One in Ten Ch. 08

It wasn't like I could tell myself they were law enforcement agents and feel better. Kwan, Riga, Seger and Somerset had all be cruel to me in some way. Dimples' crew had tackled me on the ground, intimidated me, deceived me, torn away my rights and played upon my feeble psyche. Trust hadn't placed me in this car, expediency had.

The FBI was the best chance I had to get to the Arena intact. I doubted they would have appreciated me defining their actions as our evolving tribalism. I was their investment, so it behooved them to take me safely to my destination. I didn't believe they yet understood that they had stopped working for the Director of the FBI, or the Attorney General and had become self-employed.

They may have had this delusion that this would end up with criminal indictments against the people behind the Big Lie and Carabolix-37, but that was an unsustainable fantasy. Once the system betrayed them, as it had betrayed me so often, Dimples' crew would know that escape was the only option left. It was obvious to me the moment I saw Dimples.

She would never let them win. She was the only one allowed to win. I didn't count the freebie she threw my way. That was a draw at best. The ride to the Arena turned out to be nothing much. I was dropped off. Men, and cops, were all around. I dutifully showed my ID to Arena Security, they triple checked it and then brought a coordinator to check it one more time.

They realized I was in the front third of the arena floor seating. I had a nice folding chair on the outer aisle. The coordinator decided that was a bad idea so she had me exchange seats with a guy in the middle of my row. I knew why this was, though I only had theoretical knowledge how a rally would work.

When the authorities left, having neutralized me, I politely went to the man I had exchanged seats with and asked him to switch back. He seemed dubious, but when I explained that all the blame would be foisted on me, he relented. See, here is how it worked. First your Talking Heads would get up and make their speeches.

Then would come the long question and answer portion of this farce. Women would walk up and down the aisles, men would raise their hands, wave and asked if they could present a question. In a totally democratic process, these women on the aisles would provide a sound system for the men to ask the speaker their question.

The speaker answers - on to the next man. As you might guess, men sitting on the aisle seats had the best chances of being heard. Men stuck in the middle were out of luck - men like me and my 'new' assigned seat. Men like me in my original seat, were potentially dangerous. Still, things went along very smoothly until the tenth question.

Up to that point, the speakers had done their thing with the basic theme being 'all you men are appreciated, doing your part, and we love you'. Not that they were going to do a damn thing to help us beyond patting us on the head, but they loved us. They loved us because we were doing what we were told. The men in the audience ate it up. It was what they wanted to hear.

I imagined that handing us all 'little lamb' outfits to wear would have been counter-productive to their agenda, though it certainly would have been more appropriate to how these women viewed the situation. It was clear to me that all the questions the men in the audience were asking were scripted. Some had to actually look down at their phones when reading off their instructions.

Most adults don't like being treated like six-year olds, so they ignored this mounting stupidity until Man 10 stood up, was recognized and read off his question. He was around fifty and clearly in a prosperous profession, positive he was a member of the winning (female) team.

"Is it true that at this very moment Congress is voting on increasing the cycle from 28 days to 14, and abolishing marriage?" he asked.

There was a hush. By the dumbstruck expression of the woman on stage, this was not the prepared question. The problem wasn't moving the cycle to 14 days. Men were prepared to knuckle under and do their part for the Human species. But marriage? Men loved marriage. They didn't love the idea of finding love, getting married and living happily ever after.

That was idiotic. No, men loved marriage as our last refuge from a women's world. Gaining 'attachments' was a warning flag we could wave at other women, telling them 'hey, we are doing our part, so please, leave us alone.' Marriage was your shield and armor. It was 'Don't touch. I'm with somebody!'

The hope was that if someone did do something to you, your wife would scream bloody murder and things would get done. She was a woman after all. Marriage had been preserved in the Gender Inequality Act because most of the signers were either married or had been recently married and lost a loved one to the Plague.

