Then again, she was a beguiling creature, two women in one. I thought about it late into the night, alone in a room with a bed I had set up for just that purpose, meditation. It led me to realize that our present little society, with the demographics being two women to each man, running so smoothly and with everyone so happy, was by far a better solution to western civilization’s attempts at creating a perfect state, to Plato’s Republic with its ant hill simplifications, to Marxism and it’s amputating levelling of people. Our small group seemed to be in perfect balance.
I’m not saying that it takes two women to match a man. That would make them half-men in worth. But men, always domineering over women with their physical prowess and treating them like chattel throughout history need some reigning in, some reality check, and this proportion in our numbers did exactly that.
Their presence, their preponderance in all our daily chores put them in charge of most tasks. Their voices commanded respect and a soft female voice always has a soothing effect on a male ego, both in insinuating its point of view, its perspective, making us empathetic and all the more desirous to understand and please, day and night.
Our brutal, warmongering tendencies would diminish, but who needs a war when there’s almost nobody left. We were living in the totally empty garden of Eden and our one mission was to replenish it with our kind. This was a pastoral mission, lands and sheep, lyres and flutes, not drums and swords.
Before I fell asleep that night, I thought I had bested Plato in the construction of a truly egalitarian society, not just a visionary but a real and working Republic, and one that would continue for centuries into the future, because this chance imbalance of two women for every man, how long would that last, how many generations to even out? Maybe never and in that long time we men might even learn how to live as equals with our other half.
I shared all of these ideas with Sarah. She was recovering now from her trauma and I urged her to step back into the seat with the gavel and chair of our monthly meetings. She reluctantly complied and thanked me after the first one for the suggestion and the push. She said it was a good move for her restoration, for her self-esteem. When you make a mistake you don’t radically deconstruct your whole identity and formulate a new one. You pinpoint the error and bandage it, no amputations necessary. I thought that Sarah’s strong will and character was a godsend to our tribe and I didn’t want her to bury it.
We grew much closer in the following months, sleeping together every night, confidants in every way. The one thing that surprised me was that she didn’t become pregnant. I began to imagine that maybe a woman with such a high consciousness had control over those matters, that her willpower governed it.
Whatever the case, we stayed with our slowly growing and prospering colony a full year. Juliet-Ida was doing well, the two babies doing well. The proof was that I could talk to this creature and hear her responses and not know who I was addressing, the robot or the human. They had amalgamated their voice, and I believe, their minds.
One thing I could never coerce or control in my own character was restlessness. Sarah could read me like a book and saw this growing, from an average wave into a tsunami. So she addressed the issue even before I mentioned it.
“Sam, I see that every day you’re a little more eager to get away. So let’s just do it. You look like a tiger in a cage in a zoo pacing back and forth ever faster. Put your cowboy boots back on and strap your holster and let’s just go, the two of us. We’ll head east and find other people, or maybe Dora. Either way our colony will thrive without us so we have no purpose here.”
“Sarah, you can read my heart and I love you for it. Let’s take off. I have no idea what’s out there or what we’ll find, or what a confrontation with Dora might entail. But I don’t care. You know me. Let’s take the risk. I always was a wandering soul and I’m so lucky to have found a soulmate to wander with me.”
I kissed her and two days later we were driving in a Ford pickup truck, an old one, the kind I liked, with a riffle rack behind our seat fully loaded and multiple handguns at our side, Texan style. We were even wearing cowboy hats and attire and as I drove I had my arm around her waist. I felt so happy. Others might call us ridiculous. But I never let such conflicting thoughts muddy my present mood. To do so is mental suicide.
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