The American Spectator

“I hate my medicine,” said Darien, defiantly.

“I don’t even take it,” said Jared. “I hide it under my tongue and spit it out.” He suddenly looked around to see if he had revealed a dark secret.

“That doesn’t work,” said Tom Brown glumly. “It gets into your system anyway. If you don’t take it, they know from your urine check.”

Newman regretted bringing up the subject. He was puzzled at the way he always took the side of the authorities when he took a group of boys to the woods, even though he might secretly be on their side. It was something about being an adult and wanting to see order maintained in the world, even if you didn’t entirely agree with it.

“Come on, let’s keep going,” he said, trying to break the mood of glum reverie. “We’ve still got a half-hour’s climb. Let’s keep our voices down. If you’re really quiet, we might see a bear.”

“Wow! Really? Hey, that’s great.”

Once more the boys silently fell in line.

IT WAS IMPORTANT to reach boys like this before they fell into The Void, thought Newman. Ever since the Department of Gender had declared pregnancy to be a “disability” in 2045, things had fallen apart in the Old America. Girls as young as 16 were getting pregnant on the premise that it was better to get your childbearing years out of the way early so you could pursue a career in your 30s. Newman had been teaching in high school at the time and saw it happening right under his nose. Waves of pregnancy would sweep through the tenth grade like an outbreak of head lice. Within weeks half the girls in the class would be proudly raising their hands, asking to be excused for morning sickness. It usually started with the daughter of a single mother or some wallflower who feared no one would ever like her. It spread form there. Some of the prettiest girls tried to hold out, saying they wanted husbands, but the peer pressure was enormous.

The boys claimed to have nothing to do with all this. In fact, the suddenness of the epidemic often gave rise to the rumor that girls were able to impregnate themselves. “Are you sure you have to have sex to have a baby, Mr. Newman?” one bewildered freshman had asked him after school one day. “Look at that girl that sits right behind me. She’s ugly. No one would ever sleep with her, would they?” It didn’t take Newman long to realize these suspicions were not entirely unfounded. The pregnancy epidemics, it turned out, were often driven by rumors that the county sperm bank had received a new supply from some well-known rock singer or famous athlete. It was only months or years later that the new mothers would discover the rumors to be unfounded.

And so, marriage had become essentially a thing of the past. The girls and boys still talked about it as if it were some grand initiation rite waiting for them in adulthood, but it had no bearing on their lives. As the late-night comedians were saying, “It’s a good thing we have gay marriage or nobody would be getting married at all.”

“Mr. Newman, can we play manhunt tonight?” Darien’s voice rose out of the chatter behind him, interrupting his thoughts.

“If you guys get all set up, get your tents up right, gather firewood, cook a meal, clean up afterwards, then you can play manhunt. If it’s not too dark.”

“Oh, we want to play in the dark. It’s more fun,” said Jared.

“Alright, if you’ve got flashlights. Did everyone bring a flashlight?”

“I didn’t bring a flashlight,” said Squirrel, morose as ever.