Love in a world gone mad

Trigger warning: this story deals with sexual oppression and male genital mutilation.

Two years. That’s how long it took for red UWA banners—white circles framing an eerie symbol—to adorn Europe’s government buildings after the U.S. election. I say adorn; government regulation forbids me to say defile. The USA had redefined democracy and ‘invited’ Europe and Russia to join. A year later, a unified Europe was realised, and its new capital was Moscow.

After cultural diversity, non-traditional frivolities were the first to go out the window. Society was to return to God’s intent when he created the United World of America. Our communities were bleached, cleansed, and repopulated into colourless, soulless drab. After that, even white souls needed to be taught vices. 

Two inflexible sexes are recognised; the only legal union is between a man and a woman. Marriage no longer exists. Unions are for procreation, profit, and power. The Supreme Court of American Values ruled that love is a non-traditional frivolity and, hence, forbidden. Even parental love is outlawed. Children are to be created, raised and taught to be god-fearing citizens, not educated, pampered or loved. Grandparents are a thing of the past. Laws were passed even for that. Citizen Preparation Centres grow rampant; not loving their offspring seems too hard for many.

Our twin leaders are everywhere; their avatars are with us, always guiding and chiding. Their original bodies were assassinated by the Free People of The World in a final attempt to save the free Western World. 

By then, the damage had already been done. 

The technology was ready, and the constitution had been changed. Their consciousness was already digitalised, uploaded, backed up and secured for eternity. The company that invented it tried to destroy the technology. Its employees are persecuted and reprogrammed. It was too late when everybody realised what had happened.

The freedom gained was a deception, a delusion, an ordinary lie. The authorities rooted out internal resistance. Few escaped to Africa and Australia, where life changed in the opposite direction. Enormous facilities all over both continents are engaged in digital combat with the United World of America, which spans the northern hemisphere.

If you’re lucky, you were born under this regime.

I was not.

My marriage was declared null and void. We stuck together.

Then, only service men could share quarters, and authorities moved my husband and me to single-bed cells in a dormitory for the divergent.

Then came the final decree: sex between men became punishable by reprogramming and, in case of relapse, termination. 

We were still fucking each other.

Relationships between women are declared unnatural and non-existent.

Pre-union consumption of the bonding between a man and a woman: a crime.

Coupling between a man and a woman outside the assigned period, determined by society’s need for new citizens and the woman’s optimal hormonal state, is prohibited. That’s why we all received chips in the back of our heads called stack. With this new technology, everything is monitored and controlled. People say it started with the Covid pandemic and that they primed us then with the virus and the vaccines.

It was a ruse. 

In secret, the stacks were developed long before that. Stacks are silicon chips that read human consciousness. Thoughts, hopes, feelings, dreams, love, and lust are recorded and added to your file. It determines your post-mortal destination. If needed, corrective measures are taken during life. AI-reprogramming often suffices. When it turned out that some patterns and needs are deeply ingrained, programmed by biology, after all, guidelines were issued.

Chastity became mandatory. 

My stack marked my thoughts immoral, pornographic (punishable by damnation), and a danger to the fabric of society. It detected increased dopamine and oxytocin levels in my brain when I thought of my husband. The authorities sent me off to a medical facility for reprogramming.

They put me on a diet of cornflakes, steamed chicken breast, and parboiled genetically modified white rice. 

Colour and flavour induce lust.

Lust leads to sin. 

The government introduced a catch-up programme to curb masturbation. Seed shall be salvaged for divine procreation. They even circumcised all men born before the Unification. Women were ‘modified’. Those who dared to speak out about the mutilation vanished.

I am forced to wear mittens in bed, and they placed an implant that monitors nitric oxide in the erectile tissue of my penis. Algorithms link nitric oxide production to the images in my mind, dreams, and cerebral hormone levels.

Bland food didn’t kill my lust.

Taking away my foreskin didn’t cripple my penis.

Manipulative synthesised dreams failed to diminish my love for my husband.

I love him.

I miss him.

I will never again hold him.

In a perverted way, I am happy for him; they have successfully reprogrammed him. Strange when I think of it, ‘true’ homosexuals are usually impossible to reprogram. I had always believed him to be one, without a doubt. But the last time we spoke, he had no recollection of our marriage, of our love, how he had me at ‘hello’. What I told him shocked him, appalled him. He said I must be mentally ill to come up with such a thing. To sully his good name.

It ripped my heart out, crumpled it like old paper and blew the shreds into the wind. It was torture. There is no other word for it. 

