Michael lay down on his bed, exhausted from the discussion he had just had with his father about choosing girl E-27 when there were 28 girls to choose from on the E-floor, and he certainly could have chosen a D or C wife as a Gamma-1. And then his father hadn’t even heard of his possibility of choosing a B-wife. Everything was hopeless anyway when it came to explaining stuff like this to him, and there was no way to even try to explain why he had chosen this particular girl. His father had clearly wanted a perfect high-grade Wife for his son. Not just because of the trophy-factor, but also because he genuinely believed that any man would be happy with a high-grade wife from a reputable Wife School as a life partner. It had been an impossible conversation that went completely wrong, but in the end at least he had been able to convince his father that he wouldn’t change his mind on this. And he was an adult class one male now, so his father couldn’t have any actual power over him anymore as an Alpha-5. Gamma-1 was a very unclear category, but it was clear enough that any class one male was higher than a class five, Alpha or not.

And that was just the first difficult conversation for today that Michael needed to have. There was yet another matter that he had to settle now, although it wouldn’t be a face-to-face conversation this time. He muttered a little prayer, picked up the picture with Megans data and took the old housephone. Every home in the Seventh City had a landline, but they weren’t used much because people whispered that the phones were eavesdropped. No-one really knew by whom, but it could be the police, or the government, or someone who could inform your boss or school director or so. In theory there was freedom of speech according to the Glorious Constitution, but in practice you were never sure what would happen if the wrong person heard you say the wrong thing. You might lose your job or worse if you pissed off the wrong person who had more power than you, and insulting The Nation itself and its power systems was even more dangerous.

He dialled the number on the paper, and hoped that Megan's father would be home. A dial tone appeared, and then a distorted voice yelled something almost sounding like ‘hello’ in the phone.

‘Do I speak with Mister Anderson?’ He asked, unsure.

‘Yes, this is Donald Anderson speaking,’ A rough voice said at the other side of the line.

‘You are speaking with Michael Adams, I have your name from the Wife factory, and I am, eh, how do I say it, interested in your daughter.’

The voice started laughing. ‘In my daughter? Interested? But my daughter is married already. You must be mistaken, son. Barbara has been married off from the Wife factory five years ago already.’

‘No sir, I’m not interested in Barbara, I’m talking about your other daughter Megan.’

The voice started to laugh again. ‘Megan? I almost had forgotten her. She’s still in the Wife Factory and has reached marrying age now, didn’t she? And you are interested in her? Let me guess, you’re an Epsilon-7 and there wasn’t any other girl left because you were too slow to choose. We both know she isn’t really wife-material.’

Michael sighed. This was even going worse than he had anticipated.

‘No sir, I’m a Gamma-1 and I am interested in her for her. But I officially need your consent to proceed with the procedure now that I’ve chosen her.’

The man on the other side of the line abruptly stopped laughing.

‘Sorry, Mister. Yeah, whatever, you have my permission to do whatever you want with her. I cannot say anything to a Gamma-1. I hadn’t even expected any interest in her, but if she takes your fancy, whatever… Just go ahead. Good luck, boy!’

Michael started getting irritated.

‘Sir, couldn’t you at least respect your daughter as a person instead of talking about her like this?’

There was no answer for a few seconds. Had he said something wrong now? He realised that he didn’t know the rate of Donald Anderson, but he doubted strongly it came close to his.

‘Young man Adams, don’t go too far. I appreciate you taking little Megan for a Wife if you are indeed serious here, but don’t go preaching to me and messing with my business. Gamma-1 or not!’

So that man would be his father-in-law? For a fraction of a second he wondered if he should abort the whole Megan-idea, but that wouldn’t be fair to her, would it? No, he had to take his responsibility. He had promised her he would take her, after all it wasn’t really her fault that her dad was such an impossible man. It was just one more reason to find a way to rescue her from the Wife Factory and her family somehow.

‘So we have an agreement that if things work out I can have your daughter as a Wife, Mister Anderson?’

‘Whatever, son. Whatever. You’re probably mad, but who am I to disagree with a Gamma-1? You have my consent to court her and marry her and do with her whatever you want. As long as you don’t send her back home.’

