The Feminist Queendom 9 © Beverly Taff June 2021

List of Characters.
Charlie Sage Maths and electronics genius.
Shirley Sage Charlies elderly mother
Chloe Charlie’s one time early school friend.
Josephine Flint Surgeon and associate of Chloe’s.
Mrs Anston Director of Anston Aerospace.
Ronnie Garage mechanic at top of lane
Pauline Garage owner, Ronnie’s sister.
Briony Pauline’s teenaged daughter.
Billy Pauline’s middle son.
Abigail (Abby) Pauline’s youngest daughter.
‘Poppy’ Charlie’s little micro-runabout.
‘Doris’ The armoured mobile home.
‘Lady’ Chloe’s Sports Car.

Chapter 9

Ms Anston Squinted knowingly at Charlie but her pet engineer appeared to be gazing passively out through the large window. She knew it would fall to her to sort out whatever trouble had occurred and she knew she would have to address the female military doctor’s case first. Feminista rules demanded this.

Sighing inwardly she asked the Military doctor.

“What happened to your hands?”

“They got burnt.”

“How?”

“Down in your repair and development workshop, where he works.”

“Go on,” the director pressed for she already sensed that the doctor was hiding something; “what were you doing down in the workshops unescorted.”

“Are you implying that I’m not qualified to enter that area?”

“Seemingly not,” the director replied whilst nodding pointedly towards the doctor’s injured hands.

“It was an accident.” The doctor replied defensively.

“Obviously; people don’t ordinarily come out of there every day with injured hands – burnt hands that is. What exactly happened?”

“I was forced to take action to make him obey me.”

“I see, he was being violent was he?”

“Well – not exactly but he was being uncooperative and incommunicative.”

“Go on.”

“I had to take my taser out because he was being disobedient.”

“What? You mean physically resisting you, assaulting you?”

“Not exactly.”

“Well what exactly. We can check on the CCTV. There are several in that workshop and at least two of them cover the work benches where Mr Sage works.”

“What! Two cameras?”

“Indeed, they are there because Mr Sage does some extremely sensitive work. They also have audio input; top level security you understand. Several of his colleagues work alongside him so they enjoy the same level of surveillance – for their own protection you understand.

The medical officer went pale as she realised she was in trouble.

“I, - I rather think it would be better if we let the matter drop.”

“I can’t do that I’m afraid. The first-aider who dressed your hand will have put a report in the accident book already. We have an excellent industrial accident record here at Anston’s and we like to keep it that way. Every accident has to be reported and investigated. What exactly happened.”

Realising she had better come clean, the medical officer did so.

“Mt Sage was proving somewhat reluctant to communicate and I became annoyed.”

By now the incident was being replayed on a video screen for everybody to see and the medical officer realised she was bang-to-rights. She was forced to describe it exactly as it was.

“He was refusing to face me as he spoke to me and he was being generally discourteous. I had to teach him not to be so rude.”

“By tasering him while he had his back to you.” Mrs Anston’s tone clearly demonstrated her dissatisfaction with the medical officer’s narrative.

“All he had to do was turn around and face me as he spoke.”

The director wagged her head resignedly.

“Do you work much with men General. You must meet thousands of them in the military.”

“No, I deal with the ergonomic and physiological aspects of operating specialist weapons.”

“So you’ll no-doubt understand the effects of the magnetronic dessicator on aircraft controls and the neutralisation of the attendant Gee forces the dessicator can effect.”

“Yes, that’s what we’re here to discuss.”

“Exactly, and do you understand what forces are involved.”

“I understand what effects the magnetronic dessicator can achieve to out-perform enemy aircraft.”

“Do you know exactly how the dessicator achieves those effects, how it rapidly interrupts the accelerative forces to neutralise the lateral pressures in a fighter’s tight turn?”

“Well no, - not exactly, that’s the secret of our science.”

