‘So, how was the first meeting with your fiancé? How did Mike All do it?’ Shirley asked.

The three of them were sitting on Eliza’s bed again.

‘Eh, strange. But fun in a weird way. You were right about rewriting the courses, Eliza. He’s a very peculiar human, but nothing like what Miss Hunter teaches us about men.’

‘So was he flirty or dominant? They whisper that when they are flirty on the first meeting, they might end up being a decent husband.’ Shirley asked, coming closer.

‘Certainly not dominant or entitled. He was playing around, and sometimes he was completely inventing his conversation skills with the other sex on the spot it seems, which ended up a bit flirty sometimes. But that was mostly bluff and then he went for being brutally honest and open the rest of the time. And can a boy even be flirty in an intellectual way?’

‘Flirty in an intellectual way? I’ve never heard of that, but he’s a brainie after all, isn’t he? Good for you. You’ll have something in common’

‘That’s clear. He uses a lot of black market book words and stuff like that. So much for our exercises in dumbing yourself down to not let a man feel stupid. You know, those stupid role-plays we had to do about that in class?’

‘Oh, yes, I remember,’ Eliza said. ‘In the end when Betty played the man you just started grunting and Miss Hunter got mad at you. I don’t think Betty even got the joke.’

‘She didn’t need to practice anyway. You know she’s going to be the wife of that gorilla-dude?’

‘I think they deserve each other,’ Megan said coldly.

‘You think too much, young lady. Thinking too much might scare your potential husband away! Just be pretty and sexy and turn your brains off!’ Eliza said in a near-perfect imitation of the voice of Miss Hunter and they all laughed.

‘So, you are sure that he still wants you as a Wife after the first meeting?’ Shirley asked.

Megan shook her head. ‘Does he? He likes talking to me, clearly, and wants to be friends. But he still seems unsure about the whole Wife thing in general. So that’s something we have in common. And he was talking about taking responsibility because if he would dump me now it would lessen my worth or something like that. So serious, and it was clear he actually cared. You’d think I was already pregnant or so. Ever heard such a thing?’

‘Wow. I’m impressed. Five-year-old me had a good taste in boys. That day probably was my peak moment with the other sex for the rest of my life. Mike All for the win! I’ll probably never meet a better boy in a million years.’ Eliza said.

‘He even talked about fake marriages or finding ways to free me if the whole marriage thing doesn’t work. That’s not a normal first-date conversation, is it?’

‘No.’ Said Shirley. ‘But it’s a pity he’s an exception to the rules. Maybe the intellectual stuff would be too much for me, but I’d sell my left ovary for a man like that.’

‘Please keep the right ovary and make some sons with him then afterwards, because we need them in the human genepool.’ Eliza said, but no-one reacted to her strange joke.

‘So, what happens now?’

‘The next meeting is the actual first date, an outing with a chaperon in two weeks or so. You know how it works. And I need you to be that chaperon, Eliza.’

Eliza looked at her friend, as if surprised.

‘Me? Why?’ She said with a childish innocent voice.

‘Because I don’t want someone stupid as a chaperon to ruin my next time with him, and also because he seems to like you too. He wanted me to greet little Lizzie. After all, you were his only girl friend he ever had in his life, even when it was only for one day when you were five. So for this world he’s actually quite experienced in friendships with girls, more than other boys, thanks to you. And to be honest, I still feel you should be his wife, not me. Or his friend instead of me at least. You deserve him more than me.’

Eliza shook her head. ‘I’m fine, I need no man in my life. Little Lizzie has grown into an independent woman you know. And I can’t even keep a hamster alive anyway, let alone a man. They are not my kind of pet. But if he’s indeed serious about that friendship stuff I might want in on the fun too. It would be welcome to have a contact in the male world, and practical too for a lot of reasons. Do you believe he actually meant it?’

‘He did. For all his playing around he was disarmingly honest at times, I don’t believe a boy like him would be able to fake that. Not him, and certainly not in his first conversation with a girl. It’s easy to see when he’s bluffing or just messing around, even through that stupid glass. He also said he needs more time with girls before he is able to marry one. Girls in plural. Oh, is that indecent of him? He wondered about that himself. Wanting to hang out with girls as friends, I mean.’

‘I see his point. But I don’t think it has to be. People just think it is for some stupid reason in this stupid country. What you, Shirley?’

