Smugglers (The Maskheads Series, #1)
Chapter One.
This is a speculative fiction series comprised of three books. One chapter will be released every Wednesday, with links to previous and next chapters when applicable.
We didn’t know how it happened. I’ve been told it was like the world was fine one day, and then the next day women were being carried out of their homes on stretchers.
The world was in such a good place, too. Technology was becoming cheaper and more available, particularly in healthcare. Infertile couples could have babies thanks to non-human surrogate wombs. If you wanted to change your sex, you could do it down to the chromosome and look like a member of that sex within a week. Injections and vitamins cost less than ten dollars. I remember seeing measles vaccines for sale in the convenience store on the first floor of my building. Eight dollars, and Mr. Fu would open up the glass case and hand it to you.
There were many guesses as to what had happened to the women. Maybe yterine cancer had become airborne. Some PMS or menopause-based disease. Contagious mammary gland infections, maybe.
Whatever it was, it happened too fast for us to recognize it. The women of the world were dying. Slowly at first, but not for long.
At first, no one really seemed to care. Women had been the majority gender for ten years by then, and one little disease wasn’t going to wipe them all out. Let’s not be silly. Let nature take its course.
That was how it was for a few months, until lesbian women started dying too. Men couldn’t carry it, which meant they probably weren’t responsible. But that also meant it wouldn’t be as traceable as something spread through sex.
Transwomen and Betweeners (the name that intersex people invented for themselves where I lived) weren’t contracting any similar diseases. Men who had been born as women were protected by the new transition technology.
Women were fainting, breaking out in tumors, then dying less than a week later. It was happening all over the country, with no detectable root.
It had to be something cisgender women (women who had been born as women and had chosen to stay that way) had carried for a long time, possibly from birth. A latent virus or bacteria. Something horrible that rotted them from the inside.
“Then the real wackos came out,” Mr. Fu would always say that next. He often ate dinner at our house, coming over after closing down the store. He and Mama John told me this story sometimes.
He’d go on, sounding exasperated. “I knew things were going downhill when there were stories of people killing little girls so that they wouldn’t eventually die. That one man on TV, what’s his name… he said that it was proof that women were inferior to men. And that all the newfound medical technology was the work of Hell.”
Then he’d sigh, like he does sometimes. “Then the President came on TV one night and said we were in the middle of a health crisis. He said that our nation was going to hold strong. We were the country that was working to preserve women’s rights above all others, and we weren’t going to stop protecting them in this time of crisis.
“But all that meant was a lot of restriction. No one could transition to being a woman for a while, even if they had been on a waiting list. That changed you down to the DNA, so there was no way they were going to make more women that could die. Whatever women were around were put into quarantine.”
Mama John would then tell him to hush. She never wanted to talk about the quarantine, making an excuse about it wasn’t appropriate for the dinner table, or that I was too young to understand.
But Mr. Fu would go on anyway. “That was when your mother was found, after thirty days of complete quarantine in the PNW Camp. Just as strong and healthy-looking as ever, comforting a little Asian girl whose mother had just died. That, of course, was Lady One.”
It would end up that Lady One and Mama John would be the only ones who made it out of that quarantine camp. Something in them had resisted whatever was killing their friends. They were studied by doctors, but no definite answer to why they had survived was found.
The two of them were made into celebrities. Lady One, the exotic gem from the East who had resisted the evil of the West. Mama John, the wholesome lumberjack’s daughter christened Lady Two. They were like the queens of our part of the country.
But while we were celebrating our survivors, quarantine colonies across the country closed down. No one could figure out why all the women in there were dying. Eventually, there weren’t any living people left to fill them.
No woman went home for six months. The time dragged on, and many of their kids were orphaned.
Time passed. Four more survivors were discovered. Lady Three, the red-haired juvenile delinquent who bit the quarantine nurse who tried to give her a flu shot. Four, the pale artist from the Midwest. Lady Five, the dark-skinned singer who was stunningly beautiful despite her unusually squalid quarantine in the Northeast. Then, tucked away in the southern part of the country, Lady Six.