But even that did not have the desired effect. I knew what they had done to him. I blamed them, not him. Cerebral neutering. That’s what they do. They don’t reprogram you to heterosexuality. They extinguish all desire for physical pleasure. After all, it might be genetic, a danger to the fine gene pool. It can’t be risked. It had no effect on me. I just wanted my husband more, and my love for him survived.

The pastor in the dark blue uniform with the red band on his arm was my last chance to redeem myself, to become the man and live the life God had intended for me. His husky blue eyes were empty except for the contempt and hatred that spat from them. He didn’t even try, and I told him to go fuck himself.

Now, I am sitting in my cell, waiting for my termination. Officially, the death penalty does not exist in the United Europe; we are too civilised for that. Society helps unwanted, dangerous, and hopeless individuals. Out of sight of the good citizens, of course.

Thanks to stack technology, pastors preach the truth with even more fervour. Hell exists, praise BigTech! When you are terminated for your crimes and misdemeanours, your consciousness is uploaded to a virtual hell. Depending on your crimes, verdict, and the preference of your assigned pastor, you burn for eternity, are placed in a loop to be hanged, drawn and quartered infinitely, or taught how you could have been a righteous human being until you break. Leadership announced the computer simulations of God’s creations dry-eyed. They said we should have listened to the pastors all along.

How do I know this? I am not the only one who is ‘therapy-resistant. ' Technology is not infallible and has leaks. Rumours that the Free People have infiltrated the State are stubborn. Once, an update of my stack felt different; it lacked hostility. It must have been deleted long ago.

The walls of my cell are white. The tiles on the floor are white. The bed is white, and the toilet is white. My mittens are white, and the straps around my arms and legs are white. When the door opens, men clad in white medical suits enter. They drag me through a white corridor to a sterile chamber. I am dumped on a surgical table; the sterile metal is hard and cold, and the surgical light above me blinds me. They tighten new straps around my limbs. A cold hypodermic needle pierces my skin, the fluid running into it cold. Someone grabs my head and roughly plugs a wire into my stack. 

They say nothing. 

My mouth stays shut.

The pastor looms over me. His dark uniform breaks the serenity of the moment. He declares my hopelessness, says that my chance for redemption has passed and that I am to burn in the cleansing fire for eternity. The son of a bitch smiles as he nods to his medical minions.

A hand switches a valve on the IV. A glaringly red fluorescent fluid crawls from the tube into my arm. I know I will burn. It burns in my veins. My heart pounds. Before panic can strike, my eyelids get heavy, and the light dims, and everything goes black. 

The beating of my heart stops.

When I open my eyes, I am in bed. My pillow is soft and fluffy; the warm duvet and the big pink paeonies printed on it soothe me. I see a window. Outside, the sky is blue, and the sun is shining. I blink. I know this room. It is my bedroom. I am in my own bed, mine, and my husband’s. I’m not on fire, not in excruciating pain, nor hanging by a rope. If anything, I am at peace, and a feeling of relief takes over. How can this be?

Then, the door creaks open, and my husband steps inside the room. A smile splits his face as he rushes to me. I can’t believe my eyes. We hug, kiss, and cry.

‘Where am I? What are you doing here?’ 

I can’t believe this is real. I know it isn’t, but it feels real. My husband takes my face in his hands; I feel their warmth on my face, the pressure of his fingers. The love in his moist eyes makes me tear up again.

‘You’re safe. The Free People of The World found a tech flaw and created an alternative world,’ he says. 

‘But they’ll find out,’ I stammer. The fear that our reunion is short-lived tears at my simulated stomach. The scent of detergent tickles my nose, and air flows into my lungs, indistinguishable from life.

‘No, they won’t. As far as they are concerned, you’re burning in hell. They see what they want to see. You’re free, baby!’ 

He beams, lifts me up and spins me around.

‘Wait, how do you know all this? How is it you’re here?’

He grins.

‘The Free People recruited me before the red banners went up. We hacked digital heaven-and-hell. I helped them reprogram it into a safe simulation and secure untraceable backups and servers. When that was done, I uploaded myself. The reprogrammed me you met…an avatar.’

My jaw drops. I knew he was a programmer, but he made everyone believe he was mediocre. 

 ‘I’m sorry you had to go through all that, but we couldn’t risk them extracting the intel from your stack.’

I nod. ‘I understand. But where are we?’

‘We’re on a server, 1200 meters below the Australian desert. No nuke will reach us or our backups.’ 

I blink and need a minute to take this in.