Even before the Iron Cities, the women of Kaqar had always been imprisoned. But after The Election, the compound was more than a prison. It was a death sentence.

⛤⛧⛤

Laundry duties were always the worst part of the day. The fumes of 1.5 million filthy shirts, combined with an even greater number of blood-stained underwear. In a facility of solely women, the government still refused to cater to our pubic needs...

“Hey, careful with that one. Look’s like she’s ’bouta shred.”

I gently rolled the torn-up blouse across the steamer, my hands shrivelling under the intense heat. Though the dead left many intact clothes behind, no one wanted to wear the garments of our past friends. It’s better to just sustain the old robes until they crumble to shreds, I thought as I drenched my soiled hands in a bucket of soapy water. 

“Dalia came in with a new bin today. Think you can get that done, too?” My boss, Jules, approached my side and placed a silver keycard on the table next to my wash station, “These should be fine. I’ll send them back to Kenorla Base if you’re done.”

“Yeah, they should be clean enough...”

With that, Jules pulled out a small iron rod from her pocket and stuck it into the keyhole of the laundry carrier. The rod spun twice in the keyhole before a sharp click sounded, and the bin ungracefully lifted itself off the ground. This sight wasn’t anything special – flying carriers had been around for years here – but I couldn’t help but watch in amazement as the bin shakily flew off on a ricketty ride to Kenorla Base. But the work day isn’t over yet, I thought, glancing back at the remaining six massive containers of ten-year-old clothing...

⛤⛧⛤

The walk back to Kenorla Base was a bleak one: A seemingly endless paved road surrounded by nothing but grotesque weeds and dead trees, with their branches lying broken on the dirt. I could feel the cement chipping away beneath my bare feet as I brushed my torn-up toes against the ground. A dull crow cry sounded in the distance to mark the passing of another work session, and the grey of my surroundings drifted through my vision in a bleak mosaic of emptiness. I could hear the clumping of feet from over my shoulder; the rest of my work crew had gotten out. There were only three miles left before I reached Kenorla Base, but I felt as if I’d been walking for an eternity - one foot after the other down the path towards my lifelong doom. The death count’s pretty high today, I thought, as the live screen displaying the number of deceased slowly became visible.

Three thousand, six hundred, and twenty-seven. Then, twenty-eight. Twenty-nine. Out of the remaining 190 million, it barely scratched the surface. But the sudden spread of GX_P2V, known in Kaqar simply as “Jix,” had made the death rate skyrocket, and more and more women were being infected by the deadly disease. All I could do was pray that it wouldn’t reach Kenorla Base, where my mother and sisters were just beginning to recover from the last “glacial illness” outbreak...

“Hey, Thali, wait up! I gotta show you something,” Calleigh’s high-pitched voice shouted from behind me as she sprinted ahead of the crowd to reach my side, “Dang, Jix really is taking a lot of people...” Out of breath, she placed her hands firmly on her hips and attempted to keep up with my fast pace, “Yo, mind slowing down? I gotta pee, and if I go any faster, I might wet my pants.”

Calleigh was known within our work group for having absolutely no filter. And with an absence of medications in the Iron City, her ADHD was left completely unchecked.

“I honestly can’t believe they released another one from the ice. Like, what are the men doing out there that could be this bad for the climate?! But for real - if they don’t stop with the fossil fuels, we’re gonna have to,” she cringed, pausing only for a moment to catch her breath, “erm, share...”

Despite the total lack of resources within Kaqar, we women had still managed to build a somewhat functioning society with advanced climate-friendly tech. Funny that the men couldn’t do it with the whole world at their fingertips... We all knew the men would soon come for our materials, however, and rob us of our dignity as they had so many times before.

“You thinkin’ what I’m thinkin’?”

I glanced up, pulling myself from my thoughts of the outside world. Whenever Calleigh asked that, one thing was for sure. We were never thinking the same thing.

“Depends,” I mumbled as I went back to staring at the bleak, uneven ground, “What’s on your mind?”

We paced for a few more steps before she answered, a sparkly twinkle in her eye.

“If they come for us, they’ll have to break down the wall, right? Or come in with a helicopter, for that matter. Soooo,” Calleigh turned to face me and began making strange gestures with her hands, first pointing to herself, then to me, and then to the sky. She was delusional, “You, me... You know. I would say it, but we’re probably bugged.”

