ploughshares and pruning hooksWed, 03 Dec 2008 14:44:41 -0800 by
amyfmcleodThe year is 1982. Britain is in the midst of a protracted and expensive war which has spread to the Balkans, South Americas and Russia. Conscription was introduced 2 years ago. The nation remains prosperous, there have not been huge death tolls, but the conscripted men are being held in large camps in America on reserve; human capital for an obscene insurance policy. This limbo-state has proved, for those kept apart and in suspense, in some ways less and in someways more distressing than if the men were fighting and dying. Most of the British women's loved ones remain alive, they have merely been stored, like battery hens or so much surplus crockery, in a gargantuan complex of warehouses somewhere in the Texan badlands. There - inactive, quiescent, bored - they remain, the term of their incarceration indefinite. Necessarily,opportun ities for sex - at least for procreative sex - have diminished drastically, and, correspondingly, birthrates have of course declined. Organized mass childcare units - wherein the boys are trained for battle, the girls for the world of work - have been introduced by the government in order to free up the female workforce and optimize their output. No longer engaged in the relay of breeding and birthing, they have more time to devote to their professions and their interests. Britain's women live, as such, in a state of perpetual inertia, still adjusting to the realities of life in a country devoid of healthy males. Most women have adapted with comparatively little difficulty to the new regime. Some even claim to prefer their current state. For Englands young daughters, and the sons the army did not want, this truly is a brave new world
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