Gynococene

By Roland Keller

Widowmama’s daughter’s aspiration to become a widowmama herself depends on the capture by a security patrol of a wild orchied. When a grown daughter of a security patrol warns of a pack of wild orchieds, the Community is thrown into turmoil, believing the wild orchieds prey on persons for food. A security patrol is dispatched to vanquish the pack and widowmama’s daughter must overcome her greatest fear and join.

• Language: English
• Publisher: PKA Publications
• Release date: Jan 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9780965192866

Roland Keller

When he wasn’t riding on one of his Paso Fino horses, Roland Keller was the editor of the literary tabloid, PKA’s Advocate, for over three decades. He is the author of the ‘Easy Taylor’ mysteries Pardee Holler, Nature of the Beast, Denial, Chimera, and Squirrelly, and of the political romance novella, Straw Man. He, his wife Patricia, and their Paso Finos live in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

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Roland Keller GYNOCOCENE

Gynococene is entirely a work of fiction. All the characters, places, and events within it are absolutely true. I know this because I made it all up myself. If you don’t believe this is how things will be, stick around for a few centuries or millenia– whichever, it doesn’t matter– and see for yourself. If I’m wrong, oh well.

-RK

__________________________________________________________________

©2023 Roland Keller

PKA Publications / Imagination Gone Wild Press

All Rights Reserved

This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form or by any means whatsoever, without written permission from the publisher, PKA Publications, Imagination Gone Wild Press, or author, Roland Keller.

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For Lee,

who will stay in my heart.

GYNOCOCENE

Part 1

"Once a woman is made man’s equal,

she becomes his superior."

– Margaret Hilda Thatcher,

Baroness Thatcher of Kesteven (1925-2013)

British stateswoman and first woman British prime minister

Journal Entry,

Today I have reached 7000 days and just passed my seventieth cycle. Widowmama gave me this diary in honor of that, and this is my very first time writing in my very own journal. Widowmama says recording even ordinary, daily occurrences and my thoughts and feelings about them are important. Future generations, she says, will study what I will have written to learn about us and to understand the Community just as she and the others at the Institute study what our predecessors and the Ancients did and thought. Widowmama says the knowledge gleaned from them can serve to guide us. I do not know what anyone can learn from me, but I will do what Widowmama says as that is a daughter’s first obligation.

Everyone has been very nice and my celebration was wonderful. The preparations that Widowmama ordered were spectacular, even though the lower gelding made a mistake in setting the table. Widowmama had to have him beaten by the upper gelding just to insure discipline. We all had a good laugh at the way it lay whimpering at Widowmama’s feet.

You’re skating on very thin ice, gelding, she warned it, but of course it couldn’t know what she was talking about since it is such an ignorant thing. All the geldings are ignorant. In truth, I think some of the other widowmamas and their daughters didn’t know what skating or thin ice were either, but no one would ever dare dispute anything Widowmama says. They all nodded in agreement which is the polite thing to do anyway since Widowmama was the host.

Later, I asked Widowmama what that meant and she tried to explain it to me. She said that the Ancients would glide around on something she said were called ponds and that the ponds had water that would turn solid during a time called winter when it got what she said was cold, but it was all hard for me to picture. I could not help but wonder where would the Ancients have gotten so much water just to spill on the ground, and why wouldn’t the water just dry up on the hard ground right away. Then she tried to explain about something she called rain, but it just made my head spin. Water falling from the sky? How could that be, I asked. Then she started to tell me about something called weather, and that was so odd I would have thought she was making up a story. But I have to believe Widowmama. She is the smartest person I know, and does not just make up things.

Widowmama knows all sorts of things the other widowmamas don’t know, or at least don’t believe. Widowmama says it isn’t just all mythology, that there really was an ancient time when things were very, very different. She and her underlings at the Institute call the ancient time the Anthropocene.

From what Widowmama has told me, it was a very dark time. Everything was different from normal life. It was like an upside-down world. Widowmama says they have accumulated what they call evidence that it actually was a real time. According to some of that evidence, Widowmama has postulated that the orchieds were actually the dominant life form among several life forms, and late in the epoch they were commanded by this evil creature the widowmamas at the Institute have named the Trumpasaurus Wrecks. Even though T. Wrecks was one of the orchied pack, somehow it had gotten to be in charge. It all came to a terrible fiery end when it ignited the Great Conflagration that Widowmama says ended the Anthropocene epoch.

