Eliza looked at the printers in the machine room of Seventh City Ghost Town. Now that she wasn’t tied to school it was much easier to be here and make use of the rare installations, and they even appreciated her presence a lot. She was just thinking of the best way to reprogramming an ancient scanner unit when Jenny came up from behind her. Jenny was ten years older than Eliza, had short brown hair, and seemed to have the gift of omnipresence within the walls of Seventh City Ghost Town. She was both the assistant of Lady Martha and the main administrator of the community, and knew the magic of always being friendly in such a way that people usually listened to her and did what she asked. Today she wore a multicoloured suit with flower motifs, and she smiled broadly.

‘Hi Eliza, I think you have an audience with Martha now.’

Eliza looked up from the ancient LCD screen.

‘Me? I didn’t know that. She wants to see me? Ah, fun. Where is she?’

‘Just where she usually is.’

‘What does she need me for?’

‘Advice on things you’re an expert in, like usually?’

‘I’ve already given her advice about what to do with that pre-Nation robot, and the 3D print engine has been optimised already too. I just need more time for this old machine, and I’m not sure if there are cartridges available for it either. It needs 4 cartridges with different colours of ink.’

‘Oh, not that. She’s quite happy with what you’ve done with our tech already, and she can probably get the right cartridges from our colleagues at Thirteenth City Ghost Town, they’re the specialists. But today she needs you for something that no-one in any Ghost Town has much knowledge about, not even in First City.’

A silence fell.

‘Ah… Well, I’ll finish the printer program for now and then I’ll see what I can do. I have my doubts though that I can be of much help.’

She turned off the printer, threw away an old dried-up cartridge and then washed her hands thoroughly, but the ink stains remained. She looked into a window at her reflection and sighed. This was not how she liked to appear to a community leader: messy hair, old stained clothes, and her hands full of ink in four primary colours. Even with her natural anarchism she wanted to respect Lady Martha, and she didn’t like to look too shabby for someone like her. Today was not really the day for a courtship sabotage cosplay look.

A bit nervously she arrived at the office of Lady Martha ten minutes later. She wasn’t seated behind her desk but on a sofa in the corner.

‘Hi Eliza. Sit down and have a mint tea,’ she said casually.

‘Hi Lady Martha,’ Eliza answered. Natural anarchist and hardcore egalitarian or not, even she was impressed with the natural authority of the Ghost Town leader, and even more so when she didn’t use any authority. Lady Martha poured two cups of fresh mint tea.

‘I just wanted to tell you that I’m impressed with you lately.’ Eliza sat down on the other sofa and stared into her tea. This was what she’d expected.

‘Impressed? With me? Because I made that 3D printer work and re-wrote the robot’s program?’

‘That too, but I’m thinking of something else. I’ve been following the outside news, and recently I’ve been hearing a lot of strange stories about you and the unsegregation movement for example. There’s also the Pen Pal project that you’ve been using to contact me recently. And then I didn’t even mention your Free Person badge system and the little pledge attached to it that we’re using for visitors now. You’ve really been doing interesting things, revolutionary stuff even. Sometimes I almost wish you were part of the elders of my little Ghost Town here.’

Eliza felt herself shrink;

‘Me? I just do what I find necessary to do… And you probably should thank Michael more than me. It was all his idea, and I couldn’t have done anything without him.’

‘Ah, you’re saying I should thank the so-called Michael Adams myself? Our young barman who’s behind the unsegregation thing? I’ve been impressed by him too, yes. Whatever it is that you youngsters are doing, it’s refreshing, and it might help heal this broken country in the end. Even if it might take some more centuries.’

‘I’m quite sure the only thing he had in mind was staying alive without losing himself and becoming an empty creep. I was surprised, but boys are just people who aren’t girls in the end, and he’s quite a good friend now.’

Lady Martha pointed at her Free Person badge.

‘Weren’t you nicknamed Eliza the man-hater? And now you come hopping into a Ghost Town talking about your friendship with a boy?’

Eliza shrugged. ‘I never chose that nickname. I’d never met any man before him that wasn’t a creep, and I’m strongly against the idea of Marriage as we were prepared for in Wife School. You can’t expect me to respect people who don’t respect me. But if a guy wants to be friends, and he is honest and open, why not? They are technically humans after all, and some of them can even behave as such.’

Lady Martha emptied her mint tea.

‘Apart from the fact that I personally have never met such a man in my whole life, and had never really heard of such a man in this country before either, at least not in the last 100 years, I would probably have to agree with the principle. But the divide between the sexes has always been absolute in The Nation thanks to John Manfred, as far as I know at least. In the early days there were a few rebel men who disagreed with Manfred and hid in our communities disguised as a woman, and in the end they just became women to the community, but after the first generation we never had anyone from the otherside at all that wanted to talk to us. Never. They ignored us at best, and at times we had to defend ourselves with all we had. Most just fear us now. We never had any connections with the male world. And I know from the traders that they have the same story of separate worlds, all the school books from the other gender are either taken from garbage or from books discarded after marriage. That also was the case until very recently by the way. Your little Pen Pal project is probably even more revolutionary than you realise, and again it’s also connected to you and the boy known as Michael Adams.’

