Joy learns about Gilead

I’ve always been fond of finding anachronistic details in movies. Like an album that came out in 1972 used in a movie set in 1968. Or the wrong model of a car that wasn’t available until later in that particular year. In this future time, everything is foreign, but the Gilead train and their soldiers felt that same way compared to the comparative idyllic nature of the Free Union. Even with that in mind, I never expected to see something this out of place.

The horses themselves were beautiful and obviously well cared for. Six in all were pulling the large carriage. The driver, dressed similarly to the guards except for a blue hat, was sitting up on the edge. He even had someone sitting next to him in the ‘shotgun’ position wielding what looked like a shotgun, although like the previous weapons it had a humming electric bolt wavering around its barrel. Once I got over the odd duality of a futuristic weapon and a horse drawn carriage, I realized what this was for. The carriage was an open design filled with eight individual cells. This was a prison transport of some sort.

Once the horses were reigned in the ‘driver’ stepped down and walked to a seeming random guard. While he was obviously not talking to me, he was staring right in my direction. “This it? Just the one? If this drought continues, we won’t have much left to go to the special market, let alone enough breeding stock. Lemme see what we have.”

The guard doesn’t acknowledge him in the least but the driver heads over to me and pulls the folded paper that’s underneath the belt holding me in the chair and looks it over. I see his eyes glance from the paper, up to my hair, then back to the paper. After reading everything on the paper, he slips it into his pants pocket. And then with a casual grace that I almost have to respect he reaches forward and smacks me across the cheek using his open palm. I’m sure he could have hit me harder, but it’s not like he was holding back either as my head is rocked to the side. I have to bite my cheek in order to prevent the yell welling up in my throat from coming out.

When I look back toward him, he says in a calm voice “Keep your eyes off me girlie. I don’t care how special you are.”

Not understanding this society at all I decide I’d better just follow along with what they say and tilt my head down. Without another word I see him walk behind me and then feel him wheel me up onto the cart and into a cell. After awhile I see another cart coming up, but before the driver can disembark, my own horse drawn cart starts pulling forward. I take one last look over my shoulder, straining to find Atticus and or Catty. Neither of them, however, are to be found at the station and I’m left to hope they’ll be able to find me.

There’s only a handful of cityscapes that I could identify. San Francisco with the Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid. New York City with the Chrysler Building, Empire State Building, Statue of Liberty, and One World Trade Center. Paris with the Eiffel Tower and Notre Dame. Chicago with the Willis Tower and John Hancock Center. So, I’m not sure if I’m seeing Dallas or not, but regardless, I feel like we’re heading into a ruined city. There are several tall buildings that look brand new. Spires of metal and glass that gleam with moving images as if they were televisions. But most of the buildings look like they’re from my time and they’re husks of their former selves. Some look like they’ve simply decayed over the years while others look like they were blown apart. It’s a frightening combination of old and new.

As we get closer to the city center, I lose track of the skyline as the cart is drawn by the horse team between buildings tall enough to obscure it. The street seems like the correct width for a major metropolitan area, but instead of concrete or asphalt, it’s covered with rocks. Or rather, as I look closer at them, cobblestones.

The prison carriage finally comes to a stop. Looking around I see we’re between a lush park on one side and a concrete monstrosity of a building on the other. There are three large columns supporting its six stories. But each floor going up is larger than the one below it. On the other side of the building, it was stair stepped up, while on this side it literally looks like the building is leaning forward as the face is at an angle to the sidewalk. I shake my head, wondering in what era they built such an ugly thing.

The driver rather quickly has me out of my cage and wheeled into the building where he hands me off to another person who wheels me deeper into the building. I can’t help but fidget in the chair. I’m not sure if it’s because I’m nude, beaten, fearful of doing anything to upset anyone, or if it’s simply that my arms hurt from still being bound behind me.

When the man wheels me into a room, I’m almost reminded of the initial interview and treatment room I was brought into in the Free Union. But where that looked bright, sterile, and modern, this looked dim, dirty, and old. When the man exited the room, leaving me alone, I looked more closely at my surroundings and found more things that made me think this place was far older than the Free Union. The decaying walls looked like plain old dry wall. The ceiling was a drop ceiling with metal frames and even included the practically required water stains. And the lights? I had to blink just to make sure I wasn’t getting lost in what I assume is my own concussion. After a few moments though, I realize it’s not me. The light is both buzzing and flickering. It’s a florescent light. Like the horse carriage earlier, this is something we weren’t even using in our time.

When the door opens up, I immediately bow my head and focus on the laminate wood table in front of me. After unhooking and removing all the belts, the man leans me forward with surprising gentleness and unhooks my wrists from each other. When I don’t sit back, he softly rubbed my shoulders and said “That’s a good girl, but you can sit back and stretch your arms. They have to be quite cramped.”

Hoping that he’s not setting me up, I pull my arms in front of me and cross them under my breasts. I’d rather cover my breasts as no one has had this long of a look at them bare. Not even me. But even though the man is being casual, is smiling, and seems genuinely kind, I don’t trust the situation. I was beaten when I balked at being put into a pen. I was gagged when I dared speak. I was slapped for merely looking at a man.

While I stretch my arms the man sits across from me. I can’t help but wonder how these two civilizations connected by a train rail can be so different. The Free Union is a white sterile future. This is a dingy dirty past. The man was even wearing a button up shirt, a white suit coat, and what I think they called a bolo tie with an American flag clasp. He pulls out a clipboard and starts reading over what I believe is the same sheet that was pinned to me earlier. “Okay, let’s see what we have. Oh my, you are quite the specimen aren’t you. Let’s start with your old name. You were Joy, right? Joy Williams?”

He looks up at me and while his smile remains, there’s a grit in his eyes that says he can drop the happy kind act at any time. I nod once and answer softly and curtly “Yes.”