‘Well, eh, he clearly is quite weird, but in a good way, and I haven’t met him so what can I say? But friends sounds fine to me in his case. And I’m not surprised by anything any more when it comes to him now. You can study all of Miss Hunter’s books for a century and he would still be completely uncharted territory. So he certainly sounds like an interesting person to meet. Not as a marriage match for me I mean, just as a friendly person who also happens to be a boy.’

‘We’ll be sure to make you chaperon for a later date then. But for that we’ll need your burglar skills again, Eliza.’ ‘So I have to break into the bureau, find the meet-up forms for the second date, and change some papers so you and I can take your loverboy out for a walk in Seventh City? That will be fun. Finally a challenge after all those dumbing lessons here that make me lose brain cells every day. Consider it a done job. Every time you need it even. No mystery chaperons for my friends.’

‘Thanks Eliza, what would I be without you?’

‘Less distracted and less rebellious mostly, and certainly not number E-27 on the Ceremony of Partner Choice.’ She grinned.

They sat on the bed for a while without saying much, each of them with their own thoughts.

‘So, do you think there is a way to set a woman free as a man if you don’t marry her? If you’re Gamma-1 I mean?’ Shirley asked suddenly.

‘I don’t know what that would mean, you need a man for almost everything in The Nation when you’re a woman. A non-wife will by definition be poor and have a very bad life. I’m not sure if even he could do something about that.’ Megan said. ‘Even that is better than being a sex-slave for a creep and playing a domestic robot 24-7, not?’ Said Eliza.

‘You shouldn’t say that!’ Shirley said, shocked.

‘Do you disagree then?’

Shirley thought for a while before she answered. ‘No, I think, but you can’t say it like that. It’s wrong. Not out loud. You know what I mean. It’s indecent.’

‘So do you say that it’s possible that escaping to live as a non-Wife, or even as a squatter in the ruins of a Ghost Town, is still better than becoming a Wife in those cases?’ Megan asked Shirley.

‘Probably, but you shouldn’t think like that. It’s disrespectful. Men need to get their respect!’ Shirley said, with a bit of the voice of Miss Hunter in hers.

‘What about respect for us? Respect for Megan, Eliza and Shirley? Why all this babble about respect for men as if it’s the most important thing in the world if no-one will ever have respect for us.’

‘You’re right. It’s just hard to undo the endless conditioning.’ Shirley said, using words that Eliza had taught recently from an old book on cultural brainwashing.

‘But we could do with some more respect for us indeed. Maybe we need to get back to the Housewife-o-matic Wifebot 2.0’

‘The one that could be programmed to rehabilitate men who were aggressive to women, and that would electrocute him when he did something improper to them?’ Megan asked, interested now, and Eliza got excited.

‘Yes, that’s the one she means, the mother of all wifebots and the holy grail of older technologies, I showed one of those babies in my robotics book to Shirley a few weeks ago. They were made before the Magnificent Revolution, and they even should still have radio and wireless internet receptors hidden inside of them, if you find an intact one. Most people say all of them have vanished long ago, but you know how it is living on a planet with depleted resources where everything technological gets reused over and over again… It’s always possible that some of them are still in use as wifebots for men who are unmarriable. Although that is without the rehabilitation program on active, alas. No-one cares about that any more. The idea was that the unmarriable man had to live with the robot as a wife until he learnt to be a perfect gentleman, and only then he got the right to meet real women again. But that was before The Nation, in the times of seventh wave feminism. Things were different then. Why doesn’t anyone care about women anymore?’

‘That’s an interesting history lesson and all, but how could an oldschool wifebot help any of us escape the whole Wife School thing?’ Megan asked.

‘Well, if one of us is taken for a wife by such a bonehead baboon, the kind that doesn’t listen to any rules and just takes you home after the second meeting for whatever, and we replace her with a wifebot at the second meeting and reprogram it to electrocute him for any improper touch. That will teach him.’ Megan grinned.

‘A genius idea, with only 2 minor problems: first of all smuggling a complete robowife in here is near impossible, even if you’d manage to find one. It’s not as small as a black market book or a bottle of men’s beer. And second, no-one will mistake one of those for you or Shirley.’

‘I know people who can re-do a robot, with a 3D-print device and all.’ Eliza said as if it was the most normal thing in the world.

‘And the bonehead baboon will only have seen her twice anyway, with the closest encounter being behind that prison glass, remember. And the first time he’s only focused on those bikinis and what’s underneath it. He won’t even see what colour your eyes are. Hmm, would there still be coloured lenses for wifebots available somewhere? They used to exist in the past.’

