
Amy to her bunk and said she should ask this woman how things were
done. He said goodbye, with what she later realized was a meaningful
grin, and she never saw him again. "So?" Amy said after a while. The
woman sat up on her bed. Amy was shocked at how worn out she looked.
The woman said her name was Rachel, and asked when she had had her last
period. Amy wasn't sure, but she thought it had stopped a few days ago.
Rachel sighed. And she began talking.
"Let me guess: Do you know
where babies come from? Do you know that there are boy babies and girl
babies and they are different? Do you know what a man looks like
between his legs?" To each question, Amy shook her head. She had asked
some of these questions of Sue and Vivian, but they didn't know.
"There
is one basic fact that you need to know, and you might as well know
now. One day every month you are going to be taken off to the mating
house, and you will experience the worst pain you can imagine, over and
over and over again all day. Then you get to come back here and wait
for the next month. You can do pretty much whatever you want here. Some
of us read, play games, get exercise. But for all of us, that one day a
month haunts us." Amy started feeling sick to her stomach. "Before you
got here, you were a girl. Now you are a woman. Babies grow inside the
bellies of women. OK, you know where you put a tampon? That is where a
baby will come out. Men have a thing between their legs called a penis
that gets long and hard, and it slides up where the tampon goes. It's
way bigger than a tampon. They slide it in and out, and that's mating."
She demonstrated with one finger in her other loose fist. "Then stuff
spurts out the end, and every now and then it starts a baby inside a
woman, where it grows for nine months until it comes out." Amy was
reeling. Was this a big joke? "The problem is that when that stuff
spurts out the end of the guy's penis, it hurts really bad. Really,
really bad. It hurts so much that they tie you up when you are in the
mating house so you can't run away, or kick, or bite, or pull your hair
out, because you will want to do all those things." Amy just stared.
She
went to the dining hall with Rachel and they got their trays and ate.
There was some dull conversation, but no joy. The next morning a doctor
came to examine Amy. He took her temperature and took a swab from
between her legs, where the tampon went in. The next day he did it
again, and said it was now time. He told her to use the bathroom and
take off her clothes. A few minutes later a couple of other men came in
and before she knew what was happening they had clipped her hands
together behind her back and she was walking down the corridor with
them. As she passed, a couple of the women stopped to look at her. One
cried.
They led her outside and down a long path, then in a
door, through another door, and into a long corridor with one wall full
of stalls. Glancing to the side she saw what looked like women bent
over, still. In one she saw a man behind the woman, grabbing her butt,
moving. But her guards took her aside into an empty cubicle before she
could see much. They had her kneel over a sort of funny sofa, and she
felt one knee and then the other fastened. They undid her hands from
behind her back and fastened each of them separately. She could still
move. They pointed out a tube within reach of her mouth that she could
suck on to get water. Then as they were turning to go, one man pulled
down his pants and underpants, and for the first time in her life she
saw what was between a man's legs. She was shocked, and looked it. He
laughed. There was a weird little sack hanging down, but in front of it
a thing hanging down like a finger, though a pretty big finger. "Better
see it once first" he said. Then he pulled his pants up again and left.
She heard a blood-curdling scream from somewhere. She had a couple
minutes by herself. Then a door behind her opened and a man walked in,
one with gray hair. He smiled and walked around her to the sides. He
ran his hands all over her back and her breasts, and stroked her hair.