The news always spoke of her in a rude way: She was a “matronly” Native American woman who knew all there was to know about the country’s original ways of doing things. She was the oldest and supposedly the wisest of the Six.
That was how we knew them. One through Six. The last women on Earth, we thought.
Not all of them wanted to be celebrities, but it just sort of happened. We didn’t really get news from other countries anymore, not since the laws against immigration were passed. These women were all from America. And they were all different, which made it even more fun to see them on TV.
Mama John became a figure of environmentalism, having come from a very nature-filled part of the country. She had worked her entire life in lumber, but not anymore. Now she was opening health food stores and meeting community leaders, talking about the virtues of preserving the forests.
This is all stuff I learned after arriving at Home. I never would have learned about Mama John’s life as a Lady otherwise. She never talked about it.
That period of peace lasted a few years, but Mama John eventually got away from her life as a Lady. She went underground. My birth was never mentioned in the papers, so I assume she got away completely. Maybe she had bribed people in order to slip away unnoticed. I never knew how she did it, though I would have liked to.
The news always used old pictures of Mama John when they talked about Lady Two. They didn’t even look like her. They were definitely altered to look like her at whatever age she was, but it wasn’t right. These were pictures of her with long hair and breasts that weren’t bound.
I didn’t have to lie about how old I was, because I could always say my “dad” had just fertilized an egg from my mom in storage. The richest people still hired artificial wombs to make kids, spending huge sums on eggs donated from decades past. But even that wasn’t a perfect solution. Every so often, there’d be headlines scrolling on the bottoms of news feeds that read: ORLANDO, KANSAS CITY AND HOUSTON HAVE DECLARED “EGG BANKRUPTCY.”
I never saw many kids younger than me in my neighborhood. Maybe one or two. They were either the kids of wealthy families, or immigrant kids who had broken the law and snuck into the country. I wish I had had the opportunity to ask them.
Mama John told me I was a boy. But when I went to school and saw pictures of what cisgender boys and girls looked like next to each other, itt was a shock.
“I look more like Lady Five than the president! Whats going on?”
“I know. Oh, I know, Andrew. I’m so sorry.” She reached down and hugged me, which was confusing.
“Am I a boy or a girl, Mama?” She was crying, so I didn’t yell this time.
“You were born a girl, Andrew. But you can be anything you want to be.”
“Why did you tell me I was a boy, Mama?”
“I didn’t want you to get sick, Andrew. I didn’t want anything to happen to you. Oh Andrew, I love you so much.” She kept sobbing into my hair, rocking me back and forth.
For a five year old, that was enough. That was all the explanation I needed. The sickness that had killed the women could somehow detect what you were born as. It was like the tiger at the zoo, ready to leap with open jaws at the first sign of womanhood.
I also knew that this was the end of asking Mama why she had hidden my sex from me. The way she’d presented it told ne it wasn’t something she wanted to do. Maybe being a Lady had exposed her to the tiger that was the disease. She wanted to trick it so it would stay away from her cub. I didn’t ask for more information.
We lived our lives like regular civilians, me going to school and Mom maintaining the house and pretending to go to work in the mills by the river. She still had money stashed from when she was an active Lady, so we were never hard up for money. What was more important was living our lives in safety.
Mama went by John more and more as the years went on. By the time I was ten, she was smoking regularly and binding her breasts. Both sped up her aging, and a few years after that her face was covered in stress wrinkles. She gained weight steadily to complete the transformation from wholesome lady to androgynous mill worker. In conjunction with every other body modification tool she used, she could easily pass as a man.
Meanwhile, I grew up to be more like myself. My body was thin and lanky, and my hair was cut more frequently. I made friends with local boys, playing video games and playground games like Chef Show, Army and Bug Out.
Bug Out was my favorite. Grabbing bags, shooting at “bandits” like they did on TV while we ran to the safehouse… it was super fun. The safehouse was usually Mr. Fu’s store, where we’d pick up sticks of beef jerky and stare at the new posters of Lady Five and Lady One.
