In 2014, I sat down to write a speculative book. Being a (1) blabbermouth and (2) an incurable optimist about America, what came out wasn’t the usual dystopian stuff, but I tried. In fact, I didn’t go far enough.
Advice to writers: go there. Think of the wildest shit you can imagine, and spill it all out.
But I did allow myself a bit o’ fun, and I thought up this concept: replacing birth, the basic thing of all life, mammal and non-mammal, with the clinical word: “gestation.”
So, birthday became “Gestational Output Day,” and so on.
He chuckled, in a fake, empty way without the pretense of amusement. Empty space, empty words, empty prayers! He was trapped and deserved to be. There was no way out. He wasn’t going to die or kill himself. He had to get through each day as it came. If circumstances changed, he would seize the initiative, but until then, he had to grit it out. That’s what a man did. That’s what a Brother did.
Today was his birthday. He hadn’t remembered it when he woke up. The Brotherhood Orders referred to birthdays as GO day—Gestational Output day—but the old word endured. Whatever one called it, the occasion meant nothing to Jed. He was just a year older.
He took out the old notes and read what he had written after he buried the Lady:
Thursday, 27 November 2160—0130. I don’t know why I named her the Drowned Lady. I buried her. I guess I should have called her the Buried Lady, but the Drowned Lady just came up, an impulse. Like stopping and opening that door.
On the same page, he penciled in a note:
Saturday, 7 September 2165—1145. But I found her, and took her to the riverbank, and waited years for the chance to take her home. Her home, not mine. I don’t have a home.
A
brotherBrother has no life.Wincing with each step, he left the church and headed down Main Street toward the river, Descending was harder than climbing.
Here’s how they did it:
One progenitor, entitled “Alpha” in honor of the founding fathers, whose superior seed impregnated thirty-six healthy surrogates, producing four live male births. One cohort of one hundred and forty-four male offspring. The names of the gestational surrogates and the egg donors were not recorded.
Oh, I’d forgotten about “gestational surrogate.”
Jephthah and his brother were different, as he and Max were different. But he and Max had a different mother. No, gestational surrogate. Joshua and Jephthah, the same mother. Mother, not gestational surrogate. Raised under the same roof, while he and Max were raised separately, and discovered one another as adolescents.
And so on.
Welp, a week ago, the New York State Legislature caught up with me. I made sure to link to Snopes, which is 100% woke. This is not NY Post clickbait.
Naturally, Snopes had to frame it this way:
“Far-right X account” = baseless conspiracy-mongering.
But it turned out to be true.
Governor Hochul has until today to sign or veto.
Whatever — I called it 12 years ago!!
Links to books.
The Brothers Of Redemption (that’s where the excerpts are from; worldbuilding, grim, Burgess-lite)
A Daughter Of Her People (an ode to America, not really dystopian, “true grittish,” lol)
FYI, “Technium” is a word I coined although some others use it, according to the ‘net. It means the stuff that the human brain creates automatically.
We’re stuck in it. No pills. Just our brains. No escape from that.