Author: Sterling Title: Agony With a Purpose Summary: Either women will experience agony during intercourse or else humanity will go extinct. Keywords: ScFi MF mf rape tort? NOTICE: This story contains explicit sex. First posted 9/21/2009, new header added 8/24/2010. I'm always eager for comments, whether good, bad or mixed. Comments to sterling27@live.com. I have written many other stories and they can all be found at /files/Authors/Sterling/ You are welcome to copy this story if you include the entire text unchanged, including this notice. If you tell me where you have re-posted it, I can enjoy knowing it is appreciated and perhaps enjoy the feedback the story gets where you re-post it. Sterling And now, our feature presentation. Enjoy! ================================================================== Agony With a Purpose ------------------------------ Excerpted from "Genetic Performance Art", published 2315. In the early 2200s there was little personal liberty and communication was restricted. This allowed the social planning elite to perform genetic experiments at the level of societies, changing the genes slightly and seeing what happened not with the individuals but with the society populated with such individuals. By that time humanity was expanding to dozens of different planets, and each needed to be seeded to create new societies. The scientists could experiment with a single isolated human society rather than the whole of humanity. Ethical standards in that era were far lower than today and far lower than they had been around the turn of the millennium. A minority in that era argued for experiments that could benefit humanity at the expense of freedom and independence for experimental subjects. But only in the 2200s was it acceptable to perform such experiments not for a concrete benefit to humanity but in the name of art. Albrecht Smith was the unquestioned master in sexual performance art. His manipulations changed human sexuality in major or minor ways, and he had a knack for knowing what manipulations would lead to interesting developments. A substantial segment of today's society feels that due to the horrible ethical violations his work entailed, accounts of the results of Albrecht's experiments should be suppressed, if not totally destroyed. We stand with the majority who hold that we should learn and draw inspiration from all parts of our history, however repugnant we may find the morality that allowed such developments. Albrecht Smith faced more condemnation for this piece of his genetic performance art than any other, and it is no wonder why. ============================== Bill stopped by the mating house on his way home from work. He looked forward to sex with the women and found he was good for about twice a day, usually on his way to work and his way home. He loved the pleasure, the buildup, the orgasm, and the woman's writhing and screaming that affirmed his manhood. He liked the bit of extra income he could earn too. Today about 15 of the 40 rooms had green lights, and one other man was looking them over. To keep his cash flow positive he would skip the lovely girl he would have to pay $2 for. The next one was kind of average with big boobs, and she was free. $4 for a kind of scrawny older woman. Then $8 for a fat woman by the name of Mary. He felt up for a challenge and really wanted the $8. He entered her stall. She started swearing at him "Oh God, no". But he put his card in the wall, and her bonds started tightening. She was gently but firmly pulled down on the horse, which started vibrating against her pubic bone area. He pushed a button to start his favorite pornographic movie running against the wall. These movies were from a happier day, especially this one with the woman on top of the man, engulfing him, ecstatic with her pleasure. Bill pulled his pants down and idly fondled himself, and got an erection easily enough. Now the problem was to find Mary's vagina in all that flesh. He shoved one large buttock in one direction, the other in the other, and found it. He could just barely reach. "I have razor blades up my cunt, and if you go in you'll be sliced to pieces", she growled. Of course she didn't. So he put the tip of his penis right where her opening was, and slid in. "It's acid, you'll have holes in your dick where the pus boils bleed". No wonder she was worth $8. He spit on her neck and said, "Shut up, cunt, you'll be screaming soon enough." He started thrusting. She fell silent, defeated. Fucking a woman was satisfying at a primal level, even if it got a little nasty sometimes. She was hot and wet inside; no matter how much she dreaded this, her body was still welcoming. He speeded up and then lunged inside and came. The instant his semen shot into her, she tensed up, straining against her bonds, her face in pain. A sensor picked up her agony. His card indicated he had received the $8 credit. The bonds loosened a little but still kept her pretty tight so she wouldn't hurt herself as she thrashed around. They would loosen fully after fifteen minutes or so. Bill was panting a little, having enjoyed his little mating