Parallel Lives Pt. 02

A white estate car, with a small illuminated taxi sign atop its roof pulled up outside the cottage she shared with her mother. The driver sounded its horn to alert her of its arrival.

"Just coming!" she called out to its driver. "Just need to zip my case up!"

A few moments later, she stepped out of the front door and locked it behind her. Wheeling her small case she stepped along the garden path towards the white picket fence that enclosed the small cottage she and her mother called home. The garden gate opened with a slight creak, and closed behind her with a soft click as the latch clicked itself shut. It was always important to keep the gate shut - her mother had once inadvertently left it ajar and they'd come home to find a couple of pigs had got in.

The pigs were owned by one of the forest's "Commoners" who had ancient rights dating back to Norman times that allowed them to graze their livestock on common land. The animals had found their way into the front garden and were busily eating acorns that had fallen from the nearby oak tree that overlooked their cottage. The errant porkers had trampled all over the flowerbeds and defecated all over the lawn, ruining the once pretty garden and leaving it looking like a battlefield.

"The ferry terminal at Town Quay please," Kat instructed the driver as she got into the back of the car, with her small case on the seat beside her.

"Off across to the island, eh?" the driver, a man in his late thirties asked her.

"Uh, yeah," Kat responded as the driver pulled away, not sure whether or not it was advisable to mention the purpose of her trip to the Isle of Wight.

She opted to keep it under wraps, for the time being at least.

"Short break is it? Or a longer stay, perhaps?" the driver persisted to glean her for information.

Even though she knew he was only trying to start up an amiable conversation, Kat found his manner to be a little intrusive. She could see his eyes in the rear view mirror as he looked back at her.

"Ahh, I get it," he said, obviously experiencing a moment of enlightenment. "You're off to Parkhurst!"

Well, there wasn't any point in denying it now that he'd worked it out for himself.

"Yeah, I'm off to do my bit for the human race," she answered.

"I was there myself a couple of years back," the driver said without taking his eyes off the road.

"Really?" Kat responded now that he'd piqued her interest. "What was it like?"

"Well, a bit different from what you'll be experiencing there, I suspect!" he responded mirthfully. "You'll only be there a week - I was cooped up in there for two bleedin' years!"

Now that he'd started, he went on to give her a full and unbridled account of his two years of incarceration at the Parkhurst Fertility Centre.

"I was made to have sex three times a day, six days a week," he went on. "And a daily cum collection once a day for good measure. It certainly wasn't a holiday camp!"

"Cum collection?" Kat asked, seeking clarity as she wasn't sure she'd heard him correctly. "I thought that... y'know, you like..."

"Took care of it ourselves?" the cab driver said, anticipating the rest of her sentence. "Nah, they collected it from us. And by that I do mean what you think I mean!"

"They... did that? To you? Every day?" Kat gasped.

The image of technicians masturbating the men and collecting their ejaculations in little plastic pots suddenly entered her imagination - it certainly was an arousing scenario.

"Six days a week, yeah," the driver confirmed ruefully. "The novelty soon wears off, I can tell you!"

"Was it worth it though?" she asked him. "I mean, it wasn't all that bad, surely?"

"Well, I'd rather not have gone there at all, but of course as soon as I tested positive for viable sperm I had no say in the matter," the cab driver replied with animosity towards the authorities clearly evident in the tone of his voice. "It was almost as if my life wasn't mine anymore, like I became the property of the Repopulation Program. And I can safely say that if I never have sex again I definitely won't miss it!

"But now that it's in the past I guess it was worthwhile in the end. I mean, thanks to me there are seventy two more boys in the world, and if say, fifteen of them live to adulthood there's a good chance that at least one of them will become fertile for a while like I did and help keep us going. It's a shame I probably won't ever get to meet any of them, but hey, that's just how it is for us."

Suddenly hearing a first-hand account of the male perspective of the reproductive process brought everything into sharp relief - she of course had only focused her mind on what she would be experiencing at Parkhurst. Now she wanted to know more.

"So, do they like, force you to have sex?" she asked him.