‘You should be writing fiction, Eliza.’ Megan said.

‘Maybe I’d read more fiction if there were books out there like that…’

‘Speaking of books, what do you think I’d get for a copy of the first date questionnaire by the way?’

‘Legendary status at least for solving an ancient Wife School mystery and ending years of speculation, and maybe it’ll acquire you a pile of hard-to-get books too. Did he actually do the questions then?’

‘Some of them, he found the whole thing silly, and not without a reason. What’s your most feminine quality? What do you think of the Church? What’s your favourite colour? He passed the reverse questionnaire test by the way, he answered every time I asked the question back at him. It’s a silly list of questions that seems to be written in another world. But if he doesn’t forget it we might be able to get it on the first date even.’

‘And so another old tradition dies with loverboy. No more nightly discussions about what questions are on that cursed questionnaire that only few boys even use.’ Shirley said.

A knock on the door announced a visitor. When they opened the door of the dorm they saw official Greystone, having one more paper in his hand.

‘Young lady Megan, you need to fill in some papers about your second meeting with your young man.’ Megan bowed, and took the paper with a theatrical gesture. ‘Thank you, highly esteemed sir Greystone.’

He didn’t show any emotion, but the two other girls could hardly stop their giggling.

‘I need these papers before I can arrange the next date with your Husband-to-be, so make sure that you fill them in correctly. You wouldn’t want to displease your Husband, would you, Miss Megan?’

‘No, you’re right, I wouldn’t, my dear sir.’ She said subserviently, but Greystone didn’t even seem to notice, and disappeared as quickly as he had come.

‘What on Earth was that?’ Shirley asked.

‘Ah, I think I must have picked that up from Michael. He seems to be rather confused about how to be polite to me, and so he uses a lot of black market book honorifics mixed with being extremely casual. He actually went from calling me Megs to calling me dear Lady Megan the next minute. It’s rather funny and it makes it impossible to imagine him being a man as described by Miss Hunter at all. Young Lady Megan is definitely something he would say, but from him it would be more playful than when old Greystone does it. If there’s no natural way to speak to the other sex we’ll have to find new ways. And why not practice on Greystone? He’s one of the males around here that will talk to us, and that can be communicated with in some form at least. He’s mostly harmless and as dense as neutron star matter.’

‘Mostly harmless? I’ve never heard anyone use that descriptor for old Greystone. He’s boring as a fossilised turd and devoid of any human happiness or other emotions.’

‘True, but apart from being a grumpy coprolite he’s also a male that doesn’t abuse women. At least give him that. Remember Rogers who was here before him?’

‘Ah, yes, my first triumph with paperwork.’ Eliza recalled.

‘He got promoted indefinitely to an office job in the tower away from all girls and women, hah! That was a very good move, Eliza. The C-floor got much safer after that.’

‘Oh, that was before they kicked us out there and we had to come here on the E-floor… Anyway, I would’ve moved him to the inside of the main incinerator of the trash plant at 10.000 degrees after what he did with Gemma, but alas, couldn’t do that. There’s no standard form for such things.’

‘You managed to even have his pay halved and to have him wait for his pension age with ten extra years. And no-one even questioned it except for Rogers himself.’

‘Ah, but he was such a creep that he had no friends who cared. And all these silly people trust a system running on autopilot that has fallen apart long ago already, and that is way too easy to manipulate.’

‘Eh, you’re the only one who has ever done that, Eliza.’

‘Wrong. But that’s a secret. You have a point though, Megan. And I probably should look for a few apprentices to share my craft with before I’m gone here forever.’

‘That wasn’t… Nevermind. You do you and be Eliza… That’s why I love you.’ Megan said. She had the best friends in the world after all, for as long as it would last. Most Wife School friendships ended when a girl married anyway.

*

The next morning Michael was eating his breakfast when his mother suddenly stood in front of him.

‘Michael, can I please talk to you?’ She was visibly nervous as she interrupted him while eating his wheat flakes. He saw that she was wearing an apron for doing work in the house, but was also perfectly made up like a beauty contestant even now when her husband had already left the house.

‘Yes, Mom, you can always talk to me but you never do, and you shut me down when I say more than 2 sentences. So what's up?’

‘Your father asked me to tell you that your brother will be visiting us, three weeks from now on Saturday. We've invited them now that you are becoming more of a man, with your new rating and all. He might be able to give you some advice on the new phase your life has entered, as one man to another. So see that you are present. Otherwise Sam will be here for nothing.’ Michael looked at her, trying to understand what she meant.