Five minutes later the conversation was over, and he was laying on his bed again, feeling even more miserable. But at this moment it was more than his own misery that had hit him like a train. It was about her now that he was worried, more than about himself. He was starting to understand that being a girl in The Nation was way worse than anything he could ever understand as a boy, even as a Gamma brainie boy that had always been picked on by the Alphas and Betas. No matter what had happened, her story, and that of Lizzie, must have been much worse. He had no clue what he even wanted from Megan, but he felt deeply sorry for her, and desperately wanted things to end up well for her. And for Eliza too, and for every other girl in the world, including number 3 and 8. But things ending up well for a Wife School girl in the Nation seemed even more unlikely than for a brainie boy in a Nation school dominated by Real Men. It was strange how ideals of what men and women were supposed to be in The Nation made it impossible to live comfortably for most people of both sexes, unless they had no problem with becoming something much worse than they could and should be.

And then he wondered what Megan was doing in Seventh City Wife Factory. Was she thinking about him too? What did girls even do all day in that enormous scary building? Lessons about home economics and taking care of houseplants? He had no idea how that looked, but he was getting curious, not just about his future Wife, but about girls and the world they lived in.

He really wasn’t ready for marriage or anything like that, but he still looked forward to getting to know Megan more. He hadn’t even spoken to a girl since he was five, but the presence of Lizzie had reassured them that it should be possible to be something like friends too. If only he could break through the wall between the sexes.

Yes, that look of pure hate in Lizzie's eyes was something he wouldn’t forget, but it hadn’t been directed at him, had it? Those other boys had deserved it, and he’d be creeped out too if his future depended on something like that, choosing him for a life partner. But still, was there a way to convince them that he wasn’t like that? A man is a man after all, and if he would have been a reasonable girl like Megan and Lizzie, men would probably be the enemy. He was well aware of that. Trying to get a woman who wasn’t a brainwashed robot might turn against him too. But they both had been moderately friendly in the end, not? Or were they just too shocked to react? He didn’t really know.

But he shouldn’t even be thinking about girls now, he had to study chemistry and make an essay about the societal danger that the sentience of robots could pose. He took his chemistry papers, but it was hard to focus on organic acids and methyl groups today.

*

Megan herself was lying on her bed too, looking at a course of ‘home economics’, which gave aspiring Wives just enough math knowledge to be able to buy all the stuff a household needs without getting bankrupt or swindled and so losing money that belongs to your husband. She knew much more about math than this, in her closet she had a black market book from a boy school for 12 year olds that was much more advanced than even the extra exercises in her book. She had gone through the whole boys math book with Eliza and some other friends years ago in a few weeks, but officially this stupid home economics course was everything she needed to know about math to become a proper housewife. She had an exam in a few days, which would be way too easy for her so she didn’t really worry.

Now that she came to think of it, it was strange that she had only been number E-27 at the last bi-weekly day of partner choice. Usually she was somewhere in the middle group. She wasn’t really ugly. Her body wasn’t like the supermodels in higher grades but it had no clear flaws, and her school grades were much better than average. But her rebellious attitude, and criticism of the whole Wife School system, and her general vibe seemed to have sunk her grade again. And the same seemed to have happened to Eliza, who had studied even much more advanced subjects as advanced calculus and applied robotics for engineers but only got fights with her teachers lately.

But still, E-27 or not, the weird Gamma-1 boy had chosen her nonetheless. She hadn’t expected to be chosen at all, so the whole thing complicated all the plans she ever had. And the weirdest thing was this strange boy himself, who had been friends with Eliza when they were five, even if just for one day. She still didn’t know what to even think of him to be honest, but she was glad that Eliza wasn’t mad at her for being his chosen partner. She still found he should have chosen Eliza then, and not her. It was not fair for her to be chosen at all. Not when he could call her Lizzie, a name she didn’t even know her best friend had ever been called. There was something strange and intimate between him and Eliza that even she didn’t share, or was she making up stories in her mind again? Her emotions weren’t really stable at the moment, for several reasons, but what had happened would have been a shock at any moment.