venture, and he pulled his pants up. As he left he saw above her door on the outside the red light, and the readout at 29:23, the time remaining until someone could mate with her again. Her posted payout had fallen from $8 to $7. ------------ Fred was 14. He had been going to the mating house for a couple years, finding that he loved the sensation of thrusting into a vagina. He also felt an orgasm, but nothing much came out. He restricted his attention to the women who were free or had a small payment. He knew he had been producing a little fluid for a few months now. Some of the women tensed a little when he came, but they were mightily relieved that he wasn't quite mature enough to send a woman into full agony. Today he was mounted on Carly and felt his pleasure building. He came, feeling the warm waves begin as usual. But he was startled to hear Carly scream, and see the green light by the card reader indicating he had succeeded. He had reached manhood. He had sent a woman into agony! His friends were skeptical. They went with him next time, and waited outside as Fred went in to try to earn $1 for Sophie. After a couple minutes they heard a scream and the red X above the door changed to a counter, 30:00 and declining. Fred must have done it. They hoped they would reach that point soon. ------------ Michael had plenty of money, so he looked first at the girl he would spend $12 for. Just gorgeous. He went in to look. Lou was crying softly, pausing only briefly when she heard him come in. Lou was slim, with perfect skin and perfect breasts. He fondled the breasts for a little while. Although her hair and face were sweaty and streaked with tears, he could see how beautiful she was underneath. The tears just added a little spice. When he inserted his card the bonds tightened. Her rear end was perfect too, and as she was now pressed firmly against the horse her vulva were opened a little and were moist. The vibrator her pubic bone was pressed against made her moister. His penis was ready for the task. He loved that first moment when his glans touched the wet flesh of the vulva. As she felt his tip she said softly "Please..." He moved in very slowly, a millimeter at a time, enjoying each bit of sensation as his penis was engulfed in her perfect silky vagina. He reached the end, then slid back very slowly. He was in no hurry. He liked the idea of fathering a child with her, however unlikely that might be. And that got him going a little faster. Now he was thinking of her as a perfect female of his species, and he the perfect male was mating with her perfectly. His pleasure built. Very soon now nature would take its course and his pleasure blend with the reproductive act. He liked looking intently at the girl's face as his orgasm came, and seeing exactly how small the delay was between his semen shooting out and the convulsion of pain that would distort her face. So curious that he felt pleasure and satisfaction at the exact moment she felt agony. But it wasn't really even proven that women felt pain. Maybe they just had that reaction as a reflex and we interpreted it as agony. In any case, he felt fine, and casually said, "See you later, Lou", giving a pat to her body as it still writhed in agony. ------------- Amy was one of the oldest girls. She had first gotten he period three years before, that yucky monthly time when the blood flowed between her legs. Her breasts and pubic hair had been growing, her hips and all. Her body was that of a grown woman. She had seen the older girls say goodbye, one by one, to go off to join the women. All the girls wondered what it was like there. Once a girl went off she never came back. They were excited and a little scared to go. Today was her turn. She said tearful farewells to the other girls, and her teachers Sue and Vivian took her to another room that was usually locked. There she met Tony, who must have been a man. Sue and Vivian had said there were men in the world, mysterious people who met with them now and then and had helped them become teachers. They had grown up in this school and never left, being trained as teachers and surrogate parents. They knew no more about the world than Amy did. Tony was bigger than Sue and Vivian, and his voice when he spoke was deeper, and there were other differences. She and Tony drove some distance in a car to what he said would be her new home. It was the first time she had been in a car or left the school grounds. She was surprised and thrilled with the novelty. But when he led her into her new home, she was surprised and scared. There was no hint of fun anywhere. There were a few men, but lots of older girls and women like Sue and Vivian everywhere. Some didn't look up; some gave her a dull glance. They looked weary. It was much larger than the school she had lived in for as long as she remembered. There was a long corridor lined with bedrooms, all the same, and Tony showed her to her room. It had two beds, one occupied by a woman who was lying on her back with her arm over her face. She gave a look when Amy came in, but didn't say anything, and put her arm back over her face. Tony pointed