It felt a little rude to her. He slowly took his clothes off, and she
saw what was between his legs. He put a card in the wall and she felt
her bonds move, drawing her arms and knees down so she was flat against
the horse. She then felt this vibrating between her legs, and it felt
pretty good in a way she hadn't felt before. Really good, actually. The
little tube had gotten longer, and she decided it must be the penis
Rachel had talked about. He moved up behind her, and moved his hands
all over her butt and back, and it felt kind of exciting in a way. Then
she felt him playing with the folds between her legs, then she felt
what must be the penis poke her, and then she felt it press hard
against her, and then it suddenly whooshed up inside her where the
tampons went, but this was huge. It hurt a little, but it also felt
exciting, and connected somehow to the pleasure she felt from that
vibrating against her front. Something stirred deep within her. Then he
started sliding it in and out, over and over. So far there was no agony
here. It felt good. Really good. She felt pleasure building, building
more than she thought possible, then felt a huge wave of it, and she
cried out a little. The man laughed. As he started going faster and
faster, she was still panting with the glow. Then he said, "OK, little
girl, now it's my turn", pumped faster and faster, breathing harder and
harder, and then let out a big "Unnnh!". An instant after he did, she
felt it. Like knives through her eyeballs, a blowtorch searing her
between her legs, charring her flesh, fingernails being ripped out,
knives all over, head about to explode. She was screaming, she realized
as an afterthought. It went on like that for an eternity. She felt
herself straining against her bonds. Gradually it subsided to the point
she could cry out "Help!". Mere gravel in her eyes, and the knives all
over her skin subsided to nails and pins. Then she lay there panting,
and felt the bonds loosen a little. The man had left, she now noticed.
She felt up to some of the water, and drank from the tube. She heard a
voice from what was probably the next cubicle. "First time, honey?" she
asked. "Yes." "Oh, you poor, poor thing." After she had rested a few
minutes the pain had stopped, then she heard the door open behind her.
Another gray-haired man walked in. She felt the bonds tugging her down
against the horse again, the vibrating between her legs. He pulled down
his pants, touched her all over, and actually tugged on her nipple
until it hurt. Or what she used to think "hurt" meant. She started
pleading with him, "Oh God, no, please, it hurts so much, oh no, don't,
oh God..." "Oh shut up," he said, and hit the back of her head. She
felt his penis slide into her, but where there had been pleasure before
it was pure terror now. He didn't thrust in and out anywhere near as
long as the other man had, but then he too pressed a little harder, let
out a big "Aaaah!", and she felt the knives through her eyes, her brain
tossed into a fire, limbs being ripped off, but once they were off,
still there to be ripped off yet again. The third time she vomited as
the man approached her. She was dimly aware of someone coming in to
wash up the vomit and the pee she had leaked out. She lost count in her
recurring agony, but when the men came to get her she had taken in 24
penises, had 24 ejaculations inside her, and gone to hell 24 times.
Long forgotten, once, at the beginning, she had had the only orgasm she
would have in her entire life. The men handcuffed her again, and she
stumbled a little as she got to her feet, but just trudged numbly where
they led her, until she was uncuffed and lying on her bunk.
She
slept, had bad dreams, woke expecting to have escaped her nightmare,
but found she was in the same world she had been in before. She just
lay in bed a long time. Gradually hunger got her up and to the dining
hall. That night she timidly asked Rachel if she could join her in her
bed, but Rachel angrily told her to get lost. As the days wore on, she
saw a few of the girls struggling as they were led off to the mating
house. A few were dragged. Some were crying. She saw the girls come
back dazed, like zombies, some being dragged, limp. When her period
ended, she started getting nervous. She tried hiding in the bathrooms
and in other girls' beds as the doctor looked for her. She was warned,
then found herself handcuffed to her bunk. She kicked as the doctor
tried to examine her, and regretted it as the attendants ground her
knees into the floor as they held her down. And then it was her turn to
go back to the mating house all over. Month after month. Year after
year.
She got pregnant. The visits to the mating house stopped
and she moved to another area, and when the baby was born she felt some
of the universal joy of motherhood, but then was bitterly disappointed
when they took the baby away from her. A few years later she got
pregnant again and bore another child.
The
Change was marked by two major developments: Fertility started
dropping, and women reported pain after intercourse. It wasn't pain in
their lower parts, it was pain at a systemic level, throughout their
bodies. The specific trigger was when a man's semen made contact with
their vagina. Sex with condoms was fine, though the usual fears of a
condom breaking were intensified by more immediate consequences.
At
first the pain was minor and the drop in fertility was modest, but the
pain got worse and the fertility dropped further. Artificial
insemination was no help, since the semen introduced into the vagina
caused the same problem. In vitro fertilization stopped working. It was
no longer an option to harvest eggs, fertilize them in a test tube and
implant them.