"Not exactly," the driver chuckled. "I mean, they don't tie us down or anything kinky like that! But they have ways to make sure we men get the deed done!"

"Such as?"

"Well, the wristbands for starters."

"Wristbands?"

"Wristbands that vibrate to let you know when it's time to report for duty and get down to business," the cab driver explained. "And if you don't report to the room of whichever woman you're assigned to within ten minutes, they come and look for you. The wristbands also have little location beacons in 'em, y'see. They can literally track you down in no time at all."

"Assigned? You get assigned a woman to have sex with?" Kat gasped. "I thought we could choose who to have a child with?"

"Well, you women might be able to choose, but we men certainly don't get any say in it," the taxi driver huffed. "We just get told which room to report to and to get on with it."

"Oh," Kat responded.

Suddenly she felt uncertain about volunteering - even if she had to do it with a total stranger, it would still have been nice to be able to choose who that stranger was. But then she reminded herself that just because the men had no say in who they were partnered with, it didn't necessarily mean that the women had no say. The only way for a definitive answer was to go and find out for herself, but she cursed inwardly at not asking her mother or any other woman she knew about it. The sad fact was she'd just felt too embarrassed to ask. And she knew her new friend Claire had been too embarrassed to ask about it too.

After a thirty minute ride the taxi deposited her outside the entrance to the fast ferry terminal at Town Quay. After paying her fare, and receiving genuine wishes of good luck from the intrusive but otherwise affable cab driver, she wheeled her suitcase into the terminal building.

"Kat! Over here!" she heard Claire call out to her from the waiting area.

At once, Claire got up and dashed towards her, and they embraced each other in a friendly hug as they reconnected, even though they'd only last seen each other a couple of days ago.

"For a while there I thought you might've backed out," Claire said as they parted.

"Nah, got caught in a bit of traffic because of roadworks on the Redbridge flyover, that's all," Kat responded. "Anyway, our ferry's not due for a while yet - I'll just check in and we'll grab ourselves a coffee while we wait."

"That sounds like a plan to me," Claire answered with a smile. "I'll go get 'em in - what'll you have?"

"I'll have a flat white, since you're offering," Kat replied.

She turned and headed over towards the check-in desk, retrieving her ticket from her bag that she'd printed out before setting off that morning. It was a simple enough procedure, and in no time at all she was heading for the cafeteria to catch up with Claire.

"So, you excited, Kat?" Claire asked her.

"Yeah," she replied keenly. "Though I've gotta say I'm a bit nervous too."

"Glad I'm not the only one!" Claire chuckled. "This has all happened so quickly -- it would've been nice to at least have had a week or two to get myself mentally prepared for it."

"I hear you," Kat replied as she sipped from her cup of coffee. "I mean the um... the sex part I'm looking forward to... but the pregnancy part I'm not so sure about."

"And then after that comes the giving birth part," Claire responded, with just the hint of a shudder.

"It'll be worth it though, right?" Kat asked her friend.

"Definitely," Claire affirmed unequivocally.

The two young women continued their conversation as outside the terminal building their ferry, the MV Green Jet, glided into its berth ready to allow its current load of passengers from Cowes on the Isle of Wight to disembark. Once everyone had left the vessel, and after a further short wait to allow the crew to ready it for its next crossing, the public address system crackled to life and informed those waiting in the terminal that passengers were now cleared to go aboard. The two young women followed the signs that led towards the covered gangway that led down and onto the vessel.

Despite having lived in Hampshire all their lives, neither of them had ever ventured across to the island that had once been part of their home county. Nowadays the Isle of Wight was a county in its own right, and had been since the seventies. The ferry was due to depart at exactly eleven o'clock, and so on the stroke of the hour as the bell of the distinctive Portland stone clock tower of Southampton Civic Centre chimed the hour in the distance, the crew slipped the ferry's moorings and with a pulse from its bow thruster it glided gracefully out from its berth. Moments after casting off, the automated announcement played out over the onboard public address system welcoming them aboard and explaining the emergency procedures.