I imagine they thought it was a quaint institution that would gradually fall to the wayside as society progressed. At the start, it looked that way. The number of marriages did slowly decline for thirty years, but about ten years ago, the trend began reversing. When a man is in his late teens, early and mid-twenties, going out with lots of girls sounds nice.

Women pay for everything, they take you to nice places and if you end up in the three- or four-way occasionally - well, you've got the stamina for it. When you hit your late twenties and early thirties, men start slowing down. Pulling a train on a Saturday night - all night - becomes a burden you could do without.

About that time, marriage starts looking good. You've probably been in a few attachments. You pick the one you can live the best with and who has the best financial status and you keep dropping hints until she realizes what you really want and she pops the question. Congratulations, you only have to screw one women for the rest of your life.

Okay, maybe her sisters, your mother-in-law and her boss, but still, that's not too bad. Ten years ago, that generation of men who grew up after the plague were hitting their thirties and they were taking a renewed interest in the dying institution of marriage. Men got interested - women got REAL interested. For women, it meant no more desperate hunting every weekend.

You wanted dick? Call your husband, tell him to be home by six and wear something sexy and it got done. Best of all, you could make that call, look around your office and see all your female co-workers dripping with jealousy. If you truly wanted to turn the screws, during that call, you told your hubby to take some enhancement drugs because you wanted it deep and hard all night long.

By this time in our social evolution, men didn't mind being treated like that too much. We had safety. As married men started to bask in their safe status, their unmarried brethren began wondering if marriage would be a good idea for them, too. More took the plunge and most of them were marrying up social and financially.

As I keep repeating, women aren't stupid. When rich, successful bankers began marrying sales clerks and custodians, the social stigma of marrying beneath your station evaporated in the burning reality that they had their genetic future waiting at home, willing to do his duty. The floodgates were open.

More married men meant fewer men in the fishing pool. That meant greater pressure on the remaining men, who were now opting into marriage to relieve that pressure. That meant even greater pressure on the fewer and fewer remaining men. Last year the marriage rate began its climb toward 30%. From the gender quota point of view, this was a disaster.

To put that in perspective, that's thirty percent of ALL men. Then you have to drop out every male below the age of 16. Then you have to consider that once men are over 59, they need a yearly physical. If something is wrong, you get a limited deferment. That means you don't have to have sex as often.

You never get to 'not have sex' unless you are on life support, or a rape victim. There are waiting lists for kidneys, livers and hearts - if you are a woman. If you are a man, they'll slap an artificial heart in you if they have to. Men must perform for the general female population - unless they are married.

Back to the question at the Arena. Men had been quietly bleating, nodding our heads, and smiling without real passion until that point. Sudden, like scenting a wolf for the first time, they were very attentive. If you were a twenty-something guy, this wasn't 'good'. If you were a forty-two year old husband, with a wife, three kids and twelve years of marital bliss, this was disastrous.

The government was about to shove you back into the deep end were packs of starving women were going to devour you because your avoidance skills were rusty. You were about to be waking up wondering if the pain coming from your groin was worse than the headache you had from whatever the hell those women drugged you with.

Oh, and by the way, you were about to lose your parental rights to your offspring and most of your shared property. Effectively you were being forced to divorce. The magnitude of this was amplified by the speaker. If she had a pat lie handy, she could have defused things because men wanted comforting words more than unforgiving reality.

But she stammered. She could have said yes, and that might have been better. By stammering, she told the men that 'Yes, you are boned, but we are going to lie to you about it'. In my opinion, she did the worst possible thing.

"Next question?"

That was the equivalent of 'Yes, but you don't deserve to be told about your fates'. There was no riot over that. No, it was something far, far worse. Before that moment, the 20,000 men in the arena thought they were part of this society. They were deluded into thinking they were equals. They thought I was a lunatic. Now?

As a group they came to a consensus and it wasn't a pleasant one. 'They think we are sheep...Mother-fuckers!' This wasn't the crowd that carried dowels this morning but they were starting to wish they had some now. The shift was subtle. Men had been sitting back in their seats. Now they were leaning forward.