Eliza shrugged a bit uncomfortably, she suddenly didn’t like to be seen as an important rebel leader by someone as Lady Martha. It could mean responsibility.

‘Ah, well… Everyone needs a hobby I guess. Just mooching some Manfred plus beer from him while I was playing the chaperone on dates between him and Megan that went nowhere, romantically speaking at least, and hanging out on that unsegregated summer terrace got boring after a while…’

‘Don’t act so innocent, young lady. You know very well that you were being revolutionary, and fully intended to be so. You’re a natural rebel. And you succeeded in a way in which even the Women are Human activists never managed. And the weird thing is that it caught on too. The unsegregated spots are everywhere in the Nation now, and there are boys and girls corresponding with each other through the connected black market trader system. I’ve been watching the whole thing with astonishment. I know it went mostly under the radar of the male world and those dusty Central Computer idiots in First City, but the Ghost Town leaders have their eyes open. And the epicentre of the revolution has been right before my own eyes, in Seventh City. And my sisters are unsure of how to react.’

‘Honestly, Lady Martha, the unsegregated spot thing was something he did all by himself, in between Megan’s second and third date with him, because he was still irritated that he couldn’t just have a drink with us, and then he wanted to talk with Angela about the Women are Human activism. I had nothing to do with it except that we’ve used it ever since. But you could as well blame Angela. She accidentally accomplished more than all the other WAH activists of The Nation together just because she was open to talking to him…’

Lady Martha smiled. ‘Little Angela? The short-haired non-Wife WAH activist girl? She’d be even more dismissive and humble than you are. But maybe I’ll speak to her about it too then. But the fact remains that everything revolutionary that’s happening in Seventh City is always connected to you, and to him too. I’d almost say it’s a pity that he is a man, but then again it’s also clear that it only works because he is one. I’ve been having a lot of discussions with the elders about him here by the way. But in the end I think that we’d be missing the boat of history if we would not in some way try to connect to him too. I know it would be weird to invite a man into a Ghost Town to talk to him, but what do you think his reaction would be if we did?’

Eliza almost spit out her mint tea.

‘Are you serious, Lady Martha? Him here? In a Ghost Town. In his current state?’

‘I am serious. The elders disagreed among themselves too, but the majority wanted to try it. Only Mildred was very aggressively against it. But she’s against everything.’ Eliza stared at a point at the horizon for a few seconds.

‘He would be freaked out and be nervous probably, but he wouldn’t refuse. He might not completely understand how exceptional it is, but he’s not completely unaware. And on the other hand there's weird superstitions about you that he’ll have to overcome.’

Lady Martha poured in more tea.

‘Let me tell you a secret, young woman. My hope is that I can live long enough to see it not being exceptional at all anymore. That we can open up at least for some decent men. You said that they are technically humans, and some can even behave as such. Even if it’s only one in a hundred, we should connect to those, and maybe at a point even take them in, especially if they are at war with male society for being a decent person. I can see that happening. And, you know, that in the end there would be a natural new generation here without the whole segregation of the sexes thing.’

‘Ow…’

Now even Eliza didn’t know what to say, while she tried to understand the scope of Lady Martha’s last words. She knew they were wild fantasies of a visionary woman, but she was still surprised by them.

‘Don’t say that to Elder Mildred. She’d freak out even more.’ She finally said, looking out of the window.

‘Oh, it’s way too early for any of that, but it’s my longterm vision, shared by more Ghost Town leaders, but not always by the general public. We know that any community without natural children isn’t sustainable in the end. And we’re not going to take the unnatural way or, eh force something. It’s against our principles. Biologically we will need both sexes together, eh, in a very intimate way. We’re not a dystopian organisation from a fantasy story that’s going to keep pet men as sperm donors or so. If we’ll ever have children it will be the natural way, through love. But there’s a million steps to take before we ever get to that, and the first one is probably friendship with the male side. Or just with some persons there. And you’ve accomplished a lot there, more than this whole community together.’

‘You make it all sound so grand, Lady Martha. It was he who rejected the whole script of marriage and offered friendship to Megan instead on that choice ceremony, and to me too. It all just happened before we knew what it was.’

‘And we’ll let more things happen, Eliza. I’m not sure how yet, but I want to talk to him.’ Eliza nodded, and wondered what this would lead to.

*

Megan pushed her hair away from her dark eyes and looked at the job applications again, and then she sighed. This was going to suck again. While she was in Wife School she had always dreamt of getting out, preferably unmarried, but now that it had actually happened like that she still wasn’t really happy with it. Sure, it could have been much worse than living with Eliza as her roommate, but it was clear that being a non-Wife in The Nation sucked by definition. She had understood that from Angela and Samantha already, but some things you only really know when you experience them.