“Good. I rather like the name Joy, so we’ll consider keeping it. You’ll obviously lose the last name. Now, it says here that you are originally from the Eastern Coalition, immigrated into the Free Union with your family, and then voluntarily immigrated to us.” He looks up with obvious doubt “Is that right?”

I again nod but try to offer a little more information “Yes, I’m originally from the Eastern Coalition, and we voluntarily immigrated to the Free Union. But we couldn’t stay there, and they weren’t going to let us leave. Coming to Gilead was the only way out. We… we didn’t exactly choose to come here.”

The man returns to the paper, nodding as if my extra explanation actually helped. “Ahh, that makes more sense. It’s rare for women raised in other societies to choose to come here voluntarily. I’m guessing that you didn’t know how our society cares for women, did you?”

I shake my head and again answer curtly and politely “No.”

The man stands up and starts pacing across from me. “Well, then let me be the first to welcome you officially to Gilead. You’ll be spending the rest of your life here. As you didn’t choose to come here but weren’t forcibly relocated by one of our free-range trappers, I’ll give you a good idea of how we operate. I’m sure, in time, you’ll find satisfaction here if not outright enjoyment. We were formed three hundred years ago by a small group of men who were following the original tenants of God. They were religiously prosecuted in every nation and called heretics. Once they left those infidels behind, they found out that this area wasn’t as badly destroyed as they’d been led to believe. They built up a society completely based around the man’s role as head of the household and woman’s role as breeder. Unlike most societies where women are given some modicum of freedom in choosing her birthing partners or patterns, we optimized the process by taking all women and putting them in birthing pens. There, they’re fed and cared for and bred every hour of every day that they’re fertile. For the longest time we had to have our men actually come in and breed them personally but several decades ago we developed our current system. All men donate their precious sperm to our government and the government mixes it and implants it to the women. The women are positioned for ideal impregnation and are injected with a full dose of sperm every hour. Unless a woman is found to be completely infertile, its rare for them to NOT get pregnant. And now, compared to most countries around the world that are having trouble maintaining their populations, we’re growing steadily.”

As much as I’m trying to remain calm, I imagine the horror is showing clearly on my face. The man places his fists on the table and leans toward me “Now, as a non-**** new woman, you’d normally be going through medical processing and assigned to a pen. Once your fertile period starts, we’d start you breeding and get you pregnant. But you, my dear Joy, are a rare treat. Your hair might be common where you were from, but blonde is a rarity here. Like any woman with a rare trait or skill, you’ll be auctioned off as a trophy. Depending on your owner, you might be paraded around as a wife of old, left at home as a servant, or be bred in his own personal stable.”

Leaning closer to me he runs his fingers through my hair as he grins wickedly “If it were me gaining you, I think I’d have you on display to as many people as possible. I don’t think I’d even dress you. But there’s no way a government employee like me could ever afford a beauty like you. Of course, I’ve also heard that ancient breeding processes are quite pleasurable, and some men have set up their trophies to do that with paying men.”

The man finally takes his seat again and seems to be going over a checklist of things to tell me. “Regardless, you need to know the basics. Women here have no rights. We believe in the almighty’s declarations that women are to be kind, silent, and submissive. Their purpose is to bear the fruit of their wombs. They will rejoice in their servitude. Being that you were raised to adulthood in another society, it’s best if you consider yourself property now. Someone else’s property. How you are treated is up to whoever owns you. Any man can treat you in any way he wants if your owner isn’t present. If you aren’t sold to a personal owner and aren’t able to bear children, you’ll be tasked with caring for the other women, but this will give you no leadership or power over these women, nor them over you. You are all women, and you are all equal in the eyes of the Lord and the eyes of the nation of Gilead.”

The man never even told me his name. He just continued to give me example after example of how I’d made the worst mistake of my life. And here I thought the Free Union was treating me like breeding stock. Once he’s finished, he gathers up his things and leaves. He doesn’t even ask if I have any questions but by everything he’s told me, it doesn’t matter if I have questions or not. A few moments later another man steps in with a basket full of needles and tubes and other medical equipment. I recognize most of what he does, including taking my blood pressure, my pulse, my temperature, and even taking several vials of blood. But he also pulls out a device that looks like a simple metal circle connected to a handle. He waves that over my heart area for a moment then waves it around each of my temples. There’s no display on the device, so I’m not sure what it’s measuring. And finally, he hands me a cup and tells me he needs a urine sample. When he merely takes a step back and continues to look at me I realize I’m not even going to be given that level of privacy and am **** to take the cup, crouch down, and pee into it while being watched.

Its longer between the medical man and the next, but without a clock I have no idea how long I’m left waiting. The next man that comes in is wearing the military uniform again and silently motions me forward. Stepping up beside him he roughly grabs my arm and starts practically pulling me through the hallways. Unlike the Free Union, all the rooms here at least have room numbers while some even have names. I see us pass by two locker rooms, but instead of men’s and women’s they’re simply labeled locker room 1 and locker room 2. We pass by restrooms, but again there are two men’s rooms and none for women. And finally, he turns me to stand right in front of a door named “Stage”

When the door finally opens, he steps aside and pushes me in. I take a few stumbling steps into the dark room until a very bright light shines directly on me. As I squint and raise my hand up to try and block the blinding light, I hear a man’s amplified voice saying excitedly “And here we have something truly special, a voluntary immigrant from the Eastern Coalition. Not only is no one going to come looking for her, but she’s completely naïve to Gilead. A true unformed clay shape ready to be formed and fired by your strict hands! And her hair has been scanned and verified to be true blonde hair. That’s right gentleman, this woman doesn’t need dyes or coloring agents, her hair is all natural! Can I start the bidding at 500?”