There had been polite whispered banter. Now there were grim faces and quiet. I jumped up and waved my hands around. The communications girl came my way, was offering me her microphone when she suddenly realized who I was - I wasn't the man they had reassigned to that seat. She back-pedaled and another questioner was immediately tapped to speak.

"Let him speak," the man pointed my way. There was a hush. His comm girl backed up as well. Another man was found. He started asking his state-sanctioned question but then the hissing and boos began. The speaker's response was barely audible over the racket. I jumped up again. The next man repeated the plea, though it was more insistent now.

"Let him speak!"

I wasn't sure what they expected me to say. I wanted some sort of redress to our legal plight, something to defend us against the GED and the most egregious insults to our dignity. An arena security guard, neat and prim in her freshly pressed uniform, moved from the wall nearby and was clearly coming for me.

The world cracked a little more.

Five men jumped up around me and they looked angry.

"Don't," one of them menaced the guard. Cops would have kept coming. It is what they do, but this was a security guard. She wasn't armed and she certainly didn't like the mood presented to her.

She suddenly realized she was down on the floor of the arena, back to a wall with a sea of angry faces looking her way. She stepped back then ran, calling for back-up. It was the most horrible thing she could have done. Two cops were already advancing my way from the front of the arena. The ripple of the men's successful defiance moved through the crowd.

The majority of men kept their seats. They had not come to get in a fight. They were not rowdy. In fact, they were becoming afraid as most sane people do when violence approaches. Two patrolwomen came my way. Men rose as they passed by, but they held firm. Courage was the important thing. The belief was if they held firm, the men would back down because they ALWAYS backed down.

I saw Officer Passey and her partner as they closed. They didn't have weapons drawn because they didn't want to spook us. There must have been sixty men standing around me. I was still standing at my aisle seat and no men had left their seats to pour into the aisle so the cops had unimpeded access to me.

"Come with us," Passey beckoned.

"I haven't done anything wrong," I begged. She grabbed my arm...and then two men hit her. Passey went down, I heard her partner yelling for everyone to get back as the males on all sides charged in. A taser went off then the men were punching and kicking the crap out of the two women.

The source of this rage was two-fold. These men had come here completely wrapped up in the belief that they were equals. These were successful men with good homes, jobs and lives. They weren't Kenny and Luanga who worked in a factory. They were professionals and semi-professionals. They had just been told they were considered nothing but sheep and now they were being treated like sheep.

The other factor was the fact they were NOT the men with dowels this morning. They'd watched those morons getting plastered, stomped on and arrested. They didn't admire or even empathize with those men - they held them in contempt because why on earth would any man be rebelling? It wasn't that they didn't suffer from the same indignities.

They did, but they accepted it as normal and went about their days. Smacking a woman in the head with a stick was stupid. It would accomplish nothing. This was the mental quandary these men were in. The morons of this morning had been right in their futile protest and they had been the fools.

Like most people, when someone makes a fool of you, you don't say 'Gosh, I'm foolish'. No, you get angry with the person who made a fool of you. They were sheep, they had little lamb bells in the shape of a bracelet and they'd been fleeced. Those two cops had simply been too vulnerable to resist.

I pushed forward, then threw myself on Passey's body, hoping to buy time. I didn't see her partner. From later footage, I was to learn that five more policewomen came storming up from the front, tasers out and firing. Men were dropping, but not fast enough. At that crucial moment when it seemed those five women might stem the tide, the men discovered something really bad.

The floor of the arena was covered with FOLDING chairs which make nice weapons. Up went the chairs and down went the cops. The majority of the men in the arena were angry, but weren't as angry as the mob around me. Cops were pouring in from every exit so the men did what came naturally - they tried to get out.

