BSU: A Romance In Molly - Ch. 02

Foreword from the author: Tigger warning: This mini-chapter contains no sex, but only sexism.

I hesitated before writing this chapter, I really did, but one should remember that Shifters used to compete with women for men. They have a superiority complex and think very, very differently from human women. Their view of history, even if it is practically firsthand, is going to be biased and skewed towards supporting a narrative that paints them as better sex-slaves and receptacles for semen than human women -- obviously a terrible thing to any right-minded human being, but to Shifters, a wonderful existence that all of them desire, but never seem able to achieve however hard they work.

Chapter 2: History

Astrid and Astra held their silence as the car rolled on past the early 21^st-century North American suburban sprawl that this zone was meant to replicate. None of the gentle hills around this area were above twenty feet in height -- the bulldozers had seen to that.

Though most of the homes were homogenous McMansions with immaterial variances -- a brightly-colored garden gnome or an extension that ate into the home's allocated lawn -- one or two showed real originality. Carla's lips curled upwards as she turned her head to follow an azure-roofed home garret windows and a turret at its northeastern corner. The woman who built it -- Martha was her name -- had been a construction worker from before the Uprisings.

Carla's colleagues had said no to everything at first: money, labor, materials, and even a permit when Martha had managed to save the money, gather a group of friends with the necessary know-how and callused hands, and scare up a supplier of construction timber that took human business proposals seriously.

Carla had shrugged and promised her the permit if Martha gave birth to another boy that year.

After staring for a few minutes at the other homes but still seeing only Martha's, Carla broke the brittle silence in the car by drumming her fingers along the car's door when they reached the fifty-foot-high silver-gray wall that demarcated the PG zone's border. Astra and Astrid fairly jumped in their seats.

"I don't think the two of you have much idea of what society was like before us Shifters arrived on the scene."

Astra and Astrid exchanged glances. Their Lady could sometimes be capricious, but when her kind of Shifter was doing the asking, their kind had better answer.

"No, not really." Astra said.

"We only remember daily life as far back as..." Astrid concentrated. "Charlie".

"Recall lesson H-AA1 from history class."

Astra cleared her throat and began. "For most of human history, men and women were engaged in a vicious competition for social and economic dominance. Men gradually gained the upper hand, first politically, and then economically, and gradually came to be arbiters of sexual activity via an institution called 'marriage'. This trend continued well into the early twentieth century, when the Feminist uprisings and Sexual Revolutions eroded the lead that men had won in North America and Europe."

Astrid continued for her twin sister, "The consequences of such a defeat were onerous taxes levied on men to pay for --"

Carla started laughing.

"Is that what they're teaching you in class these days?" Carla said, rubbing her eyes dry. "Didn't it cross your mind for an instant that if men and women were really at loggerheads with each other, there wouldn't have been the need for a Shifter Rights Movement? The men would have welcomed us with open arms, and there would have been far more female than male soldiers during the Uprisings."

"Kinda... sorta..." Astra said.

"Don't waffle. You quoted the textbook's summary verbatim. Page two-fifty-one." Carla leaned back in her seat, eyes shining with a strange light. "Well, I can do better than that. I can tell you what things were really like before those textbooks were published. Even before we took over completely."

"That's... that's before Elaine." Astrid gasped.

"Before Rachel, even." Astra agreed.

Carla smiled and patted them each on the crowns of their heads. "There, there. At least you'll have something to tell your descendants. Now... where do I begin?" She drummed her fingers on the car door again. "Ah, yes. I'll start with Galatea's memories."

Astrid, seated in front, turned around and exchanged silent glances with Astra. They must have done their homework on her, and were likely wondering why they had not heard of this one before. Carla made a mental note to ask for bodyguards that were slightly less politically aware in the future.

"She came before Athena," Carla explained.

"Oh wow," Astrid and Astra said simultaneously.

"The Athena?" Astrid said.

"Yes. The Athena. Galatea came five generations before. She held down a job as a janitor at the Royal Museum in London."

Astra and Astrid had almost forgotten to breathe. Carla thumped them both on their backs. "Stop fangirling."

"Yes, ma'am." They both said.

