About once a month, one of the citizens of Ultima, the last city on Earth, would come to the office of the president to complain about books. They would say books were destroying the minds of the eighty million women of the domed city. Books with so-called traditional gender roles were undermining their matriarchal society.
Penelope39 was a priestess in a fringe religion whose followers ritually ended their own lives. The Church of Christian Suicide, they called it. She was the mayor’s next appointment. She was the thirty-ninth in her line.
“Please have a seat,” President Taryn said. “What can I do for you today?”
“I’m here about the books,” she said.
“This again.”
“The ones with men in them.” Penelope spoke on behalf of her congregation. She spoke like a woman with a legion behind her. She spoke directly to the president, but it was mostly for the cameras.
“That doesn’t narrow it down,” Taryn said. “A lot of books have men in them.”
“The ones where women are victims,” she said. “The ones where women are exploited and forced to serve men.”
“People seem to like those books,” the president said. “I don’t know what to tell you.” After waiting several months to see her, Taryn could hardly believe the useless things that people complained to her about.
Surprisingly, among the female population of Ultima, misogynist books were traded like currency.
“They shouldn’t exist,” said the priestess.
“That is a slippery slope,” said the president.
“These books are degrading and emblematic of a bygone era. They make women feel inferior, as if we couldn’t exist without men.” Penelope wasn’t making a request. It sounded more like a demand.
“There are no men. There hasn’t been for a while,” Taryn said.
“Not real ones. No. But in the books.”
Meeting people was half of the president’s job. Disappointing them was the other half.
President Taryn hated those books too. But there was no stopping their appeal, and no books would be banned, burned, or buried as long as she was president.
Charles Bukowski wrote a novel called Women that was very popular. Why so many women would want to hate-read outdated rubbish was beyond her.
Digital books were destroyed during the Fourth World War along with every piece of information in the cloud.
A return to physical books was inevitable. The city of Ultima was one giant library.
“We’ve been down this road before. You want to remove the entire gender from history books and from novels. But it’s a bad idea. We remember the past in order to not repeat the same mistakes.” President Taryn was losing her patience. “Madge!” she called out to her assistant, but got no answer. That was so unlike her.
“I saw something,” Penelope reported.
“You saw a book.” Taryn was growing more sarcastic and more worried that something had happened to her wife/assistant/security. She should have been here throwing this woman out, but she wasn’t.
“There was a woman with a penis,” the priestess said. “She may have been a man.”
“The body printers can’t make penises,” the president told her. “They are listed under appendixes. They don’t make wisdom teeth, tonsils, or gall bladders either. All unnecessary organs are left out of the process. Do you want to return to a time when eighty million women were all on the same cycle? You don’t. I’m tired of hearing about this. It’s Bigfoot. It’s the Loch Ness Monster. It’s a waste of my time. Madge!”
“Perhaps you need to be impeached,” Penelope warned her.
“You mean recalled. There is no Congress.”
“Then you need to be recalled.”
“I do. I really do,” Taryn mocked, when what she really wanted to do was threaten the woman’s life. “Could you impeach me, please,” she said sarcastically. “And could you do it before lunch. I would love to have the afternoon off.”
“You joke, but I have a big following,” the woman said. “Enough for a recall petition. Do you know how many people are watching us right now?”
Taryn didn’t. So few people watched the presidential feed that she rarely checked it. She changed her tone but still couldn’t find her wife. Madge was better at this stuff than she was.
“Fine. Where was it?” Taryn humored her.
“I saw it between her legs.”
The president rolled her eyes. “I will begin an investigation. Will that satisfy you and your three hundred thousand parishioners?”
“I am a priestess of the Church of Christian Suicide.”
“I know. You ladies believe that Jesus killed himself on the cross. But you do know he was a man, right?”
Penelope was appalled. “Jesus was not a man, madam,” she insisted. “He was a god. Gods do not have gender.”
Taryn was starting to get worried. She had no security. She had no assistant. “Where the hell is my wife?” she mumbled. “It just seems a little hypocritical,” she told the priestess. “But I will put my best woman on it. We will find that penis and cut it off. Are you satisfied?”
“I wouldn’t be here if I was.”
“Okay, we’re done. Madge!”
“It’s all connected,” Penelope pleaded.