Among the things that Widowmama says is evidence are the brick hills of the Community. Some of them are very tall, some little more than piles of rectangular stones, and some, like where Widowmama and I live, have regular shaped compartments that serve quite well as domiciles. Widowmama also thinks that the arrangement of these brick hills in straight rows with uniform distances between the rows supports the theory that the brick hills didn’t just happen but were actually built by the orchieds. Widowmama is also convinced that the multitude of caverns beneath the Community also were made by the orchieds. According to Widowmama, her studies indicate that it was in those deep caverns that our ancestors who survived the Great Conflagration, as well as the ancestors of the orchieds, had hidden during that terrible time. Some of the Council widowmamas are understandably skeptical although none of them says so outright.

The Council Committee on Security has made certain that the many entrances all throughout the brick hills are all securely barricaded, just in case whatever may lurk down there ever tries to come out, and the Council has decreed that no one in the Community is allowed to go into those caverns, sealing them with the official mark of the Council. I and most of the daughters do not think about the caverns as the very idea of them makes it difficult to sleep.

As far as I’m concerned, I don’t understand how anything as unruly as an orchied could ever be in charge of anything. I asked Widowmama if anything like that could ever happen again. She answered with another of those phrases from her studies of the Ancients. The jury’s still out, she said. I didn’t ask what that means, what a jury is, or to where it is out, but I think it means something like she’s not sure, but I’m not sure.

What I am sure about is that tomorrow is a big day for me. Widowmama is taking me to the Council Committee of Assessment for examination. It’s very exciting. I’m not sure what the examination entails, but Widowmama has been organizing and reorganizing all the education and health documents she has about me. Widowmama said that, if the documents prove acceptable to the COA, I will qualify as a grown daughter. That would open a broad path for me, but I don’t know if I have the courage to walk it. Being a grown daughter would mean a complete and irreversible change in my life.

Journal Entry Day 7001

It was a very long day. Widowmama got me up early so we could get to the COA before there was a long line. But there were already many widowmamas and their daughters waiting, some even having arrived the night before. The day was bright by the time our turn came, but the waiting wasn’t so bad. The Council has a well-trained gelding who brings seats and refreshments if anyone calls for them. And I got to talk with other daughters and share our expectations of what form our assessments might take. Widowmama mingled with some of the other widowmamas. It would have been rude of me to ask her what she and the other widowmamas were talking about and she didn’t say, so I don’t know.

Eventually, our turn came. One of the Assessors approached us and exchanged formal greetings with Widowmama. Then she asked Widowmama for my documents, ushered us into a separate compartment in the COA, and offered Widowmama a seat. I wasn’t offered a seat. I was too fidgety to sit still anyway. Besides, it would have been rude if I sat while the Assessor remained standing.

With a polite nod to Widowmama, who returned the nod, the Assessor told me to remove my overgarment including my footwear. I was directed to perform certain movements like crouching, then jumping up as high as a could, then turning left and right quickly. One movement that I thought was fun was jumping up and landing with my feet far apart while I clapped my hands above my head then jumping back into a plain standing position with my hands at my sides. It was all I could do not to laugh at myself, but I could tell by the expressions on the faces of Widowmama and the Assessor that this was not meant to be fun or funny.

After the movement part of the assessment, the Assessor directed me to answer a whole series of questions, some of them mathematical, some of them about manners, and some of them about what I think I know about our collective lives and the Community. I know in my heart I gave the best answers I could, but nothing in the way the Assessor or Widowmama reacted was either reassuring or distressing. Grown-ups can be very hard to read.

Then the Assessor directed me to issue a command to her. At first, I was completely at a loss. In all my days, I have never commanded anyone to do anything, not even Widowmama’s low gelding, and even the middle and upper geldings do that, albeit with gestures and not actual words since they aren’t intelligent enough to speak. What was I to command? And how? My mind was in a whirl. The very idea that I might be rude was mortifying. I looked at Widowmama, hoping for some guidance, but Widowmama just stared at me as though I were someone else’s daughter.

I knew I couldn’t delay very long as that in itself would have been rude to the Assessor, so I made my face look stern, stood up as straight as I could, and in what I hoped was a commanding voice said to the Assessor, You are to tell me the purpose of this directive.

To my great surprise and relief, the Assessor looked at Widowmama who returned the look and then both of them smiled. Imagine! I had issued a command. A command! Me!