She always had seen marriage as the worst thing that could happen to a woman, almost a death sentence. Even with a decent man the institution was rotten to the core and only helped men to be their worst possible version, and women too. Was it possible to not end a marriage in disaster, even if a good man existed? She wasn’t sure. Not that she really distrusted Michael. Friendship she could believe, more or less, if it was him, which was already rather unthinkable in her world. But turning marriage into something enjoyable for a woman? She had no place for that in her worldview.

Her grim thoughts were interrupted by one of the other girls yelling from the kitchen.

‘Phonecall for Megan. It’s your father.’

Like every house in Seventh City the E-floor had just one phone, which was in a corner of the kitchen, where everyone else could follow the conversation too. There was no privacy with outsiders in a Wife School. Megan felt like freezing up inside. Brittany, who had been number five at the last ceremony and was still grumpy that all the other boys of the partner choice ceremony had been disqualified from choosing a wife for a year because of their violent behaviour came to her bed to repeat her message.

‘He sounds impatient. You should never let a man wait.’ She added.

Reluctantly she rose from her bed and walked to the phone. Brittany herself took the book she had been studying, and looked at the home economics and tried to remember the rules of adding and subtracting. She didn’t really understand why she would have to learn stuff like this, but she had to do the same test so she didn’t neglect her duties of studying, or at least trying to do so. But it didn’t take very long for Megan to return. Only a few minutes later she was back, crying. Brittany didn’t want to deal with giving emotional support to anyone who was not her future husband, so she disappeared quickly and left Megan curled up like a ball next to her home economics book, where she remained like that until Eliza and Shirley found her more than an hour later.

‘What’s up, Megan, trouble with your fiancé already?’ Shirley asked.

‘No, I don’t think so… It’s not him that’s the problem. He called my dad to ask permission to arrange the procedure. My dad thinks that he’s mad, and that I’m wasted on a Gamma-1, but he didn’t protest. He gave consent.’

Eliza sat herself next to her, and stroked her long dark hair. ‘Hey, your dad didn’t disapprove. Which means that the procedure has started. Gamma-1 boy Michael has not backed off, even after speaking to him. He really must be serious about you. Why are you crying then?’

‘He isn’t the problem at all now. Dad is. He doesn’t care at all about me. He doesn’t even see me as his child anymore. Not even as a person. Even if I would be turned into dog food he wouldn’t care. Am I nothing to my family now that I’m just a class E wife candidate here?’

‘Wouldn’t you be something to them if you were the wife of a level one male, Gamma or not?’ Shirley said.

‘I don’t know. Doesn’t that make it worse? Level one males just intimidate him, and Gamma-ones don’t fit in the simple classification where Alphas are high and Gammas are low. And brainies like him mess up his head even more when they’re not actually lower than him. My dad hates everything that he doesn’t understand. We are the smart girls here, and even we don’t understand that Gamma-1 boy, so how will he ever understand him?’

‘It’ll all work out, eventually. I’m really happy for you, you know.’ Shirley said.

Well, at least that makes one person in the world with enthusiasm, and she’s not even involved, Megan thought sarcastically, but she said nothing.

‘So the next step is a meet-up in the visitation room I guess?’ Eliza said.

‘I guess so.’

‘That’ll take some time to arrange I guess, you know how slow old Greystone is with the administration. So we have all the time in the world to make plans, and anticipate what’s coming. And there’s always the basic and advanced techniques of courtship sabotage if things go wrong.’

Megan shivered.

‘We don’t need that. Not with him.’

‘Who will say? Does that ever work anyway? If men are indeed what Miss Hunter teaches us it won’t even be enough, but if we can trust our first impression you’ll just have some awkward moments and then a reasonable person to talk to.’

‘I can do awkward,’ she said. ‘

And you can do calculus while they want you to calculate the price of 3 bottles of Nation-coke for your test tomorrow. Don’t underestimate yourself.’

‘You can’t compare marriage to math.’

‘No, but you’re not married tomorrow either. You’re both eighteen or so, so the whole process will be a year or longer, and you’ll have all the time to find out what’s happening, and then act. And you’re not one to say all those “never let a man wait” and “Everything is about him” platitudes. I trust you to know what you need to do. And you’ll always have me.’ Eliza said.

‘Yes, I’m glad to have you both. I only wish I wouldn’t have to leave you when I get married.’ Megan said after a pause.