The Deluge

Today they legalised the wombots. It had been in talks for some months now but finally the concerns of the organisations opposing the bill were put to rest. The Right Mirror carried a story which said some members of Mothers by Society were paid in gold.

Nobody knew what implications the bill would have. There was a dire need for an alternative to women. Not women per se, but, their functions. It has been two months since the outbreak of Crake brought humanity to a standstill. The human female was its prime target when Crake flew through air.

On the TV there were live debates on wombots. I remember one burly, old guy, who looked dizzy from lack of sleep, jump at his chance saying why he would prefer a hooker over a wombot any time of the day. A suave guy in a suit and trimmed, neatly combed hair, would then point out how wombots were not only better than human females in the ‘act’ but the obvious fact that women were dwindling like stars from the sky with the arrival of daylight. The old guy missed it every time.  He said he’d know it was fake. To this the gentleman said that they’d employ double blind with even the ‘mediators’ not knowing the fake from the real.

That was a month ago. Today the wombots were set free by Electric International. A team would simultaneously work to escort the existing women out of the trade and harvest their bodies for reproducing human females while others would be subjects for studying Crake. Of course, all that was never openly stated.

Electric International had plans to take buildings and rooms on rent in certain high density localities at the behest of a pseudo government run mostly by members of large private enterprises which stood to gain through the accoutrements of the business and by leasing parts of their infrastructure to Electric.

That was before Harold, the self proclaimed goodwill ambassador of all parties, said anything. There had been plans to provide wombots free of cost under the stated model but then Harold Hammer said that a free commodity had zero utility. He said that if wombots were free, the satisfaction derived would be equal to no satisfaction at all.

And then the growing concern that if the wombots were not as good as human females would not help the plans. It was, then, a placebo in action. People would be charged slightly for the services to induce a sense of value if wombots didn’t come out as expected. It was even better to do that and pass them off as humans rather than as themselves. And that’s what they did.

So, today, they are set free among the birds of human thought. Most of the men are out. Even those whose wives have just died. There had been endless discussions about the drop off points. Endless theories have since been floating around. Some said it was business as usual. A few said it was to check the crime rate (The president’s daughter was kidnapped, raped and murdered). Some believed, “We ARE in the future.” The Right decried eroding morality. The Left preached rationality.  But most, most like me, were indifferent. It had taken my mom and she was never coming back. Dad had always been wayward and could never walk the drink.

With these thoughts circling my head, I moved out of my slow, blue room, picked the leftover pie from the round table by the kitchen, and closed the door behind me. As I left the elevator and approached the main door of our apartment building, I could hear a distant noise; coming from the Final Ground where thousands, or maybe more, were gathering.

Outside, there was dry euphoria floating all around. People walking the streets looked at each other with hesitant smiles. Everybody seemed to be going in the same direction.

After a while we stopped. There were a few, maybe ten helis (the big ones which Electric was known for) hovering over the ground and dropping huge containers. One after another, then more.

One young guy went up to one of the containers, and knocked, as we all looked. And then two opened the latch.

For a moment, the ground became silent. As if everyone had inhaled lots of Oxygen and then forgot how to breathe. Jim would later joke he saw a plant grow an inch.

But then, that moment, dusting off packaging bubbles, a woman came out of that container. She was in pants and a loosely tucked pin stripe shirt, with sleeves folded up to the arms. More than that, she had sultriness about her. There were others behind her who were followed by hordes of droves. It reminded me of a scene from a movie in which the last batch of soldiers was sent among zombies. Here, the ground seemed to be contracting. There was not enough space for all of us. Everybody was pushing the others. Those closer to the containers were going back. The people behind them pushed forward to catch a glimpse. Nobody knew that a few minutes later the 31^st division of Electric would be there, killing for more than kicks.

Up, from the air, they were still dropping containers. The wombots were still flowing out from the mouths of the containers, which looked like newly formed tributaries from a river which originated in the sky, turned into a fall, before cascading and dividing into multiple tributaries. Out of these tributaries flowed streams of wombots. They didn’t move, apart from making way for others like them.

Just then, there was another noise; the noise of wings slicing through air. The 31^st Division was here: two soldiers were manning rattle guns from a Heli-jet. And before anyone could make sense, they started firing. The rate of rattle guns shamed the rate of light. The wombots were terrified too. But there was more space for them now that most of the crowd lay dead. The lucky ones scurried out.

Half an hour into the future, the wombots, with some unuttered understanding, decided to leave the stadium. From outside it looked as if every exit had been withholding a tsunami which was suddenly unhooked. They were laughing and giggling. Some fell, yet stood up with a jerk. Some eyes were closed in blissful laughter. Others were holding their sculpturesque tums which were aching as tears flowed down their real cheeks. They were tumbling, rolling into humanity.

And I believe they still are. That was a few hours ago. Right now as I write this, my Dad sits with a wombot by that round table. And oh, in that movie, like any other, the soldiers won.