rain.
The summer stretches on for months, chasing the rain and the beauty and the color from the world. Everywhere I go, it’s hot and dry and brown. My desk is brown, my purse is brown, my wallet is brown, even my new bowl is brown. My hair is brown. The grass is brown, the trees are brown, the birds and the bugs and the ground is brown. Our fence, brown. My plants? Brown.
Too much brown, endless shades of brown the color of no rain.
I’m going to live to be 333.
I say it with such certainty that I get raised eyebrows. After all, such a long life isn’t yet common to my people. We typically fade out at 80 or so.
But I know when I’ll die. I can see it.
It’s October 31st, 2310. I’m sitting in a big comfy chair, a sweet fruity drink in hand, regaling yet another generation of my great (to some degree; I’ve lost count) grandchildren with the great stories of my life. I’ve reached my end and I can feel it, but I face it unafraid, ready.
I stop mid-sentence, laughter on my lips as my last breath leaves me. Perfect.
She watched me from across the store as I dispelled the boy hitting on me with ease. Her perfectly made-up face made a face and she pretended to examine her fingernails, but I knew she was burning to talk to me.
I went to her, complimented her hair, gave her the opportunity to talk to me. She took it. “How did you get him to leave you alone so easily?” Her voice, tinged with upper-class sarcasm, trembled. I looked at her, my pierced eyebrow raised.
“I told him I’m gay.”
To my amusement, she flinched. “Oh.” She looked me over, I stood my ground. Her manicured nails tapped on her pressed pants, held in place by a belt that probably cost a month of my salary at the coffee shop, with a perfectly pressed shirt tucked perfectly therein. She hesitated. “Are you?”
I took a defiant step closer to her. “I am.” To her credit, she didn’t back away – though she clearly wanted to.
“Do you think it would work… if you weren’t?”
I laughed. “Sure, if I was good enough at pretending. It’s gotta come across as real, or he’ll think I’m lying.”
She nodded. “Can I… take you to lunch? Will you teach me?”
Many hours later, yet another cute guy makes his approach. She deflects him easily, confidently, with a glimmer in her eye that I alone understand.
Weeks later, and it’s the new trend. All the uppity high-class girls are claiming lesbianism to fend off overzealous would-be suitors.
But then, something shifts. The pretending shifts. It becomes more than a game, it becomes reality. The girls slowly realize they are more than claiming, they are becoming. Hundreds of them over a period of weeks, then thousands. It becomes a global shift, and woman by the millions are coming out.
Men become largely unwanted. Over years, they become unneeded. We stop having sons, then stop bearing children in ways dangerous to our bodies. War ceases, communities grow, peace spreads. Women dismantle the patriarchal systems that rule over us, and shift into communal systems that allow power to spread, until every woman on the planet is important, empowered, known, loved.
Memories fade. Thoughts of the old ways die out with the last of the men. I look out over the world from my station high above and wonder at how far we’ve come… and wonder what we’ve lost.