“Ha! Please, we’ve said worse. And everyone talks about escape here. But, knowing the Men, they’ll be ready for that. Probably gonna bring their ‘advanced weaponry’ and all they used to round us up...”

“Yeah, right...”

The rest of the walk was quiet - absent of wild plans that would never come to be. Calleigh refused to say anything more, so we continued our trip to Kenorla Base staring at the ground, watching small pebbles roll beneath our feet. But it was never completely silent in the Iron City, for in the distance, we could still hear the clangs of machinery and the cries of the newborns in the Birthing Centre. In this world, being infertile was a gift. Most never saw a man, but those who did... they were the ones with the true trauma. They were the women who couldn’t look at their children's faces without seeing the face of their abuser. My sister was one of them.

⛤⛧⛤

By the time we’d reached Kenorla Base, the sun had already begun to set below the horizon, and the dead bodies sprawled limply across the entrance pathway were bathed in soft orange and golden light. A crow flew over my shoulder, and the piercing cry of a newborn shattered the quiet curtain of dusk. In the dim light, the massive steel walls of the building appeared to tower up to heaven, and soft voices echoed from within. The iron door was lit by a single lantern, which flickered on and off as it swayed in the evening breeze. Calleigh approached the door and knocked twice before it gradually slid open with a creek so loud I feared it would wake up all of Kaqar. Together, we braised ourselves for the cluster of bodies that we would be met with as soon as we entered, but it was a normal feeling, and we at Kenorla Base no longer feared the claustrophobia of our ‘home.’

“Thali, Calleigh, come on in!”

Open arms greeted us at the doorway as we were yanked through the entrance by a pair of rough, blistered hands. The front room was massive, yet the majority of the space was simply filled with women milling around and conversing at random. Gleaming fluorescent lights hung from the domed ceiling, and a droplet of sewer water bounced onto my scalp as soon as I stepped forward. Buckets lined the floor in attempt to contain the rain flow, but the cement ground still remained drenched in a thin layer of mould and moisture. On the left side of the room, hundreds of bunks lay piled on top of each other in attempt to save space, and laughing children scampered through the rows and rows of empty beds. The right wall, however, was crowded with cooking appliances, tables, and benches overflowing with hungry workers who’d just returned from their shift, and the few couches that weren’t falling apart at the seams were housing solely the elderly, who, at their well-worked age, could barely stand, much less walk. Knotted ropes hung from the damp ceiling: some for children to play on, and some, specifically those tied into nooses, were for... other matters. 

The smell of roasted vegetables and baked bread drifted through the chamber, and by the time I’d turned to meet her eyes, Calleigh had already dashed off to the ovens to collect her well-earned feast. Long strands of fungus dripped down the walls, and puddles of greenish goo flowed beneath my feet.

The sound of deep-voiced newscasters reverberated off the back wall; Taurene must’ve turned on the news again. I could only catch snippets of the report, but what I heard didn’t exactly bring me joy: “Another iceberg disease was discovered late last night” and “Plans to exterminate the majority of the female population are being discussed in the UN...” God, what had the world come to?

“Thali, you alright?”

My mother’s soft voice drifted into my ears, and I felt her fingers gently rest upon my shoulder. Her hands were worn, skin turned grey by years of exposure to charcoal and toxic chemicals. Mother was one of the few who remembered the outside. She was six when the Men took her, and, though her memories of the outside were few, what she did recall, she shared with me and my sister as the childhood stories we would keep in our minds for the rest of our lives. Imagine a world not flooded with bleak grey surroundings... But that was something we women would never see, and, after spending my whole life in the Iron Cities, it wasn’t too hard to accept that my entire life would be a culmination of sorrow and misery.

⛤⛧⛤

I’d always hated the night.

I lay five bunks above the ground, my head hammering from being pressed against a rock-hard mattress for far too long. The room was quiet - too quiet - and even the sound of breathing was muffled by the cold curtain of darkness. The Iron Cities were never silent, which made nights like those such a strange occurrence. No clangs of laundry bins clattering against the stone ground, no cries of children longing for their imprisoned mothers.

A cold breeze ruffled my hair as I sat up. I was used to avoiding sleep. We all were. After carefully climbing down the long ladder from my bunk, I slowly made my way to the main entrance. The televisions were still on, dimly brightening the empty couches as soft whispers of politicians flooded the room. I gently lowered myself onto one of the couches, its torn red fabric ruffling beneath my thighs. I didn’t necessarily want to watch horrible men destroy the world, but it wasn’t as if I had anything better to do. Besides, it wouldn’t change my opinion of them. I’d decided long ago that all men were cowards and, to be frank, a-holes.

