Wyoming

The Other Boys and other Stories, Pieter, Los Angeles, 2010

TALKER 1
The Separatist Boybanders, internal to California and comprised primarily of teen-agers, and their 21-35-year-old sympathizers, was not in fact the only threat to the integrity of the State. When the replicants became the sole police authority by decree of the Governor, and sexual reproduction
was made a crime, the political situation for the contrarian Maternal Origin Movement, became insufferable. Bearskin Lakefront, the telegenic face of the M.O.M.s, lead an exodus of biologicals from California to Wyoming, a state which had by then spread, the hearty people of Wyoming finding it easy
to overtake its surrounding governments; failed states that had never benefitted from the big boom of biotech; a cluster of areas banded together by a renewed, reactionary faith in The Universe in the Uterus, as the best-selling manifesto, was called. Thus, the gynarchy that was said to have faded in the
ancient times became reborn in a western matriotic society, flying the hand-woven flag of mandatory sexual reproduction.

TALKER 2
And hunting, and gun worship. But if there were no animals left, what were the guns, (which were traded for sex slaves (i.e. women who were unable to procreate) shipped to Russia (which had long since exhausted it’s own supply)) going to be used for?

TALKER 3
In a departure from speech-making, Bearskin Lakefront’s tenure as M.O.M. leader was characterized by televised discussions
she had with her ever-pregnant daughter, Pistol, for all the state to watch on their holoscreens. The setting was the grand presidential, tipi, sewn together from the cured hides of Replicant police she caught at the border of what had once been Nevada, now a contested area and site of one of many wars between the states.

TALKER 2
And so we join the leader of the M.O.M.s, with her daughter, in a discussion already in progress.

PISTOL
Mama, tell us of the meaning of the hunt?

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
Since ancient times, humans have had to hunt to prove they were not animals.

PISTOL
But all the animals are gone.

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
The furry animals are gone, and the fish and the birds, and the insects too, but my darling, the clones are here to provide us with something to hunt. The great mother goddess, in her wisdom, allowed humans the gift of life-like re-creation only so we could make something lesser than us to satisfy the bloodlust that is natural to us, as natural as carrying a blessed child to term.

PISTOL
Mama, I am sixteen and this will be my fourth baby. When will I have had enough babies?

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
That is a paradox: there can never be enough babies, but there are already enough adults. Adults make mistakes, but babies teach lessons. Every one of my babies proved something to me I had already suspected. You taught me that daughters are mirrors of showing a lady. My sons taught me pain is the best part of life, but one which must be contained, like orgasm, by codes of conduct. That is why male children are not allowed to live among us after they are sixteen. They must be sent to the hunting squads. While women must fight too, I ain’t saying we can’t, it is also our duty to live till we are old
and pass on traditions. Sons kill or be killed, die for the cause, \wear cargo pants without shirts; their torsos weathered and their seductive power diminished.

PISTOL
Mama, my new boyfriend, his name is Kitten, he’s thirteen, he has red hair, and I am sad he has to leave in three years to fight in Nevada against those gay monsters out in California. Sometimes I hate the system, but I know you designed it to benefit my children.

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
Exactly. And remember: every tear you cry for Kitten is the tear of a black widow, like the Spiderwoman, who wove our universe to trap flies.

PISTOL
Last night, I was teaching Jemima-Claw, my eldest, about how to drive a car and she ran over another child, dead. As is the law, I paid the family with a hundred starch balls for each year of the baby’s life, and they seemed to think it was a more than fair trade. As I was filling out the paperwork, the husband, who was fifteen, thanked us for relieving him of the burden. You see, it was a slow kid; wasn’t contributing to the clan.

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
All babies are procreated for a purpose. That baby died in order to teach Jemima-Claw the consequences of vehicles. It was wrong of the family to admit that they were happy for the death; it shows a lack of breeding on their part.

PISTOL
Mama, I want to fight in the war too, as soon as this baby is out of me.

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
The greatest accomplishments of history are those of warrior ladies. When I was born, there still was respect for what a woman could do that no man could. Yet, even then, people didn’t see the connection to traditions, per se, as important. They were too busy trying to make a living. What is the point of making a living in a culture of what I call artistic production when you can literally make the living come right out of your body? It is infinitude, multiplicity, right in you. And then there is what I call the Great Irony, in that what entities are produced from the human body also have the power to terminate life. So Pistol, when you have had your mandatory five children, and your contract will be fulfilled, you go, girl! You go, girl, and you fight, wonder woman. Good hunting. Clone meat tastes just like tofu. Bring me back some skins and we’ll build you a home.

PISTOL
Thank you, Mama.

BEARSKIN LAKEFRONT
Bless us all and our great state, as it spreads like juice across the kitchen counter.

PISTOL
Amen.

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