Amy to her bunk and said she should ask this woman how things were done. He said goodbye, with what she later realized was a meaningful grin, and she never saw him again. "So?" Amy said after a while. The woman sat up on her bed. Amy was shocked at how worn out she looked. The woman said her name was Rachel, and asked when she had had her last period. Amy wasn't sure, but she thought it had stopped a few days ago. Rachel sighed. And she began talking. "Let me guess: Do you know where babies come from? Do you know that there are boy babies and girl babies and they are different? Do you know what a man looks like between his legs?" To each question, Amy shook her head. She had asked some of these questions of Sue and Vivian, but they didn't know. "There is one basic fact that you need to know, and you might as well know now. One day every month you are going to be taken off to the mating house, and you will experience the worst pain you can imagine, over and over and over again all day. Then you get to come back here and wait for the next month. You can do pretty much whatever you want here. Some of us read, play games, get exercise. But for all of us, that one day a month haunts us." Amy started feeling sick to her stomach. "Before you got here, you were a girl. Now you are a woman. Babies grow inside the bellies of women. OK, you know where you put a tampon? That is where a baby will come out. Men have a thing between their legs called a penis that gets long and hard, and it slides up where the tampon goes. It's way bigger than a tampon. They slide it in and out, and that's mating." She demonstrated with one finger in her other loose fist. "Then stuff spurts out the end, and every now and then it starts a baby inside a woman, where it grows for nine months until it comes out." Amy was reeling. Was this a big joke? "The problem is that when that stuff spurts out the end of the guy's penis, it hurts really bad. Really, really bad. It hurts so much that they tie you up when you are in the mating house so you can't run away, or kick, or bite, or pull your hair out, because you will want to do all those things." Amy just stared. She went to the dining hall with Rachel and they got their trays and ate. There was some dull conversation, but no joy. The next morning a doctor came to examine Amy. He took her temperature and took a swab from between her legs, where the tampon went in. The next day he did it again, and said it was now time. He told her to use the bathroom and take off her clothes. A few minutes later a couple of other men came in and before she knew what was happening they had clipped her hands together behind her back and she was walking down the corridor with them. As she passed, a couple of the women stopped to look at her. One cried. They led her outside and down a long path, then in a door, through another door, and into a long corridor with one wall full of stalls. Glancing to the side she saw what looked like women bent over, still. In one she saw a man behind the woman, grabbing her butt, moving. But her guards took her aside into an empty cubicle before she could see much. They had her kneel over a sort of funny sofa, and she felt one knee and then the other fastened. They undid her hands from behind her back and fastened each of them separately. She could still move. They pointed out a tube within reach of her mouth that she could suck on to get water. Then as they were turning to go, one man pulled down his pants and underpants, and for the first time in her life she saw what was between a man's legs. She was shocked, and looked it. He laughed. There was a weird little sack hanging down, but in front of it a thing hanging down like a finger, though a pretty big finger. "Better see it once first" he said. Then he pulled his pants up again and left. She heard a blood-curdling scream from somewhere. She had a couple minutes by herself. Then a door behind her opened and a man walked in, one with gray hair. He smiled and walked around her to the sides. He ran his hands all over her back and her breasts, and stroked her hair. It felt a little rude to her. He slowly took his clothes off, and she saw what was between his legs. He put a card in the wall and she felt her bonds move, drawing her arms and knees down so she was flat against the horse. She then felt this vibrating between her legs, and it felt pretty good in a way she hadn't felt before. Really good, actually. The little tube had gotten longer, and she decided it must be the penis Rachel had talked about. He moved up behind her, and moved his hands all over her butt and back, and it felt kind of exciting in a way. Then she felt him playing with the folds between her legs, then she felt what must be the penis poke her, and then she felt it press hard against her, and then it suddenly whooshed up inside her where the tampons went, but this was huge. It hurt a little, but it also felt exciting, and connected somehow to the pleasure she felt from that vibrating against her front. Something stirred deep within her. Then he started sliding it in and out, over and over. So far there was no agony