“As of last night, President Nugent officially confirmed plans to exterminate much of the female population, and therefore claim the rich resources concealed within Kaqar.” The news screen shifted to the president, a relatively young, curly-haired man with deep brown eyes and pimples tracing the edges of his pale skin. He stood at the steps of the White House, addressing the nation from a small pew surrounded by stone-faced security. “We, the people, must take control of our nation. The days of women are no more. Why keep them alive, I ask you, when we only need a small few to continue the reproduction of our society.”

A baby cried in the distance as dark grey clouds flooded the sky. The crowd watching Nugent was decked out in slickers and hats, for rain had become a somewhat constant occurrence since the global temperature had risen by 2 degrees Celsius near the end of the 21st century. Cold water droplets slithered across the camera lens as the president was drenched in the tears of the Earth - the tears that his kind created.

“The nuclear war with Russia may have worsened, but we as a nation must stay strong and take what is rightfully ours. Hold your children close; the next few months will be turbulent and destructive, but I can guarantee this: we will prevail over the communist demon-spawn.”

An explosive cheer erupted from the crowd as a tall, grey-haired man in a rain-soaked suit approached the pedestal. Beside him, an even taller security guard held a polished, blue umbrella, tho it did nothing to keep the president and the vice from getting drenched.

“You shouldn’t be up at this hour. You’ll be too tired to work.”

I redirected my gaze from the television to my mother, a gaunt old woman with knotted cornrows and deep grey-brown skin tarnished by dirt, dust, and despair. Her eyes - once wide with curiosity and wonder - hid slimed down to nothing but a sliver as the weight of her heavy thoughts bushed her lids further and further down. A faint smile trickled across her face, but it would soon fade like the rest of this place - burned or broken by those with little care for the lives of their very own people. She reached over to me, taking my hand and gesturing to sit down on a couch opposite the TV.

“It wasn’t always like that, you know.” Her voice was soft yet firm, and the curved wrinkles surrounding her mouth shifted as she spoke. “Sure, there was always misogyny, but there was also hope. Colour.”

I nodded. She’d recounted these stories a million times as a small child, but I couldn’t exactly stop her from telling the tales of her past. It wasn’t as if she remembered sharing them, anyway. With years of work came fogginess. A sort of empty feeling in one’s mind where memories were sucked up and stored forever beneath a curtain of forget. The medic named it Alzheimer’s, but our family called it something else: the shroud. Mother didn’t know that, of course. She’d forgotten her diagnosis long ago.

“My husband - your father...” Her eyes appeared to glaze over as she envisioned the forgotten face of her lost love. “He was a good man. He didn’t stand for any of this...” she trailed off, unable to find the right words to describe our situation.

“This shit?”

“Watch your tongue, child.” My mother was old-fashioned. Whether or not the world had been better before the Iron Cities, she was still raised in a society where one’s only hope was to be grateful for what the Men provided - to be a people pleaser. “Don’t be so sour. We’re lucky to be alive. Your father, on the other hand... When they were rounding us up, well, that was just after I’d gotten pregnant with you. Your father... he fought for me. He protected me like no man had ever done before. But they shot him before he could lay the second punch. Generation Delta was the last to live outside these walls.” She stared at the wall in silence for a moment before turning to me and putting her cold hand in mine. “I promise you, my dear, we’ll get out. We’ll escape this place. You hear me, Catlan?”

I sucked in a deep breath. Catlan, my sister, hadn’t been seen by my family in over eight years. She was trapped within the Birthing Centre, forced to fill the world with more and more power-hungry men.

“Mama, I’m Thali. Your other daughter.”

Her face gradually changed as she remembered where Catlan was, and a heart-wrenched tear dripped down her cheek.

“Yes... yes, of course. Now, off to bed with you. Sleep soothes the mind.”

With that, she nudged me off the couch and, with a sombre smile, sent me off into the hallow darkness.

⛤⛧⛤

Fire. Smoke. Ash. Screams of mothers and children alike. Bodies gasping for air amongst the crowd of wreckage. Steel clattering against the floor. Bangs echoing in the distance.

“Thali! Thali! Come on, girl, get up!”