Once clear of the terminal, the catamaran throttled up its powerful diesel engines and gathered speed. It cruised down the length of Southampton Water, past the five tower blocks at Weston shore and the grand Victorian church at Netley, which was all that remained of the once immense Royal Victoria military hospital there. Further along the wide tidal inlet, after overtaking the much slower car ferry, they passed by the industrial sprawl of Fawley oil refinery with its fractioning towers and flare stacks looking like something out of the opening shot of Blade Runner, and the mothballed and soon to be demolished Fawley power station with its impressively tall chimney that dominated the skyline for miles around. Once past the coastguard lookout tower at the tip of Calshot Spit they were out into the open waters of the Solent, and their destination lay ahead of them. The crossing, being in relatively sheltered waters, was smooth and uneventful and Claire and Kat spent most of it gossiping and watching the coastal scenery gliding past.

Just slightly under twenty-five minutes after casting off from Southampton, the fast ferry slowed as it entered the mouth of the River Medina, and approached its berth at Cowes ferry terminal. Together, Kat and Claire disembarked the ferry and headed up the gangway. A line of taxis was already waiting for passengers just outside the terminal building, and it wasn't long before they were on their way for the final leg of their journey.

"Let me guess," the taxi driver, a woman in her forties said after both young women were seated in the back of her vehicle. "You girls are off to Parkhurst, right?"

"How'd you know?" Claire asked.

The cab driver chuckled knowledgeably.

"Sorry, but I see girls like you almost every single day getting off that ferry," she explained as she drove out of the terminal area and on to the High Street. "The small suitcases are a bit of a giveaway for starters, as is your body language. I can just sort of tell, y'know."

"Have you ever, um, been in there yourself?" Kat asked, sensing an opportunity, albeit rather late, to find out more about the place from the perspective of a woman who had already been through what they were about to.

"Me? Nah! Motherhood is definitely not my scene!" the driver replied. "Yeah I know they say that it's every woman's responsibility to volunteer and have kids but the truth is I'm just happier going my own way. That, and avoiding the potential of heartbreak in the future."

"If you have a boy, you mean?" Claire supposed.

"My sister volunteered," the driver explained as she drove out of the town. "She had a little boy - he died when he was just five years old, poor kid. I mean, five years old, for fuck's sake! Sorry, about the bad language there, but it still stings even to this day. Losing him at such a young age almost destroyed my sister, she still has to have counseling, even after fifteen years. I decided I definitely didn't want to put myself through what she went through."

She looked at the expressions on her passengers' faces in the rear view mirror.

"That doesn't mean I don't think what you two are going there for isn't a wise thing to do," she clarified. "We still need to have boys out there, it's just that the possibility of having one myself isn't for me."

The driver's words once again brought home the heartache and emotional trauma that they were risking, and set their minds racing with dark thoughts about the potential risk of losing a son to Anderson-Swift's Disease.

Every day, for over a hundred and seventy years now, young boys all over the world succumbed to the fatal virus. It had plagued humanity and decimated the population, resulting in a greatly imbalanced society where women now vastly outnumbered the men lucky enough to survive into adulthood. And the resulting infertility that the virus caused in almost all those men that survived had resulted in the population stagnating at less than half of what it once had been.

As they left the town they passed a stone monument, topped by a bronze statue of a boy angel staring up towards the heavens.

"That's the town's boy's memorial," the driver explained to them.

Such memorials to all the boys that had died from Anderson-Swift's Disease were commonplace, not only in Britain but all around the world. In fact, almost every city, town and village had a memorial in some form or other - some were rather modest affairs, others much grander, but all of them were regarded as sacred monuments.

Every year on the fifteenth of August, the anniversary of the day when Charles Anderson-Swift had first identified the disease that had later been named after him as the cause of spiralling boyhood mortality in Nepal, remembrance services were held around the world, and every mother who had lost a son to the disease placed a single blue iris, the flower that represented the mourning of a lost boy, at the base of her local monument. As they looked at the pediment that the town's remembrance memorial stood upon, both Claire and Kat couldn't help but notice the hundreds of little blue paper flowers fluttering in the breeze. The sight caused both of them to feel a tear welling up in their eyes. Each little blue flower represented two precious things - a young boy's life cut tragically short, and a mother's undying love for her child. No woman wanted to contemplate losing a son, but at least the monuments where they could commemorate their loss had become a source of comfort and contemplation.