“Well actually Colonel, it’s not precisely our science, it is in fact Mr Sage’s science. Without his insight and intuition, your planes would never be able to out-perform the Asian block’s aircraft. Furthermore, we here at Anston Aerospace will privately admit to your committee that while we share the benefits of the magnetronic desiccators with your airmen, we still don’t exactly understand precisely how the damned things work. Only one person has that depth of intuition and he’s standing by that window.

Now whilst I’ll admit I might not fully understand it’s secrets I can assure you that I know this much. When Mr Sage or one of his work colleagues opens up one of those gizmos, there are some very high voltage capacitors and desiccation repeaters which, if they shocked a man or woman, would most likely kill them or burn them very severely. The capacitors in particular can store their charge for a considerable period after de-activation.

That is why he and his work mates take great care when testing them on the bench. They don’t want to die.

Incidentally, that is also why they wear the copper-mesh ground suits to act as a faraday cage and immediately conduct any stray short circuit to earth. Just like sitting in a car during a lightning strike.

Now after watching the CTT of Mr Sage’s workshop bench I can only thank God that he was wearing his ground suit when you tasered him without warning! For if he had collapsed unprotected onto the dessicator with its opened safety panel and live connections to the test bed, Mr Sage would be dead. Those terminals are rated for five thousand volts with not inconsiderable amperage.

Would you like to see a raw arc shorting to earth from those testing terminals. It’s a display that Mr Sage arranges for every newcomer to his bench team and it is a very sobering lesson. If you look at every work-stall, you’ll see each individual has his own copper-mesh, ground-suit hanging on its own peg. Now many of Mr Sage’s team wear them as a matter of course because they believe they have accidentally discovered some other benefits to do with rheumatism and other joint pains.

That’s something my ladies are even now researching but it was Mr Sage’s team who first reported the unexpected bonus. A medical spin-off from military research.

I’m telling you this Colonel because of Mr Sage and his work, - and please remember, I’m not allowed to describe it as research because of the Feminista 'job description laws that ensure he remains on a lower pay grade. Mr Sage's work is what keeps this company and even your armed forces ahead of the technology game. Only the magnetronic dessicator enables our aircraft to dodge hypersonic missiles at virtually point-blank range! - And, more importantly, out-accelerate them when fired upon from behind.

In an ordinary fighter-plane’s cockpit, those gee forces would crush a human being; man or woman! That’s the brutal truth!”

The medical officer wanted to glare at Ms Anston but the director was far too high up the defence-industry’s pecking order for a mere colonel to invoke her wrath. Instead, she tried giving Charlie a malignant stare but Ms Anston spotted it immediately and a single knowing glance put paid to the colonel’s thoughts of revenge.

Even as the medical officer glanced around the gathered generals, she could feel their censure boring into her. Now was not the time or place to get even with this damnable man!

The rest of the afternoon was taken up by Ms Anston the director escorting the generals around the plant to describe what exciting new researches were taking place. This went down very well with the military except for the fact that almost everywhere they stopped to examine some military innovation; Charlie’s name kept popping up when the technology was being discussed.

By the end of the day, the generals were more than concerned to learn just how much of their technology was attributable to one person and a male person at that.

Charlie’s very existence threw their whole concept of the Feminista order into disorder and the military were never comfortable with disorder.

At the end of the tour, several of the generals asked Ms Anston if they could interview Charlie again before the visit ended. She regretted that it was gone seventeen hundred hours and Charlie, as a supervisor level, kept regulated hours and was paid at an hourly rate. If they had wanted to speak to him after five o’clock they should have put their request in before he had left. Then the man would have been paid a direct overtime hourly rate.

“Are you saying he’s not even enjoying an executive salary?” One of the senior generals observed disbelievingly.

“Feminista rules I’m afraid general. Men cannot hold executive positions unless they’ve been feminised. I’m sure your aware of that.”

“How come he wasn’t feminised when a child, his intelligence must have alerted the educators.”