When I look back on that time, I see that Lady Five was a genius. She made a fortune selling pin-up style portraits of herself, and when she got married to the president, their joint photo shoots of their super-perfect married life sold just as quickly. Every man and boy wanted to picture themselves as her husband.
One (she didn’t like to be called Lady) stayed single, hiding her age behind cute outfits and shoots with stuffed animals. She was never shown with men in her photos or on television unless she was being interviewed. She was just One, existing in her own little world. We were all her guests. It felt special.
A picture once surfaced on the social media network Give, a selfie of One wearing a vintage t-shirt with the words “Girl Power” streaked across it in tacky pink letters.
It felt like she was looking straight at me and smiling because she knew. She flaunted “Girl Power” because she knew I was there. She was only ten years older than me, and she must have known that Lady Two escaped with a baby. She must have known I existed. And she was smiling directly at me. It made me feel safe.
Not every Lady dealt with their worship the same way. Lady Four had always loved her title. She was an artist living in St. Paul, Minnesota. She was my friend Justin’s favorite Lady, even though everyone else usually liked One or Five.
Unlike the other Ladies, Lady Four flaunted the fact that she had admirers. They were her assistants, and slept in the same loft where she lived. Up to a dozen men at once, sleeping on the couches in her living room and sometimes in her bed.
I never saw what was so special about her. She had light skin like Mama John, but her arms and legs were much skinnier. Her hair was long like most of the other Ladies, blonde with dark roots like artists of the past. That’s what she was: A performance artist and painter. I’ve never met either type of person in real life.
She filmed some of her performance for her weekly television show. Every Lady with a known location had their own show on public television, and Four’s was alway the most interesting.
Unlike Lady Five’s daily talk show and One’s true-life show, Lady Four’s slot featured full-length experimental films. They could go over an hour long, and I loved watching them. I hope some recorded versions of them still exist for future viewings. They’re easy to access now, but we’ll probably need some physical version in the future in order to watch them.
I was nine when the infamous Tub Sketch was broadcast live. The episode was titled “Lady Four Takes A Bath.” This was a live broadcast, which Four sometimes chose to do instead of an edited segment. This also meant there was a delay in it getting to the Internet, but that’s another story.
We had a big TV, so I could see small details like the curtains opening up on the scene. Four was sitting in a clawfoot tub filled with water within a bathroom with grey walls. I recognized it as her private bathroom, which she had shown off in previous episodes of the show. It was the one place she could go to be alone, she said in interviews. No boys allowed.
But this sketch was different the others from the introduction scene onward. Four looked much sadder than usual. The water also couldn’t obscure her nudity during the overhead shot at the very beginning. Lady Four leaned back, exposing her entire body to the camera (undoubtedly held by one of her assistants).
More assistants came in one by one, each one with a bathing implement. One assistant poured colored oil into the water, while another lathered up a sponge and washed Lady Four’s arm lovingly. One of them even poured a different color of oil on Lady Four’s legs and started shaving them. Limb by limb, they held her up and slowly cleaned her. Eight men in all. They handled her lovingly.
There was one shot from that sketch that I can remember now, years later: A sudden pull-in to Lady Four’s face, directly from above. It was of only of her face as she leaned up against the wall of the white tub. She was crying, but you could only see it right if you looked at the corners of her eyes. She was so pale and luminous, her eyes mostly just looked like they were shining. But look closely, and you can tell they were wet. I can’t describe it fully. I’ll add more later if I think of a better way to say it.
That skit ended with Lady Four shooing the attendants away, then dunking herself completely under the water. She emerged less than a minute later, gasping deeply for air.
Every assistant offered her a towel, each a different color. But she climbed out of the tub without support, holding her breasts against her with one arm and dripping over the floor. White sheets had been spread out, so you could see the water as it fell.
Her hands covered her breasts, but her bottom half was exposed to the camera. I touched the inside of my leg in recognition; I was like her.
Lady Four looked straight at the screen. She knew she was visible, but she didn’t care. She could see me. I knew she could. She was looking straight at me.