I’m not sure if my command met the Assessor’s expectations since she didn’t actually tell me the purpose of her directive, but deep in the pit of my stomach, just issuing the command made me feel stronger. There is something very delicious in speaking a command. And not just because it was a new experience for me.

Journal Entry Day 7002

Widowmama told me this morning that very soon I will be finishing my formal education and that tomorrow is another big day for me. Widowmama is taking me to the Council Committee of Eugenics for even more tests. It’s very exciting and very mysterious. I think Widowmama could tell that I was very curious since she sat me down and told me to ask her any questions I might have about what the Committee does. I wasn’t prepared to ask any questions, so Widowmama told me to think for a while. Widowmama is a great proponent of thinking. She has often told me to think before I speak or act. I try, but I don’t think I always succeed. Widowmama says that’s normal and that it’s just part of growing up.

I spent the morning thinking, but I didn’t know enough to come up with many questions. Really, my only question was why does the COE examine daughters.

Widowmama waited until after our first eating of the day before summoning me to answer my question. The long and the short of it, as Widowmama often says when explaining something to me, is that the Committee of Eugenics examines each cycling daughter’s documents to make sure, firstly, that everything is normal in the daughter’s health, and secondly, to determine the daughter’s collective predecessors.

That immediately made me think of another question, and I asked what difference did my predecessors make since everyone already knew that I am Widowmama’s daughter. That brought a smile to Widowmama’s face, and that made me feel warm. Pleasing Widowmama isn’t always easy, but it always makes me feel good when I can make her smile.

Widowmama thought for a little while, as she usually does before answering complicated questions. Her answer, To ensure our continued survival through the viability of our progeny and all subsequent generations, exceeded my understanding. So Widowmama said something that completely surprised me. I fear I have been remiss in explaining some of the facts of life, she said.

That Widowmama could ever be remiss in anything was a concept I could not grasp. Widowmama is always so careful, and everyone knows it. I wasn’t sure I wouldn’t be disrespectful if I asked her how she was remiss, but I didn’t have to ask. Widowmama looked deep into my eyes and said, Daughter, by now you know about insemination, pregnancy, and birth. And I know you and other daughters have spoken about the subject in addition to how you have been instructed.

There didn’t seem to be any criticism in the way Widowmama spoke, so I just nodded.

She then explained that it was the responsibility of the COE to determine which daughters are inseminated from which orchieds to insure that the daughter and the orchied have different predecessors so the offspring won’t be flawed.

On the infrequent occasion that a daughter is inseminated from a orchied that was captured from a wild pack and that service yields an orchied offspring, that offspring is gelded as soon as its orchies descend from its belly. That way, there won’t be any unexpected flaws arising from any unknown characteristic of the wild orchied. Those geldings make the best ones since they are trained right from the beginning.

I asked Widowmama why, if there was any risk of some kind of flaw in the offspring, did the COE sanction any siphoning of a wild orchied, whether it produced a daughter or another orchied. Widowmama’s brow wrinkled at the question and I thought I had inadvertently angered her, but to my relief, the wrinkling had to do with Widowmama concentrating on how to frame her answer in terms suitable for me. Widowmama is always very thoughtful.

After a while, Widowmama smiled and said despite the diligent efforts of the COE, there simply aren’t enough domestic orchieds that can be used without what Widowmama called a back-cross producing a flawed offspring. So to expand the selection, any time any of the security patrols comes upon a lone wild orchied, care is taken to asses whether it seems to meet the Council’s standards and be worth capturing. On closer inspection, some of the captured ones just don’t measure up. Those are promptly gelded. Unfortunately, they are the most difficult to train and usually aren’t any good for anything except strenuous labor since they are strong but not trustworthy. That’s why they have to wear thick leather restraints even while working so they can’t run away or resist their overseers. The grown daughters who oversee these captured wild geldings are also very strong and they have heavy clubs and cudgels fashioned from the long bones of orchied hind legs to enforce their orders. Of course, if a wild orchied proves unmanageable even after it is gelded, it is then rendered for its meat and hide just like a domestic orchied after it is siphoned for inseminating a daughter. The wild orchieds’ hides make the strongest footwear and tethers, but only the very young domestic orchieds hides are ever fine enough to make pages like these.

The grown daughter overseers have a very important, difficult assignment, but the grown daughters who go on the security patrols are the most highly respected since the work they do is not just important, it’s very dangerous. Widowmama says without their vigilance we run the risk of being ambushed by roving wild orchieds and that could be very dangerous. In my mind, I sometimes imagine that that was how it must