The Feminist Queendom 7 © Copyright to Beverly Taff

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 7

Several times during their honeymoon, Chloe and Charlie took Doris their mobile home or Lady, Chloe’s performance car and savoured the delight of travelling long distances and indeed even travelling overseas during dark cloudy nights when they could avail themselves of the cloud cover. Then, in some convenient remote unpopulated location, they could silently alight, drive a few kilometres and find a camping site for the night.

Thus in the fortnight they had been allotted for their honeymoon, they stealthily visited locations in Spain, Portugal, France and Belgium before slipping undetected back to their home in England.

For Chloe it was simply a delight to revisit some places she had enjoyed vacationing as a girl child of a prosperous and successful mother, whilst other visits had been expensive educational school trips during high school and college. At other times she was visiting other places for the first time as part of her ‘bucket list’.

For Charlie of course, as a boy child of an eccentric rebellious mother, there had never been enough money to travel so everything was a novelty to him. Having finished all formal schooling in year seven, he had never enjoyed an educational trip in his life.

Sadly,
the honeymoon, whilst being thoroughly enjoyable in terms of sharing the pleasures with Chloe, it also cast in him a resentment at the thought of all the opportunities to travel that had been denied to him because of his being firstly poor and secondly, a boy. The honeymoon had wetted his appetite for travel and he could not wait for the weekends or any statutory holidays that Chloe’s femininity entitled her to.

Slowly, he began to resent the idea that he was being exploited and his skills were not being fairly rewarded.

Some months later, as Charlie was handed a complex aerospace component that enabled rapid computerised responses to safely guide an aircraft through avoidance manoeuvres that would not inflict crippling injuries on a human pilot, he asked for the maintenance manual and the medical directives concerning ‘G’ forces and survivability conditions vis-à-vis the female skeleton.

Such a complex request was immediately ‘booted upstairs’ and several days later Charlie was invited to an interview with a military-medical panel concerning his request.

“Good morning Charlie,” Mrs Anston smiled enigmatically.

“Morning Ma-am.”

“The panel here would like to ask you some questions concerning your unusual request.”
Charlie twitched a wry smile and nodded his comprehension.

“Go ahead.”

A high-ranking military doctor leaned forward with suspicion writ large behind her crocodilian smile.

“We wonder why you need to have comparative figures for male and female bodies and as a follow up, where would you get the idea that men would be suitably equipped mentally these days to operate a very sophisticated fighter.”

Charlie sat silent for long moments as he searched the military doctors question for any hidden traps. Eventually he ventured a cautious reply.

“The first part of your question is simple to answer; there is no doubt that nowadays male skeletons are heavier and stronger than female skeletons simply because your sperm-doner parameters favour heavier built males to handle manual tasks. If a woman was subjected to the manoeuvring ‘g-forces’ that a man could survive, she could suffer skeletal damage, especially to the neck and spine. Their neck muscles simply cannot withstand the forces.

The second part of my answer is this. You are breeding apelike men who are much stronger but – and it’s a big but; they are generally far less intelligent than their sisters. I say generally, but there are exceptions. Such men as you rightly say, would generally be ill equipped to operate a military plane with the same intellectual skill and manual dexterity as your latter day ladies. The issues arise when the ‘G-forces’ are applied to the female long bones and spinal column with less muscle and ligature strength.

They, the men that is, can resist the greater ‘G-forces’ pressing down on their arms; necks and spines, women are less able. Despite your technology embedded in your Gee-suits, neck supports and breathing gas mixes, planes are once again beginning to outstrip the human limits.

Unless I have access to those parameters, I cannot integrate all the factors that would optimise the cockpit design and location when conjoined to the new enablement conditions supplied by the gee-suit and the unstable geometry that enhances manoeuvrability.

If I am unable to access your ergonomic ‘G-force’ limits for women pilots, I cannot programme the manoeuvring parameters and accelerations to accommodate a woman’s average physical limits. There’s a lot of sensory engineering to be connected to the control surfaces and engine controls.”

“How come you know all this?”

“Twenty years of intense repair, modification and design work on Anston military components that are then re-installed in your equipment.” Charlie replied bluntly. “It’s impossible not to learn for somebody with half a brain!”

Even as he said it, Charlie knew he had overstepped a very thick red line. He cursed himself inwardly and waited for the vituperative response.

The medical officer, who had field rank, glared at him poisonously as she demanded an apologetic explanation.

“Are you saying that you know more than our own experts?”

Charlie, having realised he had crossed the line, realised there was no going back but he still tried to moderate his reply to avoid further offence.

“Sometimes; yes.”

“Without a proper scientific education!” A four-star general scoffed.

“Definitely!” Charlie declared.

“If you’ve not had the education, how would you know about the education?” The doctor persisted, little realising she was digging a hole for herself.

“It’s simple.” Charlie replied and left his answer at that; thus forcing the medical officer to keep digging.

“Explain.”

“The explanation is in the work I do for Anston Aerospace and Avionics. – For very low pay I might add!”

“You haven’t answered my question.”

“I just did. Ask her!” (Charlie indicated Mrs Anston the owner of Anston Aerospace.)

