The Stronger Sex? Ch. 01

The year is 2047. The world is a very different place, and those born before the year 2020 have seen one of the greatest changes to happen to mankind while those born after know of no other way. Everyone expected change in the future, many people realistically thought, or dreamed, that by 2047 we would have flying cars or live on Mars or the moon, but neither came true (although cars do drive themselves now, more on that in a minute). The world is pretty much the same as it was early in the century, outside of advances in technology. Virtual reality games and VR universes are the primary form of entertainment for many, but this mostly replaced social media, video games and TV for most of the population so there was no real societal change. Billions just swapped social media/TV/video games for VR.

We still have many of the same problems in the good old USA: we still fight over many things like politics, social issues, ethics, climate change, human migration, and how to care for elderly, sick, and disabled people living here. Maybe these issues will never go away.... but now they are overshadowed by a major change in the world, not just the USA. What change, you may ask? We will tell you.

They messed with the natural order of humanity. They hacked our genetic code. They changed everything. We have no idea who They are or how They did it, but They did it. We have pictures of the suspects, we know where They lived, we know where They carried out their plan, we know the online name They used on social media, we know where They bought the equipment They used. We still have no answers, no fix to the issue, and no people to prosecute or put on trial. All of this is eternally frustrating to many (especially men) across the world.

How did They mess with the natural order? How did They hack our genetics? As with so many things, it started with the COVID 19 pandemic that hit in 2020. COVID changed everything, and it never really ended. Sure, it was worse in 2020 and 2021 when it was new, and a few years had variants that were worse than others. A variant in the late 2020's carried a significantly higher mortality rate and led to more shutdowns. However, the variants just kept coming and seemed to be ever more transmissible as they continued to mutate. It's safe to say everyone in the modern world got COVID more than once in the first few years. That's how They did it.

They used the COVID virus and it's ever increasing transmissibility to introduce a virus to hack our genetic code. How They did it was very simple in theory, but beyond exceptionally difficult in practice. The virus They used began activating "junk DNA" in our genetic code. This was a very targeted activation of specific junk DNA. For those who don't know, junk DNA is simply DNA in our body that is dormant our entire lives. Before the "Event", as it became known, we weren't entirely sure where it came from or what it did, but we know more now than before. This targeted activation of specific junk DNA led to an increase in density of muscle fiber and increase in amount of the fast twitch muscles in the human body.

Essentially, this made certain people physically stronger, faster, and improved their reflexes. Think about it this way: a gorilla is roughly 20 times stronger than a human male while only weighing roughly two or three times as much. Same with chimps: they are much stronger despite being smaller and weighing less than the average human. How? It's how their muscle is put together, not the quantity of muscle. The actual mechanisms They used still baffle scientists around the world, and this is often the simple explanation of what happened put forth by scientists and doctors.

Maybe this doesn't sound so bad? It is. Here's why: it only affected females.

They improved the female of our species and made them physically stronger and faster than the males. Studies varied in how much stronger females became because every sample of people is different. Some studies said they grew four times stronger than preC (we tend to break things down to pre-COVID (preC) and after COVID (afterC)). A few studies said two or three times stronger, a few five to six times stronger than before. Generally speaking, most people and the majority of studies agreed their strength increased four-fold, maybe five. So, if the average woman born in 1980 could bench press 70lbs at age 20 in the year 2000, that same woman born in 2027 could probably bench press 280lbs today in 2047.

That's not all, there were other consequences to go along with women getting stronger and faster: they grew taller too. Not much taller (the studies would tell us), but it was noticeable. The studies would say the average American woman went from just over 5'4" preC to just under 5'5" afterC, but that didn't capture the whole story. The studies would also say that "extreme observations are more common afterC", which to the average person meant there were more taller women now than before. For example, preC only about 1% of women were six feet tall or taller while afterC that number is 6-10% of women (depending on the study). Since it was spread through the population during COVID, full grown women did not grow taller but girls who were still growing, and those born after COVID, did.

Another consequence was their durability. Since their muscle was now denser, it was more resistant and resilient to injury and impact. That may seem minor, but now a grown man could punch a young woman in the face and she could take the blow without major injury. If she punched him back full force, she risked seriously injuring him with a single blow due to her enhanced strength.

As most of the muscle was denser and not more abundant, women did not get bulky like muscular men do: and they kept their lithe, hourglass body shapes. They did have more fast twitch muscle, but the doctors and scientists said the amount was minimal and did not significantly affect their body shape or size.

All women were affected, but younger women were affected so much more. Women full grown when COVID hit in 2020, or preC, only grew marginally stronger and faster as they had already developed their muscles naturally. Those born after 2022 or 2023 generally got the maximum benefit of the genetic hack. It all depended on when woman contracted COVID 19 virus that carried the genetic hack, but nearly all girls born after 2026 or 2027 grew up fully enhanced, and those benefits were drastic, despite not being incredibly obvious....