I lay unmoving in the centre of Kenorla Base as figures shouted and rushed around me. Fallen steel panels clanged beside me, and Calleigh’s frightened voice shook from above. A cool liquid dripped along the back of my neck. Blood. It was everywhere. In pools upon the ground, splattered across my eyes, dripping down Calleigh’s worried face.

“We gotta go, Thali!”

Dust rained down from the ceiling as Calleigh wrapped her fist around mine and yanked me off the splintered ground. It was as if the entire world had been split in half, and I was at the centre of it all. Kaqar had finally shattered.

⛤⛧⛤

Beyond the entrance, thousands of bodies were limping towards the Far Wall, mothers leaning against daughters, babies sobbing, and the violent bangs of weaponry sounding in the distance. I was lucky to have gotten out with a broken hip, but Calleigh, who’d been fortunate enough to escape unharmed, had the burden of carrying Mother, whose legs were limp and completely flattened from the weight of a metal sheet crashing down upon them.

“Look!” a high-pitched voice sounded from across the crowd, and a thousand heads all turned in unison to what had caused the damage: a massive missile crushing the entirety of the Birthing Centre. Three more had already gone off around it, and massive mushroom clouds shrouded the sun, giving the cryptic illusion of dusk. A ginormous blast echoed from the horizon, and, all of a sudden, the Birthing Centre erupted in blue-coloured flames.

Catlan.

Without a second thought, I began sprinting towards the fire. Sweat drenched my brow, and my hip nearly caved beneath me, but I had no intention of stopping. My sister was in there.

“Don’t. There’s no chance of survival. It’s not worth it.”

A taller woman with dark brown skin tainted with ash caught my hand and pulled me backwards. Something deep inside me knew she was right, but I couldn’t leave her. I couldn’t leave my sister.

“Let me go!!” I shrieked, tears of sweat and blood pouring down my scarred cheeks. I writhed and thrashed, but her grip was too strong, and within a few minutes, my fragmented hip no longer allowed me to move. The woman pulled me to her chest as my sobs grew louder, and she began to rub her hand softly along my back. “That’s it. Let it out.”

“Thali, we don’t have time for this!” Out of the shadows, Calleigh returned to my side and pulled me away from the woman and back towards the massive crowd of injured. I tried to pull away, but the woman simply smiled and waved as my eyes began to flutter shut, and the world closed around me...

⛤⛧⛤

“I’m telling you, Thali, don’t trust Men. They’re all monsters. Every single one of them. Look what they did to mom? To me?! I was a baby when they took me, and you- you weren’t even born yet. What kind of person tears a pregnant woman and her daughter from all she’s ever known and puts her here?!” Catlan stared deep into my eyes, searching for a sign of agreement.

“But Mama says Papa was a good man?” I gazed back, my voice still young and high-pitched with opportunity.

“Mama’s blinded by hope. But no man is coming to save us now... It’s just something you gotta accept, understand me? Trust me, life will be better when you realise men are the only true villains. All they ever want is harm and destruction.”

“But-”

She put a finger to my lips and whispered grimly: “There are no ‘but’s. They’re all the same. It’s better to just agree and go on with your life. It’s not like you’ll ever meet one anyway...”

⛤⛧⛤

The man was short; maybe 5’2, 5’3 - around my height. He wore a dark blue button-up and leather pants that seemed to blend with his golden brown, freckled skin. His frizzy black hair shadowed his face, but I could see his mouth was twisted into a worried, grim expression. I didn’t blame him. Seeing all these dead and injured women wasn’t exactly something to smile about - unless you were the president, of course. He stepped forward upon a heap of broken glass and steel planks, brushing back his curls and revealing a sharp scar running the length of his forehead.

“All of you, I’m here to help. There’s no time to explain now, but you have to come with me. Staying here in this warzone is a death sentence.”

His deep voice resounded throughout the crowd as if a cold wave had just swept over us. Here to help. Never in a million years had we imagined a man would say that to us. I glanced at the women surrounding me, attempting to read their thoughts on whether or not he could be trusted. Most simply shook their heads or stared in shock at the first man in two generations who had openly shown us care.

“Please...” he paused, trying to figure out what words would make us join him. “I- I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t want to help. I’m risking my own life by coming for you all. You just... you have to trust me.”

He raised his arm and brushed away the sweat dripping from his brow, but the motion only built up ash upon his tarnished face. I’d always hated the idea of getting help from a man, but seeing him glance around at the ground in hopes that at least one of us would join him, I knew deep down that there was no other option. The only home we’d ever known had just been blown to smithereens. We had nowhere else to go.