Seeing the monument and everything it represented had caused a thoughtful silence to ensue between the two young women on their way to the Fertility Centre, and it wasn't until they were near their destination before either of them spoke another word.

"I know what you're thinking, Claire," Kat said to her friend.

"Seeing that thing, all those little blue irises, it sort of brings everything into sharp focus, doesn't it," Claire responded, sighing and wiping a tear away from her eye with the back of her hand.

"Yeah," Kat replied thoughtfully. "But we've got to believe, right? We've got to believe that if either of us has a boy that he'll be fine and live to adulthood. I know the odds are always against us, but we can't give in to it - Swift's Disease, I mean. We can't let it beat us."

"Amen, Sister!" Claire smiled, raising her fist in a gesture of defiance against the virus.

Checking In

WELCOME TO PARKHURST SOUTHERN REGIONAL FERTILITY CENTRE

The large sign above the entrance to the complex's administration building bade them welcome as they entered. Convenient signs pointed them towards where they were to report, and it wasn't long before both of them were stood before what at first glance resembled a reception desk such as one might find in a budget roadside hotel.

"Good afternoon, ladies," an attractive young man with a smile that instantly melted their hearts greeted them. "May I have your names please?"

"Claire Waltham."

"Katherine Greening."

The young man tapped on his keyboard and soon located their names on the checklist for that day's admissions.

"Excellent," he said as he looked up and smiled at them. "Have either of you been here before?"

"Nope," Kat responded.

"First time," Claire added.

"That's fine," the receptionist replied politely. "I'll just put you down for the full induction process. It's just basic formalities really - filling in a few forms and basically going through how this place works."

"Do we get to choose a man? Or are we assigned one at random?" Kat asked, clearly unable to suppress her desire to know for certain.

"It'll all be explained to you in due course," the young man answered with a smile.

Claire was pretty sure he got asked that question a lot, judging by his polite but evidently bored tone of voice.

"If you'd like to take a seat, ladies, I'll have someone come and take you in."

He gestured towards a row of plastic chairs lined up against the opposite wall. No sooner had they sat down he was on the phone.

"Hi, Martha - I have Claire Waltham and Katherine Greening here," he spoke into the receiver.

"Now he is a cutie!" Kat enthused. "I would totally do him!"

"Even if he's intact?" Claire whispered in reply. "Which he most likely is, by the way."

"Hey, just because it's a preference doesn't mean I would turn down a good looking guy like that!" Kat answered. "Besides, maybe I could convince him to get it done as an act of his undying love and devotion to me."

"Oh, in your dreams!" Claire chuckled.

"Someone will be down shortly," the object of Kat's sudden affection announced as he put the phone down.

"Thanks, um... what was your name?" Kat responded.

"Kyle," the receptionist answered.

"Thanks, Kyle," Kat went on.

A short pause ensued.

"Um, are you by any chance..." Kat began, before Claire abruptly jabbed her elbow into her side. "What?" she turned towards her friend. "I was only going to ask if he's single!"

"Yeah, of course you were!" Claire smirked, and discreetly mimed a "scissor" motion with her fingers.

The way Kat suddenly blushed told Claire all she really needed to know that her suspicion was indeed well founded.

"Sorry to disappoint you ladies, but I'm afraid I'm taken," Kyle said.

A short while later, a middle aged woman entered the reception area and introduced herself as Martha Meadows. She smiled an amiable smile towards Kyle, and it didn't take much to work out that the two of them were most definitely an item. With a smile she invited them to follow her for their inductions. Once inside the building proper, they were both given admissions forms to fill in, and had their luggage searched for any contraband.

"The men here are kept to a strict diet to help maintain their fertility for as long as possible," Martha explained to them as two uniformed officers rummaged through their belongings. "Any alcohol, sweets, spices and of course drugs, are banned within this complex in case they might be passed to one of the men. So you must forgive the intrusion, but I assure you it's absolutely necessary."