Actual conceptions dropped dramatically as fewer
women were willing to even try. As with most women in a modern society,
they had mixed feelings about having children in the first place, and
the idea of months or years of painful intercourse was just not
appealing. Another factor was that the Change engendered profound
unease about the future of humanity. Women were uneasy bringing
children into the world, especially daughters.
In areas where
women's rights were well established, very few women put up with the
pain of intercourse, but there were a few who wanted families badly
enough to bear the pain. In pockets of heavy male domination such as
fundamentalist religious sects a few more births were seen because
women were being coerced into sex. Female defections from such
organizations increased markedly.
Another discovery was that the
number of different partners was a key factor in increasing women's
fertility. It looked as if the woman needed the right man's sperm, not
just sperm. Some subcultures with extreme male domination had early on
moved to imprison women -- not far out of line with their basic values.
But encouraging multiple partners for women was quite a different
matter. Some sects adjusted. Smuggled video showed women being held
down for endless gang bangs, with the humiliation the women felt
dwarfed by the sheer physical pain after each man had his turn with
her. But a significant number of pregnancies resulted from such
arrangements. Estimates were that if a woman had 20 partners during
each of her fertile periods from the age of 18 to 40, she might achieve
on average 3.2 pregnancies and bring 2.9 of them to term.
Even
in areas where women's rights were established, fringe groups raised
the idea of imprisoning women for similar treatment. To no one's
surprise, the fringe groups were predominantly male. Women who had
experienced the agony even once tended to drop out. Defenders of
women's autonomy were composed of just about all women and a large
group of fair-minded men.
But it was inevitable that as time
went on the fringe ideas would spread. With virtually no children under
the age of 10, the danger of extinction was palpable. Life was as good
as ever for men, and as painful as coercing women might be to all
civilized norms, these men could not face going extinct.
Women
were the majority of the electorate, so no such proposals were going to
be achieved by the legislative process. But the male pro-coercion vote
increased inexorably. Ripples went through the military, notably short
on men who felt great compassion for women. There was a bloodless
imposition of martial law. When it was over, the constitution had been
amended to strip from women the right to vote. Coercion was accepted,
and the question was just how to do it.
One obvious refinement
was that women only be subjected to painful intercourse during their
fertile periods -- women were suffering plenty without heaping on
gratuitous pain.
There was no harm in a family continuing to
live as before as long as the woman was available for sex with 20 men
during the middle of her cycle. But her screams and physical restraint
were traumatizing for the children and the husband. The suicide rate
for women went up dramatically. Many husbands snuck off, some guiltily
and some with no regrets. It was hard dealing with the agony and
torment their wives went through. Even in men low in compassion, having
their wives raped by twenty men each month was a problem at a gut level.
Many
women hid from the coercion, aided by men who loved them. But they were
discovered gradually. Helping a woman hide from her sexual duties
became a crime. Even when not hiding, women managed not to report a
fertile period a remarkably high percentage of the time.
What it
came down to was that the women needed to be imprisoned and their
reproductive cycles monitored by men. They needed to be housed in
guarded dormitories. Women didn't want to hear other women screaming
day and night, so they were taken to another facility for their ordeal.
The
work women could do while imprisoned was limited, and then their
willingness to do it dropped too. There was a severe labor shortage, as
men had to fill most of the jobs women used to do. The women cooked for
themselves and did laundry, but not much else. Although women's
devotion to their children is strong, a few women started strangling
their babies. Babies were so precious that the risk was too high.
Children had to be separated from their mothers. Many went to live with
their fathers, but group settings became more and more common, as the
men had a tremendous amount of work to do.
Even many men who
favored the coercion in abstract terms had a hard time dealing with
actual coercion and the agony of individual women. The men who could
stand dealing with women tended to be callous, no help to women's
plight. But there was enough decency that sadism was stopped when
detected.