So what was she going to do now? She looked at the seriously underpaid office work that Eliza was applying for, and felt miserable. It would be better than overseeing trash-sorting robots all day like Angela and Samantha did, probably, but still… Doing all that work for so few money? It just wasn’t fair how the ranking system worked, especially if you were outside of it. Or just if you were a working woman and not a man in this sexist hellhole. Not that rated women often had to work, it was considered unmanly in The Nation to have your Wife working out of your house, indecent even. But non-Wives had no reputation to save, and it was a matter of survival anyway.

She crumpled a paper and threw it in an old bucket that was converted into a trashcan. ‘And to think I could have been a Gamma-wife, married to a friend who loves me.’ She mumbled to herself. Even if she hated the idea of marriage it still felt like a loss for a lot of other reasons. It would have given her a completely different life if she had been married to Michael if he hadn’t been deleted, since the place where a couple lived depended on the ranking of the husband. Gammaville neighbourhoods usually had separate row houses for each family, not these terrible apartment blocks. Strange how she had never thought of those practical things before it was too late, and now all of that was gone and completely of reach, even in her dreams. There was only the Zeroville woman house for her now, and no chance on any Marriage. Girls didn’t get a second rating chance when they were written off unlike boys, so this probably was how the rest of her life was going to be if it depended on male society.

Still there was the relief of having escaped marriage too. everyone knew that Marriage was always disastrous for women, with men bossing you around, dominating you and often even physically abusing you or using violence for the smallest problem, and then the sexual aspect wasn’t even considered. She couldn’t see Michael behave like that, but the word Marriage still automatically triggered a state of panic in her, thanks to all of Miss Hunter’s lesson, and to the couples she’d seen around her when she was a kid. It was completely unfair to him, but it was hard to even imagine the possibility of another kind of Marriage, even after all the time she’d been with him. It was as if she could only expect the toxic relationship templates to take over, which was probably insulting to the poor boy, who was just unable to be a Real Man in so many ways… But sometimes imagination can only go so far if you’ve been fed on the same narrative all of your life, even if it was unfair to some people. Ah, Michael, the one who had broken the narrative… Probably the perfect husband for any reasonable woman who didn’t like to be beaten, dominated and who liked intelligent conversation and stuff like that. He was everything that shouldn’t exist in The Nation, and better than she’d expected. And still she didn’t know what she wanted with him. Apart from friendship that was, there was no doubt about that. But the romantic part… She hadn’t been ready for that, not even with him at his extra-slow pace. Or maybe it wasn’t something for her at all?

Oh, she had enjoyed their dates a lot, and you could even say she had fallen in love with the idea of being so safe with a boy, and it had felt like a dream. But she had never been able to imagine more than that, even if she’d tried. Their relationship had been fun, but there had probably been something that was missing, even if she didn’t really knew what. She didn’t really have more desires than that. Eliza had teased her that she hadn’t even tried to kiss him, and she’d always said that he hadn’t taken any initiative for that either. Whether it was her trauma about the forced ‘intimacy’ that wasn’t intimate at all in most Nation relationships or something else altogether, she didn’t know. She still wanted to hug him, and hold him to be both safe, but she had no real other physical desire for him, which was probably weird now that she came to think of it, but everything was weird anyway.

And still it felt wrong to let go of him as some sort of lover like that, even while keeping him as a friend. Eliza had said he had been heartbroken about the annulment of their engagement. But could there ever be between them except for friendship? Oh, Michael, you idiot, why couldn’t you have chosen Eliza? That would have made it all so much easier, and she’d still have had him as a friend somehow. Why was everything so complicated?

What she actually wanted was getting away from all of this. She wasn’t like Eliza, who always seemed to be able to hack the system from within and accomplish her goals somehow, and she was so tired from everything that was going on. If there ever would be a chance to get away from The Nation, and to travel to other countries she would certainly take it, without any hesitation. But that was another silly dream, even if those countries existed -and there wasn’t really a doubt that there were other countries on the planet for any intelligent person- The Nation had no contact with them, and there was not enough fuel to travel to other continents in a fuel-depleted world where combustion engines were a taboo anyway after the disasters of earlier centuries…

She looked at the next job application. For now it would be living in this Zeroville woman house, as a working non-Wife. Why was life always like being adrift between Scylla and Charybdis, without even having the chance to choose a safe sea that led to some kind of safe home? Sure, this Scylla had bitten her with different ugly heads but in fact only eaten her E-rating, her place in Seventh City Wife school and with it her state of marriability, but she wished for an open sea full of freedom, and for other new places to go. She filled in her personal details on yet another form for a low-paid office job.

Shit, she thought when she had written an E again where they had asked for her rating. This wasn’t going to be easy at all...