“Madge!” she called out again. “How?” she asked her. “No, wait. I don’t care how. Just get out.”
“Those books teach women to want men sexually,” Penelope insisted.
President Taryn was moments away from having the poor woman beaten to death in her office.
“It’s not the books doing that,” she said. “Some women are just born hetero. It happens.” She had gone from impatient to angry and was looking for a weapon. If the suicide girls did something to Madge, there was going to be a massive factory reset. The first one in quite a while.
“Correlation isn’t causation,” Penelope said finally.
Taryn thought she had an old baseball bat in her office, but she couldn’t find it. She liked her chair and didn’t want to get blood on it.
“That doesn’t even mean anything,” she said as Madge walked in. “Where the fuck were you? I didn’t see you on the camera. I was worried. Get in here and throw this woman out before I make an enemy of an entire religion.”
Factory reset was when a citizen was brought back with no memories. In a city of immortals, it was the closest thing to true death.
“Oh my goddess,” Madge exclaimed. “Don’t do that. Don’t do anything. I’ll handle it.” She grabbed the high priestess by the arm and pulled her toward the door.
“This is Madge. Thank her for saving your life,” the president said as she was done.
“Thank you, Madge,” Penelope said politely.
“You’re welcome, priestess.” Madge was on damage control. She escorted the woman to the door. There were no fatalities.
“Madge,” the president said. “Get me the Science Authority. I have a new idea.” Taryn had a plan for an old friend.
“What about?” Madge asked.
“The penis,” she said.
“We don’t have those anymore. Body printing removes unnecessary components.”
“Maybe the system is compromised. Maybe it’s decided to reintroduce old-fashioned procreation. Maybe it’s trying to save the human race in another way. The original way,” Taryn wondered.
“No fucking way,” Madge added.
“Well not for you, baby, but you know how some women die and come back no longer in love with their lovers?”
“I do. I have seen it first-hand. It’s a big part of my job.” Madge dealt with heartbreak every day.
“I’m saying nature may have done this to us. Nature has always had a tendency toward spontaneous reemergence.”
“That’s horrifying,” the First Lady said.
“Not everyone thinks so, babe. I serve all the people as their president. Even the ones who didn’t vote for me.”
“Even the straight ones,” Madge added.
“So true,” Taryn crowed. “I have the perfect person for this useless task.”
“Not me. I hope.”
“Not me. Caroline,” she said her name as if it were an ancient curse. “The one and only.”
“Are the cameras still on?” Madge whispered.
“No, I turned them off when she told me she had three hundred thousand followers. We don’t need another riot.”
“You were going to kill her.”
“You weren’t here.”
“I’m here now,” she reassured her. “You want me to give Caroline a scavenger hunt?”
“Yes,” Taryn said. “The appendix has reasserted itself and must be removed.”
President Taryn resented Caroline’s popularity. She knew that if there was ever a real rival for her position, it was going to be her, but it would have to be forced on her because Caroline didn’t want it.
“You’re trying to make her look ridiculous in the eyes of the population.”
“The ones that vote, anyway. Send a quiet memo to Sciences. Make it a priority. Appendix irregularities, we’ll call it.”
Vice President Caroline had no number. Taryn was Taryn5. Madge was Madge16. Everyone else had died and come back multiple times. In all the city—meaning all the world—Caroline was the only person who hadn’t died, and it showed.
Caroline maintained her life without a reset. As the city’s top geneticist, she would print and replace her organs when exposure caused them to fail. The only woman with wrinkles. The only woman with signs of aging. The one and only.
She was just as immortal as the rest of the city, but her immortality was contiguous. She was still working with many of her original parts. Caroline of Theseus. Everyone loved her except for the president, maybe the First Lady and possibly her cat Lucy. Professor Gremwile called her the last human.
“You’re so beautiful when you’re being devious,” Madge said.
“I’m being presidential,” the president responded. “I’m the president.”
“I’ll send a missive.”
“Pencil and paper,” Taryn reminded her, noticing the handle of a Louisville Slugger under one of her bookcases.
“Of course,” Madge agreed. “We wouldn’t want prying eyes.”
“Excellent,” Taryn said, grabbing the baseball bat. “But before you do that, send in the next one.” She gripped it with both hands. “I’m on a roll,” she said.
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