After a moment of thought, I braced myself to step forward through the crowd. As I approached the pile of wreckage, mass gradually spun around and watched as I re-entered the society of Men.

“Thali, what the hell are you doing?” Calleigh grabbed my arm and our eyes met, a look of concern and confusion flooding her face. “He’s a man. Men can’t be trusted, remember?”

“So what do you want us to do, sit here and rot? The only way we’re getting out of here without being shot or captured is with him, whether he’s just as bad as the rest of them or not. I can’t do this: wasting away over torn-up laundry for hours every day, knowing full well my loved ones are being tortured beyond what I can ever imagine... You were the one that wanted to escape. Here’s our way out - our helicopter. Just trust me.”

Her grip loosened around my arm as I separated myself from her and stepped towards the wreckage. The man, who grew in height as I approached him, reached out a hand to me and lifted me onto the pile - broken ankle and all. I was positive: we were finally getting out of that hell hole.

⛤⛧⛤

“So, umm... what’s your name?”

We’d begun walking over an hour ago, and, though I’d been upfront with the mysterious man the whole way, that was the first time we actually spoke. It caught me off guard, but his aura seemed more awkward than the confidence I’d expected. It surprised me how much he expressed his emotions. One second, his face would be torn with worry and anxiety; the next, it would be an array of strength and stoicness. The men on TV had never shown their emotions, not really. He really was different.

“Sorry, I- I don’t really know how to, uhh...” He trailed off, directing his gaze to the ground. “It’s stupid, really. I’ve never actually talked to a... you know, a-”

“A woman? Yeah, I can tell...”

Something about the way his voice cracked ever so slightly at the word ‘you’ made me smile. I glanced over at him, my eyes still piercing through his body for any signs of betrayal. No matter what my gut told me, I had to stay alert and focused.

“Thali. Like Thalia, but without the ‘a.’” But maybe I didn’t have to be completely alert... “Yours?”

“I’m, uhh, Diego.” Silence. Damn, talking to men was hard. “You, ummm... you been here your whole life?”

After another long moment of silence between us, I smirked and, with a somewhat loud snort, countered, “How old do you think I am? 60?”

Diego directed his eyes to the stony ground, but I could still see a sliver of a grin on his freckled face.

“Well, I dunno. You got beauty products in there? I mean, not that you would need them.” Was he flirting with me? After helping me and my family climb out of layers upon layers of nuclear wreckage?! “Er, ummm, I didn’t mean... Sorry, I just...”

“Yeah, I know. Talking’s hard.”

The next hour was filled with chatter and gossip, but not between the two of us. However, as we crossed the massive expanse of sand and stone, I could tell the bleak surroundings were beginning to mess with Diego’s head. He couldn’t help but glance back and forth to scan the perimeter every few minutes, and his hands shook crazily with every step.

“You know, for our ‘saviour,’ you seem to be having a pretty tough time.” I nodded to his sweaty palms as he processed what I was accusing him of.

“I- I just don’t want to be caught. The president kills anyone who even thinks about breaking down the walls of Kaqar... but to think that I let you all out and am now parading you to a safe house? I’m done for.”

Though we’d just met, the sorrow in his voice reminded me of what his childhood self could’ve been: a scared little boy stolen from his mother within minutes of birth.

“Hey, think what they’ll do to us women if we’re caught!” As soon as those words slipped out of my mouth, I knew I’d messed up. I’d never been outside the walls of Kaqar, and it wasn’t as if the news feed constantly discussed the consequences of advocating for the imprisoned women. “Sorry, that... that came out wrong.”

“No, no, it’s fine. It’s not like you have all the information in there. It’s mainly the president, really. The man hates when anyone even brings up women, in his presence or not. There’ve been threats for as long as I can remember about what would happen if you attempted to help women.”

I pinned my eyes to the ground for a moment before asking, “And what was the punishment?”

There was an awkward pause between us as he everted my prying eyes. Whatever it was, it couldn’t have been worse than something I’d already seen or experienced.

“Mu- murder. Killing everyone, me, you, the rest of these women. All of us.”

Just as he finished his dreadful response, a blood-curdling shriek erupted from somewhere within the crowd that had been diligently following behind the two of us just mere moments ago. In unison, Diego and I spun to face the scream, only to see a young girl about my age suspended above the ground with a rifle to her head. An older man with curly blonde hair and an FBI uniform stood behind her, one hand wrapped around her neck and the other clinging tightly to the gun.