here. It felt good. Really good. She felt pleasure building, building more than she thought possible, then felt a huge wave of it, and she cried out a little. The man laughed. As he started going faster and faster, she was still panting with the glow. Then he said, "OK, little girl, now it's my turn", pumped faster and faster, breathing harder and harder, and then let out a big "Unnnh!". An instant after he did, she felt it. Like knives through her eyeballs, a blowtorch searing her between her legs, charring her flesh, fingernails being ripped out, knives all over, head about to explode. She was screaming, she realized as an afterthought. It went on like that for an eternity. She felt herself straining against her bonds. Gradually it subsided to the point she could cry out "Help!". Mere gravel in her eyes, and the knives all over her skin subsided to nails and pins. Then she lay there panting, and felt the bonds loosen a little. The man had left, she now noticed. She felt up to some of the water, and drank from the tube. She heard a voice from what was probably the next cubicle. "First time, honey?" she asked. "Yes." "Oh, you poor, poor thing." After she had rested a few minutes the pain had stopped, then she heard the door open behind her. Another gray-haired man walked in. She felt the bonds tugging her down against the horse again, the vibrating between her legs. He pulled down his pants, touched her all over, and actually tugged on her nipple until it hurt. Or what she used to think "hurt" meant. She started pleading with him, "Oh God, no, please, it hurts so much, oh no, don't, oh God..." "Oh shut up," he said, and hit the back of her head. She felt his penis slide into her, but where there had been pleasure before it was pure terror now. He didn't thrust in and out anywhere near as long as the other man had, but then he too pressed a little harder, let out a big "Aaaah!", and she felt the knives through her eyes, her brain tossed into a fire, limbs being ripped off, but once they were off, still there to be ripped off yet again. The third time she vomited as the man approached her. She was dimly aware of someone coming in to wash up the vomit and the pee she had leaked out. She lost count in her recurring agony, but when the men came to get her she had taken in 24 penises, had 24 ejaculations inside her, and gone to hell 24 times. Long forgotten, once, at the beginning, she had had the only orgasm she would have in her entire life. The men handcuffed her again, and she stumbled a little as she got to her feet, but just trudged numbly where they led her, until she was uncuffed and lying on her bunk. She slept, had bad dreams, woke expecting to have escaped her nightmare, but found she was in the same world she had been in before. She just lay in bed a long time. Gradually hunger got her up and to the dining hall. That night she timidly asked Rachel if she could join her in her bed, but Rachel angrily told her to get lost. As the days wore on, she saw a few of the girls struggling as they were led off to the mating house. A few were dragged. Some were crying. She saw the girls come back dazed, like zombies, some being dragged, limp. When her period ended, she started getting nervous. She tried hiding in the bathrooms and in other girls' beds as the doctor looked for her. She was warned, then found herself handcuffed to her bunk. She kicked as the doctor tried to examine her, and regretted it as the attendants ground her knees into the floor as they held her down. And then it was her turn to go back to the mating house all over. Month after month. Year after year. She got pregnant. The visits to the mating house stopped and she moved to another area, and when the baby was born she felt some of the universal joy of motherhood, but then was bitterly disappointed when they took the baby away from her. A few years later she got pregnant again and bore another child. ================= The Change was marked by two major developments: Fertility started dropping, and women reported pain after intercourse. It wasn't pain in their lower parts, it was pain at a systemic level, throughout their bodies. The specific trigger was when a man's semen made contact with their vagina. Sex with condoms was fine, though the usual fears of a condom breaking were intensified by more immediate consequences. At first the pain was minor and the drop in fertility was modest, but the pain got worse and the fertility dropped further. Artificial insemination was no help, since the semen introduced into the vagina caused the same problem. In vitro fertilization stopped working. It was no longer an option to harvest eggs, fertilize them in a test tube and implant them. Actual conceptions dropped dramatically as fewer women were willing to even try. As with most women in a modern society, they had mixed feelings about having children in the first place, and the idea of months or years of painful intercourse was just not appealing. Another factor was that the Change engendered profound unease about the future of humanity. Women were uneasy bringing children into the world, especially