In grand terms the society developed a near total
division of the sexes, each group living their own lives and not
forming intimate bonds with the other gender. But there was sexual
intimacy, or at least sexual intercourse, of unprecedented scale.
Vaginal applications of new drugs eliminated the transmission of STDs, one problem that was relatively easy to solve.
The
goal was that a woman in her fertile period should have semen injected
into her by about 20 men. Unless something was done, she would be in
agony after each one. Ordinary painkillers were hopelessly ineffective.
General anesthesia was possible, but there were a couple problems.
There are inherent risks, and the labor shortage meant few men could be
spared to receive training to provide and monitor it, especially 20
sessions of 20 minutes each during a day. Studies also showed that
women under general anesthesia just didn't get pregnant as often. So
with no realistic alternatives, a woman was going to go into agony each
time a man ejaculated in her. The agony was intense enough that she was
not going to be cooperative. Assembling several men to hold her down
for each of these bouts of sex, a half hour apart throughout a day, was
an even bigger strain on male labor. She might fight, and with the
danger of kicking, scratching, and biting, it was also perilous.
The
solution was restraining the women in a single spot they would occupy
throughout their fertile period. Each hand and knee was tied at a
separate point. Then throughout the day at periodic intervals a man
could by himself come in, have sex with her and leave. Early
experiments restraining women on their backs for missionary position
did not work so well. She could spit at the man and her face would
often be seared with hatred, and she could move her pelvis around
violently, forcing the man to hold it in place while he was raping her.
Instead it worked best to have a sort of padded horse she was face down
on, and tighten her firmly against the saddle so she could not move her
pelvis. The man could then mount her doggy style. This was more
convenient for the men anyway, allowing them to remain standing and
having a little bit higher rate of following through erection to
ejaculation. It was clear that holding her in this tight a position for
24 hours would hurt her severely. So there developed the idea of
loosening the bonds considerably during much of the time, and having
the man tighten them just as he was about to mate with her. She needed
water, so that was available to her by a mouth tube she could suck. She
might urinate and defecate, usually between matings, but a man had to
be prepared to deal with such surprises while mounted on her as well.
It
made sense for dozens of women to be assembled at a single mating
center, so men could come to a central location and choose who to mate
with from a wide selection. One obvious arrangement was for each woman
to be in a separate soundproof room, but it turned out to be better for
the women's health to be able to converse with each other and offer
what words of support they could. This was more important than the
chilling effect of the screams and moans -- actually, the screams
actually enhanced the men's effectiveness. Because the walls were not
complete the women could hear each other though they couldn't see each
other.
The shortage of labor meant that automating this process
as much as possible was important. So in a standard arrangement, there
was a corridor for men to go down, where each woman was in a stall
behind a door of her own. There was a window in each through which the
man could see what awaited him within. Above each door was a display.
It might show a red timer, displaying how long until this woman was
available for sex again, or it might just have a green "OK". Once the
man entered, he could inspect his potential mate in person, and if he
wanted her, he would slide his ID card into the wall, which would do
several things. It would lock the door behind him, shut the window so
he would have privacy, and make the green "OK" outside turn to a red
"X". It would tighten her restraints to hold her very firmly against
the horse. The horse she was pressed against also had a vibrator, and
it started vibrating against her pelvic area when she was pressed
against it. This made sure she was lubricated, and increased the
pregnancy rate slightly. Women sometimes had orgasms, a sensation they
came to detest because of the association with what came next. When
pressed firmly against the horse, with some vaginal lubrication, she
was ready for sex.
Early experience with the gang bang approach
showed that there was a significant chance a woman would die if she was
raped too soon in succession. The agony seemed to accrue separately for
each man whose sperm she took inside her. So the safe approach was to
give her a chance to rest. As a result, a woman in the automated setup
was off limits for half an hour after a man mated with her. This was
defined as an actual ejaculation inside her. Adolescent boys might come
but not have the semen necessary to trigger her reaction, and both men
and boys could lose an erection or not follow through to ejaculation.