"Back then, men had all the rights that women did. They had the right to vote, the right to have sex with anyone they wanted -- with their partners' consent, of course, and the right to equal opportunities at work. The same tax scheme applied to both genders as well. In fact, the pay gap actually favored men."

Astrid raised her hand. "Yes, Astrid," Carla said indulgently.

"Did this pay gap exist just in London?"

"Excellent question. It was actually slightly less severe in London. In most of the world, the average man was paid better than the average woman for doing the same job."

"Holy Ancestors," Astrid said.

"But it wasn't all a bed of roses for men: some countries did not penalize women for breaking their marriage contracts."

"Then what was the point of marriage at all?" Astra said angrily, "wasn't exclusive access to their personal man good enough?"

"Stop thinking like a Shifter for a moment and start thinking like a human woman." Carla said. Their car rolled over a speed bump (even those were faithfully replicated), rocking her gently in her seat. "They wanted sex, yes, but not for the same reasons that we do, and they were quite fussy about their mates' other features. Some of them preferred men with different personalities, and some of them would even break their marriage oaths and have sex with other men they thought had more symmetrical or aesthetically-pleasing features."

"That's like being given a million-dollar car and getting angry because it's not the exact color you wanted it to be!" Astra clenched her fists. "Batshit crazy."

"But maybe -- just maybe -- those women were angry because their men were sleeping with other women and not giving them their due amount of sex? I'm just being the human women's advocate here." Astrid spoked in hushed tones, as though she had suggested something as sacrilegious as sending men off to fight and spilling their precious blood.

"Some of them weren't getting enough sex, true," Carla said, "but they would be much unhappier that their men were having sex with other women in the first place. Remember: Men were bound by the same vows that women were."

"Wow," Astra said.

"Cuck-oo." Astrid shook her head.

"That was just in some parts of the world, though. In many other parts of the world, men had a lot more economic and political power than women. There were more male than female leaders, and some countries even had to give their women special advantages to prop them up so that they were barely on equal footing with their men. The point I'm trying to make here is that the men were not oppressed. They viewed their women as allies.

"So that answers the question of why were there so many men who volunteered to serve against us in the Uprisings, even going so far as to act as living shields for their women against our shock troops. You won't find that in your history books, by the way; that juicy nugget of history has been redacted."

"So the men didn't want us to help them run the planet? But what's there not to want?" Astra said.

"Oh, the men were fine with it at first. Even the ones who hated us simply because we weren't human changed their tune really quickly when Shifters got on their laps -- Galatea met one herself. It was the women who first coordinated the Uprisings, but what your books don't tell you is that they got far more men than we had expected to back them up."

Carla sat immobile and silent after that, lost in thought. Her photographic memory kept replaying the expression on Martha's face as she had marched into her office with her male baby in her arms. Carla had cast about for something snarky or hurtful to say, but she was so incensed by Martha's defiance and cheek that even hear vast learning and ample faculties had failed her.

Martha was supposed to be beaten. She was supposed to be revolted at her own readiness to play Carla's game, and resigned to the fact that Carla and her kind would practically own the flesh of her flesh after he was eighteen.

Martha had taken out her phone and punched in her carpenter's number right in front of Carla, smirking all the way. There was nothing Carla could do but honor her promise and sign away, burning with impotent fury.

As Martha had swept out of the room while making her next call to her plumber, her poise had seemed to say: I am a woman. You may scorn me, heap injustice upon me, hate me, and maybe even take my son away, but I will never, ever bow before you.

For I am a woman.

Carla had stood up and swept her stationery off her desk after Martha had left, screaming incoherently.

Back in the present, Carla caught herself growling with remembered fury. She took a deep, cleansing breath and reminded herself that she should be thanking Martha. That episode had made her work harder and forced her to grow as a Shifter. The Carla of today would have eaten Martha alive, or at least laughed at her pathetic attempts to ... to do what, exactly?

Show the Shifters that women could get a project off the ground? Check.

Prove that women had the commitment to run through the myriad maze of red tape that she had thrown up? Done.

Erect (ha, ha) a lasting monument? Accomplished.

Beat her at her own game?

Carla folded her trembling arms beneath her shapely breasts. Astra looked out of her side of the car, and Astrid stared blankly ahead. They continued doing so for the remainder of their journey.