daughters. In areas where women's rights were well established, very few women put up with the pain of intercourse, but there were a few who wanted families badly enough to bear the pain. In pockets of heavy male domination such as fundamentalist religious sects a few more births were seen because women were being coerced into sex. Female defections from such organizations increased markedly. Another discovery was that the number of different partners was a key factor in increasing women's fertility. It looked as if the woman needed the right man's sperm, not just sperm. Some subcultures with extreme male domination had early on moved to imprison women -- not far out of line with their basic values. But encouraging multiple partners for women was quite a different matter. Some sects adjusted. Smuggled video showed women being held down for endless gang bangs, with the humiliation the women felt dwarfed by the sheer physical pain after each man had his turn with her. But a significant number of pregnancies resulted from such arrangements. Estimates were that if a woman had 20 partners during each of her fertile periods from the age of 18 to 40, she might achieve on average 3.2 pregnancies and bring 2.9 of them to term. Even in areas where women's rights were established, fringe groups raised the idea of imprisoning women for similar treatment. To no one's surprise, the fringe groups were predominantly male. Women who had experienced the agony even once tended to drop out. Defenders of women's autonomy were composed of just about all women and a large group of fair-minded men. But it was inevitable that as time went on the fringe ideas would spread. With virtually no children under the age of 10, the danger of extinction was palpable. Life was as good as ever for men, and as painful as coercing women might be to all civilized norms, these men could not face going extinct. Women were the majority of the electorate, so no such proposals were going to be achieved by the legislative process. But the male pro-coercion vote increased inexorably. Ripples went through the military, notably short on men who felt great compassion for women. There was a bloodless imposition of martial law. When it was over, the constitution had been amended to strip from women the right to vote. Coercion was accepted, and the question was just how to do it. One obvious refinement was that women only be subjected to painful intercourse during their fertile periods -- women were suffering plenty without heaping on gratuitous pain. There was no harm in a family continuing to live as before as long as the woman was available for sex with 20 men during the middle of her cycle. But her screams and physical restraint were traumatizing for the children and the husband. The suicide rate for women went up dramatically. Many husbands snuck off, some guiltily and some with no regrets. It was hard dealing with the agony and torment their wives went through. Even in men low in compassion, having their wives raped by twenty men each month was a problem at a gut level. Many women hid from the coercion, aided by men who loved them. But they were discovered gradually. Helping a woman hide from her sexual duties became a crime. Even when not hiding, women managed not to report a fertile period a remarkably high percentage of the time. What it came down to was that the women needed to be imprisoned and their reproductive cycles monitored by men. They needed to be housed in guarded dormitories. Women didn't want to hear other women screaming day and night, so they were taken to another facility for their ordeal. The work women could do while imprisoned was limited, and then their willingness to do it dropped too. There was a severe labor shortage, as men had to fill most of the jobs women used to do. The women cooked for themselves and did laundry, but not much else. Although women's devotion to their children is strong, a few women started strangling their babies. Babies were so precious that the risk was too high. Children had to be separated from their mothers. Many went to live with their fathers, but group settings became more and more common, as the men had a tremendous amount of work to do. Even many men who favored the coercion in abstract terms had a hard time dealing with actual coercion and the agony of individual women. The men who could stand dealing with women tended to be callous, no help to women's plight. But there was enough decency that sadism was stopped when detected. In grand terms the society developed a near total division of the sexes, each group living their own lives and not forming intimate bonds with the other gender. But there was sexual intimacy, or at least sexual intercourse, of unprecedented scale. Vaginal applications of new drugs eliminated the transmission of STDs, one problem that was relatively easy to solve. The goal was that a woman in her fertile period should have semen injected into her by about 20 men. Unless something was done, she would be in agony after each one. Ordinary painkillers were hopelessly ineffective. General anesthesia was possible, but there were a couple