“Get on your knees, hands above your heads.” The man’s voice was shaky, yet it resounded powerfully across the mass of fearful women who were too frozen in shock to follow his command. “All of you! Last chance, or I shoot!”

With that final threat, the entire crowd sunk to our knees as we watched the poor girl struggle against the killer’s grip. Just seconds ago, I’d felt hope. Mere moments ago, I’d been scared and confused, yes, but I had been looking forward to the future. And there I was, knees scrapped by dirt and pebbles, all the hope flooding from my body and into the dry, dismal Earth.

“You have no right, you- you heartless monster! Let her go, or we’ll attack!” Calleigh rose from the sand, her fists clenched in stone-shattering rage. The anger in her eyes was powerful enough to turn a metropolis into nothing but ash and ruins, and her voice was strong and steady, as if all the hurt and suffering she’d experienced had solidified into one courageous beast. “You hear me?! I said, drop her, you a-ho-”

Boom. The gunshot shattered through her ribs, spraying blood and gore across those sitting in before her. Calleigh’s courage crumbled to shock and a pain so violent it sunk deep within her gut, pulling her limp body to the ground as her knees gradually gave in. A small yelp escaped the deepest, darkest pit of her throat as her body plunged into an inky pool of sorrow and broken dreams. A soft gasp rang throughout the crowd as we watched our friend - arguably the best of us - crumble into the cold hands of oblivion, her eyes rolling back in her head to reveal the bleak, barren socket left behind by years of watching the world around her collapse.

More shots fired, but I hardly noticed. My eyes were locked on Calleigh’s lifeless body, dead in the sand. Diego pulled me to my feet and dragged me into a nearby clump of thorn bushes, but he, too, fell into the cruelty and bloodshed. However, even with bullets flashing around me, my vision poked through the thorns and gazed at Calleigh’s unmoving chest, her face frozen in a state of fear and misery. After a few minutes, dark circles began to flood my line of sight as the world went black, and my head struck the stony ground.

⛤⛧⛤

Three years later...

Whilst searching for my keys, I yanked on my blazer and wrapped my itchy grey scarf around my neck, pausing in the mirror to confirm that I passed as a man, just as I did every morning before the 6 am commute to Crawford Stadium. Sweeping seats and passing out sodas wasn’t exactly the most fun job in the world. Still, it paid well and gave me the extra benefit of watching daily sports matches without anyone paying much attention to my oddly feminine features.

I brushed back my short-cut curls, adjusting the coils until they completely matched the undercut from the men’s hair magazine I’d picked it from. My smooth brown skin shivered in the morning chill that, even with locks on all the doors and a good heating system, still managed to seep into the sweet safety of my bedroom. It had been over three years since I’d moved to the city, and I wasn’t even sure if any other women from my group had escaped the massacre. Scenes of blood spilling across the plains still haunted my every waking day, but I knew that if I wanted to keep up my role as a modern-day Mulan, I had to push past it and focus on the present. After the nuclear war between the US and North Korea subsided, the entire western half of the United States was torn to smithereens by atomic bombs and massive amounts of radiation. All of Kaqar was swallowed by the battle, and, to be honest, I didn’t miss it one bit. Equality was coming. There was nowhere else to shove women away. More voices were speaking up about equal rights. I’d escaped at the perfect time.

That’s what I had to tell myself every morning as I prepared for long hours slaving away under the feet of oafish men going feral after some guy hit a ball more than twenty feet. My entire family was dead, for all I knew. I hadn’t met anyone else like Diego, and the men I’d heard about who were like him had all been swiftly silenced by anti-equality cults and violent groups.

“Where the hell did those keys go...”

Tightening the scarf around my neck, I made my way into the mudroom only to find my keys resting atop the newspaper article from that very morning, December 13th, 2136. The title was written in bold, eye-catching letters and read, “President Nugent Surrenders and Agrees to Sign Gender Equity Bill.” Below the text lay a brightly-coloured picture of the president in a vibrant blue jacket and mossy green pants leaning over a desk lit up by brightly glowing lamps and the flashes of cameras. A red-tinted pen rested between his fingers as his magical-looking signature danced across the fresh white paper. The age of female imprisonment and discrimination was over. Change was coming.