No catastrophe is one mistake. Men were panicking and trying to get out. A stampeded could prove fatal to the crowd of men. The police had to restore order. They also wanted to capture and punish the men responsible. The commander on the scene ordered the police to hold the exits until the riot was dealt with. The policewomen were polite but firm.

The men responded like good little frightened sheep and obeyed, though they were clearly nervous. Around me, the men saw a wall of ten riot police coming from the front, backed up by a small group of normal policewomen. Riot cops had knee-to-shoulder length transparent shields and stun batons. This was the kind of thing they had trained for. They were not afraid.

The men also discovered they had seven pistols - things got worse. A few got some shots off before they were stunned into unconsciousness. Others couldn't even figure out how to work the safety. The police wall pushed forward, they were recovering the bodies of their fallen co-workers then they finally got to me.

The policewoman saw me on all fours over a semi-coherent Passey and swung her stun baton. I raised my arm to defend myself and a sharp shock burnt through my arm, but didn't knock me out. At that moment, the riot squad became a victim of its own success. Having pushed so far forward, the presented an avenue of egress for the panicking men on their side of the arena.

The human wave shattered the police cohesion. It became a desperate fight - everyone for themselves. The riot cops went down under the surge of bodies. For a second, the area around me cleared up. I saw Passey's partner. She looked to be in a bad way, but I didn't know her. I knew Passey. I was still ordering my jumbled thoughts when the bomb went off.

It had been suspended over the arena floor, disguised as sound equipment. The blast wave was focused down into the audience. The concussion knocked people down, but that was the only direct effect. The designers of the bomb weren't looking to create casualties on the floor, oh no. They were looking to spread chaos, confusion and fear.

They did that admirably. That thin blue line holding those 20,000 men at bay? They were still trying to figure out what the explosion was when the men surged forward once more. They yelled at the men to stop. Their hands went to their tasers. Most likely, the men facing the cops tried to stop, but with hundreds of men behind them urgently trying to get away from the explosion, it was a hopeless gesture.

Police escalation was simple: command, taser, physical takedown, and pistol. Most of the policewomen never got to the takedown phase. A few went straight for the pistol phase. Shots began ringing out. Police communications were overwhelmed with calls for orders, or help. At the main exit's long series of doors it got even worse.

A police lieutenant was trying to bring order out of the chaos. She could make out what was being said by a subordinate in another part of the arena.

"Shots fired? I repeat, shots fired?" she requested over her link. That's not what a man a few meters away heard.

"Oh my God! They are going to shoot us just like China!" he screamed. He wasn't rational, but a bomb had gone off, another one might go off and the cops weren't letting him leave. The rational thought should have been 'I'm too valuable to be slaughtered,' but he was gripped by fear. "They are going to kill us all!" he continued.

The closest police officer tased him. That was normal procedure; the man was starting a panic. Unfortunately, there was already a panic, the man was claiming the cops were trying to kill him, and the cops had just prove him right. He wasn't dead, or even unconscious, but the men didn't know that. They attacked.

Men tend to be taller, heavier and have superior reach. The policewomen had training, weapons, body armor and morale - they were policewomen facing men after all. The deciding factor was weight of numbers, quite literally. The men rolled forward like a wave. The front men were tasered, but couldn't fall down in the press of bodies.

There was no way the women could hold back five, six, or even seven men pushing against each one of them. Realizing the women at the first exits were being pummeled to death, the supporting police went straight for their guns. Had the men had some sort of organization, the hail of bullets might have stopped them. The men were a stampede.

Men fell and were trampled into mush. The women? They were savagely beaten to death for the most part. Some were literally torn to pieces. The men slammed into the glass doors and walls. The material was tough. It bent and bowed before finally popping out of its fixtures. The men cascaded into the city's last line of defense.

It was a police auxiliary riot unit. These women had 'day jobs' but served in uniform on special occasions, like this. What was coming at them wasn't something they were mentally prepared for. Still, they were in full riot gear, with each flank secured by a water cannon. The unit's sergeant had a horrid dilemma.