This is the first chapter and it's a rough draft. Enjoy! :)
In
Our Future
I often stop to look at the
bright screens positioned for my consumption at every street corner. They are
attractive and I don't mind being ripped away from the fantasy world I am aware
I have created for myself. These days, to mix things up, they broadcast talk
shows. On them, they showcase individuals who talk about their feelings, their
kinks, their interests. Today, I believe it's a re-run, but we see so many that
I don't know if it might be original. A transman is pregnant, has asked a
stranger on the street to ejaculate in a cup, she brought it up to her
apartment, and inserted it into her womb. She said she wanted to become
pregnant even though she felt like she was a man. The news reporter is weeping
and they show clips of an emotional audience of women, all together wiping
their eyes and cheering for the brave, empowering gesture this genderbent
creature has accomplished. The transman will give birth and be the child's
father, and will likely have a sex change and have a dildoesque phallus
installed where her female genitals should be.
I'm disgusted. I usually am.
It's a change from being in my bubble of happiness, of faraway pyramids and
pearly white sand dunes. It brings me back to the streets, where I
realize others have stopped to watch. Many weep, others share a slight curl
of the nose, and I notice them and they notice me. Those who feel their
emotions are crippled, embracing one another although they know nothing of each
other. My eyes catch with the eyes of the other disgusted person; it's a woman,
which is rare. I cannot interact with her in public as this, especially that we
are of the same skin colour. I do wish to see her again, and I become excited
to bring her to my apartment so we can take Etherall together and play
holographic sea exploration games. She's has absolutely stunning blue eyes and I start to wonder if she's not already
taken. I touch her hand as I sidle by her and watch subtly for a response. She
looks to the right, which means she will follow me from afar. I turn to the street
again, easily returning to a world that I accept completely as my reality.
The sky isn't a sickening orange and grey,
it's purple and blue, and there are live trees, palm trees around me, not just rusting,
metallic, poles. I walk up the street and the horizon shows me a sparkling
ocean, with rippling white waves and small wind-surfers, enjoying the still
tolerable sun. The sun of the past world. There is a jolly tune playing in the
back of my mind, classic rock from the 1960's, no... it's Retrowave mixed with a bit
of Japanese city pop. The people around me are happy, smiling, the girls wearing
short skirts and t-shirts, the guys are ripped and pleasantly tan. In my mind,
everyone is white or East Asian...
I turn into a grocery where on
the door is written 'Whites Only'. It's one of the worst there is, but the next
best place I can go is another two kilometers walk, or is in the black market.
I didn't get along much with the underground Whites; they still thought they
could overthrow the powers that destroyed our countries; I didn't see life the
same way they did. I didn't consider myself nihilistic either, but resilient. I
knew the codes in order to interact with people I was allowed to interact with,
and I tried with all of my might to be good. I buy a few cans of food: beans,
spaghetti-O's, corn, peas
I am slapped on the shoulder
and I turn and see a vicious-looking Skin, his body adorned with faded
blue tattoos with Nordic pagan symbols. He's probably in his late thirties. How he managed to live this long
tells me he's not to be trifled with.
"Good day,
friend. There's going to be a meeting tonight at the Old Gate Pub, in the
basement. Tell others. All are invited. We paid to have the section of the
city. Thank Power Grid."
I nod at him.
"Good day, friend." He pays an extraordinary amount for a 6-pack of
beer and leaves the store with a wink. I've been to rallies, they're all right,
but I can't stand the ego trips, the genocidal racism, and the ridiculous idea
that things might be different in the future. There have been times where I had
desired to act alongside them, to be a proud white person in this society, but
I was more careful. I didn't want to be knifed, jailed, or sued. It depended on
who would you would mess with.
So I quietly
make my way back to my apartment, passing some drug addicts in the street of
unknown ethnicity, and a group of women wearing burkas chaperoned by a man
whose gaze I avoided. I hop up the stairs and as soon as I am inside, I
lock the doors. I get out some rice and nutrient paste and mix it together
with a bit of salt that I have left. My front door is knocked on. I quickly
check my eyehole and open up. The girl from earlier walks in wearing her
niqab and when she rips it off I finally observe her for who she is.
"Hey,"
she tells me, smiling. She had good teeth, and smells like perfume. I can't
stop staring at her and she rolls her eyes and takes my hands. She places them
on each side of her hips and tells me:
"I want to
wait at least a few hours before we fuck, all right?"
"What...?"
I pose, flabbergasted.
"I'm... I'm
not a slut or anything... I only sleep with white guys and I'm clean."
"Wait...
you... you have condoms?"
"Yeah. Good
ones. My father works for Power Grid."
I was gaping.
"Why the fuck are you here with me?"
"You're
handsome. I don't know, you're normal I guess. I live in a pretty white sector
but everyone's... you know..."
"Yeah... what
do you mean by 'pretty white sector'?"
"Well, it's
around 40% white, 20% Chinese and the rest are mixed. Not too bad a sector."
"Any pure
bloods?"
She smiled at me
and I shook my head and spun, holding my breath and then exhaling completely as I exclaimed: "Unbelievable! What...
what... can I know...?"
"Promise
not to tell anyone. It's really important... else I'll be..."
"Of
course... I won't."
"One-hundred
percent Finnish," she whispered, hiding her smile behind her hands.
I felt like I
had found a pot of gold. Perhaps the Underground was right to hope, to be optimistic
about the world making room for us again. There was a small colony of
isolationist Japanese but they barely had the necessities to keep the planes
away from bombing them to sterility. Then there was the Last Colonies, which
were able to keep away from the Satellites because of their environments. The
one in Canada, which consisted of the last of the Canadian Natives and whites, were
in the mountains. The East Pacific islanders left had harboured some of us during the Race
War, but they would be tempted to raise their IQ by breeding with us and in a
sense I didn't blame them.
"You have
to breed..."
"You don't
even know my name and you're asking me to breed."
"Not with
me. I'm a Euromutt. But you know the Underground--"
"--yes, I
know the Underground is desperately looking for my phenotype, but I... I just
don't want to be a womb for a white supremacist project."
"Huh. I
would have thought women eligible would be killing for a place in their
project."
"My father
doesn't understand me either. But I just want to be normal."
"Normal?
You just walked in here wearing a fucking niqab!"
"Do you
want me to get raped?"
"Never..."
I answered, my stomach churning with the thought. "Please don't..."
"Yea, feel
like a fucking failure don't you... Gosh... I'm sorry. We're so full of programming
even if we try not to be. I'm sorry. Please, I want to..." She had tears leaking
from beautiful blue eyes. She had the loveliest of blonde hair that waved down
to her shoulders. "...just play video games, eat flavoured nutrient paste
and then have some nice sex..."
"I have
some good music and an Underwater Simulator."
She wipes her
eyes. "That sounds amazing." But soon she's weeping, hiding her face
behind her hands. I embrace her and kiss her pink cheeks.
"You're the most
beautiful woman I've ever seen."
"Allison. My name is Allison."
"Carl."
