The End of Men(79)
“Life now has a lot of requirements and not a lot of joy. So, a dating app that says ‘We get it: it sucks that your life has changed beyond recognition, but guess what? You can still have love and sex and something that makes you feel less alone’ is a welcome piece of normalcy.”
Does she want to ever introduce men to the platform?
“Ha, no! They don’t need any help finding women. No, in all seriousness, it’s partly that. If a man wants to be in a relationship with a woman, the statistics are in his favor, put it that way. But it’s more because of hope. Do you know what’s worse than your life’s plans falling apart in the space of a few weeks as the world collapses? Hoping that somehow, despite the odds, your plans of a husband and two kids and a white picket fence will still come true. Women go on Adapt to find love in a new way. I don’t want them to be faced with the question, when they first sign up, ‘Are you interested in men . . . still? Do you hold out hope . . . still?’ Because the numbers don’t add up. There are nine women for every man.”
Does Bryony hope to meet a man, fall in love? She sighs. I guess she must get this question a lot. In return for my commonly asked question, I receive a rehearsed response. “I’m single and I don’t anticipate that changing. Hopefully I’ll be able to have a child one day but I try not to build it up as an important goal because there’s absolutely nothing I can do to make it happen. Most things in the world don’t operate on a ‘return on investment’ basis anymore. Before the Plague, when I was interviewed about my job I always used to say that it was a numbers game; if you spend enough hours on the app, swipe a sufficient amount, message your matches and arrange dates, the chances are that you’ll meet someone and, perhaps if you’re lucky, fall in love.” She smiles ruefully. “It was a simpler time. I can’t put in the effort to meet a man or have a child. The odds are pretty stacked against me now. But I can put effort into building my company, employing more people in jobs that are interesting, and help women more flexible than me find love. That will do for now.”
As I’m being walked out, thanking Bryony for her time, I ask the big question everyone keeps asking. “Do you think lots of the women in relationships with other women have had a shift in sexuality, or was their sexuality always there, the way it is?”
“You know, we don’t pretend that women are suddenly all gay now. There’s no doubt that female sexuality is more fluid than male sexuality is, although that’s not saying much. But the fact is that humans don’t like to be alone and there aren’t a lot of men now, so we do what we can to still feel like the people we used to be.”
It’s a simple, straightforward answer from a complex, successful woman who knows exactly what she, and other women, want. But the question will inevitably be asked for many years to come.
DAWN
London, United Kingdom (England and Wales)
Day 1,500
The second I turn my phone off airplane mode, it starts buzzing with an incoming call. Zara, of course. My boss is many things and even though she’s now the head of the British Intelligence Services she’s still a micromanager.
“Is that you back in London?”
How else would I be answering the call? “Yep,” I reply, as politely as I can imagine after an eight-and-a-half-hour flight following a two-day business trip spent entirely in windowless rooms talking to American politicians and CIA employees.
“A memo from the Child Lottery people in the States has been leaked. Maria Ferreira’s written an article about it. Press are going nuts. Gillian’s called an emergency meeting to discuss the child allocation plans. Her press team are worried about the optics; home secretary can’t be tarred with a bad brush.”
“What’s the general thrust of the memo?”
“Lying to the public about it being a lottery is the most damning thing. There’s also some very unpleasant stuff about single parents.” Zara sighs and I try to remind myself that, as she’s a rung above me, however many crises I deal with in a day, she deals with even more I’m never aware of. Thank the Lord. “To be honest, it’s not a million miles away from our plans but the optics are dire. Get over here as soon as you can. We’ll start the meetings as soon as Gillian arrives.”
My lingering excitement from being on commercial flights ebbs away. Even going through security was a novelty. No liquids? No problem. A half-hour delay? How very 2019 of you. I was intending to have a relaxing day of sleeping and spending time with my daughter but no, no. The Americans had different ideas.
I already have a link to the Maria Ferreira article sitting in my inbox, in an e-mail from Gillian titled: SERIOUS ISSUE??? NEED MEETING URGENTLY!!!! You’d think the home secretary would maybe only need to use one punctuation mark at a time.
“An American Outrage”
by Maria Ferreira
It was revealed today in a leaked memorandum that the “Child Lottery” in the United States is not the random allocation we have been led to understand it is. The opportunity to have a child through donor sperm is actually determined by an algorithm taking into account factors including relationship status, socioeconomic status and resources in the local area, among others. In other words, the American people are being lied to. We are being led to believe that our opportunity to have a child—that most primal and important of decisions, that many women desire—is left to chance when it is actually determined by a secret algorithm administered by a governmental department.