problems. There are inherent risks, and the labor shortage meant few men could be spared to receive training to provide and monitor it, especially 20 sessions of 20 minutes each during a day. Studies also showed that women under general anesthesia just didn't get pregnant as often. So with no realistic alternatives, a woman was going to go into agony each time a man ejaculated in her. The agony was intense enough that she was not going to be cooperative. Assembling several men to hold her down for each of these bouts of sex, a half hour apart throughout a day, was an even bigger strain on male labor. She might fight, and with the danger of kicking, scratching, and biting, it was also perilous. The solution was restraining the women in a single spot they would occupy throughout their fertile period. Each hand and knee was tied at a separate point. Then throughout the day at periodic intervals a man could by himself come in, have sex with her and leave. Early experiments restraining women on their backs for missionary position did not work so well. She could spit at the man and her face would often be seared with hatred, and she could move her pelvis around violently, forcing the man to hold it in place while he was raping her. Instead it worked best to have a sort of padded horse she was face down on, and tighten her firmly against the saddle so she could not move her pelvis. The man could then mount her doggy style. This was more convenient for the men anyway, allowing them to remain standing and having a little bit higher rate of following through erection to ejaculation. It was clear that holding her in this tight a position for 24 hours would hurt her severely. So there developed the idea of loosening the bonds considerably during much of the time, and having the man tighten them just as he was about to mate with her. She needed water, so that was available to her by a mouth tube she could suck. She might urinate and defecate, usually between matings, but a man had to be prepared to deal with such surprises while mounted on her as well. It made sense for dozens of women to be assembled at a single mating center, so men could come to a central location and choose who to mate with from a wide selection. One obvious arrangement was for each woman to be in a separate soundproof room, but it turned out to be better for the women's health to be able to converse with each other and offer what words of support they could. This was more important than the chilling effect of the screams and moans -- actually, the screams actually enhanced the men's effectiveness. Because the walls were not complete the women could hear each other though they couldn't see each other. The shortage of labor meant that automating this process as much as possible was important. So in a standard arrangement, there was a corridor for men to go down, where each woman was in a stall behind a door of her own. There was a window in each through which the man could see what awaited him within. Above each door was a display. It might show a red timer, displaying how long until this woman was available for sex again, or it might just have a green "OK". Once the man entered, he could inspect his potential mate in person, and if he wanted her, he would slide his ID card into the wall, which would do several things. It would lock the door behind him, shut the window so he would have privacy, and make the green "OK" outside turn to a red "X". It would tighten her restraints to hold her very firmly against the horse. The horse she was pressed against also had a vibrator, and it started vibrating against her pelvic area when she was pressed against it. This made sure she was lubricated, and increased the pregnancy rate slightly. Women sometimes had orgasms, a sensation they came to detest because of the association with what came next. When pressed firmly against the horse, with some vaginal lubrication, she was ready for sex. Early experience with the gang bang approach showed that there was a significant chance a woman would die if she was raped too soon in succession. The agony seemed to accrue separately for each man whose sperm she took inside her. So the safe approach was to give her a chance to rest. As a result, a woman in the automated setup was off limits for half an hour after a man mated with her. This was defined as an actual ejaculation inside her. Adolescent boys might come but not have the semen necessary to trigger her reaction, and both men and boys could lose an erection or not follow through to ejaculation. So she was also fitted with a sensor that recorded when she went into agony to start timing the 30 minutes. The tightening of the horse followed a schedule. When a man came in, she was tightened against it very firmly, so she could not move her body to interfere with his penetration and thrusting. Once she was pulled down tight, the men had only ten minutes to come, and a clock showed how much time he had left. Some men liked to prolong the pleasure of the experience and the clock let them gauge when to finish up. After the man came, the woman's bonds were loosened a little. She