‘Ah, you want me to talk to him from man to man about getting a wife?’

‘That was your dad's idea I think, yes.’

‘So why doesn’t he say that himself?’

Her mother hesitated. ‘He asked me because he says he can’t speak to you any more since you got that Gamma-1 rating. You’re getting all kinds of weird ideas and he doesn’t know how to react to them.’

‘He just yells at me, you mean? Because he considers my choices unmanly. And he can’t yell me into submission any more now that I’m a legal adult with a level one rating, so he has no way to make me do and think what he wants as he is used to. So that’s a complete impasse that we won’t get out of if he doesn’t want to give in, and I won’t either.’

‘Michael, listen to him. He’s your father. I know he can’t force you now that you’re a Gamma-1, but I ask you…’

‘You ask me, not him… Which is beyond unusual, as we both know very well. He sent you, who hasn’t talked to me since I was twelve to talk to me because he can’t. And now he’s inviting Sam whom we haven’t seen since his wedding. He must be pretty desperate.’

‘Your behaviour lately has been weird, and unmanly, and you’re doing the strangest things, try to look at it from his perspective.’

‘I can’t. And I will never be what The Nation calls a Real Man. It’s toxic and dehumanising and it’s also the opposite of the kind of person that I am. There must be other ways to be a man. Or just to be a decent person and forget about all that men and woman nonsense.’

‘Did you really say that to him too? I can understand why he’s so mad.’

His mother sat down on the chair next to him and poured herself another Nation-coffee.

‘By the way, you said you invited them, in plural, does that mean Sam is bringing Natasha too?’

‘They will both be here, yes,’ his mother said, with alarm in her eyes.

‘So I can ask her too about what girls want when they are in Wife School, and how to become a better match for Megan?’

She looked at him, shocked. ‘What? How?’

‘I am supposed to get married to a woman, so it's important that I learn how to talk to women. I can use every practice there is. It's not like I meet much girls in this stupid Nation with two separate universes.’

‘I understand what your father meant. You’re more indecent than I thought. No, you can't do that. You can't just talk to your brother's Wife. That would be wrong. She's not your mother or your kid sister, nor your fiancée. Where do you even get those ideas?’

‘I don't see why it's indecent to talk to my sister-in-law. Or to any woman at all. It’s not that I’m sleeping around with them or assaulting them or something like that. It’s just a conversation from human to human.’

'Michael, you can't be serious. How are you ever going to be a decent husband if you want to talk with every woman you see.’ ‘Oh, I don't think Megan would mind me learning how to talk to women. She was glad when Lizzie did the talking for her on the ceremony night I think.’

'Lizzie? Who might that be.’

‘Another Wife School girl, nevermind.’

‘Michael, I worry about you and your new interest in girls. It's not right. You're not supposed to talk to them. You're not supposed to befriend them. That can only be indecent and lead to serious problems.’

‘All I have to do is fantasise about pictures of them in dirty magazines now, and later treat them as some sort of human wifebot and never actually connect to them? Is that what it is? If that’s the case just count me out of the whole marriage business, sorry. No interest… If I have to have a wife I need to be a good husband, human partners, love relationships, stuff like that, what's wrong with that? You know I was so very nervous for that first meeting with her, and then that weird visitation room with the table and the glass and all didn't make it better either. And then when I just started talking it clicked and it just worked somehow. it was much easier talking to her than to a lot of boys I knew.'

His mother looked up from her coffee, with a completely different look in her eyes. 'They still have the visitation table with the glass? That brings back memories.'

'Yes, and the whole list of questions too, that is so stupid that it only can be used as a bonding exercise if you both make fun of it.'

'You two actually did the list together? No-one does that.'

'We did some of it. She even asked some questions back, but mostly we were astonished by the whole thing. In that way it was a good conversation starter, yes. It was fun even.'

He looked at the clock.

‘It’s time for me to take my bag and be verbally abused by Instructor Jack for our daily be-a-man session, can’t miss my schoolbus. Thanks for talking to me again, Mom. I hope we can talk more, and not just about all our disagreements.’

He took his stuff and disappeared, leaving his mother alone with her coffee and an internal clash of worlds. She didn’t really understand her youngest son, but the experience her future daughter-in-law was going through would certainly be radically different from hers, or even Natasha’s.