Fully enhanced younger women do weigh more than an older women of the same size, but initial studies have shown their ligaments, tendons, and bones are denser too. Men were still bigger, both taller and built bigger and heavier, but they were no longer stronger. A young women under 25 would now demolish 98 or 99% of men on the planet in a physical confrontation, and both sexes knew it. The physical advantage men had had over women since the dawn of mankind was at an end, and it happened in just a few decades.

The effect varied for women from 25 to age 40 or 45. Having said that, the younger the woman, the more she grew after the Event, and the stronger she will be. Only those born afterC are fully enhanced by the Event.

There was only one documented downside for females: broken bones and tendon/ligament injuries became more common. As muscles were denser and allowed greater feats of strength sometimes bones and soft tissue did not increase enough to accommodate. Yes, bones and those soft tissues were denser, but broken bones and soft tissue injuries were more common postC in female athletes and competitors.

The change seems 100% one sided for the foreseeable future too: They did this using CRISPER technology, which is essentially a technology to unzip and rewrite DNA. It is simple in practice and can be used by anyone motivated to do so. It used to be available to anyone with money to buy it, but not anymore. After the Event was discovered in the mid to late 2020's, the world's governments banded together (for once) and decided that this technology was too dangerous to leave in the people's hands. Sure, this Event was bad, but someone else could combine COVID infection rates with Ebola death rates and wipe out half the world's people. Perhaps even They had additional plans that They had not carried out yet. Fear drove the public to demand action, and that drove the world's governments to act.

So, governments tracked all CRISPER equipment down and confiscated it. There were only a few manufacturers as the methods used are very precise and mechanisms very delicate, so finding it all was a relatively short process. Those who did not comply or claimed "I sold it!" or "I don't know where it is!" were detained until the equipment they bought was found. Journalists at the time wrote about abuses of citizens that were done to find the equipment and about individuals being detained indefinitely despite not committing a crime, but when the world's major governments band together on an issue all other concerns seem to be secondary. Even the basic human rights of a few.

This confiscation of CRISPER technology made sure men could not try to reverse the Event to level the playing field or maybe cause more damage to the human genome. Now, all genetic research is strictly monitored and limited to certain industries and universities. Much of the world's population thinks that certain countries are still experimenting as classified sites, but hard evidence of that has never been made public.

Men, and some women, in the media screamed about this confiscation and how it was wrong. They used any form of straw man argument they could, but they lacked a solid position to argue. Men (a minority of men, but way too many) had beaten their wives and girlfriends without fear of physical repercussion and raped women who were in the wrong place at the wrong time since mankind began. Now that was nearly over. Many men out there were scared at the loss of their physical dominance. When that was contrasted with the very real prospect of a genetically engineered super virus wiping out millions (or billions) of people worldwide, those against the confiscation did not have a strong position to argue to a world weary of the never ending COVID variants.

The effects rippled through too many aspects of society to mention, thousands of papers have been published in peer reviewed journals and hundreds of thousands of articles written about individual impacts and specific things that have happened. Covering all the impacts would take a lifetime, but a few stand out.

Women's sports teams often faced off with the men's team for an unofficial championship, but not always. Normally the champ of the WNBA beats the NBA champ and women's Olympic volleyball and soccer teams usually beat their male counterparts, but most other sports champions still don't face each other. Everyone knows that male champions of individual sports like swimming, track and field, or tennis have no chance against a female champion, so they usually don't face off. We still have women's sports separate from men's, and the men's viewership still far exceeds the women, but now it's separated to protect the men from the women, not the women from the men.

Rape is nearly a thing of the past, and that is huge for society worldwide. Although older women can't fight off all the men out there, there is an unofficial code where women now protect the other women. Suspected rapists began getting beaten to a pulp by "unknown assailants" or ended up in the infirmary of the jail from a beating they took overnight when the lights were off. Rapists didn't like coming forward to say they were beaten down by a woman or group of women, so the culprits were rarely found. Rapes are rare nowadays, and women seem freer to be out at night, go places alone, and wear ever more revealing clothing on a regular basis without fear of male reactions.

Women are also now leading the USA, a trend that began in the 1990's. Society saw more and more examples of increasing numbers of women in leadership roles in business, increased number of women being CEO's of Fortune 500 companies, and increased representation in the courts as judges and in state and federal government. Those trends kept going: now the majority of judges, members of the House of Representatives, Senate, governors, and state elected officials are women. The scales tipped in the late 2030's, and for the first time in US history we have a female President, Vice President, Speaker of the House, Senate Majority leader, and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Combine that political power with a newly minted physical advantage over nearly every man, and the societal impacts are inevitable.

Those impacts were exacerbated by technology, specifically self-driving cars and trucks. When this happened in the early to mid 2030's most people who drove for a living were now out of work or saw their job duties and pay significantly reduced. Chauffeurs, truckers, delivery men, and every other profession that drove for a living were gone within the decade. Sure, there are still logistical support staff and logistics companies in every town as machines can't pick out a package and walk it to your door or unload a semi-trailer, but those jobs paid much less when the driving element was removed. This affected men so much more than women, and millions of men had a hard time adjusting.