“His mother was a bit of a rebel who did not hold with the feminista agenda. She worked on her son and after a troublesome year at school where he tried to study to a higher level, the boy appeared to give up. Our company has researched his childhood and it does not cast the Feminista principles in a good light.

“Explain!” The general requested

“The boy grew up tight lipped and deeply introspective.”

“So how on earth does he understand the science? Or the maths even! He must have somehow gained access to illegal textbooks.”

“Really general, that’s an extremely naive perception. Who’s text-books did Newton consult when he discovered calculus.”

“Are you saying he has discovered it himself and then taken it forward.”

“Worse than that general, he’s discovered his own mathematical tools with his own symbols and functions and they are considerably more powerful than our conventional maths. It’s no use trying to get him to explain it. When my staff fail to comprehend he just looks at our mathematical researchers then shakes his head and walks away.

However, I can assure you now, he breaks NO laws; - unless there are some new kind of 'thought regulations' that I have not heard of. The only other assurance I can offer you is to be thankful he is on our side, or at least he is for now.”

“Yeah! But for how long if he keeps getting treated like an ape – and paid like one?” One of the generals wondered.

“I leave that question to be answered by higher powers than me.”

“Couldn’t he be forcibly feminised under emergency powers?”

“He’s married. That would put you in clear breach of his wife’s human rights!”

The word ‘married’ dropped on the assembled military like a nuclear bomb.

“Married!? That’s a bit primitive isn’t it. I would have thought that somebody of that level of intelligence would have avoided such a backward, primitive step like the plague.”

“Seemingly not,” the director riposted, “his wife is adamant that he is a thoughtful, kind, careful and gentle sperm donor.”

“You mean they -!”

“Yes general, they conjugate the old-fashioned way. It may seem unhygienic to you but they seem to delight in the private anticience it lends them.”

“Isn’t that illegal?”

“Hardly General. Wasn’t that one of the pillars of the Feminista arguments, liberating women both in the bedroom and in the bed. What a woman does with her sperm donor or donors, is entirely outside the remit of government or religious intervention, provided she does not injure him or them.”

“Hmm,” the General mused, “so he’s breaking no laws.”

Ms Anston smiled beguilingly.

“I’ve already told you that General. Just be glad he’s on our side.”

“But in truth, he’s out of control, - well our control that is.”

“In my view general, he’s very much in control, - self-control that is. My advice is to avoid poking him.”

“I doesn’t make me feel safe though. What’s the relationship with his minder?”

“Do you mean his wife?”

“Sorry, yes, his wife. It’s a word I’m not used to. It seems primitive to me.”

“Get used to it general, she’s the prickly one and he dotes on her. - Typically old fashioned infatuation, as I understand it.”

“So if we can get her on our side, -“ The general hazarded.

“General, I’m warning you now, DO NOT POKE THAT RELATIONSHIP! I’ll say this one more time! Neither I, nor Anston Aerospace nor this country can afford to lose that brain, - that MAN’S brain!”

ooo000ooo

The general somewhat resented Ms Anston’s blunt warning but she was the director and owner of one of the Feminine Queendom’s largest and most advanced aerospace companies. He already knew that she had a lot of clout with the defence ministry and Downing Street. It galled her to know that Ms Anston’s clout was almost entirely owed to Charlie Sage, who was nothing more than a shop floor supervisor.

That evening, the generals and the colonel doctor had a long discussion about Charlie. Some argued that the best solution was to feminise him but others, including the doctor, pointed out that his potential to improve the intellectual gene pool was too important to be destroyed.

“Just remember sisters, science tells us that the ‘Y’ chromosome is a vital component to the principle of sentient, mongrel vigour. The potential for throwing up the occasional genius like Mr Sage is a brutal statistical truth. We cannot allow male intelligence to be retrograded genetically and we are forced to acknowledge the laws of genetics. You cannot inbreed intelligence through the mitochondrial DNA.”

The generals and particularly the medical officer, fully understood the realities of medical and genetic science and knew the director was right; though it galled them.

ooo000ooo