All the military panel turned expectantly to the lady engineer and physicist. Who glared at Charlie as she rushed to gather her thoughts. Finally she revealed.

“He does seem to have a particular knack for analysing the flaws in components and developing more elegant solutions; and not just our components either – we are often forced to hand him captured components from the Asiatic block because he seems to have an insightful knack for determining what the component does – and, more importantly; how it does it.”

“Are you saying you allow him access to our most valuable military hardware?” The four-star general gasped.

“I’m saying he’s actually designed and improved much of your – that is our military hardware. He has actually enabled us to take the lead again in the electro-magnetic spectrum. Not to mention electronic counter-measures. Do you remember the Hindu Kush incident when we deliberately let their new fighters intrude into our air-space then disabled them electronically so that they could continue flying but could not return to their own bases.

When they started to run out of fuel they were forced to either crash-out or look for an airfield. The braver, fanatical pilots simply crashed their planes into the mountains whilst the less fanatical ones decided to land into captivity on our airstrips. One of them even claimed we had somehow taken control of his aircraft; electronically that is.”

“Yes. That was something of a feather in our air-force’s cap.”

“That would be his cap then!” Mrs Anston indicated Charlie, the only male in the room. “He re-designed their magnetronic dessicator that enabled our forces to interrupt, then control, then kidnap their aircraft even with their pilots still sitting in the cockpit. I believe they are still trying to work out how we did it, the engineering that is.”

“We? Ma-am?” Charlie interrupted. “Don’t you mean me?”

Mrs Anston glanced uncertainly at what had always been her tame problem solver. This was a new Charlie Sage and she was unsure of where the conversation was going.

Having sensed that his boss was beginning to crumble, Charlie took the electronic bull by its avionic horns as he described bluntly how much input he had into the magnetronic dessicator.

“I recall that you plonked the captured component onto my work bench because you could not determine exactly what it did and more importantly; how it did it. I also know you had been studying it for months before you deigned to allow me to inspect it because I heard the engineers talking and arguing about it every time I passed one of their groups. Apparently, you could not get clearance from these ladies to allow me to even look at it. Because I am a man I suppose. Would I be right?”

The managing director nodded somewhat sheepishly and Charlie slowly nodded his confirmation before continuing by addressing the generals..

“So eventually, this wholly inexplicable piece of alien, partially-disassembled electronics appears on my work bench with Mrs Anston’s note asking me to ‘have-a-look-at-it’! See-what-I-can-make-of-it is what she wrote.”

He turned to the Managing director again.

“Obviously, your own so-called boffins had been looking at it for months and given up; am I right?”

She nodded; too embarrassed to say a plain ‘yes’, so Charlie continued embarrassing both Mrs Anston and the military panel.

“So, your own pet, supposedly, dumb-arse, under-paid, uneducated, bench-grunt sets to work; - reverse-engineering it, analysing it and finally rebuilding a better and counter-intuitive device that desiccates their impulsed, cockpit, digitalisation.

What’s more, I know for a fact that your own boffins are still not confident with its secrets because every time you seem to have a problem with this particular device, it always somehow, lands on my bench!”

A resentful silence settled around the table as Charlie finally lost patience and stepped away to turn his back on the assembled group and stare out of the window. This dismissive gesture only served to irritate the panel further. Eventually the medical officer spoke plainly to Charlie’s back.

“Do you seriously think you are intellectually superior to your colleagues.”

“The facts speak for themselves; it’s got nothing to do with what I think.”

“So what do you think?”

“As far as you are concerned, I think about nothing. My thoughts are private; they always have been and they always will be.”

“But you do obviously think about stuff, it’s hard not to if you’re as intelligent as you say you are.” The medical officer pressed.

“She had more than a passing interest in psychiatry and the male in the room now intrigued her.

‘No person with that level of mental capacity could get through life ignoring his circumstances and any unfairness he might deem to affect them.’

She had become convinced he was a seriously potential subversive but the elephant in the room had already been made clearly apparent; he was too damned important to Anston Aerospace. As the silenced endured, Mrs Anston became uncomfortable so she decided to break up for Lunch. Her actions served to relieve the tensions in the room but the next event only served to drive home the issues. All the military and managerial staff went into the executive dining room while Charlie returned downstairs to his bench and the labourer’s canteen.

Having realised the blunder, the medical officer hurriedly questioned the situation. For she had clearly sensed the problem.

“Where’s he gone?” She asked Mrs Anston.

“Oh dammit,” the managing director cursed, “he’ll be eating down with the labourers in their canteen.”

“It’s too bloody late now. I suppose he’ll be spreading sedition down there.”

“Unlikely; knowing Charlie, he’ll be sat at his bench eating and tinkering simultaneously.”

“Is it worth going to get him and invite him up here.”

“Are you prepared to face any comment he might have about that?”

“He wouldn’t dare, it could land him on a gender assault charge.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Mrs Anston cautioned the doctor, “he’s far to subtle for that. You’ll get the message alright but there’ll be nothing that could stand up in court. As you’ve already learned; he’s clever.”

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