could now move around a little more freely, but she was still held fairly tight to keep from hurting herself as she thrashed. And then for ten minutes at least the bonds were quite loose. There was another problem. Some men were turned off by women they found unattractive, reasons for which could include fat, ugly, verbally abusive, skinny, or of an unpopular skin tone. Men tended to avoid them in favor of more attractive mates, and when the men's tastes coincided, a comely girl might have had 30 mates in her 24 hours, but a less desirable woman might have had only two or none at all. So a market system developed. Along with the timer display outside each stall was the current price or payment for the woman in question. A man might need to pay $12 for a really nice woman, but be paid up to $20 for one who was particularly hard to find mates for. He paid the money up front for the chance to begin, but only earned the $20 if he proceeded to send her into agony. A woman's price would vary depending on her past history and how far along she was in her fertile period. A woman might be worth $15, but after a couple successful matings her price might fall to $10 or lower. A woman who required a payment of $2 might go to offering $5 if matings were unexpectedly slow. Many men might start taking a turn with a $20 woman, but find that her body or her verbal abuse would turn him off. They wouldn't get paid but could try their masculine efforts with another woman. Some things don't change, and it could cost a man $1,000 for the chance to take a girl's virginity. A man who is going to make a woman go into agony is almost by definition not very sympathetic to her. He might not be especially callous in general, since the structure of this brave new society made it easy for him to view her as less than human. There was nothing wrong with a man feeling a woman up wherever he wanted, though her head was perilous ground because of the teeth. For variety, a man who was so inclined could stick his finger in her anus or vagina or spank her a little. But he couldn't do anything that harmed her potential to get pregnant or her long-term health. A woman could report a man by biting on a second tube near her mouth. Women on either side could also report him depending on what they heard. That would immediately bring a video of the mating room to the attention of a man supervising hundreds of mating rooms. The supervisor could tell the man to stop. Security could get their reasonably fast. Repeat offenders or serious offenders could be barred from the mating houses, fined, or arrested. But if the woman cried "wolf" a lot, for instance, if she bit the tube merely because she went into agony, her cries would be taken less seriously. But for all those possibilities, most men were not vicious, or even very kinky. This system mostly unleashed in them a primal urge to mate quickly with women and ejaculate deep inside them. -------------- Once in a great while a woman became pregnant. She was quickly separated from the others. A grim mood pervaded the general female dormitories, but the pregnant women were a little more lighthearted. They would have a baby, and all this suffering they had gone through would be worth something. At the very least, they would have a full year off from the mating house. They were given the highest quality obstetrical care. The peak pain of childbirth was not as bad as the agonies of sex they had gone through month after month for years. And when the babies were born, the women were allowed to hold them and nurse them for a while. But some women overcame their maternal instincts and started strangling or shaking their infants, such was their hatred at the world they lived in. As a result, women were under strict supervision with their infants. Within a few weeks, in any event, the babies were taken from the mothers and delivered into the care of nurturing men for a few months before being delivered to the sort of center that Amy grew up in. --------------- When the Change struck, men had boys and girls in their families, and they kept in close touch with them. But girls conceived after the Change were different. They had genetic fathers, of course. Men were told they had fathered a daughter, and this was an added incentive to mating for many of the men. They could see her if they wanted, but few did, and they rarely did for long. They did not want to get too close to girls given the pain that loomed in their future. Originally all the boys and girls were raised together, and at the right age the girls went off to take their place among the women. At about that age boys would go to all-male schools. But there were problems. Some boys and girls formed friendships. The boys didn't want to be separated from their friends, and many of them developed questions about the humanity of the society they lived in when they knew what sort of life their young female friends would face. Sometimes a boy would later find his childhood friend restrained in a mating center and become terribly upset. So the boys and girls were separated around age one. A boy would never come into contact