Women were already making inroads into the workforce, but they did better and better than the men with the new working world. When physical strength was not their strong suit, no pun intended, women were forced to excel at other elements of a job or profession to succeed. Now that they are physically stronger than the men, they had yet another advantage over them. They took full advantage, and the world looks a lot different now than it did preC.

There was a benefit to a handful of men, but it was a very, very, small handful. These were the men who were still naturally stronger than even the new enhanced women. Think of the offensive linemen in football or the power lifters who threw kegs of beer or flipped huge tires for fun: big and naturally strong while still being quick and athletic paired with top flight exercise and nutrition regimens. That's what it took for those men to stay ahead of the women now. They became celebrities: as popular as athletes and movie stars combined. In fact, many were athletes or became movie stars. They were now rich just for being strong, they fathered dozens (or hundreds) of children if they wanted to, and often lived lifestyle that would make any dictator or the long gone, yet not forgotten, Hugh Hefner jealous.

Now, back to Them and how They did it. To date, no one really knows. The mechanics of how it was done are well known: some junk DNA was activated to alter muscle development. How They knew which base pairs to activate and how they coded a virus to only activate those specific combinations of base pairs is a mystery.

In addition, They coded the virus to be shut down by the Y chromosome present in males. How they did this is a mystery too. Again, this is simple in theory but beyond exceedingly difficult to actually do. The best geneticists of the past 25 years are baffled and cannot replicate what They did.

A geneticists from France explained it to the public best in the late 2020's: picture a sandbox with four different colored grains of sand. All four colors appear in equal numbers in the sandbox, and there are millions of grains of sand. Now, imagine you must grab an unknown number of specifically colored grains of sand in exactly the right order. If the number of grains of sand you grab is incorrect, the project fails. If the order is wrong, the project fails. Now: go!

It is impossible, everyone agreed, yet They did it. When the effects were first being observed they were dismissed as "fake" and video clips of girls performing feats of physical strength previously unimaginable were deemed to be altered or CGI. When scientists and doctors began documenting the incredible strength of young girls all the talking heads from academia and doctor's associations said it was impossible. They claimed human muscle growth and physiology could not be altered. They called it "fake news". In their defense, they had a responsibility to their professions to be skeptical. They also came to believe the stories when young girls around the world were studied by respected institutions, and they have been studying the Event ever since.

Writers compare the achievement to the stone cutting at Puma Punku in Bolivia, the construction of the Pyramids, the 1000 year old uncorroded Arabian sword found in 2036 on the seabed of the drying Dead Sea, or the building of Gobekli Tepe 11,000 years ago when people were supposed to be primitive hunter/gatherers, or other ancient accomplishments that defy explanation. Those sites and the sword can be visited and seen in modern times, yet we cannot agree or speculate on how they were built.

Geneticists compare Them to Mozart, Einstien, da Vinci, Socrates, or Nikola Tesla and the other people who are considered the greatest minds in human history and whose names have echoed across centuries or millennia. While we don't know who They were, it is safe to say that whenever the third person pronouns "They" or "Them" appear in capital letters everyone who reads English will know who is being referred to.

To make it frustrating to the masses worldwide negatively affected, and no they are not all men, we even have pictures of Them. They lived in China, in the outskirts of one of China's many hugely populated cites. They rented from a local homeowner who lived next door, and he has pictures of Them in the background of random pictures he took while They lived next door, such as pictures of the sunset over the city that he liked to take in the evening on a light smog day. He has pictures of himself standing shoulder to shoulder with Them in his yard while they chatted politely on a weekend afternoon.

However, the pictures are useless, and no positive ID has ever been made of Them. They were only ever seen in long pants and long sleeved shirts with surgical masks and sunglasses. Always masks and sunglasses. Always. This was not unusual among the population in the COVID conscious Chinese cities. Sunglasses on cloudy days? Sure, it was unusual, but not something any person would find to be suspicious or overly odd.

They seemed to be a couple: the man was probably 5'7" or 5'8" and the woman was about 5'5" and they were both thin to moderately built. Their landlord who took the pictures said They spoke fairly fluent Mandarin, and while he felt it was not their first language he could not say for sure.

The landlord guessed they were in their 30's, but due to the masks and sunglasses being on 100% of the time, he said they could easily be mid to late 20's to mid-50's. Their lighter skin tone ruled out people of a majority African decent, and likely ruled out most of Indian or Middle Eastern decent. The skin tone could have been a tan or darker complected Caucasian or a lighter skin toned Pacific Islander, Asian, Central/South American, or even a lighter skinned Indian or Middle Easterner.

That left open the option of any country whose population was not predominantly African and everyone age 25-55 in those countries, or 3 or 4 billion (give or take a few hundred million) potential suspects.

The car They drove was paid for in cash from a private party sale, They wore clothes that could be purchased anywhere, They had everything delivered but no delivery man had noted any detail out of the ordinary. They used credit cards of recently deceased men and women and paid cash in every store where They were caught on camera. Any lead or potential lead in the past 25 years had yielded nothing.