At this point, Mama John turned off the television. “That’s enough nudity for you two.”
“But it’s almost over!” Justin cried.
“I don’t care. I had had no idea that Lady Four was going to get naked on today’s show. If I had, I wouldn’t have let you watch it.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not respectful to her. How would you like it if someone watched you come out of the tub like that?”
“Mr. John, she had people come and film her! She wanted to be watched on TV!” Justin whined.
“Even so, it’s disrespectful. Go play outside. I think Mr. Fu may even need help unloading a delivery.”
“Forget it. Come on Andrew, let’s go.” Justin picked up his toy rifle and I followed him out. I agreed with him — why would Lady Four film a sketch like that unless she wanted it to be seen? Unless Mama John had seen something in Lady’s Four’s crying, or my face at the sight of her naked. Hopefully not the second one.
That was our life. Playing, school, television, sleep. Mama John took me to different regions sometimes for a vacation, but we never stayed more than three days at a time. I was just a kid, and had to be a boy kid. That overshadowed everything. But Mama John loved me, and made sure to tell me so.
When I outgrew the green velvet dress on my tenth birthday, she went to her closet and pulled out a shimmering, slinky evening gown for me to wear instead. It had been hers years ago, and now it was mine. There would always be a dress for me if I wanted one, and I was ecstatic. I felt loved.
We continued on together for a few more years, and no one seemed to catch on that I was born a girl. “Andrew” meant me, and it always did. That is my name, even now.
The Ladies got older too. Three (her chosen title, after she said she was insulted to have the title of “lady” in a democratic system) went missing the day after my eleventh birthday. She was found dead a day later, alongside her husband. The news said they had been shot by someone who was robbing their apartment. People wondered if this was the actual cause of their death, but a list emerged of what was missing from the apartment. It was all valuable stuff, and seemed like it was a real crime. Nothing staged or overly sensational.
We all lit candles and put them in the windows, because there was now one less woman in the world. But to be honest, my friends and I weren’t all that moved by Three dying. She’d had no children, and had spent most of her life being an activist against the government. She hadn’t done anything too meaningful for us. Not even Mama John shed many tears over her death.
But she definitely grew more uneasy. I wasn’t allowed to go out after the streetlights were turned on at night. She made me quit playing sports for a long time, and I resented her for it. After a while she relented and let me go back to playing baseball in the city league. That was better than nothing.
Mr. Fu and Mama John would come to my games, cheering extra loudly whenever I scored a run. The message was clear: if I could keep up with the other boys, I was passing. I was safe.
I don’t resent them for that behavior. I know you probably don’t believe me, but I don’t. At least not now. Even then, I could tell that something had turned with the announcement that Three had died. They were frightened.
Justin had gone into the bookstore one day to find that every single poster of the Six was sold out. Every single poster of them all together. One had announced that she was releasing a book months before, and it was rushed out to the public earlier than planned. Every copy in the city sold out in two days. I added my name to the waiting list for a copy, and was told it would take at least a month to restock the books. Everyone was anticipating One’s book, he had said.
In reality, people were hungry for more of the Six. Something was off in my city. Off in a way that was fundamental. Fights were becoming more common at school. Vandalism increased in every section of the city. Mr. Fu actually had to pull out his gun twice to stop his store from being robbed. There were rumors of the government hacking the popular social network Give to track potential criminal activity, though no one believed they could or would go that far. At least, we hoped not.
People were afraid. There was much more to fear, now that someone had had the gall to mess with one of the Six. To kill her, no less. The life of one of the last women on earth and her husband, all for some electronics and jewelry. Such a small reward!
Whoever they were, they were probably dead by now. Even if they weren’t, they had an unofficial bounty on their head. Killing them would be an act of honor for most people I knew. Vengeance for a fallen woman, revered in a world that had so few to spare.
Nothing was as safe as before. The murder hadn’t happened close to where we lived, so I myself wasn’t afraid. People still played basketball. School went on at a normal schedule. Mama John still loved me, and I could be Andy or Andrew at home. All was fine.
The second death wouldn’t come until Easter Sunday.