with a young female until he went to a mating house -- unless his career path took him to work with the women. Even post-menopausal women were kept segregated because of the horror stories they sometimes told with such bitterness. The female experience in this society was a grim, nightmarish one, but the girls led a carefree life. In their all-girl groups, word of their future fate was kept from them. Initially they were tended by men, but after a while a few girls were allowed to stay and grow to maturity, so they took over the care of the younger ones, never learning about the mating houses. The girls were free to learn certain things, but nothing related to the structure of the society they lived in. They could have perpetual sleepovers, or alone time if they were more the shy type. And as the girls reached puberty, they got frequent medical exams from the women who tended them. There came a point where their bodies were old enough to bear children without traumatizing them -- the bodies, that is -- often around age 15, and it was time for them to take their rightful place as women in the society. Leading them to a woman's dormitory was a bit like leading a farm animal to slaughter -- in some ways better, in some ways worse. ============================== Gradually the Change reversed itself. Women found that the sex hurt less, then not at all. More women got pregnant, and then it seemed they were all getting pregnant. Giving the women contraceptives was easy enough, but the men were reluctant to dismantle the society they had set up. Who knew when the Change might come again? The mating houses were the one place where men and women met. Women understood that the only way to win freedom was to change the hearts and minds of the men in the mating houses. The need for restraints disappeared, the sexual pleasure started becoming mutual. Through talking, flirting, and nonsexual touch, women started getting the message through to the men that they were human. They liked the idea of seeing the same woman again, and now there was no reason the women couldn't come to the mating houses at any time, not just during fertile periods. Men realized that they missed the company of women. After a number of dates, the men wanted to take the women home with them, and they did, first a trickle, then a flood. The women who had made it outside worked very hard to please their men, since they could be returned to the women's facilities at any time -- it took a very long time for anything resembling equal rights to re-emerge. There was no obstacle to dismantling the warped structure of the society and returning to nuclear families. But many men resisted, saying it was important to preserve the structure of the mating houses in case the Change returned. As a political compromise, some of the old structure remained, slightly modified. The women in the new facilities were available in the mating houses for sex all the time, not just during their fertile periods. Some went off contraceptives long enough to bear a child or two. There was selective abortion of the boy fetuses, but the girl babies were raised by their mothers. What remained was a hereditary caste of prostitutes, largely ignorant of the outside world. Since sex was no longer agonizing and they now contained children, these prostitute societies were far happier places than the women's houses of old. But the residents were still second class citizens, to say the least. It took many decades of agitation led by women in the broader society before most of them were closed down. Yet a small minority of the women did not want to leave. These prostitute societies had developed their own rich culture with its own intricate traditions, and some wanted to carry it on. There were still plenty of men willing to carry on their role in keeping the societies authentic. --------- Long after the Change had stopped, people pondered the morality of what had gone before. Imprisoning and torturing the entire female half of society was an affront to any moral code ever devised. And yet, they had all come through it. They had survived and not gone extinct. ============================== This was the second and far more famous of two closely related installations Albrecht created. In the first, the residents knew that they were just one society among many and knew my ongoing communication that the others had not undergone the horrible Change. In that installation the society more or less quietly went extinct. So few babies were born that the society shrank to virtually nothing. Men and women grew old together and died. In this second installation as described above, the residents were totally cut off from the rest of humanity and believed they would be cut off forever. They did not know that the Change was only happening to them. This danger of true imminent extinction was required to push the society -- the men, that is -- over the edge into taking the brutal and extreme measures they did. ================================================================== I'm always eager for comments, whether good, bad or mixed. Comments to sterling27@live.com.