So she was also fitted with a sensor that recorded when she went into
agony to start timing the 30 minutes. The tightening of the horse
followed a schedule. When a man came in, she was tightened against it
very firmly, so she could not move her body to interfere with his
penetration and thrusting. Once she was pulled down tight, the men had
only ten minutes to come, and a clock showed how much time he had left.
Some men liked to prolong the pleasure of the experience and the clock
let them gauge when to finish up. After the man came, the woman's bonds
were loosened a little. She could now move around a little more freely,
but she was still held fairly tight to keep from hurting herself as she
thrashed. And then for ten minutes at least the bonds were quite loose.
There
was another problem. Some men were turned off by women they found
unattractive, reasons for which could include fat, ugly, verbally
abusive, skinny, or of an unpopular skin tone. Men tended to avoid them
in favor of more attractive mates, and when the men's tastes coincided,
a comely girl might have had 30 mates in her 24 hours, but a less
desirable woman might have had only two or none at all. So a market
system developed. Along with the timer display outside each stall was
the current price or payment for the woman in question. A man might
need to pay $12 for a really nice woman, but be paid up to $20 for one
who was particularly hard to find mates for. He paid the money up front
for the chance to begin, but only earned the $20 if he proceeded to
send her into agony. A woman's price would vary depending on her past
history and how far along she was in her fertile period. A woman might
be worth $15, but after a couple successful matings her price might
fall to $10 or lower. A woman who required a payment of $2 might go to
offering $5 if matings were unexpectedly slow. Many men might start
taking a turn with a $20 woman, but find that her body or her verbal
abuse would turn him off. They wouldn't get paid but could try their
masculine efforts with another woman. Some things don't change, and it
could cost a man $1,000 for the chance to take a girl's virginity.
A
man who is going to make a woman go into agony is almost by definition
not very sympathetic to her. He might not be especially callous in
general, since the structure of this brave new society made it easy for
him to view her as less than human. There was nothing wrong with a man
feeling a woman up wherever he wanted, though her head was perilous
ground because of the teeth. For variety, a man who was so inclined
could stick his finger in her anus or vagina or spank her a little. But
he couldn't do anything that harmed her potential to get pregnant or
her long-term health. A woman could report a man by biting on a second
tube near her mouth. Women on either side could also report him
depending on what they heard. That would immediately bring a video of
the mating room to the attention of a man supervising hundreds of
mating rooms. The supervisor could tell the man to stop. Security could
get their reasonably fast. Repeat offenders or serious offenders could
be barred from the mating houses, fined, or arrested. But if the woman
cried "wolf" a lot, for instance, if she bit the tube merely because
she went into agony, her cries would be taken less seriously.
But
for all those possibilities, most men were not vicious, or even very
kinky. This system mostly unleashed in them a primal urge to mate
quickly with women and ejaculate deep inside them.
Once
in a great while a woman became pregnant. She was quickly separated
from the others. A grim mood pervaded the general female dormitories,
but the pregnant women were a little more lighthearted. They would have
a baby, and all this suffering they had gone through would be worth
something. At the very least, they would have a full year off from the
mating house. They were given the highest quality obstetrical care. The
peak pain of childbirth was not as bad as the agonies of sex they had
gone through month after month for years. And when the babies were
born, the women were allowed to hold them and nurse them for a while.
But some women overcame their maternal instincts and started strangling
or shaking their infants, such was their hatred at the world they lived
in. As a result, women were under strict supervision with their
infants. Within a few weeks, in any event, the babies were taken from
the mothers and delivered into the care of nurturing men for a few
months before being delivered to the sort of center that Amy grew up in.
When
the Change struck, men had boys and girls in their families, and they
kept in close touch with them. But girls conceived after the Change
were different. They had genetic fathers, of course. Men were told they
had fathered a daughter, and this was an added incentive to mating for
many of the men. They could see her if they wanted, but few did, and
they rarely did for long. They did not want to get too close to girls
given the pain that loomed in their future.
Originally all the
boys and girls were raised together, and at the right age the girls
went off to take their place among the women. At about that age boys
would go to all-male schools. But there were problems. Some boys and
girls formed friendships. The boys didn't want to be separated from
their friends, and many of them developed questions about the humanity
of the society they lived in when they knew what sort of life their
young female friends would face. Sometimes a boy would later find his
childhood friend restrained in a mating center and become terribly
upset.
So the boys and girls were separated around age one. A
boy would never come into contact with a young female until he went to
a mating house -- unless his career path took him to work with the
women. Even post-menopausal women were kept segregated because of the
horror stories they sometimes told with such bitterness.
The
female experience in this society was a grim, nightmarish one, but the
girls led a carefree life. In their all-girl groups, word of their
future fate was kept from them. Initially they were tended by men, but
after a while a few girls were allowed to stay and grow to maturity, so
they took over the care of the younger ones, never learning about the
mating houses. The girls were free to learn certain things, but nothing
related to the structure of the society they lived in. They could have
perpetual sleepovers, or alone time if they were more the shy type.
And
as the girls reached puberty, they got frequent medical exams from the
women who tended them. There came a point where their bodies were old
enough to bear children without traumatizing them -- the bodies, that
is -- often around age 15, and it was time for them to take their
rightful place as women in the society. Leading them to a woman's
dormitory was a bit like leading a farm animal to slaughter -- in some
ways better, in some ways worse.
Gradually
the Change reversed itself. Women found that the sex hurt less, then
not at all. More women got pregnant, and then it seemed they were all
getting pregnant. Giving the women contraceptives was easy enough, but
the men were reluctant to dismantle the society they had set up. Who
knew when the Change might come again?
The mating houses were
the one place where men and women met. Women understood that the only
way to win freedom was to change the hearts and minds of the men in the
mating houses. The need for restraints disappeared, the sexual pleasure
started becoming mutual. Through talking, flirting, and nonsexual
touch, women started getting the message through to the men that they
were human. They liked the idea of seeing the same woman again, and now
there was no reason the women couldn't come to the mating houses at any
time, not just during fertile periods. Men realized that they missed
the company of women. After a number of dates, the men wanted to take
the women home with them, and they did, first a trickle, then a flood.
The women who had made it outside worked very hard to please their men,
since they could be returned to the women's facilities at any time --
it took a very long time for anything resembling equal rights to
re-emerge.
There was no obstacle to dismantling the warped
structure of the society and returning to nuclear families. But many
men resisted, saying it was important to preserve the structure of the
mating houses in case the Change returned. As a political compromise,
some of the old structure remained, slightly modified. The women in the
new facilities were available in the mating houses for sex all the
time, not just during their fertile periods. Some went off
contraceptives long enough to bear a child or two. There was selective
abortion of the boy fetuses, but the girl babies were raised by their
mothers. What remained was a hereditary caste of prostitutes, largely
ignorant of the outside world.
Since sex was no longer agonizing
and they now contained children, these prostitute societies were far
happier places than the women's houses of old. But the residents were
still second class citizens, to say the least. It took many decades of
agitation led by women in the broader society before most of them were
closed down. Yet a small minority of the women did not want to leave.
These prostitute societies had developed their own rich culture with
its own intricate traditions, and some wanted to carry it on. There
were still plenty of men willing to carry on their role in keeping the
societies authentic.
Long
after the Change had stopped, people pondered the morality of what had
gone before. Imprisoning and torturing the entire female half of
society was an affront to any moral code ever devised. And yet, they
had all come through it. They had survived and not gone extinct.
This
was the second and far more famous of two closely related installations
Albrecht created. In the first, the residents knew that they were just
one society among many and knew my ongoing communication that the
others had not undergone the horrible Change. In that installation the
society more or less quietly went extinct. So few babies were born that
the society shrank to virtually nothing. Men and women grew old
together and died.
In this second installation as described
above, the residents were totally cut off from the rest of humanity and
believed they would be cut off forever. They did not know that the
Change was only happening to them. This danger of true imminent
extinction was required to push the society -- the men, that is -- over
the edge into taking the brutal and extreme measures they did.